Quotes about importance (6132 quotes, page 45)

“I know that it can be very easy, under the intensive pressures of a campaign, for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics — to rationalize this on the grounds that what is at stake is of such importance to the Nation that the end justifies the means. And both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics in the past.
In recent years, however, the campaign excesses that have occurred on all sides have provided a sobering demonstration of how far this false doctrine can take us. The lesson is clear: America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means.
I urge the leaders of both political parties, I urge citizens, all of you, everywhere, to join in working toward a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made. This is my goal. I ask you to join in making it America's goal.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, First Watergate Speech (1973)

People , Past , Future , Falseness

“The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)

God , Truth , Faith , Universe

“Worse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Am I the NRA?" collected in Lever Action (2001) and republished online in 2007 http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle401-20070114-03.html.

Life

“There is something … more important in life than punctuality, and that is decorum.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

Life

“While it will be desirable to achieve planned results, it will be even more important to avoid unplanned disasters.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XV, Section 2, p. 169

“Gurdjieff said, “Change depends on you, and it will not come about through study. You can know everything and yet remain where you are. It is like a man who knows all about money and the laws of banking, but has no money of his own in the bank. What does all his knowledge do for him?”

Here Gurdjieff suddenly changed his manner of speaking, and looking at me very directly he said: “You have the possibility of changing, but I must warn you that it will not be easy. You are still full of the idea that you can do what you like. In spite of all your study of free will and determinism, you have not yet understood that so long as you remain in this place, you can do nothing at all. Within this sphere there is no freedom. Neither your knowledge nor all your activity will give you freedom. This is because you have no …” Gurdjieff found it difficult to express what he wanted in Turkish. He used the word varlik, which means roughly the quality of being present. I thought he was referring to the experience of being separated from one’s body.

Neither I nor the Prince [Sabaheddin] could understand what Gurdjieff wished to convey. I felt sad, because his manner of speaking left me in no doubt that he was telling me something of great importance. I answered, rather lamely, that I knew that knowledge was not enough, but what else was there to do but study?…”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 46–48 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Constantinople 1920

Money , Sadness , Law , Idea

“At different stages in the educational process different changes are required. In schools the chief need is for a general change in the attitude towards science, which should be from the beginning an integral part and not a mere addition, often an optional addition, to the curriculum. Science should be taught not merely as a subject but should come into all subjects. Its importance in history and in modern life should be pointed out and illustrated. The old contrast, often amounting to hostility, between scientific and humane subjects need to be broken down and replaced by a scientific humanism. At the same time, the teaching of science proper requires to be humanized. The dry and factual presentation requires to be transformed, not by any appeal to mystical theory, but by emphasizing the living and dramatic character of scientific advance itself. Here the teaching of the history of science, not isolated as at present, but in close relation to general history teaching, would serve to correct the existing atmosphere of scientific dogmatism. It would show at the same time how secure are the conquests of science in the control they give over natural processes and how insecure and provisional, however necessary, are the rational interpretations, the theories and hypotheses put forward at each stage. Past history by itself is not enough, the latest developments of science should not be excluded because they have not yet passed the test of time. It is absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that science not only has changed but is continually changing, that it is an activity and not merely a body of facts. Throughout, the social implications of science, the powers that it puts into men's hands, the uses they could make of them and those which they in fact do, should be brought out and made real by a reference to immediate experience of ordinary life.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 246 : How such a method of teaching could become an integral part of general education is sketched by H. G. Wells' British Association address, "The Informative Content of Education," reprinted in World Brain (Mathuen, 1938).

Life , Men , Hostility , Education

“Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance tot the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept op space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them.... the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain (an idea approved by Apollinaire and later by Matisse) that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: poetry being the content and raison d'être of art.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, Letters of the great artists', 1963, p. 248-249

Art , Idea , Future

“Needless to say, if I knew my daughter would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if she does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Drugs and the Meaning of Life http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/ (5 July 2011)
2010s

Life , Sleep , Daughters

“The leadership and other processes of the organization must be such as to ensure a maximum probability that in all interactions and all interactions and all relationships with the organization each member will, in the light of his background, values, and expectations, view the experience as supportive and one which builds and maintains his sense of personal worth and importance.”

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Source: New patterns of management, (1961), p. 103

Support , Sense , Light , Personality

“Journalists are, or ought to be, the public's hired guns sent out to collect information, question it, verify it and distil it to what is important and true. This takes time and skill, and is the only thing a journalist does that marks him or her out as a professional. It's also the reason why anyone would choose well-known newspaper's website over an unknown blog.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Press Gazette http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/8235 - "Harold Evans, Guido Fawkes, Heather Brookes and Bild on journalism and the public interest", 27 September 2011.
Attributed, In the Media

Question , Time

“For those who distinguish state and society, "regime," as used in this essay, is closer to society than state. Although the distinction of state and society is a philosophical question of the first order, I do not think it makes any difference for the purpose of this book just where one stands on this great issue. Those who, like Aristotle, do not distinguish state and society may perhaps feel more comfortable with the words "regime" or "polity" than those who make this distinction. The latter may prefer the somewhat ambiguous term “society values.” It is important to note, however, that I am not talking exclusively about the values of the "state"”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

the authoritative and coercive agent of a political society.
1989, p. 90-91, Note 33
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

