Quotes about instance (881 quotes, page 6)

“Considerations of justice are also integral to efforts to generate transcultural security in the first instance and, ultimately, transcultural synergy.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.403

Justice , Effort

“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 12 : Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy Pt. 3
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

School

“Am I happy? There are moments when I am overwhelmed by a sense of my success and ease. I become aware that thousands of things which had formerly been forbidden fruit to me are at my command now. I distinctly recall that crushing sense of being debarred from everything, and then I feel as though the whole world were mine. One day I paused in front of an old East Side restaurant that I had often passed in my days of need and despair. The feeling of desolation and envy with which I used to peek in its windows came back to me. It gave me pangs of self-pity for my past and a thrilling sense of my present power. The prices that had once been prohibitive seemed so wretchedly low now. …
And yet in all such instances I feel a peculiar yearning for the very days when the doors of that restaurant were closed to me and when the Canal Street merchant was a magnate of commerce in my estimation. Somehow, encounters of this kind leave me dejected. The gloomiest past is dearer than the brightest present. In my case there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way. My sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of emptiness and insignificance, of my lack of anything like a great, deep interest.”

Abraham Cahan book The Rise of David Levinsky

The Rise of David Levinsky (1917)

World , Way , Feeling , Sense

“For instance, the blood of hibernating arctic squirrels may supercool to minus 3 degrees, when it would normally congeal. The supercooled blood still flows, since it remains a liquid, but the slightest disturbance will cause it to freeze, killing the squirrel; therefore, you should not disturb hibernating arctic squirrels.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 113
Faster than the Speed of Light

“They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

"Bleakonomics" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=books&adxnnlx=1191080508-xgqHp+i170M7vW5X5Q4Yeg&oref=slogin The New York Times Sunday Book Review (2007-09-30).

“From early on, my father talked to me like an adult. One of the earliest things he did was teach me the Latin names of the parts of the body. He was very analytic. We had no money, but intellectual curiosity was encouraged, and my parents constantly talked with each other. This develops the brain. I remember listening and thinking, listening to voices talking, talking, talking. … My father died of cancer but lived long enough to see me famous, though not long enough to read my book fully. If he were alive I wouldn't be quite so outrageous, speaking about my sex life, for instance. I don't believe in embarrassing my family.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Life , Money , Books , Family

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

Women , Men , Art , Music

“I, for instance, am a jackass, and this anguishes me quite a bit, or at least it would if I were not so fond of being a jackass, which has long been a hobby of mine.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

True/Slant, "The Weekly Standard, Ethan Epstein, and Jesus" http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/07/18/the-weekly-standard-ethan-epstein-and-jesus/, 18 July 2010.

“That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If for instance, +1, -1, √-1 had been called direct, inverse, and lateral units, instead of positive, negative, and imaginary (or even impossible) such an obscurity would have been out of question.”

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

In Theoria residiorum biquadraticorum, Commentatio secunda; Werke, Bd. 2 (Goettingen, 1863), p.177. As quoted by Robert Edouard Moritz in Memorabilia mathematica: the philomath's quotation book (1914) p. 282.

Question

“Wilhelm II styled himself Admiral of the Atlantic, though that ocean had never been claimed to be an inland waterway. The fleet of gunboats that cruised up and down the Yangtze was a standing temptation for the local representatives of the Great Powers to give point to their often unreasonable demands by a demonstration or the threat of a bombardment. Many instances could be given of this kind of 'gunboat diplomacy' in the interests of missionaries, private debtors and even ordinary Christian converts.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

“There is always a nasty surprise in store for the imperial mind. It is typical of the imperial point of view that it is ignorant of, or blind to, the other. The imperial mind keeps missing the point. It fails to appreciate, for all its benevolence, why it might come under attack, why it might, for instance, be worth a nation's while to rise up against it. The imperial mind has to be shocked out of its daydreams.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

"Goodbye to All That?" (p. 72)
The Strength of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (2001)

“Of course, one of the main legitimate functions of thought has always been to help provide security, guaranteeing shelter and food for instance. However, this function went wrong when the principal source of insecurity came to be the operation of thought itself.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Changing Consciousness (1991)

Food , Help

“There is also, for instance, a direct symbolic strength in the words 'Say it with flowers', which makes that poem one of the cornerstones of Danish lyricism. It has stood out like a boot of an exceptionally fine fit..”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Flowers

“The essence of any interpersonal relationship is interaction. Two individuals may be said to have formed a relationship when on repeated occasions they are observed to interact. By interaction it is meant that they emit behavior in each other's presence, they create products for each other, or they communicate with each other. In every case we would identify as an instance of interaction there is at least the possibility that the actions of each person affect the other.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: The social psychology of groups. 1959, p. 10

Behavior , Communication , Personality

“Qutb-ud-Din, whose reputation for destroying temples was almost as great as that of Muhammad, in the latter part of the twelfth century and early years of the thirteenth, must have frequently resorted to force as an incentive to conversion. One instance may be noted: when he approached Koil (Aligarh) in A. D. 1194, ' those of the garrison who were wise and acute were converted to Islam, but the others were slain with the sword.”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Dr. Murray Titus quoted from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946) (Alternative translation: “those of the garrison who were wise and acute were converted to Islam, but those who stood by their ancient faith were slain with the sword”. Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they. Original quote is from Hasan Nizami, Taj-ul-Maasir, E.D. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036729#page/n237/mode/2up/)

Parting

“There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Interviewed in The Guardian, December 4, 2005.

