Quotes about importance (6132 quotes, page 58)

“Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, observed that elites in a society typically maintain their power not simply by controlling the means of production (ie money), but by dominating the cultural discourse too (ie a society’s intellectual map). And what is most important in relation to that cognitive map is not what is overtly stated and discussed – but what is left unstated, or ignored.”

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher

Gillian Tett " Eliminate financial double-think http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/96810a0e-8d8f-11de-93df-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2TVG2oiL2" Financial Times, August 20, 2009

Money , Relation ships

“Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957

Way , Appearance , Time , Art

“For me, a director is more important than a big banner. A great director can do wonders. Of course, banners do matter because, ultimately, after all the hard work you put it, the film must release. This will happen only if you work with a good banner or a producer who markets your film well, gives the director whatever he wants, and releases the film.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

[rediff.com, Fame, http://www.rediff.com/movies/2003/jun/12rani.htm, 23 August, 2006]
The Actress' Take On Films

“The sword and the purse, all the external relations, and no inconsiderable portion of the industry of the nation, are entrusted to its government. It can never be pretended that these vast powers draw after them others of inferior importance, merely because they are inferior. Such an idea can never be advanced. But it may with great reason be contended, that a government, entrusted with such ample powers, on the due execution of which the happiness and prosperity of the nation so vitally depends, must also be entrusted with ample means for their execution. The power being given, it is the interest of the nation to facilitate its execution. It can never be their interest, and cannot be presumed to have been their intention, to clog and embarrass its execution by withholding the most appropriate means.”

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

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 407
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

Idea , Drawing , Relation ships , Dependency

“The important thing is that Clyff Still – you know his work?”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

and Rothko, and I – we've changed the nature of painting.. .I don't mean there aren't any other good painters. Bill [ Willem the Kooning ] is a good painter, but he's a 'French' painter [Pollock meant: a French-abstract style]. I told him so, the last time I saw him after his last show,. ..all those pictures in his last show start with an image. You can see it even though he's covered it up, or tried to.. ..Style – that's the French part of it. He has to cover it up with style.. [answering Seldon Rodman's question]
In an interview (1956); published in Conversations with Artists, by Seldon Rodman, New York, Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 84-85
1950's

“We are… bound to attach the greatest importance to the preliminary step taken by Lavoisier, who is even more justly called the father of modern chemistry than Kepler is called the father of modern astronomy. The exact claims of Lavoisier to this important place in the history of chemistry have been variously stated: …since his time, and greatly through his labours, the quantitative method has been established as the ultimate test of chemical facts; the principle of this method being the rule that in all changes of combination and reaction, the total weight of the various ingredients—be they elementary bodies or compounds—remains unchanged. The science of chemistry was thus established upon an exact, a mathematical basis. By means of this method Lavoisier, utilising and analysing the results gained by himself and others before him, notably those of Priestley, Cavendish, and Black, succeeded in destroying the older theory of combustion, the so-called phlogistic theory.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=xqwQAAAAYAAJ (1903)

Time , History , Mathematics , Science

“Ki tests are not founded on the idea of testing for strength or weakness. The most important factor in ki testing is to accurately inform the person of the state of his or her mind. Thus, the person performing ki tests must truly understand and exhibit oneness of mind and body from the outset and then perform the tests correctly.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

22 : The treasure of ki testing
Ki Sayings (2003)

Idea , Understanding , Personality

“American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963) http://pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org/?page_id=6

Truth

“The greatness of Turgot now began to appear: while he performed all the duties of the seminary and studied thoroughly what was required, he gave himself to a wide range of other studies, and chiefly in two very different directions—to thought and work upon those problems in religion which transcend all theologies, and upon those problems in politics which are of vast importance in all countries, and which especially needed discussion in his own.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 167

Study , Religion , Country , Problem

“As I plodded back and forth I reflected miserably upon my own political rootlessness, in a world where politics is so important. When I am with Tories I am a violent advocate of reform; when I am with reformers I hold forth on the value of tradition and stability. When I am with communists I become a royalist — almost a Jacobite; when I am with socialists I am an advocate of free trade, private enterprise and laissez-faire.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The presence of a person who has strong political convictions always sends me flying off in a contrary direction. Inevitably, in the world of today, this will bring me before a firing squad sooner or later. Maybe the fascists will shoot me, and maybe the proletariat, but political contrariness will be the end of me; I feel it in my bones.
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

