Quotes about interest (5680 quotes, page 17)

“A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That's true if you are trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you're building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letters to David Skrbina
The Road to Revolution (2008)

People

“I was attacked for fighting a rearguard action in defence of “middle-class interests.”…Well, if “middle class values” include the encouragement of variety and individual choice, the provision of fair incentives and rewards for skill and hard work, the maintenance of effective barriers against the excessive power of the State and a belief in the wide distribution of individual private property, then they are certainly what I am trying to defend. This is not a fight for “privilege”; it is a fight for freedom—freedom for every citizen.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Article for Daily Telegraph ("My Kind of Tory Party") (30 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102600
Shadow Secretary for Environment

Freedom , Fight

“The world is a terrible place, but it’s very interesting.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

World

“These masters of the universe must be tamed in the interests of the ordinary families whose jobs and livelihoods are being put at risk… The Tories won't say anything about the current crisis as they are completely in the pockets of the hedge funds.”

Vince Cable (1943) British Liberal Democrat politician

Comment's on hedge funds http://blythvalleylibdems.org.uk/news/000037/hbos_brought_to_its_knees_by_hedge_funds_hunting_in_a_pack__cable.html, 17 September 2008.
2008

Family , Universe

“The correctness of the so-called materialistic conception of history, which considers the political development as dependent on the economic, cannot be brought more strikingly and convincingly to the mind than by the change which in the course of the Nineteenth century has been wrought in the bourgeoisie. It can be demonstrated with the greatest precision how with the change in the productive relations a change of political view and attitude has taken place in the bourgeoisie. Every step forward in economic development has been a step forward in the development of class antagonisms and a step in the approach of the bourgeoisie towards its old enemies, the landlords and priests, and a step in drawing away from the rising proletariat, which in order to effect its emancipation, must advocate equal rights for all men and the democratic principles formerly supported by the bourgeoisie. The moment the proletariat steps forth as a class separate from the bourgeoisie and having interests opposed to it, from that moment the bourgeoisie ceased to be democratic.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Men , History , Support , Change

“During World War II it was exciting and unexpected for Hayek to find someone else, from Vienna, who was interested in many of the same topics that he was. The Open Society and Its Enemies has three main parts, on Plato, Hegel, and Marx. The next main chapters in Hayek’s uncompleted “The Abuse and Decline of Reason,” on which he was at work then, were to be on Hegel and Marx. In addition, Popper’s scholarly style was similar to Hayek’s, with extremely extensive notes.”

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

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

War , World , Parting

“The most interesting character here is an animal, a sturdy-looking white and black bulldog, who appears throughout the movie, angel style, to speak the truth -- silently. In this load of mind-bendy bushwa, he's the only thing worth watching, or listening to.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/02/23/number_23/index.html of The Number 23 (2007)

Truth , Angels , Appearance , Animals

“When told by a female colleague about how a girl can pick the right guy, she said... "When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do."”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

Source: The Last Lecture (2008), Chapter 37: Watch What They Do, Not What They Say, p. 146

Men , Guy , Girl

“For our country, it is vitally important, as a factor for long-standing stability, that we always maintain a careful balance between the rights of individuals and communities, the special interests of indigenous people, including their right of ownership to their natural resources must also be protected.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Address to the United Nations General Assembly, 17 September 2005 (excerpts)

People , Communication , Nature , Country

“I was never so much "interested in Islam", so much as I was interested in trying to find out about God; I wanted to discover my purpose in life and a way to better the world I share with others.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)

Life , God , World , Way

“These collages were static symmetrical constructions, portico's with pathetic vegetation, the gateway to the realm of dreams. They were done with colored paper in black, orange or blue dye plates. Although cubist painting interested me very much, not a trace of their influence was to be found in my collages.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 420 - quote on his early collages, Hans Arp made ca. 1914.

Dreams , Color , Painting

“A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.”

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) Irish writer

Vivian, ch. 7; Tales and Novels, vol. 8, p. 80.

Pleasure , Country

“CONSIDERABLE attention has recently been devoted to understanding behavior in large organizational systems. Although some of this work has been based on research, it has more typically been general theorizing with little support from research data. Our interest in examining complex organizations is to study more systematically and empirically their internal functioning in relation to the demands of the external environment on the organization and the ability of the organization to cope effectively with these demands, contributing to a theory of the functioning of large organizations based on empirical research.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 2

Behavior , Understanding , Support , Study

“In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. It aimed to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

Source: 1990s, A Short History of Reconstruction (1990), p. 184

Life

“The briefest definition of the Islamic order defines it as a unity of religion and law, upbringing and power, ideal and interest, the spiritual community and the state, willingness and force… An Islamic society without an Islamic authority is incomplete and without power; Islamic government without Islamic society is either utopia or violence. Generally speaking, a Muslim does not exist as a sole individual. If he wishes to live and survive as a Muslim, he must create an environment, a community, a system.”

Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Source: The Islamic Declaration (1970), p. 26.

Religion , Law , Communication

“The full impact of printing did not become possible until the adoption of the Bill of Rights in the United States with its guarantee of freedom of the press. A guarantee of freedom of the press in print was intended to further sanctify the printed word and to provide a rigid bulwark for the shelter of vested interests.”

Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy

Industrialism and Cultural Values p. 138.
The Bias of Communication (1951)

Freedom

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Men , Truth , Books , World

“We are interested in others, when they are interested in us.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 16
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Freedom

“Excess of interest in both her own and in the stranger’s personality merge in feminine surrender, the urge to lose herself completely in a human being; but in so doing, she does justice neither to self nor to the humanity of another, and, at the same time, becomes unfit for exercising other duties.
Also connected to the false pursuit of prestige is a perverted desire for totality and inclusiveness, a mania to know everything and thereby to skim the surface of everything and to plunge deeply into nothing. However, such superficiality can never be true humanity.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

Justice , Exercises , Time , Personality

“In 1945 I really believed that by the year 1952 no American could hear the name of Roosevelt without a shudder or utter it without a curse. You see; I was wrong. I was right about the inevitability of exposure. Like the bodies of the Polish officers who were butchered in Katyn Forest by the Bolsheviks (as we knew at the time), many of the Roosevelt regime's secret crimes were exposed to the light of day. The exposures were neither so rapid or so complete as I anticipated, but their aggregate is far more than should have been needed for the anticipated reaction. Only about 80 per cent of the secret of Pearl Harbor has thus far become known, but that 80 per cent should in itself be enough to nauseate a healthy man. Of course I do not know, and I may not even suspect, the full extent of the treason of that incredible administration. But I should guess that at least half of it has been disclosed in print somewhere: not necessarily in well-known sources, but in books and articles in various languages, including publications that the international conspiracy tries to keep from the public, and not necessarily in the form of direct testimony, but at least in the form of evidence from which any thinking man can draw the proper and inescapable deductions. The information is there for those who will seek it, and enough of it is fairly well known, fairly widely known, especially the Pearl Harbor story, to suggest to anyone seriously interested in the preservation of his country that he should learn more. But the reaction never occurred. And even today the commonly used six-cent postage stamp bears the bloated and sneering visage of the Great War Criminal, and one hears little protest from the public.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

War , Secret , Books , Thinking

“There have always been two aspects to my work: formal innovation and strong content. That goes for Steve’s tape pieces as well. To make a work together, we had to be engaged by the subject matter, and we shared an interest in technology as it has advanced. Looking back at the Hindenburg and Bikini Atoll, and forward in “Dolly” to new technologies, was a way of rethinking and understanding the soup in which we swim. We call this a theater of ideas, but its success as a work depends on the strength of the video and the music.
“Hindenburg” itself begins with the crash of the zeppelin in 1937 and ends with a view of its burnt-up carcass on the landing field in Lakehurst, New Jersey, taken from an airplane. What interested us here in viewing the archival material and listening to recordings of the period was the overwhelming conviction that technology was the sure way to progress. Naturally, after the atom bomb, a darker view of progress began to appear.”

Beryl Korot (1945) American artist

Beryl Korot, in: " Steve Reich and Beryl Korot by Julia Wolfe http://bombmagazine.org/article/2521/steve-reich-and-beryl-korot," BOMB 81, Fall 2002

Music , Way , Idea , Understanding

“Learn their lesson, that if you would teach people you first must capture their interest with news; that your service rather than your sermons must be your claim upon their attention; that what you say must be simple, and brief, and above all sincere — the unmistakable voice of true regard and affection.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton book The Man Nobody Knows

On the teachings of Jesus, in Ch. 5 : His Advertisements
The Man Nobody Knows (1924)

People , Learning , Sincerity

“As the saying goes - the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance. Politicians have taken advantage of our indifference by imposing ever more draconian and restrictive laws that increase their power while diminishing ours. Asking questions of our public bodies is the best way to ensure they are working for our interests and not those of politicians. Through FOI we can go behind political rhetoric to see the true state of affairs.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 4.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Law , Way , Question , Freedom

“Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 47

World

“The mass of mankind is ruled not by its intermittent moral sensations, still less by self-interest, but by the needs of the moment.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Green Humanism (p. 17)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart.”
Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri subegit, aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habere, amicitias inimicitiasque non ex re, sed ex commodo aestimare, magisque vultum quam ingenium bonum habere.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Variant translation: It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter X, section 5

Friendship , Heart

“What's interesting is, in the months leading up to this, I was probably at the lowest ebb in my life. I was feeling just teenage angst. I didn't know if I wanted to continue living — that kind of despair. I was praying to a God I didn't know was listening.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

On the forming of the band U2
Rolling Stone interview (2005)

Life , God , Feeling , Despair

“You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

ibid., p. 209
On Goldsmith's irritation at the lack of response from responsible critics

Music , Reading

“A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It is an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are? I think we have got real problems in that regard.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

In an interview for the Los Angeles Times (April, 1990).

Problem , Thinking

“She was a grown up now, and she discovered that being a grown up was not quite what she had suspected it would be when she was a child. She had thought then that she would make a conscious decision one day to simply put her toys and games and little make-believes away. Now she discovered that was not what happened at all. Instead, she discovered, interest simply faded. It became less and less and less, until a dust of years drew over the bright pleasures of childhood, and they were forgotten.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

Pleasure , Game , Decision , Childhood

“All the major industries will be owned and controlled by the community, but there may well exist for a long time many smaller enterprises which are left to be carried on individually. … the interests of the community as a whole must come before that of any sectional group. … the managers and technicians must be given reasonable freedom if they are to work efficiently, a freedom within the general economic plan. … the workers must be citizens and not wage slaves.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Labour Party in Perspective (Left Book Club, 1937), p. 153.
Leader of the Opposition

Communication , Freedom , Time

“I have to inform the House that the present situation is so critical that the Government are compelled to seek special powers from the House by a Bill to be passed through all its stages in both Houses of Parliament to-day. The situation is grave. … The Government are convinced that now is the time when we must mobilise to the full the whole resources of this country. We must throw all our weight into the struggle. Every private interest must give way to the urgent needs of the community. We cannot know what the next few weeks or even days may bring forth, but whatever may come we shall meet it as the British people in the past have met dangers and overcome them. But it is necessary that the Government should be given complete control over persons and property, not just some persons of some particular class of the community, but of all persons, rich and poor, employer and workman, man or woman, and all property.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/may/22/business-of-the-house-emergency#S5CV0361P0_19400522_HOC_158 in the House of Commons (22 May 1940) introducing the Emergency Powers Act 1940.
War Cabinet

People , Way , Communication , Time

“I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comics are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We’re using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism and terrorism.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

Stupidity , Art , Tree

“Nietzsche … criticizes Schopenhauerian aesthetics for not freeing itself from Kant’s moralistic: ‘that is beautiful which gives us pleasure without interest’.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 95

Pleasure , Beauty

“Whoever desires that his intellect may grow up to soundness, to healthy vigor, must begin with moral discipline. Reading and study are not enough to perfect the power of thought. One thing above all is needful, and that is, the disinterestedness which is the very soul of virtue. To gain truth, which is the great object of the understanding, I must seek it disinterestedly. Here is the first and grand condition of intellectual progress. I must choose to receive the truth, no matter how it bears on myself. I must follow it, no matter where it leads, what interests it opposes, to what persecution or loss it lays me open, from what party it severs me, or to what party it allies. Without this fairness of mind, which is only another phrase for disinterested love of truth, great native powers of understanding are perverted and led astray.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love , Truth , Soul , Understanding

“My dad, Ron Brand, was an entrepreneurial Essex man, Del Boy’d up to the hilt on Thatcher’s creed. He was a self-made and self-destructive man and intermittently tumbled either side of the line. The prevailing mentality of the time, the eighties, was “every man for himself.” Unions were crushed, state interests were carved up and flogged, and council houses were sold back to the people whose efforts had built them. One of the great venture-capitalist heroes of this time, who epitomized this buccaneering spirit, was Sir James Goldsmith, Tory hero, Thatcher crush, scourge of Private Eye, and demon of the left. My dad and a lot of people from modest backgrounds admired him; there was something appealingly antiestablishment and daring in the aggressive and ingenious ways that James Goldsmith exploited the system.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People , Way , Effort , Time

“[I]t's not by chance that Russia and the U. S. forge alliances in the most critical moments of modern history. That was the case in WWI and WWII. Even if there was fierce confrontation, our countries united against a common threat, which means there's something that unites us. There must be some fundamental interest which brings us together. That's something we need to focus on first. We need to be aware of our differences but focus on a positive agenda that can improve our cooperation.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33oIF-ggK5U
2011 - 2015

History , Chance , Country

“My interest in economics had the following roots. Like many of my generation I considered the heavy unemployment in the United Kingdom in the inter-war period as both stupid and wicked. Moreover, I knew the cure for this evil, because I had become a disciple of the monetary crank, Major C. H. Douglas, to whose works I had been introduced by a much loved but somewhat eccentric maiden aunt. But my shift to the serious study of economics gradually weakened my belief in Major Douglas's A+B theorem, which was replaced in my thought by the expression MV = PT.”