Books , Feeling , Question , Thinking

“For me to get into that creative process I have to have a sort of quiet place that I work from. And if I was living the life of … somebody in the industry, as a pop star or whatever, it's too distracting. It's too to do with other people's perceptions of who you are, and what's important to me is to be a human being who has a soul, and who hopefully has a sense of who they are, not who everybody else thinks you are.
And I think, you know, that's something that's very difficult for people who become extremely famous. I mean, I find it completely ridiculous this obsession with celebrities. … Why are celebrities so important to people? It's absolute crap. I mean, the important people are surgeons and doctors and people actually put people back together and make a difference to people's lives. Not somebody who's in an ad on telly. I mean, okay, so that's valid for what it is, too. But why so much attention on something that's so shallow?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Interview on The Mark Radcliff Show, BBC Radio 2 (7 November 2005) http://gaffa.org/reaching/iv05_bbc2_Mark_Radcliff_interview.html

Life , People , Soul , Star

“We can see that canonic status is accorded to the works of a composer not by posterity, or at least not by a posterity as distant in time as is sometimes thought; nor does it depend very much on whether the works are frequently performed for the public in every important musical center. To a certain extent, canonic status is actually built into some new works, partly by the way they impose themselves on an already substantial musical tradition. This may explain why it is so difficult to alter a firmly installed canon in any radical way, or to dislodge works that have been an integral part of it for some time.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

Music , Way , Distant , Time

“It is of great importance that the laws by which the contracts of so numerous and so useful a body of men as the sailors are supposed to be guided, should not be overturned.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Cutter v. Powell (1795), 6 T. R. 320.

Men , Law

“It is important for a father who feels pushed away to say, in effect, "When you do that, I feel unwanted as a father," or "I feel my rough-housing is not bad parenting; it's my contribution to helping our child take risks." Women cannot hear what men do not say.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

page 105.
Father and Child Reunion (2001)

Women , Men , Feeling , Parent

“The price system transmits only the important information and only to the people who need to know.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", 15

People

“The musical language which made the classical style possible is that of tonality, which was not a massive, immobile system but a living, gradually changing language from its beginning. It had reached a new and important turning point just before the style of Haydn and Mozart took shape.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Part I. Introduction. 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century
Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (Expanded edition, 1997)

Music , Change

“When I was 14 or 13 or 15 I went to Sri Lanka on the Experiment in International Living for a summer. I wanted to travel. And going outside of my own culture and traveling and seeing my own world from a foreign perspective is a big part of my life and who I am. That's what I was talking about earlier, is stepping outside of yourself and examining yourself with a different perspective is very important, and it's important to do as an artist for others.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Academy of Achievement interview (2006)

Life , World , Travel , Summer

“The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the Twentieth Century.”

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British historian, author of A Study of History

Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within, Broadway Books, NY, 1997.

“In general the claim can be supported that a view of classical political economy as committed to extreme laissez-faire or unmitigated economic individualism misrepresents or at the very least analytically overgeneralizes their circumscribed theoretical and practical aims. In general then, with regard to both political and economic liberty, the classical political economists might be seen to be united in their efforts to theorize and systematize the productive and allocating functions of the mechanism of the market as the most efficient means to engender the growth of wealth. At the same time, classicals such as Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill recognized that the market, of necessity, operated in a larger context of restriction – not only legal, but equally as important, within political, religious, moral, and conventional restrictions – which could not be readily or in some cases even desirably overcome.”

Shannon C. Stimson (1951) American political theorist

"Classical Political Economy", in Coole, Diana H.; Gibbons, Michael; Ellis, Elisabeth et al., The encyclopedia of political thought (2014); see also Adam Smith

Support , Effort , Time , Wealth

“This is a great country and requires a good deal of all of us, so I can imagine nothing more important than for all of you to continue to work in public affairs and be interested in them, not only to bring up a family, but also give part of your time to your community, your state, and your country.”

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

"Remarks to the Delegates of Girls Nation (322)" (2 August 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1963

Family , Imagination , Communication , Time

“[The title] was the last thing that I chose, after all the songs and the cover art were finished. So none of the songs directly allude to that myth. But the main themes that emerge out of that myth are really close to the themes on the record -- mortality, decadence, an excess of water, isolation, rebirth. The myth is also significant to me because of the way that I encountered it, which relates to one of the huge events the record is about.
I also liked the power of the word itself. I liked how violent and cryptic it felt; it's such a daunting word to encounter. I like how it contrasted this finely rendered, carefully composed front cover -- the painting is information-dense, formal, and stylized; it looks the way something looks when a painter spends a year on it, which is what Benjamin [Vierling] did. So it has all this detail and carefulness to it, which was really important to me and relates very closely to the record. But I also felt like it needed some sort of ballast, or balance, next to it, to reflect the other elements of the record; its innate violence. I wanted a word that was like throwing a brick at the visual on the front cover; I liked that whenever someone looked at that cover they also had to encounter this short, weird word.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Interview with Pitchfork (2006)

Art , Way , Water , Painting

“When I see dads being most effective with children, it is usually when they have an intuitive understanding that, for example, the car trip to and from the soccer game is potentially as important as the game itself.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 118.

Children , Cars , Game , Understanding

“Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.... Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era... Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1921 - 1950
Source: 'Appreciations of other artists': Jean (Hans) Arp (sculptor, painter, writer) 1949, by Marcel Duchamp; as quoted in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159

Smile

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thing—and if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine—is: I'm sorry.
I respect women. I don't respect men who don't. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.
But I want to say something else, too. Over the last few months, all of us—including and especially men who respect women—have been forced to take a good, hard look at our own actions and think (perhaps, shamefully, for the first time) about how those actions have affected women.
For instance, that picture [when Franken appears to grope the breasts of a sleeping Leeann Tweeden, while simultaneously smiling towards the photographer] I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn't funny. It's completely inappropriate. It's obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what's more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it—women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

November 2017 statement https://www.wdio.com/news/al-franken-statement-leeann-tweeden/4672510/ in response to allegations of sexual harassment and groping made by Leeann Tweeden against Franken.