World

“But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

This is an advantage which scientists enjoy over most other people engaged in intellectual pursuits, and they enjoy it at all levels of capability. To be a first-rate scientist it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) to be extremely clever, anyhow in a pyrotechnic sense. One of the great social revolutions brought about by scientific research has been the democratization of learning. Anyone who combines strong common sense with an ordinary degree of imaginativeness can become a creative scientist, and a happy one besides, in so far as happiness depends upon being able to develop to the limit of one's abilities.
1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

“This is a historical evening. This is fucking important evening… We are lucky to be sharing it with each other. This is the beginning of a whole new world. Open your fucking head!”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Don’t cry for her, Vegas, Las Vegas Sun, 2008-11-07 http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/nov/07/dont-cry-her-vegas/,
Madonna Onstage in San Diego on election night, congratulated President-elect Barack Obama before a giant projected backdrop of an Obama campaign poster that read, “WE WON.” It ended with Madonna getting the crowd to chant “We are one!”

World

“Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader’s mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave make their call at five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in this unfinished and in the main inferior story, are all the elements of Jane Austen’s greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there remains, to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of human values.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925)

Future , Hope , Pleasure , Animals

“This is a reflection sad but important to the modern Governments now fallen anarchic, That they had not spiritual talent enough. And if this is so, then surely the question, How these Governments came to sink for want of intellect? is a rather interesting one. Intellect, in some measure, is born into every Century; and the Nineteenth flatters itself that it is rather distinguished that way!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Way , Sadness , Question

“Although this last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands of those who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, I do not believe that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites or Utilitarians of that day, now relies mainly upon it for the general amendment of human conduct.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

“All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which truly it is difficult to understand how any one who possesses much of both, can fail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions, will confound it with intolerance. Those, who having opinions which they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract, those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though they need not therefore be, nor was my father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governed in their estimation of individuals by one general presumption, instead of by the whole of their character.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/50/mode/1up pp. 50-51

Thinking , Feeling , Hurt , Understanding

“The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. ¶ The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers. We say this, not because we think opinions unimportant, but because of the immense importance which we attach to them; for in proportion to the degree of intellectual power and love of truth which we succeed in creating, is the certainty that (whatever may happen in any one particular instance) in the aggregate of instances true opinions will be the result; and intellectual power and practical love of truth are alike impossible where the reasoner is shown his conclusions, and informed beforehand that he is expected to arrive at them.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

"Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836)

Religion , Teachers , Truth , Thinking

“But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting. High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Money , Family , School , Time

“Education does have a great role to play in this period of transition. But it is not either education or legislation; it is both education and legislation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often so and we have to do in society through legislation. We must depend on religion and education to change bad internal attitudes, but we need legislation to control the external effects of those bad internal attitudes. And so there is a need for meaningful civil right legislation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Address at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa (15 October 1962) https://news.cornellcollege.edu/dr-martin-luther-kings-visit-to-cornell-college/; also quoted in Wall Street Journal (13 November 1962), Notable & Quotable , p. 18
Variant:
It is true that behavior cannot be legislated, and legislation cannot make you love me, but legislation can restrain you from lynching me, and I think that is kind of important.
Address at Finney Chapel, Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008)
1960s

Religion , Law , Dependency , Bad luck

“Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness! Rather let us exaltedly suppose that God eternally had the ultimate best good of beings generally and individually in his view, with the reward of the virtuous and the punishment of the vicious, and that no other punishment will ever be inflicted, merely by the divine administration, but that will finally terminate in the best good of the punished, and thereby subserve the great and important ends of the divine government, and be productive of the restoration and felicity of all finite rational nature.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. III Section II - The Moral Government of God as Incompatible With Eternal Punishment

World , God , Imagination , Nature

“The first step, then, is the most important: to realize you have a remarkable social tool that you are not cultivating. The best way to see this is to try it out. Stop your incessant interior monologue and pay deeper attention to people. Attune yourself to the shifting moods of individuals and the group. Get a read on each person’s particular psychology and what motivates them. Try to take their perspective, enter their world and value system. You will suddenly become aware of an entire world of nonverbal behavior you never knew existed, as if your eyes could now suddenly see ultraviolet light. Once you sense this power, you will feel its importance and awaken to new social possibilities.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 2 : Transform Self-love into Empathy
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Reading , Light , Personality , People

“The most significant indicator of people’s character comes through their actions over time. Despite what people say about the lessons they have learned (see Howard Hughes), and how they have changed over the years, you will inevitably notice the same actions and decisions repeating in the course of their life. In these decisions they reveal their character. You must take notice of any salient forms of behavior—disappearing when there is too much stress, not completing an important piece of work, turning suddenly belligerent when challenged, or, conversely, suddenly rising to the occasion when given responsibility. With this fixed in your mind, you do some research into their past. You look at other actions you have observed that fit into this pattern, now in retrospect. You pay close attention to what they do in the present. You see their actions not as isolated incidents but as parts of a compulsive pattern. If you ignore the pattern it is your own fault.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 4 : Determine the Strength of People’s Character
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Behavior , Time , Past , People