Truth , Way , Feeling , Personality

“Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work … for instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

As quoted in Weird Sex and Snowshoes : And Other Canadian Film Phenomena (2001) by Katherine Monk, p. 150

People , Books , Justice , Problem

“Some of these people have come up with some very elaborate arguments [for not paying taxes]. For instance, there were these guys, in Indiana and Nebraska, and they argued that Indiana and Nebraska weren't states, which was a pretty valid argument in the late 1700s. But in 1995 and '96, well, I saw a map and at that time, trust me, Indiana and Nebraska are shitholes, but they're states. I saw them! They were right there in the middle someplace. I may not be able to point them out immediately, but I know they're there.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Taxed Beyond Belief (2002)

People , Guy , Time

“Suppose we a certain Number of things exposed, different each from other, as a, b, c, d, e, &c.; The question is, how many ways the order of these may be varied? as, for instance, how many changes may be Rung upon a certain Number of Bells; or, how many ways (by way of Anagram) a certain Number of (different) Letters may be differently ordered?
Alt.1,21) If the thing exposed be but One, as a, it is certain, that the order can be but one. That is 1.
2) If Two be exposed, as a, b, it is also manifest, that they may be taken in a double order, as ab, ba, and no more. That is 1 x 2 = 2. Alt.3
3) If Three be exposed; as a, b, c: Then, beginning with a, the other two b, c, may (by art. 2,) be disposed according to Two different orders, as bc, cb; whence arise Two Changes (or varieties of order) beginning with a as abc, acb: And, in like manner it may be shewed, that there be as many beginning with b; because the other two, a, c, may be so varied, as bac, bca. And again as many beginning with c as cab, cba. And therefore, in all, Three times Two. That is 1 x 2, x 3 = 6.
Alt.34) If Four be exposed as a, b, c, d; Then, beginning with a, the other Three may (by art. preceeding) be disposed six several ways. And (by the same reason) as many beginning with b, and as many beginning with c, and as many beginning with d. And therefore, in all, Four times six, or 24. That is, the Number answering to the case next foregoing, so many times taken as is the Number of things here exposed. That is 1 x 2 x 3, x 4 = 6 x 4 = 24.
5) And in like manner it may be shewed, that this Number 24 Multiplied by 5, that is 120 = 24 x 5 = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5, is the number of alternations (or changes of order) of Five things exposed. (Or, the Number of Changes on Five Bells.) For each of these five being put in the first place, the other four will (by art. preceeding) admit of 24 varieties, that is, in all, five times 24. And in like manner, this Number 120 Multiplied by 6, shews the Number of Alternations of 6 things exposed; and so onward, by continual Multiplication by the conse quent Numbers 7, 8, 9, &c.;
6) That is, how many so ever of Numbers, in their natural Consecution, beginning from 1, being continually Multiplied, give us the Number of Alternations (or Change of order) of which so many things are capable as is the last of the Numbers so Multiplied. As for instance, the Number of Changes in Ringing Five Bells, is 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 = 120. In Six Bells, 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 120 x 6 = 720. In Seven Bells, 720 x 7 = 5040. In Eight Bells, 5040 x 8 = 40320, And so onward, as far as we please.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Source: A Discourse of Combinations, Alterations, and Aliquot Parts (1685), Ch.II Of Alternations, or the different Change of Order, in any Number of Things proposed.

Art , Way , Question , Nature

“There are also many instances where people hostile to the Soviet state are attempting by means of deceit and provocation to poison the minds of our citizens and compel them to believe in monstrous lies.”

Filipp Golikov (1900–1980) Soviet general

Quoted in "Behind the Iron Curtain" - by George Moorad - Soviet Union - 1946

Hostility , People

“The folk are peculiar in many ways," said Erwig. "They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice. What are your own views?"
"The rite should be conducted as you describe," said Cugel. "No other method carries weight.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Erwig refilled Cugel's glass. "I consider this an important endorsement of our views!"
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 5, section 2, "The Bagful of Dreams"

Way

“I make a little mystique for myself. Since I have no preference or so-called sense of color, I could take almost everything that could be some accident of a previous painting. Or I set out to make a series. I take, for instance, some pictures where I take a color, some arbitrary color I took from some place. Well, this is gray maybe, and I mix the color for that, and then I find out that when I am through with getting the color the way I want it, I have six other colors in it, to get that color; and then I take those six colors and I use them also with this color. It is probably like a composer does a variation on a certain theme. But it isn't technical, it isn't just fun.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 50.
1960's

Color , Way , Sense , Painting

“It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there — with your eyes open — and lived to see it.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Love , Way , Reality , Silence

“I'm about as Nordic and Germanic looking as they come. It doesn't matter whther I'm skinny or fat. I'm just that way. So, there have been dates: for instance, the date that I first met Alex Acuna, Luis Conte, Alfredo Rey, Sr., Alfredo Rey, Jr., Cachao, the Cuban bass player. I mean, all of these people. The night I met them, on a recording date, I was there with a bunch of Cubans and I walked in, and at first, before we recorded the music, they were all standing around, hanging out. And of course I wanted to join, so I went over and started joining in. Now my Spanish certainly is not street Spanish, it's book-learned Spanish. And Cubans speak a patois all their own, and I could tell, when I first was speaking there, you know, they kept saying, "Well, he's speaking our language, but he certainly doesn't sound like us; he's still an outsider. Maybe not as much an outsider as he was before." And yet, what really happens is that, by the time we start playing, then I felt like somebody gives my visa a stamp. You know, on the passport. Because at that point, suddenly I start getting smiles from people, and different things, and that's an experience which happens over and over and over.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT461&lpg=PT461&dq=%22there's+no+way+you+can+cut+it+any+different%22&source=bl&ots=vkOwylF67i&sig=RdKDS4QiEbLIoTYKWEL4j103DPM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizzcm_38bRAhXF4yYKHWktCS8Q6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

People , Books , Smile , Music

“At a certain point I came to the conclusion that one of the murderous aspects of the AIDS crisis was that people were used to not talking about sexual experiences in detail. Gay sex for instance does not cause AIDS. There are certain acts that transmit a virus and there are certain other acts that don’t transmit a virus. If you don’t talk about what goes on in sexuality, so that you know what particular acts you’re dealing with, then I think you're, possibly in an indirect way but never-the-less in a very real way, contributing to an atmosphere of ignorance which the result is people die.”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

Spoken Arts interview on WBFO 88.7, 20th April 2000.

People , Sex , Way , Thinking

“There is no instance where men are so easily imposed upon, as at the time of their dying under the pretence of charity.”

William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper (1665–1723) English politician and first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Attorney-General v. Barnes et uxor (1707), Gilbert Eq. Ca. 5; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 245-248.