James Meade (1907–1995) British economist

"James E. Meade - Biographical," 1977

Love , War , Stupidity , Study

“It was the FLP that was committed to reducing the cost of doing business and started by lowering the cost of utilities, and requested the commercial banks and lending organizations to reduce their fees, charges and interest rates. The FLP also moved to reduce public expenditure, which saw a saving of $96 million in its year in office. It was also the FLP, which lowered interest in Housing Authority home loans from 12 per cent to 6 per cent for those on lower incomes. It was the aggregate effect of this and a range of other measures of tight fiscal control, investment in key growth areas and a firm hand on curbing corruption that saw the economy record an unprecedented growth of 9.6% in 1999.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Reaction to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's address to the Fiji Employers Federation in Nadi, 4 September 2005

Home , Business , Housing

“.. it seems to me that you could take the opposite point of view, and say that continuity (in language and in thought, B. K.) is the thing that is so distressing and that what one can do is attempt to create a discontinuous situation. It seems to me that continuity is almost a static concept. And since we have the concept of discontinuity it seems to me that it would be more interesting to attempt to establish that.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

interview at John's studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 89
1960s

“I taught at a school in Cincinnati with a 0% graduation rate and that was also interesting so I updated from thinking school was beneficial for other people but not beneficial to me, to thinking school was beneficial for maybe some people around the middle – at least some of the better schools – but not beneficial for the vast majority of people, to then actually reading the literature on education and on intelligence and academic accomplishment and symbolic manipulation and concluding "no, school isn't good for anyone". There might be a few schools that are good for people, like there's Blair and there's Stuyvesant and these schools may actually teach people, but school can better be seen as a vaccination program against knowledge than a process for instilling knowledge in people, and of course when a vaccination program messes up, occasionally people get sick and die of the mumps or smallpox or whatever. And when school messes up occasionally people get sick and educated and they lose biological fitness. And in either case the people in charge revise the program and try to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the case of school they also use that as part of their positive branding and you know maintain a not-very-plausible story about it being intended to cause that effect while also working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Michael Vassar (1979) President of the Singularity Institute

In an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cSG0p-uflA with Adam Ford, December 2012

People , Education , School , Intelligence

“I am a working man as much as you. My father was as poor as any man in this crowd. He was of your own body, entirely. He boasts not—nor do I—of birth, nor of great family distinctions. What he has made, he has made by his own industry and successful commerce. What I have comes from him, and from my own exertions. I have no interest in the extravagance of government; I have no interest in seeking appointments under any government; I have no interest in pandering to the views of any government; I have nothing to gain by being the tool of any party. I come before you as the friend of my own class and order; as one of the people; as one who would, on all occasions, be the firm defender of your rights, and the asserter of all those privileges to which you are justly entitled. It is on these grounds that I offer myself to your notice; it is on these grounds that I solicit your suffrages.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech during the general election of 1843, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 113.
1840s

People , Family , Birth , Success

“I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie. … I have such a huge dislike. It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion. I don't even want to talk about it, it's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety - and I never needed religion to save me.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Interview for Martin Krasnik of the Guardian, (14 December 2005) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/14/fiction.philiproth

Hate , People , Lie , Fear

“What stands most explicitly as critique in Nietzsche’s late work in not a development from earlier interests but a return to two problems of enduring personal involvement for him, those of Wagner and of Christianity. Der Antichrist, to take one case, is not a response to a resuscitating public interest in Christian religion; it is primarily a renewed attempt to resolve for himself the question of piety.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 174

Religion , Question , Problem , Personality

“No matter what the future may hold for the Irish nation, the seven years — 1916 to 1923 — must ever remain a period of absorbing interest. Not for over two hundred years has there been such a period of intense and sustained effort to regain the national sovereignty and independence. Over the greater part of the period it was the effort of, one might say, the entire nation. An overwhelming majority of the people of this island combined voluntarily during those years in pursuit of a common purpose.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

On "The Troubles" in Ireland.
Judging Dev (2007)

People , Effort , Future , Parting

“Ideologies involve a mistake about their origin: agents think that the ideology arose because of its responsiveness to epistemically relevant considerations (e. g., evidence, reasons, etc.), when, in fact, it arose only because it was responsive to the interests of the dominant economic class in the existing economic system.”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

“Morality Critics”

Thinking

“What is modernity? Is it defending foreign interests, or defending interests of our country?”