“Your task is the following: After any kind of success, analyze the components. See the element of luck that is inevitably there, as well as the role that other people, including mentors, played in your good fortune. This will neutralize the tendency to inflate your powers. Remind yourself that with success comes complacency, as attention becomes more important than the work and old strategies are repeated.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 11 : Know Your Limits
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Bad luck , People , Success

“The most important problem for freedom in a social context is thus family and marriage. When the woman marries, she is in fact enslaved. It is impossible to imagine another institution that enslaves like marriage. The most profound slaveries are established by the institution of marriage, slaveries that become more entrenched within the family.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution

Family , Imagination , Freedom , Marriage

“Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them. It's not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long. … The world's clearly a better place. Individuals can now do things that only large groups of people with lots of money could do before. What that means is, we have much more opportunity for people to get to the marketplace — not just the marketplace of commerce but the marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of publications, the marketplace of public policy. You name it. We've given individuals and small groups equally powerful tools to what the largest, most heavily funded organizations in the world have. And that trend is going to continue. You can buy for under $10,000 today a computer that is just as powerful, basically, as one anyone in the world can get their hands on.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s, Rolling Stone interview (1994)

Money , Faith , People , World

“I came into the room which was half-dark and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience, and realised that I was in for trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the Earth, where my views conflicted with his.
To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful glance at me.
Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source [of heat] was discovered. That prophetic utterance referred to what we are now considering tonight, radium! Behold! The old boy beamed upon me.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

As quoted in "Rutherford's Timebomb" in The New Zealand (15 May 2004) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3566551

Parting , Age , Bird , Boy

“Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: 'Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?' And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
"Good and Bad Reasons for Believing" [open letter to his daughter]
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Thinking , Time , People

“This is the law. The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplementary.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

King Arthur and his Noble Knights (1976)

Fight , Victory , Law

“All equally truthful: number 1 is not more or less important than 35.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

1990s

Truth

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

William H. McRaven (1955) United States admiral

McRaven wrote in a February 20 editorial in the Washington Post about the dismissal by the president of the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, for having briefed congressional intelligence committee members about emerging evidence of foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/william-mcraven-if-good-men-like-joe-maguire-cant-speak-the-truth-we-should-be-deeply-afraid/2020/02/21/2068874c-5503-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

Future , Truth , Self-confidence , Evil

“The woman, who does not imitate her mother and her grandmother as a mother and a good wife, can only rely on her own scale of values to find a life ideal that is important to her happiness.”

Doris Veillette (1935–2019) Quebec journalist

Chronicle "Interdit aux hommes" (Forbidden to men), by Doris Veillette-Hamel, Journal Le Nouvelliste, March 24, 1973, page 17.
Chronicle "Forbidden to men", 1973

Happiness , Life

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life , Dead , Making love , Help

“The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient.
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in BusinessWeek (12 October 2004)
2000s

Night , People , Problem , Thinking

“I'm not the important one. It doesn't matter what I do.”

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (1984) a member of the British royal family

Referring to his position as 'the spare' behind elder brother William (before William had children of his own)
Source: Seward, Ingrid. William and Harry. London: Arcade, 2003. ISBN: 9781559706902.

“The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: "virtue", as the ancients called it, is defined at the level of "that which depends on us."”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

In both sexes is played out the same drama of the flesh and the spirit, of finitude and transcendence; both are gnawed away by time and laid in wait for by death, they have the same essential need for one another; and they can gain from their liberty the same glory. If they were to taste it, they would no longer be tempted to dispute fallacious privileges, and fraternity between them could then come into existence.
The Second Sex (1949)

Dependency

“Yes, I admit it, I’m in a long-term relationship and I’m abstinent. Scandalous, I know. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do (mostly for me, because she’s way out of my league), and that’s what makes it so important.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Way , Making love

“Culture plays also an important role in the life of minorities, who are generally discriminated in such societies where there is no political and religious freedom. Under these circumstances, their cultural values and symbols help them to retain their identity.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

In Search of History, Chapter: Cultural Intervention and Social Change, p. 13/14
Culture

Life , Help , Freedom

“You possess all conscious life. Whenever in all time and wherever in all the universe (or beyond) any conscious being stands, sits, crawls, jumps, lies, rolls, flies or swims, its experience of doing so is yours and is yours now. You are that being. You are fish and fowl. Deer and hunter. You are saints and sinners. You are Germans, Jews and Palestinians. This is an important result. What else can come close to it in importance? And perhaps the spread of this knowledge among the intelligent beings that are you can help you to stop yourself from hurting yourself because you mistake yourself for another.”