Men , Time

“Even a very general knowledge of Indian history already shows that any instances of Hindu persecution of Buddhism could never have been more than marginal. After fully seventeen centuries of Buddhism's existence, from the 6 th century BC to the late 12 th century AD, most of it under the rule of Hindu kings, we find Buddhist establishments flourishing all over India. Under king Pushyamitra Shunga, often falsely labelled as a persecutor of Buddhism, important Buddhist centres such as the Sanchi stupa were built. As late as the early 12 th century, the Buddhist monastery Dharmachakrajina Vihara at Sarnath was built under the patronage of queen Kumaradevi, wife of Govindachandra, the Hindu king of Kanauj in whose reign the contentious Rama temple in Ayodhya was built. This may be contrasted with the ruined state of Buddhism in countries like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan after one thousand or even one hundred years of Muslim rule. Indeed, the Muslim chroniclers themselves have described in gleeful detail how they destroyed Buddhism root and branch in the entire Gangetic plain in just a few years after Mohammed Ghori's victory in the second battle of Tarain in 1192. The famous university of Nalanda with its fabulous library burned for weeks. Its inmates were put to the sword except for those who managed to flee. The latter spread the word to other Indian regions where Buddhist monks packed up and left in anticipation of further Muslim conquests. It is apparent that this way, some abandoned Buddhist establishments were taken over by Hindus; but that is an entirely different matter from the forcible occupation or destruction of Buddhist institutions by the foreign invaders.”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

Koenraad Elst: Religious Cleansing of Hindus, 2004, Agni conference in The Hague, and in: K. Elst The Problem with Secularism, 2007

Way , History , Knowledge , Universe

“Object-oriented programming is a method of implementation in which programs are organized as cooperative collections of objects, each of which represents an instance of some class, and whose classes are all members of a hierarchy of classes united via inheritance relationships.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 35

“(Laura Gemser) was a very quiet woman, très réservé, but not in a snobbish way. She was very, very lovely. I worked together with her again, on Aristide Massaccesi's RITORNO DALLA MORTE, a Frankenstein movie made in 1992. She worked as a costume designer. This was another instance where I said something wrong: I told her how terrible it was that Tinti was dead, him being such a nice man…She had to rush out of the room because she was overwhelmed by her feelings for Gabriele.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Love , Way , Feeling , Dead

“No country has a perfect report card. While some countries have strong points in specific areas, they may have serious lacunae in other areas. For instance, some countries have made enormous progress on civil and political rights, but lag in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 2013 Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order
2013

Strong , Perfection , Country

“An organization is a subordinate system of a specific larger system, the cooperative system, whose components are physical, biological, and personal systems. The relations with other organizations… are outside this specific cooperative system. Other organizations are a part of the social environment of the organization. It is for this reason I have used the phrase "complex of organizations" rather than "system." Usually the most significant relationships of a unit organization are those with the specific cooperative system of which it is a part. It is this system which primarily and on the whole in most instances determines the chief conditions of the organization's existence.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 98-99, footnote

Parting , Personality

“Women have conceptualized less in history not because men have kept them from doing so but because women do not need to conceptualize in order to exist. […] Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing or symbol-making activity. Man’s vastly greater commercial patronage of pornography is analogous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 20

Women , Men , Sex , History

“Refinement. While the possession of this quality is due, in the first instance, to education, it is also largely a matter of temperament.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Education

“Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power and fashion … who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the day. There are persons in common life who … can so little bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their characters … Milton was not one of these. He had lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward power and worth, [not] to be tempted by such idle baits.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Milton's Sonnets"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Life , Men , Fashion , Time

“I don't often use the words "godawful" and "abomination" to describe a movie, preferring to reserve such terminology for extreme instances when I feel duped and mortally offended. Case in point: Bachelorette. Often with a bad film, I search for something positive or productive to say, cognizant as I am that there are real people with real feelings behind the production. That won't be happening here. When it comes to watchability, the only thing to distinguish this from Freddy Got Fingered (the turd standard for cinematic badness) is the absence of the sexual molestation of animals. And one could make a convincing argument that the sexual molestation of animals might improve Bachelorette.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

This possibility that this might not be the worst movie of the year is frightening to contemplate - Directed by Lesley Headland.
Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=2513 of Bachelorette (2012).
Zero star reviews

People , Feeling , Search , Animals

“The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero… Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech. The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

1920 - 1930, Point and line to plane, 1926

Silence

“By Jesus’s time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed in the chimney-corner, unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he was able to get about: his authority must not be questioned, yet his orders, since no longer relevant, must be reinterpreted in another sense, if the business is not to go bankrupt. When the old man says, for instance: “It is time for the women to grind their lapfuls of millet in the querns,” this is taken to mean: “It is time to send the sacks of wheat to the water-mill.””

Robert Graves book King Jesus

Source: King Jesus (1946), Ch. 21.

Women , World , Family , Law

“The British can sign and find a way to repudiate their signatures. They've done it over and over again. You need to go back to the Treaty Of Limerick. You have Malta and Egypt, for instance. They can always find high moral reasons for such repudiation. They are opportunists. Griffith, however, having given his word, would stick to it whatever the consequences, even though it meant the disaster of a civil war. They knew that.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Taken from a 1922, conversation between Childers and Brennan in regards to Arthur Griffith's decision to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), cited in "Allegiance" by Robert Brennan, Browne & Nolan, Dublin (1950), pp. 254-55.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

War , Way

“A neutral observer would have no difficulty in identifying instances of disconnect between government and people, most obviously in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes where civil society’s voices are muzzled and where peaceful protests are prohibited or severely suppressed,24 but also to a lesser degree in democracies, particularly “representative democracies” that do not genuinely represent, business-driven democracies and so-called “lobby-democracies”, where elected officials tend to be more responsive to the lobbies than to the population.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013

People , Peace , Democracy , Business

“Do you know what I long for sometimes? To make a trip to Brabant. I should love to draw the old churchyard at Nuenen, and the weavers. To make, for instance, during a month, studies of Brabant, and to come back [to The Hague] with a lot of them, for a large drawing of a peasant funeral for instance.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote of letter 295, from The Hague, 1883; as cited in Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, catalog-page: Dutch Period 2. - Weaver
1880s, 1883

Love , Study , Drawing

“Contact with like-minded painters – a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists – and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke – matters a lot to me: it is part of the input that I need.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1964; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1960's

Idea , Parting , Dependency , Country

“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 22.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life , Books , Soul , Reading