Women , Men , People , Fear

“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are—nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought?—but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

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

Speech in South Carolina (19 July 2016)
2010s, 2016, July

Women , Men , People , World

“The healer in the New Age… is also spiritually aware that the healing of the physical body is not always the highest spiritual good; the over-estimation and serious, anxious care of the form life of the physical vehicle, is not of major importance.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Esoteric Healing (1953), p.538

Life , Age

“Money as a medium of exchange becomes important when workers are paid in medium of exchange rather than in wage goods directly. Since wage goods constitute the majority of goods produced (particularly in the early stages of development), it is tempting (but misleading) to focus on exchanges and on money as a medium of exchange [like the neo-classicals]. Once capitalist production dominates the economy, money becomes universally important: money operates as a medium of exchange and money hoards provide a measure of security. However, production involves goods and services now in exchange for a promise to pay in the future. That is, money is involved in the production process because production is time-based and involves debt commitments. If one only focuses on the use of money in exchange or as a store of value, one ignores how money creation is inextricably related to time-based production in private property economies.”

L. Randall Wray (1953) American economist

Source: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies, 1990, p. 10; Cited in Howard Stein. "Theories of institutions and economic reform in Africa." World Development 22.12 (1994): 1833-1849.

Money , Universe , Time , Future

“And Music is an art which likes people to laugh and sing and dance. It cares nothing for melancholy, nor for a man who sorrows over what is of no importance, but ignores, instead, such folk. It brings joy everywhere it's present; it comforts the disconsolate, and just hearing it makes people rejoice.”

Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) French poet and composer

Et musique est une science
Qui veut qu'on rie et chante et dance.
Cure n'a de merencolie,
Ne d'homme qui merencolie
A chose qui ne puet valoir,
Eins met tels gens en nonchaloir.
Partout ou elle est joie y porte;
Les desconfortez reconforte,
Et nes seulement de l'oir
Fait elle les gens resjoir.
"Le Prologue", line 85; translation from Ross W. Duffin (ed.) A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) p. 190.

People , Art , Music , Singing

“Here, then: a revolution [in science and chemistry] has taken place in an important part of human knowledge since your departure from Europe… I will consider this revolution to be well advanced and even completely accomplished if you range yourself with us. …After having brought you up to date on what is happening in chemistry, it would be well to speak to you about our political revolution. We regard it as done and without any possibility of return to the old order.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Letter to Benjamin Franklin (Feb 2, 1790) as quoted by I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science (1985)

Departure , Knowledge , Science , Parting

“Even if we come from different sides of the world, speak different languages. Even if we eat too many chips, or rice balls. Even if we have different tastes in games. Every one of us, here today, is identical, in the most important way. Each one of us has the heart of a gamer.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

2005 GDC Keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrEosZKzp4&t=8m6s

World , Way , Game , Heart

“We have to let God's love break through the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our imagination and shape our deepest desires. That is why prayer is so important: daily prayer, private prayer in the quiet of our hearts and before the Blessed Sacrament, and liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Love , God , Age , Imagination

“Never lose the child-like wonder. It's just too important. It's what drives us.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.. The unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture; and that it is an ultimate act of”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Source: Organizational Culture and Leadership, 1985, p. 11

Understanding

“So, human beings complain that the world is ill-made, do they? But ill-made for whom? For Man, who, in the immense design of the Universe is no more than an unimportant mould! The probability is that everything in this world which we think is botched or erroneous has its reasons at a totally different level of existence. The mould endures, no doubt, a small amount of suffering, but somewhere there are giants who, huge in stature as in mind, live in a state of semi-divinity. This is Voltaire's answer to the problem of evil. It is not very satisfactory because the mould need never have been created, and, in the eyes of God, it may well be that mere size is of no importance.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

God , World , Problem , Thinking

“I am delighted to be named the first UKIP spokesman for Women and Equalities These important issues need to be promoted without patronising tokenism, virtue-signalling and political correctness.”

Margot Parker (1943) UK politician

Margot Parker MEP appointed Equalities and Womens Issues Spokesman http://www.ukip.org/margot_parker_mep_appointed_equalities_and_womens_issues_spokesman (December 2, 2016)

Women

“Before the war [World War I] the anti-Semitic movement was of no political importance in Germany.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Hitler: A Biography (1936), p. 62

War , World

“Seeing capable women holding positions of authority and importance in the country is very encouraging to young people, especially girls.”

Sangeeta Niranjan Fijian businesswoman

Interview with the Fiji Times, 18 September 2005

Women , People , Girl , Country

“The most important pretext for the ousting of President Morsi was the existence of division in Egypt…. My support for the 30 June movement in opposition to Morsi changed after the military coup, which went against all the gains and values of the 25 January revolution…Clearly, the leaders of the military takeover have something to conceal from the watchful eyes of the world…. I now feel I have a responsibility to warn the world of the fact that a fully fledged despotic regime is seeking to reinforce its foundations in the country.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Egypt's coup has crushed all the freedoms won in the revolution (2013)

World , Feeling , Support , Change

“The future states that there is no time other than the collapsation of that sensation of the mirror of the memories in which we are living. Common knowledge, but important nonetheless.”

Reggie Watts (1972) singer, musician and comedian

Cited in: Beats That Defy Boxes: Reggie Watts at TED 2012 https://www.ted.com/talks/reggie_watts_disorients_you_in_the_most_entertaining_way. Posted February 2012.

Knowledge , Memory , Time , Future

“Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.”

Johan Olsen (1939) Norwegian political scientist

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen. "The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life." American political science review 78.03 (1983): 734-749; Abstract.