Arnold Zuboff (1946) American philosopher

" Time, Self and Sleeping Beauty https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282052756_Time_Self_and_Sleeping_Beauty" (2008), p. 44

Hurt , Time , Intelligence , Help

“For me, research is very important. But I do not begin with research. I begin with writing the story, which for me is the relationship between the characters. It is after I have written or pretty much have a sense of the story that I go and do research. I am conscious that I am writing about poor people for the most part. They don’t have much other than their space or dirt. I want to do my best to represent that well. I am also conscious that I am writing about other countries. I want to make sure I understand those cultures as best as possible and represent them well…”

Uwem Akpan (1971) Nigerian Jesuit priest and writer

On the secondary nature of historical research in his writing process in “UWEM AKPAN | INTERVIEW” https://granta.com/interview-uwem-akpan/ in Granta (2008 Nov 14)

Understanding , Country , People , Sense

“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

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

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Faith , Time , Justice , Country

“I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology. We all know that religion has been historically, and still is today, a cause of great evil as well as great good in human affairs. We have seen terrible wars and terrible persecutions conducted in the name of religion. We have also seen large numbers of people inspired by religion to lives of heroic virtue, bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery and spread peace among nations. Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls. Religion will always remain a powerful force in the history of our species. To me, the meaning of progress in religion is simply this, that as we move from the past to the future the good works inspired by religion should more and more prevail over the evil.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

Soul , Peace , Religion , History

“Variation in the amplitude of written characters involves doubtless many important considerations relative to the facilitation and inhibition of movement.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 151
about Handwriting

“I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.”

Neil Gaiman book The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013), Chapter 14 (p. 207)

Selfishness

“But as of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test — That's the important thing. And the tests are all perfect. Like, the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

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

Comparing coronavirus tests to his Ukraine phone call that led to his impeachment
during tour of Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, , quoted in * 2020-03-06
Trump Says Coronavirus Testing Is as ‘Perfect’ as His Ukraine Call
Chas Danner
New York
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-testing-as-perfect-as-ukraine-call.html
2020s, 2020, March

Perfection

“Few things are more important to Pyongyang than its propaganda apparatus. Even when the rest of the nation came to a standstill in the mid-1990s, it never missed a beat.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2000s, Stranger Than Fiction (February 2005)

“South Koreans do not consider the integrity of their state important enough to go to war for.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

War

“Just as important as getting cooperation started were the conditions that allowed it to be sustainable. The strategies that could sustain mutual cooperation were the ones which were provocable.”

Robert Axelrod The evolution of cooperation

Chap. 4 : The Live-and-Let-Live System in World War I
The Evolution of Cooperation (1984; 2006)

“Certainly, Marx was atheist, "materialist", etc. But for a philosopher also, it's advisable to distinguish between what he is and what he thinks to be. The most important, this is not what Marx thought and that we ignore, but what think the texts he has written. What appears in them, in a way as obvious as exceptional in the history of philosophy, this is a metaphysics of the individual. Marx is one of the first Christian thinkers of Occident.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Marx II. Une philosophie de l’économie, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 445
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Marx certes était athée, « matérialiste », etc. Mais chez un philosophe aussi, il convient de distinguer ce qu’il est de ce qu’il croit être. Ce qui compte, ce n’est d’ailleurs pas ce que Marx pensait et que nous ignorons, c’est ce que pensent les textes qu’il a écrits. Ce qui paraît en eux, de façon aussi évidente qu’exceptionnelle dans l’histoire de la philosophie, c’est une métaphysique de l’individu. Marx est l’un des premiers penseurs chrétiens de l’Occident.

Way , Thinking , Appearance , History

“Many social scientists, including anthropologists, have been interested in the power inherent in gender relations, often described through the idiom of female oppression. It can be argued that men usually tend to exert more power over women than vice versa. In most societies, men generally hold the most important political and religious positions, and very often men control the formal economy. In some societies, it may even be prescribed for women to cover their body and face when they appear in the public sphere, and, paradoxically, these practices sometimes become more common as their societies become more modern. On the other hand, women are often capable of exerting considerable informal power, not least in the domestic sphere. Anthropologists cannot state unequivocally that women are oppressed before they have investigated all aspects of their society, including how the women (and men) themselves perceive their situation. One cannot dismiss the possibility that certain women in western Asia (the Middle East) see the ‘liberated’ western woman as more oppressed – by professional career pressure, demands to look good and other expectations – than themselves.
When studying societies undergoing change, which perhaps most anthropologists do today, it is important to look at the value conflicts and tensions between different interest groups that are particularly central. Often these conflicts are expressed through gender relations.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Study , Appearance , Relation ships , Change