“Most often, our messing around and meddling in the affairs of other countries have unintended consequences. Sometimes just over in those countries that we mess with. We might support one faction, and it doesn't work, and it's used against us. But there's the blowback effect, that the CIA talks about, that it comes back to haunt us later on. For instance, a good example of this is what happened in 1953 when our government overthrew the Mossadegh government and we installed the Shah, in Iran. And for 25 years we had an authoritarian friend over there, and the people hated him, they finally overthrew him, and they've resented us ever since. That had a lot to do with the taking of the hostages in 1979, and for us to ignore that is to ignore history… Also we've antagonized the Iranians by supporting Saddam Hussein, encouraging him to invade Iran. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? But the on again off again thing is what bothers me the most. First we're an ally with Osama bin Laden, then he's our archenemy. Our CIA set up the madrasah schools, and paid money, to train radical Islamists, in Saudi Arabia, to fight communism… But now they've turned on us… Muslims and Arabs have long memories, Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized… The founders were absolutely right: stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations, mind our own business, bring our troops home, and have a strong defense. I think our defense is weaker now than ever.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , Hate , People , School

“I don't believe in pretending to be someone else. I'm what I actually am in real life. For instance, like any normal girl, I fight with my mother. I mean, it is just fine. In fact, I fight daily with my mother.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Asked about maintaining her image http://www.timesofindia.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/I-am-a-girl-next-door-Shreya-Ghoshal/articleshow/9455640.cms

Life , Girl , Fight

“It is great comedy to hear the secular, pro-gay left, so hostile to states’ rights in virtually every instance, suddenly discover the tyranny of centralized government. The newly minted protectors of local rule find themselves demanding: “Why should Washington dictate marriage standards for Massachusetts and California? Let the people of those states decide for themselves.” This is precisely the argument conservatives and libertarians have been making for decades! Why should Washington dictate education, abortion, environment, and labor rules to the states? The American people hold widely diverse views on virtually all political matters, and the Founders wanted the various state governments to most accurately reflect those views. This is the significance of the 10th Amendment, which the left in particular has abused for decades.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2000s, 2001-2005

Hostility , Marriage , People , Education

“On the other hand, Hindu saints used to assuage the outraged feelings of Hindus and encourage them reconvert to Hinduism. For instance Harihar and Bukka, sons of the Raja of Kampil, converted to Islam by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, fled his court. At the instance of sage Vidyaranya they reverted to Hinduism and founded the Vijayanagar kingdom to resist the expansion of Muslim power in the South. Like Vidyaranya, there were scores of Bhakta saints who were helping people to resist injustice and retain their original religion. In Maharashtra, Namdeva in the fourteenth century declared that people were blind in insisting upon worshipping in temples and mosques, while His worship needed neither temple nor mosque.69 Such courageous denunciations were infectious and these spread in Gujarat, Bengal, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya, Raidas, Dhanna, Sain, Garibdas and Dadu Dayal and a host of others spoke out in the same idiom openly and repeatedly. They came from all classes of society - Raidas was a chamar, Sain was a barber while Pipa was a Raja, Raja of Gauranggarh - but they were all respected and listened to. Of these the three most important saints who turned Bhakti into a movement were Kabir, Nanak and Chaitanya.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 6

People , Religion , Feeling , Courage

“I'm tellin' you if you look at a map you will find out, in order to get Pangaea, to get Africa and South America to fit together, for instance, they had to shrink Africa 40%. They do not fit unless you shrink Africa 40%. You know, get an earth science textbook and look up Pangaea, and you will see Mexico and all of Central America, you know Belize, well, not Belize. Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama - they're all gone. They took 'em out. They twisted two continents clockwise and twisted another one counterclockwise.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Coast-to-Coast AM interview (August 2-3, 2000)

Science

“Under the old constitution, a secretary of the treasury for instance, had no opportunity, save by his annual reports, of presenting any scheme or plan of finance or other matter. He had no opportunity of explaining, expounding, enforcing, or defending his views of policy; his only resort was through the medium of an organ. In the British parliament, the premier brings in his budget and stands before the nation responsible for its every item. If it is indefensible, he falls before the attacks upon it, as he ought to. This will now be the case to a limited extent under our system. In the new constitution, provision has been made by which our heads of departments can speak for themselves and the administration, in behalf of its entire policy, without resorting to the indirect and highly objectionable medium of a newspaper. It is to be greatly hoped that under our system we shall never have what is known as a government organ.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Hope

“I have thought a little about a telepathic community, and I have decided that it would most likely create either a thoroughly paranoiac or a thoroughly homogeneous unit of individuals. Complete suspicion and hostility in the one instance, total harmony and concord in the other. I do not like either alternative.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 2, “Covenant: Derringer and Dascra” (p. 35)

Hostility , Communication

“People can go to the extreme like what we saw during the Cultural Revolution. For instance, in China, when people take everything into their own hands, then you cannot govern the place. … [It] was the people taking power into their own hands. Now that is what you mean by democracy if you take it to the full swing.”

Donald Tsang (1944) Hong Kong politician

As quoted in "HK's Tsang apologises for gaffe" at BBC News (13 October 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7042941.stm
Variant transcription or translation:
If you go to the extreme you have the cultural revolution for instance in China. Then people take everything into their hands, then you cannot govern the place. … It was people taking power into their own hands. This is what we mean by democracy.
As quoted in "Hong Kong leader apologises for democracy gaffe" at AFP (14 October 2007) http://web.archive.org/web/20070609092458/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_ytPeUlA7mXw3eMQ6WHSo_emsLw