Life , Behavior , History , Idea

“If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported, that the grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by it. Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Sea

“Our nation should always derive its character directly from the people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented to the world — the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our common dedication to democracy is much more important than that which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred years America still remains confident and youthful in its commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pre-Presidency, First Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech (1976)

People , Youth , World , Fear

“A nonlinear differential equation of the Riccati type is derived for the covariance matrix of the optimal filtering error. The solution of this 'variance equation' completely specifies the optimal filter for either finite or infinite smoothing intervals and stationary or non-stationary statistics.
The variance equation is closely related to the Hamiltonian (canonical) differential equations of the calculus of variations. Analytic solutions are available in some cases. The significance of the variance equation is illustrated by examples which duplicate, simplify, or extend earlier results in this field.
The duality principle relating stochastic estimation and deterministic control problems plays an important role in the proof of theoretical results. In several examples, the estimation problem and its dual are discussed side-by-side.
Properties of the variance equation are of great interest in the theory of adaptive systems. Some aspects of this are considered briefly.”

Rudolf E. Kálmán (1930–2016) Hungarian-born American electrical engineer

Source: New results in linear filtering and prediction theory (1961), p. 95 Article summary; cited in: " Rudolf E. Kálmán http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Kalman.html", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, 2010

Error , Optimism , Problem

“By this lux as the first corporeal form Grosseteste did not, of course, mean simply visible light. As an emanation or propagation of substance and power lux was the basis of all bodily magnitude and of all natural operations, of which the manifestation of visible light was only one. One of the most important functions of lux was to be the intermediary between spirit and matter. It was the instrument by which God produced the macrocosm of the universe, and the instrument by which the soul made contact with the physical body and the things of sense in the microcosm of man.”

Alistair Cameron Crombie (1915–1996) Australian zoologist, historian of science

Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)

God , Soul , Nature , Sense

“…the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1980s, Evolutionary Economics, 1981, p. 104

Fear , Hope , Behavior , Loss

“Dying is a strange business, and I'm not going to bore you with the details. I might have weeks or I might have months and though it's a cliche, it's true that so many of the things I once believed to be important no longer are. …I find myself reflecting on the essential moments of my life.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Carly, Chapter 43, p. 336
2009, Safe Haven (2010)

Life , Business

“Why We See Things and Not the Holes Between Them. We can now attempt an answer to the question why we do so. Two of the factors of organization which we have so far discussed seem to me to be the most important causes of this effect. In the first place, the segregation and unification which occurs will separate areas of different degrees of internal articulation, and according to our law, the more highly articulated ones will become figures, the rest fusing together to form the ground. Look at any landscape photograph. You see the shape of the things, the mountains, and trees and buildings, but not of the sky.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 208-9

Law , Mountain , Question , Tree

“I have always found it a little strange that the majority of schools are utilizing filters. It seems to me that this is the environment where filters would not be used because the students are so carefully monitored, the activities in which they engage all go toward the same goals of education, and this is the very place where young people should be learning about information and its uses, in other words, where they should be learning information literacy.A recent National Research Center report, commissioned by Congress, clearly stated that information and media literacy are the most important things we can teach our children in order to truly protect them. Instead of placing barriers around the swimming pool, we must teach children to swim. We must teach children to find and use accurate information.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"Children's Internet Protection Act" http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/02/washtech_policy060302.htm by Brian Krebs, The Washington Post (June 3, 2002 )

Children , People , Education , School

“Muscle shoals. The production of nitrogen for plant food in peace and explosives in war is more and more important. It is one of the chief sustaining elements of life. It is estimated that soil exhaustion each year is represented by about 9,000,000 tons and replenishment by 5,450,000 tons. The deficit of 3,550,000 tons is reported to represent the impairment of 118,000,000 acres of farm lands each year.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Life , War , Peace , Food

“It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man’s fate is not important.
“If it is not, what is?”
He could not endure those remembered words.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, Rocannon’s World (1966), Chapter 9

Fate

“What's got into your head? That I'm returning to my origins? The important things I have in my blood and nobody is going to take them away. I'm here to drink a bottle of my wine and sing a little–with anybody.”

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

Source: The Beach (1941), Chapter 2, p. 9

Drink , Wine , Singing

“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

As quoted in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993) by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, p. 5.

Way

“It's very important to know when you're in a pissing match. And it's very important to get out of it as quickly as possible.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

“I believe that the fight against substance addictions is very important and is a duty of the state and society, but this fight must be carried out in a deliberate way not to produce large amounts of splinters hurting a lot of people around while only chopping small trees.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulai, Jerzy (20 February 2009): Wódka groźniejsza niż egzotyczne ziółka http://www.monar.net.pl/Article8247.html. Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish).

People , Way , Tree , Fight

““The two main directions of modern ethics with their affirmation of the importance of individual conscience and the extension of moral concern for all rational beings, as worthy of equal rights, imply a hard struggle to deny absolute value to ecclesiastical or state institutions.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

“Suppose you wanted to kill people. You would need to know ahead of time how to do it. That part is not too difficult. There are many ways. Some of them are better than others. Most of them have drawbacks. So you use what knowledge you've got, and you invent a new way. You think, and you think, and you think, and you come up with the perfect method. You pay a lot of attention to the setup. Because the perfect method is not an easy method, and careful preparation is very important. But that stuff is meat and potatoes to you. You have no problem with careful preparation. No problem at all. How could you, with your intelligence? After all your training? You know the big problems will come afterward. How do you make sure you get away with it? You use your knowledge. You know more than most people about how the cops work. You've seen them on duty many times, sometimes close-up. You know what they look for. So you don't leave anything for them to find. You go through it all in your head, very precisely and very exactly and very carefully. Just as carefully as you would mark the play card you knew for sure was going to win you a fortune.”

Lee Child book Running Blind

Source: Running Blind (2000), Ch. 1.

People , Way , Intelligence , Knowledge

“Dads in the family are even more important than women in the workplace: The workplace benefits from women, but the family needs dads.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 114.