“To simplify somewhat, one may say that anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First, its practitioners produce knowledge about the actual cultural variation in the world; studies may deal with, say, the role of caste and wealth in Indian village life, technology among highland people in New Guinea, religion in southern Africa, life on the Wall Street stock exchange, the political importance of kinship in the Middle East, or concepts about life and the cosmos in the Amazon basin. Although most anthropologists are specialists in one or two regions, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about global cultural variation, and about humanity as such, in order to be able to say anything interesting about one’s region, topic or people.
Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare and understand these varied expressions of the human condition. In other words, the subject offers both things to think about and things to think with.
But anthropology is not just a toolbox; it is also a craft which teaches the novice how to obtain a certain kind of knowledge and what this knowledge might say something about.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Study , Religion , Understanding , Wealth

“…There’s still this notion that you are somehow morally superior if you don’t know anything about the background of the writers you read, and I maintain that writers have every right to not talk their backgrounds, that’s fine, but when people do and it’s important to their work, to not know doesn’t mean you’re morally superior, it means you are indifferent…”

Nalo Hopkinson (1960) Jamaican Canadian writer

On the author having the right to reveal anything personal that’s significant to them in “Interview: Nalo Hopkinson” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-nalo-hopkinson/ in Lightspeed (June 2013)

Indifference , People , Reading

“A far more important lesson to learn from artists is not that they fail, but that they prevail. Artists make. Artists do.”

Will Gompertz (1965) British journalist

Think Like an Artist (2015)

Making love , Learning

“Life can be better for women—economic and political conditions improved—and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

Time , History , Freedom , Self-confidence

“When we think about the diet of early humans, we're often drawn to thinking about meat, but plant foods were more important than the archaeological record gives credit for. The food that could be relied on wherever you were was the plant food.”

Richard Wrangham (1948) British Primatologist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Thinking , Food

“Pets are family and they should be treated as such. I think the most important thing people should know [is to treat] your dog how you’d like to be treated. Your dog is going to love you as much as you love him or her.”

T-Pain (1984) American rapper and record producer from Florida

Interview with PETA; as quoted in "T-Pain Teams Up With PETA To Remind Everyone To Treat Their Pets Like Family" https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/t-pain-teams-up-with-peta-to-remind-everyone-to-treat-their-pets-like-family-news.46218.html, HotNewHipHop.com (21 March 2018).

Family , Dogs , People , Thinking

“Although it is rarely noted in histories of the American Revolution, many of the arch-Revolutionaries came from a tradition of mystical fraternity. Except for such traces as the symbols on the reverse side of the Great Seal and the dollar bill, little evidence remains of this esoteric influence (Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Hermetic). That sense of fraternity and spiritual chisement played an important role in the intensity of the Revolutionaries and their commitment to the realization of a democracy.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Sense , Democracy , History

“Food justice is incredibly important, because food touches all of our lives daily. We have to look at how [food] impacts everyone, from the waiters and waitresses and cooks at restaurants, to the produce workers who pick our food, to the animals who are suffering and dying so we can eat them. We have the responsibility to speak out against these injustices and make sure we hold those who are doing the exploiting accountable.”

Lauren Ornelas American activist

Interview in the book The Sustainability Secret https://books.google.it/books?id=z7KnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn (2016).

Justice , Food , Suffering , Animals

“The shaping influence of economic change can of course be distinguished, as most notably in the period with which this book is concerned. But the difficulty lies in estimating the final importance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isolation.”

Raymond Williams book Culture and Society

Culture and Society (1958) p. 280

Appearance , Books , Change

“To me the most important thing in composition is disparity. Thus black and white are the strong colors, with a spot of red to mark the other corner of a triangle which is by no means equilateral, isosceles, or right. To vary this still further use yellow, then, later, blue. Anything suggestive of symmetry is decidedly undesirable, except possibly where an approximate symmetry is used in a detail to enhance the inequality with the general scheme.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1940s, Excerpt, A Propos of Measuring a Mobile (1943)

Strong , Color

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy , Support

“[A]rchitecture is more than a stage for the acting out of these performances. It offers a space for other social groups and kinds of social interactions. It is also important to remember that in examples such as the country house it was home to a large number of residents representing a variety of interests.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 4 : A class performance : Social histories of architecture