People , Democracy

“Whether God can make the past not to have been?
Objection 1: It seems that God can make the past not to have been. For what is impossible in itself is much more impossible than that which is only impossible accidentally. But God can do what is impossible in itself, as to give sight to the blind, or to raise the dead. Therefore, and much more can He do what is only impossible accidentally. Now for the past not to have been is impossible accidentally: thus for Socrates not to be running is accidentally impossible, from the fact that his running is a thing of the past. Therefore God can make the past not to have been.
Objection 2: Further, what God could do, He can do now, since His power is not lessened. But God could have effected, before Socrates ran, that he should not run. Therefore, when he has run, God could effect that he did not run.
Objection 3: Further, charity is a more excellent virtue than virginity. But God can supply charity that is lost; therefore also lost virginity. Therefore He can so effect that what was corrupt should not have been corrupt. On the contrary, Jerome says (Ep. 22 ad Eustoch.): "Although God can do all things, He cannot make a thing that is corrupt not to have been corrupted." Therefore, for the same reason, He cannot effect that anything else which is past should not have been.
I answer that, As was said above (Q[7], A[2]), there does not fall under the scope of God's omnipotence anything that implies a contradiction. Now that the past should not have been implies a contradiction. For as it implies a contradiction to say that Socrates is sitting, and is not sitting, so does it to say that he sat, and did not sit. But to say that he did sit is to say that it happened in the past. To say that he did not sit, is to say that it did not happen. Whence, that the past should not have been, does not come under the scope of divine power. This is what Augustine means when he says (Contra Faust. xxix, 5): "Whosoever says, If God is almighty, let Him make what is done as if it were not done, does not see that this is to say: If God is almighty let Him effect that what is true, by the very fact that it is true, be false": and the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 2): "Of this one thing alone is God deprived---namely, to make undone the things that have been done."
Reply to Objection 1: Although it is impossible accidentally for the past not to have been, if one considers the past thing itself, as, for instance, the running of Socrates; nevertheless, if the past thing is considered as past, that it should not have been is impossible, not only in itself, but absolutely since it implies a contradiction. Thus, it is more impossible than the raising of the dead; in which there is nothing contradictory, because this is reckoned impossible in reference to some power, that is to say, some natural power; for such impossible things do come beneath the scope of divine power.
Reply to Objection 2: As God, in accordance with the perfection of the divine power, can do all things, and yet some things are not subject to His power, because they fall short of being possible; so, also, if we regard the immutability of the divine power, whatever God could do, He can do now. Some things, however, at one time were in the nature of possibility, whilst they were yet to be done, which now fall short of the nature of possibility, when they have been done. So is God said not to be able to do them, because they themselves cannot be done.
Reply to Objection 3: God can remove all corruption of the mind and body from a woman who has fallen; but the fact that she had been corrupt cannot be removed from her; as also is it impossible that the fact of having sinned or having lost charity thereby can be removed from the sinner.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Summa Theologica Question 25 Article 6 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q25_A4.html
Summa Theologica (1265–1274), Unplaced by chapter

God , Nature , Time , Past

“"Death before dishonour." I always used to wonder, Hey, exactly how much dishonour are we talking about here? 'Cause I could handle quite a lot. I would, for instance, fellate a Smurf before I picked death. I'd cook him a little Smurf omelette as I was doing it, you know, I'd be perfectly happy doing that. Seasoning it with thyme, you know, listening to his happy satisfied Smurf lip smacks. But every man thinks about Smurfs. They don't say it, but they do. That's why I'm here—to be honest. Just once, you know, what would it be like? Nobody needs to know, you go away for the weekend. Just once, to have the blue salty bulb lolling on your tongue… if I don't say it, nobody else will."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On regimental mottos.
Monster (2004)

Death , Thinking , Cooking , Season

“The evidence … is always an exercise in suppressio veri suggestio falsi. For instance, Aurangzeb’s petty donations to 2-3 Hindu temples patronized by some pet Hindu courtiers, are played up with great fanfare. But his systematic demolition of thousands of Hindu temples and defilement of countless images of Gods and Goddesses, throughout his long reign, is never mentioned. Such pitiable attempts at pitting molehills of munificence against mountains of malevolence, go against all sense of proportion in judging a whole period of Indian history.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

God , Exercises , History , Mountain

“In all cases, wherein the mind feels itself in danger of being confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a few strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Amongst a multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. If we observe in any argument, that hardly two minds fix upon the same instance, the diversity of choice shows the strength of the argument, because it shows the number and competition of the examples. There is no subject in which the tendency to dwell upon select or single topics is so usual, because there is no subject, of which, in its full extent, the latitude is so great, as that of natural history applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 27 : Conclusion.

Feeling , History , Intelligence , Business

“Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave; which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Westminster Abbey".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

“Who isn’t frustrated and does not prove it by his actions — if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Introduction
The Wedge (1944)

Age , Art

“The most legitimate instances of communication between the living and the dead occur in an intimate personal framework in which a dead parent makes contact with its offspring; a husband or wife freshly out of physical reality appears to his or her mate. But very seldom do historic personages make contact except with their own intimate circles.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 85

Communication , Reality , Parent , Appearance

“I have laboured to abolish the infernal spirit of religious persecution by uniting the Catholics and Dissenters. To the former, I owe more than ever can be repaid. The service I was so fortunate as to render them they rewarded munificently but they did more: when the public cry was raised against me, when the friends of my youth swarmed off and left me alone, the Catholics did not desert me. They had the virtue even to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honour. They refused, though strongly urged, to disgrace a man who, whatever his conduct towards the Government might have been, had faithfully and conscientiously discharged his duty towards them and in so doing, though it was in my own case, I will say they showed an instance of public virtue of which I know not whether there exists another example.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Speech from the dock, to the people on the occasion of his Court-Martial, quoted in Seán Ua Cellaigh (ed.), Speeches From the Dock, or Protests of Irish Patriotism (Dublin, 1953)

Youth , Cry

“this is not to say, we repeat, that the conditions of labor and production are becoming the same throughout the world or throughout the different sectors ot the economy. The claim is rather is that many singular instances of labor processes, productive conditions, local situations, and lived experiences coexist with a "becoming common", at a different level of abstraction, of the forms of labor and the general relations of production and exchange - and that there is no contradiction between this singularity and commonality.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

114
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

World

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), p. 143, as cited in: Lawrence S. Bale (1992) " Gregory Bateson’s Theory of Mind: Practical Applications to Pedagogy http://www.narberthpa.com/Bale/lsbale_dop/gbtom_patp.pdf". November 1992. p. 20

Behavior , Knowledge , Change

“Aiyar wants the public to believe that the Kashmiri Pandits are so unintelligent that they left their comfortable homes and beautiful Valley at the instance of a pied piper called Jagmohan, and not by the militants' strategy of 'killing one and frightening one thousand'. He ignores the hard fact that eminent Kashmiri Pandits had been butchered before I took over.”