Women , Family

“Mentorship is a two-way street. While I was learning from them [brilliant mentors] - and their years of experience and expertise - what I was giving back was equally important. I brought fresh insights and new perspectives to their thinking.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

" Speech at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-blank/nyu-commencement-speech-2_b_10114910.html," at huffingtonpost.com, posted 05/24/2016.

Way , Thinking , Learning

“A science fiction writer is—or should be—constrained by what is, or logically might be. That can mean simple fidelity to facts (which, in science, are always more important than theories—though Lord knows the two help shape each other, undermining the convenient, complacent separation of observer and observed). To me it also means heeding the authentic, the actual and concrete. Bad fiction uses the glossy generality; good writing needs the smattering of detail, the unrelenting busy mystery of the real.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Afterword to Exposures, p. 246
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Business , Science , Help

“How important it is, then, that the child be taught to govern its passions! How important that it be taught to be kind, gentle, loving, and humane; and in all the range of human thought there is not a better, wiser, or more expedient way of accomplishing this end than by teaching kindness towards God's lower creatures. If children are thus taught they will have instilled into their hearts those principles of action which will make them kind and merciful not only to the lower animals, but also toward their fellow-men as they attain to manhood. Let them be taught that the lower animals are God's creatures, as they themselves are, put here by a common Heavenly Father, each for its own special purpose, and that they have the same right to life and protection. Let them be taught that principle recognised by all noble-hearted men, that it is only a depraved, debased, and cowardly nature that will injure an inferior, defenceless creature, simply because it is in its power to do so, and that there is no better, no grander test of true bravery and nobility of character than one's treatment of the lower animals.”

Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958) American author

Source: Every Living Creature (1899), pp. 6-7

Love , Life , Men , God

“There is no need to deny that other 'objectives' are often important—power, prestige, public approval, or the mere love of the game— it need only be recognized that the attainment of these ends more often than not is associated directly with the ability to make profits.”

Edith Penrose (1914–1996) economist

Source: The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, 1959, p. 30

Love , Game

“There is no question that the adult caregivers play an important role in the baby's life. It is from these older people that babies learn their first language, have their first experiences in forming and maintaining relationships, and get their first lessons in following rules. But the socialization researchers go on to draw other conclusions: that what children learn in the early years about relationships and rules sets the pattern for later relationships and later rule-following, and hence determines the entire course of their lives. I used to think so too. I still believe that children need to learn about relationships and rules in their early years; it is also important that they acquire a language. But I no longer believe that this early learning, which in our society generally takes place within the home, sets the pattern for what is to follow. Although the learning itself serves a purpose, the content of what children learn may be irrelevant to the world outside their home. They may cast it off when they step outside as easily as the dorky sweater their mother made them wear.”

Judith Rich Harris book The Nurture Assumption

The Nurture Assumption, chapter 1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/harris-nurture.html

Life , Children , People , World

“I love coming in with a battle plan, but I also love the freedom to make things up with my actors, and my DP, too. Sometimes we’ll be in a scene and I see new things we can do, so I will throw whatever stuff that has been cooking away in my brain for a long time because I think what I'm coming up with on the set might serve the film better. You know, your instinct will tell you, “This is a better way, try this other way instead,” and that's very important for me, and that is my style of filmmaking, for better or for worse. That's how I like to approach it. And a lot of it comes to me when I'm designing the script, the screenplay. I'm generally very involved in the screenplay, even the ones I'm not on officially as a writer, I'm still extremely involved in how I craft the screen with the writers. I like to get in there and I really craft the world so I can have an idea of how all that will play out before I go on set. Then when I go on set, I like to keep it free, so that I can improvise with my actors.”

James Wan (1977) Malaysian-born Australian film director, screenwriter and producer

Interview: James Wan on His Creative Process, Returning to Horror with The Conjuring 2 and His Approach to Aquaman https://dailydead.com/interview-james-wan-creative-process-returning-horror-conjuring-2-approach-aquaman/ (June 9, 2016)

Love , World , Way , Idea

“Cybernetics is likely to reveal a great number of interesting and suggestive parallelisms between machine and brain and society. And it can provide the common language by which discoveries in one branch can readily be made use of in the others… [There are] two peculiar scientific virtues of cybernetics that are worth explicit mention. One is that it offers a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts suitable for representing the most diverse types of system… The second peculiar virtue of cybernetics is that it offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored. Such systems are, as we well know, only too common in the biological world!”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 4-5

World

“The most important, the most fundamental and the deepest investigations are those that affect human life and activities most profoundly. Only those scientists who have laboured, not with the aim of producing this or that, but with the sole desire to advance knowledge ultimately prove to be the greatest benefactors of humanity.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

[Raman, C. V., Chandralekha, Why the Sky is Blue: Dr. C.V. Raman Talks about Science, http://books.google.com/books?id=LOC3vbnTgHYC&pg=PT1, 2010, Tulika Books, 978-81-8146-846-8, 17]

Life , Knowledge

“The leveling influence of mediocrity and the denial of the supreme importance of the mind's development account for many revolts against family life. There are many occasions when great men are convinced that, in order to fulfill their destinies, they must escape from the warmth and indulgence of their own families.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Family Life