Home , Housing , Country

“Even the most superficial of a newspaper reveals an important aspect of human psychology: our preoccupation with the short term.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Source: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Chapter 21, “Researchers Look to Local News for Trends” (p. 96)

“Everything of importance is already known, a sage said—the only thing is to rediscover it. Much of the current excitement about healing is a kind of collective remembering, a homecoming to the old wives and old doctors.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves

“The most important feature of the previous ban was the prohibition on large-capacity ammunition magazines. A large magazine is arguably the most critical feature of an assault weapon, and restrictions on magazines have the potential to affect many more gun crimes than do those on military-style weapons. Restrictions focused on magazine capacity may also have a greater chance of gaining sufficient public and political support for passage than would new restrictions on assault weapons, though current polling suggests that both measures are supported by three-quarters of non-gun owners and nearly half of gun owners.”

Christopher S. Koper American sociologist

[Koper, Christopher S., w:Christopher S. Koper, America’s experience with the federal assault weapons ban, 1994–2004, Reducing Gun Violence, 2013, 168, 9781421411101, http://www.uiw.edu/library/documents/reducing_gun_violence_in_america.pdf]

Support , Chance

“We must no longer have a pacific conception of peace. In the Middle Ages it was otherwise. The existence of the individual had no exaggerated importance. Pacifist literature depicts death on the field of battle as an unnatural death because it does not understand the ancient Germanic horror of death on a bed, and arteriosclerosis appears to it more virile than a bullet. Pacifists dwell on the horrors of the war dead as if a peace corpse were more aesthetic. The representatives of the national revolution are men and soldiers who are physically and morally warriors.”

Franz von Papen (1879–1969) German chancellor

Speech to the Stalhelm in Münster (13 May 1933), quoted in Frederick Schuman, Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship (London: Hale, 1936), pp. 345-346
1930s

Peace , Dead , Understanding , War

“After coming home, I listened to the radio and cleaned up a little. A woman on All Things Considered wrote a book of advice called If You Want to Write and mentioned the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you'd stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

01.07.1983 - p.94
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

Home , Books

“‘Soft’ skills will be 10X more important in a virtual/work-at-home world. Team dynamics, individual growth, team creativity will dominate effectiveness.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

06 April 2020
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

World , Home

“I don't think you and I are very closely related, however, if you are capable of trembling with indignation each time that an injustice is committed anywhere in the world, we are comrades, and that is more important.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Letter to María Rosario Guevara, 20 February 1964. Quoted in Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution (1971) by K. S. Karol

Spanish: No creo que seamos parientes muy cercanos, pero si Ud. es capaz de temblar de indignación cada vez que se comete una injusticia en el mundo, somos compañeros, que es más importante.

World , Thinking , Time , Relation ships

“I think the most important thing, when you are directing is perspective on the story. What is your take? What are you saying? What does it mean?”

Zoya Akhtar (1974) Indian film director

Luck By Chance - My First Film 29 Oct 2018, at 9 Min 03 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B2wChETV5g
From interview with Film Companion

Thinking

“In the NFL, the injury rate is a 100 percent. It's a violent game. And so, how you respond to injury and how quickly you heal from injury is important because if you're not on the field, you're not helping the team. I was reading the research and seeing that a plant-based diet could be beneficial, specifically for recovery. And so I started incorporating it and I started seeing really good results with it. I was recovering better. I wasn't getting as sore. I was a lot less swollen. Basically, to confirm what I was feeling, I got my blood tested. Six months after being on the diet, all of my markers were down, my blood pressure, my cholesterol. But the main thing I was looking at was the inflammation marker in your blood and mine was... almost obsolete. It wasn't there anymore.”

Derrick Morgan (American football) (1989) Player of American football

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Help , Game , Feeling , Reading

“You gotta take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forest. It's very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently, and it's a whole different story. I was with the president of Finland, and he said, "We have a much different— we're a forest nation."”

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

He called it a forest nation. And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem.

Paradise, California, , quoted in * 2018-11-20

#RakeNews: People in Finland Mock Trump With Leaf-Raking Photos After He Said the Country 'Rakes the Forest'

Ashley Hoffman

Time Magazine

https://time.com/5458605/trump-finland-raking-reactions/, and with video in * 2018-11-18

Trump Says California Can Learn From Finland on Fires. Is He Right?