Jagmohan

Setting the recored straight, Sunday, 7.11.1993, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 57

Beauty , Home

“There can be no benefit of an exorcism. It’s not like there could ever be an instance where an actual demon is involved, and a priest would be helpless even in that situation if there were any reality to that. Even if there were some placebo effect to the ritual, it still encourages belief in things that would still persist in the imagination and thus never be fully cured even in the mind of believers. And if the problem stems from any sort of actual mental disorder, then the ritual only postpones or replaces actual medical attention.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Imagination , Problem , Reality

“Overall, the universe's apostrophe store stays in balance. It seems our linguistic world was intelligently designed -- for every gratuitous apostrophe there's an instance where it's omitted.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

A.Word.A.Day (Sep 3, 2012) http://wordsmith.org/words/crows_feet.html

World , Intelligence , Universe

“You could not predict what would happen in a single instance, a single throw of the dice, a single pitch in the seventh inning, a single toss of the coin. But you could predict three out of five, four out of ten, seven out of sixteen, and to that extent chance governed everyone, all the time. Just as surely as two equals two.”

Michael Crichton book Odds On

Odds On (1966)

Chance , Time

“Arms control is so often identified with limitations on the possession or deployment of weapons that it is often overlooked that this reciprocated investment in non-nuclear capability was a remarkable instance of unacknowledged but reciprocated arms control.”

Thomas C. Schelling (1921–2016) American economist

Nobel Prize lecture (2005)

“Decision Points is based primarily on my recollections. With help from researchers, I have confirmed my account with government documents, contemporaneous notes, personal interviews, news reports, and other sources, some of which remain classified. There were instances in which I had to rely on memory alone. If there are inaccuracies in this book, the responsibility is mine. In the pages that follow, I have done my best to write about the decisions I got right, those I got wrong, and what I would do differently if given the chance. Of course, in the presidency, there are no do-overs. You have to do what you believe is right and accept the consequences. I tried to do that every day of my eight years in office. Serving as president was the honor of a lifetime, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to share my story.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. xii

Books , Decision , Memory , Chance

“I personally object to the veil on aesthetic as well as other grounds; but I must admit that, for instance in the suburbs of American cities, I have often seen women attired more sloppily than our Persian women normally are.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 232
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

Women , Personality

“Influence is strange. Because one can be influenced powerfully in every way but technique. For instance, I would think Walt Whitman probably had more influence on my whole poetic thinking than anybody, but I never dreamed of trying to write in the Whitman manner.”

Karl Shapiro (1913–2000) Poet, essayist

Paris Review interview (1986)

Dreams , Way , Thinking

“Hitherto, the well-to-do have governed this country for their own interest; and I will do them this credit—they have achieved their object. Now I trust the time is approaching for those who work and have not. My aim in life is to make life pleasanter for this great majority; I do not care if it becomes in the process less pleasant for the well-to-do minority. Take America, for instance. Cultured persons complain that the society there is vulgar; less agreeable to the delicate tastes of delicately trained minds. But it is infinitely preferable to the ordinary worker.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Said to Beatrice Webb as recorded in her diary (12 January 1884), quoted in Webb, My Apprenticeship (Penguin, 1971), p. 141.
1880s

Life , Time , Personality , Training

“Then the theory of relativity came and explained the cause of the failure. Electric action requires time to travel from one point of space to another, the simplest instance of this being the finite speed of travel of light… Thus electromagnetic action may be said to travel through space and time jointly. But by filling space and space alone [excluding time] with an ether, the pictorial representations had all supposed a clear-cut distinction between space and time.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Travel , Failure , Light , Time

“Atrocity lies were the most popular of all, especially in this country and America; no war can be without them. Slander of the enemy is esteemed a patriotic duty. An English soldier wrote (The Times, September 15, 1914): "The stories in our papers are only exceptions. There are people like them in every army." But at the earliest possible moment stories of the maltreatment of prisoners have to be circulated deliberately in order to prevent surrenders. This is done, of course, on both sides. Whereas naturally each side tries to treat its prisoners as well as possible so as to attract others. The repetition of a single instance of cruelty and its exaggeration can be distorted into a prevailing habit on the part of the enemy.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

War , People , Nature , Time

“The time has come for the dismantling of fantasies. That is already happening to our universe. Now that we have this one chance of survival we must finally rid ourselves of fantasies and seize that chance!
For centuries our race has built on false assumptions. If you build a fantasy based on a false assumption and continue to build on such a fantasy, your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant in others who are too lazy or too busy to question its truth.
In this manner you threaten the very existence of reality, because, by refusing to obey its laws, those laws engulf and destroy you. The human race has for too long been manufacturing convenient fantasies and calling them laws. For ages this was so. Take war, for instance. Politicians assume that something is true, assume that strife is inevitable, and by building on such false assumptions, lo and behold, they create further wars which they have, ostensibly, sought to prevent.
We have, until now, accepted too many fantasies as being truths, too many truths as fantasies. And we have one last chance to discover the real nature of our existence. I am prepared to take it!”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 7 (pp. 229-230)

War , Truth , Lie , Age

“Interaction may begin for quite different reasons. One or both persons may know something about the other and, on the basis of this information, may (anticipate that interaction would yield good outcomes. This would result in a deliberate decision to seek out the other person and interact with him. Under other circumstances the two persons may be thrown together by the operation of factors beyond their control. Their jobs may bring them together, common friends may introduce them, or residence in the same neighborhood may result in a chance meeting. In these instances interaction is begun in response to the immediate situation without any necessary anticipation of the possible consequences by either participant.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: The social psychology of groups. 1959, p. 19-20

Decision , Chance , Personality

“We believe we are rising because while keeping the same base inclinations (for instance: the desire to triumph over others) we have given them a noble object. We should, on the contrary, rise by attaching noble inclinations to lowly objects.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Croire qu’on s’élève parce qu’en gardant les mêmes bas penchants (exemple : désir de l’emporter sur autrui) on leur a donné des objets élevés. On s’élèverait au contraire en attachant à des objets bas des penchants élevés.
La pesanteur et la grâce (1948), p. 61
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 48 (1972 edition)

“Because that's where I live, and have lived for a few years now. I wouldn't say in food tastes, for instance, that I'm Indian. I would say I'm Chinese, food-wise. That's the food that I like to eat on a daily basis." It's common for people to be a mix of cultures, rather than having one specific identity.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

To a question as to his cultural identity
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us

People , Food

“Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78
1820s

Feeling , Horse , Painting

“Even discourse which does not acknowledge "musical coherence" as "intellectual communication" does not in fact succeed in treating it as anything else; it is only by locating their concerns in domains where the "musical" aspects of music are peripherally or not at all involved that musical discourses can circumvent the fact that when the "object of thought" consists of the contents of a musical composition just the recognition of the identities of any of these contents (or even of the undivided single identity of them taken all together as a "unit") involves (to varying degrees) the same considerations that are involved in a discourse that explicitly--and hence with a better chance of cognitive particularity--regards such a composition as an instance of communicative thought.”