Life , Men , Family

“All sultans were keen on making slaves, but Muhammad Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving people. He appears to have outstripped even Alauddin Khalji and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas writes about him thus:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon infidels… Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners”. Muhammad Tughlaq did not only enslave people during campaigns, he was also very fond of purchasing and collecting foreign and Indian slaves. According to Ibn Battuta one of the reasons of estrangement between Muhammad Tughlaq and his father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, when Muhammad was still a prince, was his extravagance in purchasing slaves. Even as Sultan, he made extensive conquests. He subjugated the country as far as Dwarsamudra, Malabar, Kampil, Warangal, Lakhnauti, Satgaon, Sonargaon, Nagarkot and Sambhal to give only few prominent place-names. There were sixteen major rebellions in his reign which were ruthlessly suppressed. In all these conquests and rebellions, slaves were taken with great gusto. For example, in the year 1342 Halajun rose in rebellion in Lahore. He was aided by the Khokhar chief Kulchand. They were defeated. “About three hundred women of the rebels were taken captive, and sent to the fort of Gwalior where they were seen by Ibn Battutah.” Such was their influx that Ibn Battutah writes: “At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Vazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.” Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India….. Ibn Battutah’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s gifting captured slave girls to nobles or arranging their marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, corroborates the statement of Abbas. Ibn Battutah writes that during the celebrations in connection with the two Ids in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, daughters of Hindu Rajas and those of commoners, captured during the course of the year were distributed among nobles, officers and important foreign slaves. “On the fourth day men slaves are married and on the fifth slave-girls. On the sixth day men and women slaves are married off.” This was all in accordance with the Islamic law. According to it, slaves cannot many on their own without the consent of their proprietors. The marriage of an infidel couple is not dissolved by their jointly embracing the faith. In the present case the slaves were probably already converted and their marriages performed with the initiative and permission the Sultan himself were valid. Thousands of non-Muslim women were captured by the Muslims in the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq, and under him the id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor. In short, under the Tughlaqs the inflow of women captives never ceased.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580., Battutah)

Women , Men , Marriage , War

“It's important that you win games at any level.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

27-Feb-2009, Hull Daily Mail
He's getting the hang of this football management lark!

Game

“Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I’m a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I use: I try to figure out what’s at stake. But to question the relations of power in the most scrupulous and attentive manner possible, looking into all the domains of its exercise, that’s not the same thing as constructing a mythology of power as the beast of the apocalypse.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

"Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual", interview in History of the Present 4 (Spring 1988)

People , Exercises , Question , Thinking

“The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in "Israel in the Desert" (1819)
Misattributed

Faith , History

“For me the intentions of background music are openly political, and an example of how political power is constantly shifting from the ballot box into areas where the voter has nowhere to mark his ballot paper. The most important political choices in the future will probably never be consciously exercised. I'm intrigued by the way some background music is surprisingly aggressive, especially that played on consumer complaint phone lines and banks, airplanes and phone companies themselves, with strident non-rhythmic and arms-length sequences that are definitely not user-friendly.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

As quoted in Elevator Music (1994) by Joseph Lanza

Music , Way , Exercises , Future

“The most promising lines of development of theory in the sociological and most immediately related fields, particularly the psychological and cultural, therefore, seem to be two-fold. One major direction is the theoretical elaboration and refinement of structural-functional analysis of social systems, including the relevant problems of motivation and their relation to cultural patterns. In this process, the structure of social action provides a basic frame of reference, and aspects of it become of direct substantive importance at many specific points. The main theoretical task, however, is more than a refinement of the conceptual scheme of the presently reprinted book — it involves transition and translation to a different level and focus of theoretical systematization.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Preface second edition, 1949
The structure of social action (1937)

Books , Motivation , Problem

“It is important for the poet not to be emotional because you cannot see the world clearly with tears in your eyes.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

World , Tear

“Values identify what you stand for. In a sense, these values are the very foundation of your culture, those basic principles on which you are unwilling to compromise. It is extremely important that the values in any organization be clearly articulated for and understood by everyone in that organization.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 29.
On Putting Your Values First

Sense

“These days I see America identified more and more with material things, less and less with spiritual standards. These days I see America acting abroad as an arrogant, selfish, greedy nation interested only in guns and dollars, not in people and their hopes and aspirations. We need a faith that dedicates us to something bigger and more important than ourselves or our possessions. Only if we have that faith will we be able to guide the destiny of nations in this the most critical period of world history.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Essay for This I Believe (1952)
Other speeches and writings

People , World , Faith , Hope

“The importance of top management commitment to organizational change is so well accepted that it is almost cliché to repeat the fact. We would therefore expect managerial values to be just as important in this area as in others that require strategic direction and leadership.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: The mutual gains enterprise, 1994, p. 97

Change

“While doing justice to the intellectual power with which a few Circles have for many generations maintained their supremacy over immense multitudes of their countrymen, he believes that the facts of Flatland, speaking for themselves without comment on his part, declare that Revolutions cannot always be suppressed by slaughter, and that Nature, in sentencing the Circles to infecundity, has condemned them to ultimate failure — "and herein," he says, "I see a fulfilment of the great Law of all worlds, that while the wisdom of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing." For the rest, he begs his readers not to suppose that every minute detail in the daily life of Flatland must needs correspond to some other detail in Spaceland; and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of moderate and modest minds who — speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience — decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Preface to the Second and Revised Edition (1884)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)

Life , Wisdom , World , Justice

“True and false individualism differ, according to Hayek, not primarily about values but about facts. The question of how societies are actually ordered or organized separates them: Are communities created, or do they evolve? The answer is obviously some combination of the two, but the relative weighting is of the greatest importance.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Communication , Question , Falseness

“No trace is to be found in the Constitution of an intention to create a dependence of the Government of the Union on those of the States, for the execution of the great powers assigned to it. Its means are adequate to its ends, and on those means alone was it expected to rely for the accomplishment of its ends. To impose on it the necessity of resorting to means which it cannot control, which another Government may furnish or withhold, would render its course precarious, the result of its measures uncertain, and create a dependence on other Governments which might disappoint its most important designs, and is incompatible with the language of the Constitution.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 424
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: [.. ] it can scarcely be necessary to say that the existence of State banks can have no possible influence on the question. No trace is to be found in the Constitution of an intention to create a dependence of the Government of the Union on those of the States, for the execution of the great powers assigned to it. Its means are adequate to its ends, and on those means alone was it expected to rely for the accomplishment of its ends. To impose on it the necessity of resorting to means which it cannot control, which another Government may furnish or withhold, would render its course precarious, the result of its measures uncertain, and create a dependence on other Governments which might disappoint its most important designs, and is incompatible with the language of the Constitution. But were it otherwise, the choice of means implies a right to choose a national bank in preference to State banks, and Congress alone can make the election. After the most deliberate consideration, it is the unanimous and decided opinion of this Court that the act to incorporate the Bank of the United States is a law made in pursuance of the Constitution, and is a part of the supreme law of the land.