Patrick Kingsley

New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/world/europe/finland-california-wildfires-trump-raking.html

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said he didn't recall anything being said about raking. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/finnish-president-says-he-briefed-trump-on-forest-monitoring/2018/11/18/dd46a57e-eb32-11e8-8b47-bd0975fd6199_story.html
2010s, 2018, November

Country

“One reason for the increased interest in studies of identity in anthropology may be the fact that issues to do with the nature of groups have become hugely important in politics worldwide in the last decades.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 9 : Social Identity

Study , Nature

“The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of "Fuck You", so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

letter to Alexander Cockburn (1 March 1990), later paraphrased in Deterring Democracy (1992) p. 345.
Quotes 1990s, 1990–1994

Truth

“Even though there are mobile devices in the favela, people still need fixed centers like Telecenters and LAN houses. Such centers are points of reference for Internet access where people keep their profiles on social networking sites and download enough music, photos and videos to last until they can return. Not only for Internet access, these centers become important spaces where people share different experiences with their phones and tablets and eventually empower themselves.”

David Nemer

(p. 84)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Music , People , Housing , Photo

“[O]ne may confidently hope, that this will not be the instance, in which the last blow will be struck at that manly, that generous mode of terminating quarrels between the common people, a mode by which the common people of England have, for ages, been distinguished from those of all other countries. ... [T]he occasion calls for some remark upon those exertions, which, of late, have been, and which yet are, making in every part of the country, with the obvious, and, in many instances, with the declared, intention, of utterly eradicating the practice of boxing; than which, I am thoroughly persuaded, nothing could be more injurious, whether considered as to its effects in civil life, or in its higher and more important effects on the people regarded as the members of a state, and, of course, always opposed to some other state, and therefore always liable to be called upon to perform the duties of war.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 195
1800s

Confidence , Country , War , Box

“Data is of course important in manufacturing, but I place the greatest emphasis on facts.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

“The Bharatas, who gave their name to the whole country, are the most important of the Rigvedic tribes.”

R. C. Majumdar (1888–1980) Indian historian

Country

“It is only through multilateral institutions that States can hold each other to account. And that makes it very important to organize those institutions in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Truman Library address (2006)

Way , Strong , Making love

“To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919), Introduction, p. 18

Relation ships

“It was also, they added, Very Now, which was important in a town in which an hour ago was Ancient History.”

Neil Gaiman book Smoke and Mirrors

The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories (p. 107)
Smoke and Mirrors (1998)

History

“And what is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The one that is missing, of course.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 276)

“America’s most important ally should be humanity itself. Our species will not survive another 100 years if we don’t move from a competitive to a cooperative mode of existence. “Me first” is an obsolete, unsustainable perspective.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (8 Jan 20)
Williamson's quotes in social media

“Economic system of the US was created & designed before women had a voice in the public realm. We do have a voice now; it’s important that we use it not to fit into the system but to change the system. The main engine of our economy should be the care & nurturance of our children”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (2 Oct 2019)
Williamson's quotes in social media

Children , Women , Change

“We (China) are still at a very critical stage in fighting the (2019-nCoV) Coronavirus. International solidarity is extremely important and for that purpose all countries should behave in a responsible manner.”

Zhang Jun (1960) Chinese ambassador

Zhang Jun (2020) cited in " China virus death toll rises to at least 212 as WHO declares global emergency https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/01/31/china-virus-death-toll-rises-to-at-least-212-as-who-declares-global-emergency" on The Star Online, 31 January 2020.

Fight , Country

“In the war to come correspondents would assume unheard of importance, plunging through flame to feed the public its little gobbets of dehydrated excrement.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. VI (*p. 157)

War

“Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Sunday, 8 October 1995
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220416100400/https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Archived] from [https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html the original

Truth , Making love , Freedom

“Axiom 8. That the importance of any action is measured by the degree of pleasure or pain that it causes or prevents.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

Pleasure , Pain

“That was a life lesson to me. Because, yes it's important to take back those choices and be who we are un-apologetically, but we should always think of it in the modern context and what makes sense for our lives today, and to not be fundamentalist about anything.”

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (1978) director

as an answer to using a modern tattoo technique on herself, as opposed to a more traditional technique

Q & A with Alethea Arnaquq-Baril - TUNNIIT: RETRACING THE LINES OF INUIT TATTOOS, Cinema Politica - 12 Jan 2017, at 10 Min 54 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1cXIe4IR7w

Sense , Life , Making love , Thinking

“You sit up there, and you see the whole gamut of human nature. Even if the case being argued involves only a little fellow and $50, it involves justice. That's what is important.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Interview in 1953 after being appointed to the Supreme Court, as quoted in Earl Warren : A Political Biography (1967) by Leo Katcher, p. 315
1950s

Justice , Nature

“At the coast you can see the most beautiful sea. I also made my panorama there. I regard it as my most important work; because it gives such a huge impression of nature. But I don't like to start it all again; to paint sixteen hundred meters of canvas there..”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) Aan de kust zie je de mooiste zee. Daar heb ik ook mijn panorama gemaakt. Dat beschouw ik als mijn belangrijkste werk; omdat 't zoo'n groote impressie geeft van de natuur. Maar'k zou 't niet graag nog's weer beginnen; daar zestien honderd meter doek te schilderen..