Benjamin Boretz (1934) American composer

from Meta-Variations: studies in the foundations of musical thought Red Hook, N.Y. : Open Space, 1995.

Music , Communication , Chance

“Let us say that we did battle, and I emerged the victor. By your reasoning, I would thus become the rightful King of Vaa-oh, wait. I see now. That would not serve, since I haven't the proper bloodline. What a cunning system you have there. You and all the other self-proclaimed royalty of Faerun. By your conditions, you alone are kings and queens and lords and ladies of court. You alone matter, while the peasant grovels and kneels in the mud, and since you alone are 'rightful' in the eyes of this god or that, then the peasant cannot complain. He must accept his muddy lot in life and revel in his misery, all in the knowledge that he serves the rightful king."
Gareth's jaw tightened, and he ground his teeth as he continued to stare unblinking at Entreri.
"You should have had Kane kill me, back at the castle. Break the mirror, King Gareth. You will fancy yourself prettier in that instance.”

R. A. Salvatore book Road of the Patriarch

Road of the Patriarch

Life , God , Knowledge , Waiting

“I have begun drafting a memorandum for the prosecuting authorities, together with all evidence necessary to establish not only the existence of numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud in relation to the official "global warming" storyline but also the connections between these instances, and the overall scheme of deception that the individual artifices appear calculated to reinforce.”

Christopher Monckton (1952) British public speaker and hereditary peer

Making the police state work for you http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/12/15/fmr-thatcher-advisor-lord-monckton-to-pursue-fraud-charges-against-climategate-scientists-will-present-to-police-the-case-for-numerous-specific-instances-of-scientific-or-economic-fraud/ climatedepot.com, December 15, 2011.

Fraud , Appearance

“Being a bourgeoisie in a colonial and semi-colonial country and oppressed by imperialism, the Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a certain revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree--even in the era of imperialism--in its opposition to the foreign imperialists and the domestic governments of bureaucrats and warlords (instances of opposition to the latter can be found in the periods of the Revolution of 1911 and the Northern Expedition), and it may ally itself with the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie against such enemies as it is ready to oppose. In this respect the Chinese bourgeoisie differs from the bourgeoisie of old tsarist Russia. Since tsarist Russia was a military-feudal imperialism which carried on aggression against other countries, the Russian bourgeoisie was entirely lacking in revolutionary quality. There, the task of the proletariat was to oppose the bourgeoisie, not to unite with it. But China's national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without overlooking its revolutionary quality.”

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

On New Democracy (1940)

Country

“But by and by the time came when the Christian Church apostatized and turned away, and began to follow after their own wisdom, and the Prophets and Apostles ceased, so far as the affairs of the Christian Church on the earth were concerned. Revelations, and visions, and the various gifts of the spirit were also taken away, according to their unbelief and apostacy; but in the latter days God intends to again raise up a Christian Church upon the earth. Do not be startled, you who think that God will no more have a Church on the earth, for he has promised that he would again have one, and that he would set up his kingdom, and when he does you may look out for a great many Prophets and inspired men; and if you ever see a Church arise, calling itself a Christian Church, and it has not inspired Apostles like those in ancient times, you may know that it is a spurious church, and that it makes pretensions to something that it does not enjoy. If you ever find a church called a Christian Church that has no men to foretell future events, you may know, at once, that it is not a Christian Church. If you find a Christian Church that has not the ancient gifts, for instance the gift of healing, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, causing the tongue of the dumb to speak and the lame to walk; if you ever find a people calling themselves a Christian Church and they have not these gifts among them, you may know with a perfect knowledge that they do not agree with the pattern given in the New Testament. The Christian Church is always characterized with inspired men, whose revelations are just as sacred as any contained in the Bible; and, if written and published, just as binding upon the human family. The Christian Church will always lay hands upon the sick in the name of Jesus, in order that the sick may be healed. The Christian Church will always have those among its members who have heavenly visions, the ministration of angels, and the various gifts that are promised according to the Gospel.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 18:171-172 (March 26, 1876).
Apostacy

Wisdom , Men , God , People

“The likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition – into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)

Time

“He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age.”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

Horace Walpole, letter to William Mason dated July 24, 1778; published in Horace Walpole (ed. William Hadley) Selected Letters (London: Everyman's Library, 1963) p. 191.
Criticism

Age

“Determination in a single instance is an expression of courage; if it becomes characteristic, a mental habit. But here we are referring not to physical courage but to courage to accept responsibility, courage in the face of a moral danger. This has often been called courage d'esprit, because it is created by the intellect. That, however, does not make it an act of the intellect: it is an act of temperament. Intelligence alone is not courage; we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.
Looked at in this way, the role of determination is to limit the agonies of doubt and the perils of hesitation when the motives for action are inadequate.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 3.

People , Way , Feeling , Intelligence

“For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms.”