Disappointment , Dependency

“Of the 56 God-realised souls on earth, the five Perfect Masters are the most important. And the one who is the highest of all is the Avatar, myself. I come every 700 to 1400 years, and it is undoubtably a very rare and lucky thing for each of you to have the opportunity of loving me individually, since even the Sadgurus long to touch the Avatar physically. When the world is in the grip of pain, misery, suffering and chaos, I manifest myself. Spirituality then reaches its pinnacle, and materialism is at its lowest level. Then again, with the passing of time, spirituality diminishes and materialism increases. From the beginning of time this game has been going on, and it will go on for an eternity.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Statement of 3 June 1927, p. 6751.
Lord Meher (1986)

Love , God , Pain , World

“An important body of evidence that suggests the irrelevance of enemy atrocities to U. S. intervention in Vietnam may be found in official Washington responses to a broader spectrum of foreign atrocities. Official estimates of deliberate NLF killings in South Vietnam for the nine-year period 1958-1966 are on the order of 12,000, and the Defense Department estimates 19,578 enemy killings of civilians in South Vietnam from 1964 through September 1969. Yet in 1966 between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in Indonesia without even provoking any official U. S. protest, let alone an invasion to prevent mass murder.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, pp. 13-14.

Women , Men , Children

“There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound trite… but it's the truth… As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the human mind. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it. Fleeing it. Overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Death and the Present Moment", speech at the Global Atheist Convention (April 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums&t=21m21s
2010s

Life , Truth , World , Hope

“Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

Faith , Understanding , Knowledge , Decision

“Lies are as important as truth, for without lies, the truth is worthless.”

Ben Elton book This Other Eden

This Other Eden (1993)

Truth

“As to sociology and anthropology, it is manifest that the importance of information and communication as mechanisms of organization proceeds beyond the individual into the community. On the other hand, it is completely impossible to understand social communities such as those of ants without a thorough investigation of their means of communication, and we were fortunate enough to have the aid of Dr. Schneirla in this matter. For the similar problems of human organization, we sought help from the anthropologists Drs. Bateson and Margaret Mead; while Dr. Morgenstern of the Institute for Advanced Study was our adviser in the significant field of social organization belong to economic theory. His very important joint book on games with Dr. von Neumann, by the way, represents a most interesting study of social organization from the point of view of methods closely related to, although distinct from, the subject matter of cybernetics. Dr. Lewin and others represented the newer work on the theory of opinion sampling and the practice of opinion making, and Dr. F. C. S. Northrup was interested in assaying the philosophical significance of our work.”

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

Introduction. p. 18-19
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Books , Way , Game , Communication

“Today no one who wishes to clean even a minimal regard for reason or evidence can espouse racist ideology as it was in its heyday, a system as comprehensive as Marxism and to some clearly equally as satisfying. However, thanks to Jensen and Eysenck and Shockley, the racist can cling to the periphery of his ideology; for example, he can provide a reasoned defence of his position on certain issues such as immigration and foreign policy. I do not wish to minimize the ground he has lost: the retreat from world history to little more than immigration quotas is a great defeat for the racist and a great source of satisfaction for all of his opponents. I am quite convinced that the refutation of racism in the light of reason is almost complete (the effort to eradicate it as a social force is a different matter and may never be fully accomplished). However, the last stand of the racist is not without importance, something I will attempt to demonstrate by giving a racist ideologue his say.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

not referring to any of the above mentioned persons
Source: Race, IQ, and Jensen (1980), p. 8

World , History , Effort , Light

“The Patriot Act does not authorize the government to go into your house or read your mail without probable cause and a warrant. It does allow law enforcement and intelligence personnel to better share information and better coordinate with each other. It does give national security investigators tools like those criminal investigators have used for years. And it does update the law to keep up with evolving technology and increasingly sophisticated terrorists. Many of the tools in the Patriot Act are identical to those that have been used for years to investigate drug dealers and white-collar crime. They've been used effectively, and they've been used without an adverse impact on civil liberties. So criticism of the Patriot Act has always begged the question: if we can use these tools successfully and prudently in the area of dealing with, say, drug traffickers, why shouldn’t they be used in the war against terrorists who want to import chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to inflict mass civilian casualties?”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