Quote of Mesdag (after 1881), cited by Godfried Bomans?, in magazine De Volkskrant, 23 July, 1966
after 1880

Sea , Painting , Beauty , Nature

“There has been a great deal of talk about raising class prejudice. I dislike class prejudice. ... There has been no feeling of class prejudice in my mind; but, my Lords, there is a worse thing than class prejudice, and that is race or national prejudice. We have not had much of it, in fact I may say almost none of it, here. Still is it not true that the cry which is going to be loudly invoked in this election, the Irish cry, depends upon race and national prejudice? Talk of class prejudice. The classes will take care of themselves, I trust. The English working man in my view—and I represented a great and important group of them for many years—is not in the least a Phrygian with a red cap, though some of his fellows may talk in that vein.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1910/nov/24/relations-of-the-two-houses#column_992 in the House of Lords (24 November 1910). The Phrygian cap was a symbol of the French Revolution
1910s

Cry , Feeling , Dependency

“Dreams are important. They are messengers…Characters have appeared to me. They say, ‘Here I am. Tell my story.'”

Rudolfo Anaya (1937) Novelist, poet

On how his subconscious informs his writing in “Rudolfo Anaya: Man of visions” https://www.abqjournal.com/1074636/man-of.html in Albuquerque Journal (2017 Oct 7)

Appearance , Dreams

“It's a very contagious virus. It's incredible. But it's something we have tremendous control of. I think very important the young people, people of good health and groups of people just are not strongly affected.”

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

Claimed by Trump in a White House briefing, as quoted in * 2020-03-15

Fact check: Trump falsely claims US has 'tremendous control' of the coronavirus

Daniel Dale

CNN

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/fact-check-trump-control-coronavirus/index.html
2020s, 2020, March

Thinking , People , Health

“Nothing can be of more importance than to separate prejudice and mistake on the one hand from reason and demonstration on the other.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Book III, Ch.1
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“In mathematics we agree that clear thinking is very important, but fuzzy thinking is just as important.”

Harish-Chandra (1923–1983) Indian American mathematician and physicist (1923–1983)

Harish-Chandra, cited in: Robert Langlands, "Harish-Chandra. 11 October 1923-16 October 1983." http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/31/198, in: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 31 (1985), 199-225. (quote from p. 211).

Thinking , Mathematics

“Among the world's crops wheat is pre-eminent both in regard to its antiquity and its importance as a food of mankind. In prehistoric times it was cultivated throughout Europe, and was one of the most valuable cereals of ancient Persia, Greece, and Egypt.”

John Percival (1863–1949) British agricultural botanist

[The Wheat Plant: A Monograph, 1921, London, Duckworth & Co, 3, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t56d5r310&view=1up&seq=21]

World , Time , Food

“Comint represents the effort to gain access to, intercept and process every important modern form of communication, in every significant sphere, and in many countries.”

David Lyon (1948) British sociologist

§6, p. 95
Surveillance society

Effort , Country , Communication

“... the most important questions and insights and goals are unpredictable.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

email sent to David Brown, 1 January 2020, quoted in [Freeman Dyson - Science and Religion (151/157) (comments section), 27 July 2016, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwoVrSICaTA] (published by Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People)

Question

“… In a way, the author is a writer's public persona. The writer, however, is a private person. Anyone who expresses life's experiences--their own or someone else's--in writing is a creative writer, and for him or her, the most important concern, the passion, is the writing itself…”

Lucha Corpi (1945)

On how she defines “author” in “Interview with Mystery Author Lucha Corpi” http://latinola.com/story.php?story=8074 in ¡Latino LA! (2009 Dec 4)

Passion , Personality , Life , Way

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Meeting of the "40 Committee" on covert action in Chile (27 June 1970) quoted in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974); the quotation was censored prior to publication due to legal action by the government. See New York Times (11 September 1974) "Censored Matter in Book About C.I.A. Said to Have Related Chile Activities; Damage Feared" by Seymour Hersh

[Omi, M., Winant, H., Racial Formation in the United States, Taylor & Francis, 2014, 978-1-135-12751-0, https://books.google.com/books?id=T7LcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA239, harv, 2018-11-02]
1970s

People , Country

Quotes about importance page 58

Quotes about importance
page 58