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

Incipit
The house on the hill (1949)

Life , Way , Time , Sea

“I am an artist, and, through my eye, must confess to a tremendous bias. In my purely literary voyages my eye is always my compass. “The architectural simplicity” – whether of a platonic idea or greek temple – I far prefer to no idea at all, or no temple at all, or, for instance, to most of the complicated and too tropical structures of India. Nothing could ever convince my EYE – even if my intelligence were otherwise overcome – that anything that did not possess this simplicity, conceptual quality, hard exact outline, grand architectural proportion, was the greatest art. Bergson is indeed the arch enemy of every impulse having its seat in the apparatus of vision, and requiring a concrete world. Bergson is the enemy of the Eye, from the start; though he might arrive at some emotional compromise with the Ear. But I can hardly imagine any way in which he is not against every form of intelligent life. (p. 338)”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

"The Great God Flux".
The Art of Being Ruled (1926)

Life , World , Art , Way

“You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you don't have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. It's like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. It's an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a bird's eye view, and those who have a worm's eye view. I've come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and that's what the human condition is really all about.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Support , Bird , Cry

“Instances of grave tactical blunders are certainly not lacking in the history of war, but it is characteristic of tactical errors that tend to be self-exposing, if not in relation to some theoretical ideal then at least in relation to the best the enemy can do. In the past, it has usually been possible for strong nations to recover from them, even if at a heavy cost in blood and possibly strategic position. Strategic errors may or may not expose themselves in some obvious fashion during the course of a war, or even afterwards, and they are therefore much less likely to damage the reputations of those responsible for them.”

Bernard Brodie (1910–1978) American nuclear strategist

Pg. 17
Strategy in the Missile Age

War , Error , History , Fashion

“Almost all medieval Muslim historians credit their heroes with desecration of Hindu idols and/or destruction of Hindu temples. The picture that emerges has the following components, depending upon whether the iconoclast was in a hurry on account of Hindu resistance or did his work at leisure after a decisive victory:
1. The idols were mutilated or smashed or burnt or melted down if they were made of precious metals.
2. Sculptures in relief on walls and pillars were disfigured or scraped away or torn down.
3. Idols of stone and inferior metals or their pieces were taken away, sometimes by cartloads, to be thrown down before the main mosque in (a) the metropolis of the ruling Muslim sultan and (b) the holy cities of Islam, particularly Mecca, Medina and Baghdad.
4. There were instances of idols being turned into lavatory seats or handed over to butchers to be used as weights while selling meat.
5. Brahmin priests and other holy men in and around the temple were molested or murdered.
6. Sacred vessels and scriptures used in worship were defiled and scattered or burnt.
7. Temples were damaged or despoiled or demolished or burnt down or converted into mosques with some structural alterations or entire mosques were raised on the same sites mostly with temple materials.
8. Cows were slaughtered on the temple sites so that Hindus could not use them again.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Men , Decision , Victory , Dependency

“I am far from wishing to treat lightly or inconsiderately the evils attendant upon a standing army. The history of those countries where standing armies have been allowed to usurp an ascendancy over the civil authorities, is a volume pregnant with instruction to every one. We may look at France, for instance, and derive a lesson of eternal importance. But when it is said, that in ancient Rome twelve thousand praetorian bands were potent enough to dispose of that empire according to their will and pleasure, it should be remembered that that was the result of a number of pre-disposing causes, which have no existence in England. Before the civil constitution of any country can be overturned by a standing army, the people of that country must be lamentably degenerate; they must be debased and enervated by all the worst excesses of an arbitrary and despotic government; their martial spirit must be extinguished; they must be brought to a state of political degradation, I may almost say of political emasculation, such as few countries experience that have once known the blessings of liberty.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (8 March 1816), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), p. 12.
1810s

People , Pleasure , History , Evil

“Ever since my United Nations work, for instance, they've been saying that I've gone into politics. The United Nations is a nonpolitical body.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

McCall's, August 1962 http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/mccall-s-august-1964/

“If, for instance, a man had a godless father or son or brother, who became a hindrance to his faith and an obstacle to the life above, let him not live in fellowship or agreement with him, but let him dissolve the fleshly relationship on account of the spiritual antagonism.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 317

Life , Faith

“During Muslim rule in India, foreign and Indian Muslims were freely bestowed jobs and gifts. Foreign Muslims were most welcome here. They came in large numbers and were well provided for. Muhammad Tughlaq was specially kind to them, as averred by Ibn Battutah. He writes that "the countries contiguous to India like Yemen, Khurasan and Fars are filled with anecdotes about… his generosity to the foreigners in so far as he prefers them to the Indians, honours them, confers on them great favours and makes them rich presents and appoints them to high offices and awards them great benefits". He calls them aziz or dear ones and has instructed his courtiers not to address them as foreigners. 'The sultan ordered for me," writes Ibn Battutah, "a sum of six thousand tankahs, and ordered a sum of ten thousand for Ibn Qazi Misr. Similarly, he ordered sums to be given to all foreigners (a'izza) who were to stay at Delhi, but nothing was given to the metropolitans."… There are scores of instances of Muhammad Tughlaq's generosity to foreigners…. The point to note here is that under Sultan Muhammad so much wealth was awarded to so many deserving and undeserving foreign Muslims that at the close of his reign the Delhi treasury had become bankrupt. There was also the loss of popularity because "the people of India hate the foreigners (Persians, Turks, Khurasanis) because of the favour the sultan shows them."”

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

Ibn Battutah, trs. Mahdi Husain, p. 105-140. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

Hate , People , Loss , Country

“"Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface'" (Arp). Only love — for painting, in this instance — is able to cover the fearful void.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Robert Motherwell, partly quoting Jean Arp, in Motherwell & black (1981) p. 94 -->
Misattributed

Love , Fear , Drawing , Painting

“It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the resistering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

"Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links" in Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information (1990) ed., Wojciech H. Zurek, p. 5. http://books.google.com/books?id=mdjsOeTgatsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA5

World , Idea , Question , Reality

“Kuhn acknowledges having used the term "paradigm" in two different meanings. In the first one, "paradigm" designates what the members of a certain scientific community have in common, that is to say, the whole of techniques, patents and values shared by the members of the community. In the second sense, the paradigm is a single element of a whole, say for instance Newton’s Principia, which, acting as a common model or an example… stands for the explicit rules and thus defines a coherent tradition of investigation. Thus the question is for Kuhn to investigate by means of the paradigm what makes possible the constitution of what he calls "normal science". That is to say, the science which can decide if a certain problem will be considered scientific or not. Normal science does not mean at all a science guided by a coherent system of rules, on the contrary, the rules can be derived from the paradigms, but the paradigms can guide the investigation also in the absence of rules. This is precisely the second meaning of the term "paradigm", which Kuhn considered the most new and profound, though it is in truth the oldest.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Truth , Communication , Question , Problem