War , Law , Intelligence , Question

“Isn't this the prettiest little thing you've ever seen? It was over a year ago I held this belt high in the air after I fought for it for the first time in Dayton, Ohio against Samoa Joe and I proclaimed this belt the most important thing to me. Right now, in my hands, as of this day 6/18/05, THIS becomes the most important belt in the world! This belt in the hands of any other man is just a belt, but in my hands it becomes power. Just like this microphone in the hands of any of the boys in the back is just a microphone, but in the hands of a dangerous man like myself it becomes a pipe-bomb. These words that I speak spoken by anybody else are just words strung loosely together to form sentences. What I say I mean, and what I mean I say, and they become anthems! You see, if I could be afforded the time here a little bit of a story. There was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You stupid old man. I'm a snake.' The greatest thing the devil ever did was make you people believe he didn't exist… and you're looking at him right now! I AM THE DEVIL HIMSELF! And all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it! You all believed in the same make-believe superhero that the legendary Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat saw some year ago today. No, you see, you don't know anything. You followed me hook-line and sinker, all of you did, and I'm not mad at you… I just feel sorry for you. This belongs to me! Everything you see here belongs to me, and I did what I had to do to get my hands on this. Now I am the GREATEST PRO WRESTLER walkin' the Earth today! This is my stage, this is my theater, you are my puppets! When I pulled those marionette strings, and I moved your emotions, and I played with them, and honestly it's 'cause I get off on it. I hate each and every single one of you with a thousand burns and I will not stop… I will not stop until I prove that I am better than you, that I am better than Low Ki, that I am better than AJ Styles! I'm better than Samoa Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, the champ is here! You don't have to love it, but you better learn to accept it. 'Cause I'm taking this with me, and there's not a single person in that locker room that can stop me!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ring of Honor, Death Before Dishonor III. June 18th, 2005.
This promo took place directly after Punk defeated Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship proceeding to turn the, at the time face, Punk heel. Directly after this promo Christopher Daniels made his first appearance in ROH in over a year to challenge for the belt. This promo also made reference to an old parable http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.htm about an animal doing an act of kindness to another creature that is venomous and being surprised when the animal injects the venom to the creature after the act of kindness who then proceeds to explain it is their nature to perform the act.
Ring of Honor

Love , Life , Hate , People

“The Reservoir system will function not only as an equalizer of business conditions, but also as a national store to meet further emergencies, such as war and drought, and-most important of all-as the concrete means of developing a steadily higher living standard for all.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part II, Chapter IV, A Plan For Conserving Surplus, p. 50
Storage and Stability (1937)

War , Business

“What ideas are convenient to express inevitably becomes the important content of a culture.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Ch 1: Medium is the Metaphor, p. 7
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Idea

“What about [my] books? How do I feel about them?
I enjoyed writing all of them. But I think that if I could only choose a few, which, for example, might escape World War Three, I would choose, first, Eye in the Sky. Then The Man in the High Castle. Martian Time-Slip (published by Ballantine). Dr. Bloodmoney (a recent Ace novel). Then The Zap Gun and The Penultimate Truth, both of which I wrote at the same time. And finally another Ace book, The Simulacra.
But this list leaves out the most vital of them all: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I am afraid of that book; it deals with absolute evil, and I wrote it during a great crisis in my religious beliefs. I decided to write a novel dealing with absolute evil as personified in the form of a "human." When the galleys came from Doubleday I couldn't correct them because I could not bear to read the text, and this is still true.
Two other books should perhaps be on this list, both very new Doubleday novels: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and another as yet untitled Ubik]. Do Androids has sold very well and has been eyed intently by a film company who has in fact purchased an option on it. My wife thinks it's a good book. I like it for one thing: It deals with a society in which animals are adored and rare, and a man who owns a real sheep is Somebody… and feels for that sheep a vast bond of love and empathy. Willis, my tomcat, strides silently over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we had been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he'll want to do is write SF novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"Self Portrait" (1968), reprinted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995), ed. Lawrence Sutin

Love , War , Truth , Books

“It is clear that the building of models is not a purely mechanical process but requires skill of a high order – not merely mathematical skill but a sensitivity to the relative importance of different factors and a critical, almost an artistic, faculty in the selection of behaviour equations which are reasonable, tentative hypotheses in explaining the behaviour of actual economies.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 16-17 as cited in Andrew Mearman (2011).

Mathematics

“As our young master paced the terrace alone, that idea of the necessity of the Creator's being incomprehensible to the created, recurred to him. The hour that succeeded was probably the most important in Roswell Gardiners life. So intense were his feelings, so active the workings of his mind, that he was quite insensible to the intensity of the cold; and his body keeping equal motion with his thoughts, if one may so express it, his frame actually set at defiance a temperature that might otherwise have chilled it, warmly and carefully as it was clad.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers (1849)

Life , Feeling , Idea

“The most basic and primitive emotion is love in its various manifestations. This has been neglected in medicine, neglected in psychiatry, and neglected in our society. We don't read in the newspapers about love. We don't read in the medical textbooks about love. We don't read in the psychiatric textbooks above love, except to study it in a pathological way. We must realize that love can activate our life energy and promote healing. This is a matter of vital medical importance. Medicine today pays little if any regard to love and its power to heal. Perhaps what is needed more than anything else is to put love back into medicine.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: Life Energy: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Your Emotions to Achieve Total Well-Being (1985), pp. 37-38

Love , Life , Way , Study

“This week’s episode discussing Tom’s car accident is hard to watch. We both live such busy lives working that sometimes it takes accidents like this to remind us of what’s most important in life—each other. I’m thankful he's made a full recovery, and just in case you were wondering, he never stopped working.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne's blog for Bravo http://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills/season-8/erika-girardi/erika-girardi-this-weeks-episode-is-hard (2018)

Life , Cars , Business

“I apologize for the insensitivity of my remarks with respect to the mayor or his family, however I think it is important to note that this decision involves potential risk to innocent people.”

John Shadegg (1949) American politician

Referring to previous statement on Michael Bloomberg's comments on trying terrorists in criminal courts in NYC.
Quoted in [Rachel, Slajda, http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/shadegg-apologizes-for-saying-nyc-mayors-daughter-could-get-kidnapped.php, Shadegg Apologizes For Saying NYC Mayor's Daughter Could Get Kidnapped, Talking Points Memo, November 17, 2009, 2009-11-17]
Terrorism

People , Family , Thinking , Decision

“The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 206

Personality

“The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle. Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expence, of higher price. They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Country

Quotes about importance page 45

Quotes about importance
page 45