Itamar Franco (1930–2011) Brazilian politician

Online text Inheritor of Tarnished Presidency: Itamar Augusto Cantiero Franco http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/30/world/man-in-the-news-inheritor-of-tarnished-presidency-itamar-augusto-cantiero-franco.html (December 30, 1992)

Country

“This incident impressed upon me the Bedu’s indifference to human life. The man was sick and if God ordered it he would die. He was a stranger who came from a tribe unrelated to theirs. None of them felt an interest because he was a human being like themselves. His death would in no way affect them. Yet their code demanded that, however unwanted he might be, they should fight in his defence if he were attacked whilst with them.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 177.

Life , Death , God , Way

“It is commonly observed — but not commonly enough! — that old folks removed from their homes to hospital settings are put at a tremendous disadvantage, even though their basic bodily needs are well provided for. They often appear to be quite demented — to be utterly incapable of feeding, clothing, and washing themselves, let alone engaging in any activities of greater interest. Often, however, if they are returned to their homes, they can manage quite well for themselves. How do they do this? Over the years, they have loaded their home environments with ultrafamiliar landmarks, triggers for habits, reminder of what to do, where to find the food, how to get dressed, where the telephone is, and so forth. An old person can be a veritable virtuoso of self-help in such a hugely overlearned world, in spite of his or her brain's increasing imperviousness to new bouts of learning… Taking them out of their homes is literally separating them from large parts of their minds — potentially just as devastating a development as undergoing brain surgery.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

World , Food , Home , Learning

“Do not undervalue attention. It means interest and also love. To know, to do, to discover, or to create you must give your heart to it – which means attention. All the blessings flow from it.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Attention
Source: I am That, P.126.

Love , Heart

“Why should I be more ‘cautious, careful,’ as you say? I stay in the big leagues as long as I do because I play only one way. I know I take too many, maybe. I know I should not sometimes dive for the ball—or hit the wall trying to catch it— as much as I do. But you catch the ball, you help your team. You don’t catch it, you don’t help your team. I believe playing, how you say, ‘all out’ has prolonged my career. If a ballplayer starts loafing, he tends to lose that little push that is so necessary, so important. You get lazy, won’t take even the smallest chance; kind of lose interest. Your rhythm, I guess it is, gets all messed up. Fly balls start falling on you, when they should not. And you find yourself not getting around on the ball like you should. Once you lose this ‘little push,’ then it is awfully hard to get back in the groove… get yourself going again. Your ambition – desire – suffers. And you become the kind of ballplayer you don’t want to be.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "‘Never Let Up,’ Says Clemente" by Hal Hayes, in The Atlanta Constitution (Tuesday, May 5, 1970), p. 2-C
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1970</big>

Way , Suffering , Chance , Help

“If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I have not the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Radio Interview, 1960. Quoted in South-East Asia: A Political Profile, Damien Kingsbury (2001, p. 337)
1960s

“The big Wall Street firms, seemingly so shrewd and self-interested, had somehow become the dumb money. The people who ran them did not understand their own businesses, and their regulators obviously knew even less.”

Michael Lewis book The Big Short

Source: The Big Short (2010), Chapter Ten, Two Men In A Boat, p. 244

Money , People , Understanding , Business

“I think he's a very good technician. And he has something in Psycho, he had some moments. Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells very much about him. Not very good things. He is completely infantile, and I would like to know more — no, I don't want to know — about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women. But this picture is very interesting.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On Alfred Hitchcock in an interview with John Simon (1971).

Women , Money , Thinking

“This one is too elegant, too shiny, like jewelry. It seeks applause. This is clear to me, but difficult to explain, which is what makes abstraction so fascinating. In one sense, abstract art is absolutely nothing, stupid. In 100 years, maybe people will just think it's garbage. But somehow we see something in it; we have a sense of quality. [searching for an illustration of his point, Richter leafs through a catalog to find some of his 'gray monochromes']. I was doing these [monochromes] when I was getting divorced. When you feel totally empty, you do this - but then I saw that one picture was actually better than another. Both were miserable, but the difference was interesting. I loved this: that there must be something, some higher faculty, some progressive sensibility that we find in abstraction. But it is impossible to describe.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love , People , Stupidity , Art

“Central banks have moved to stimulate spending in the face of this attempt to increase savings by lowering interest rates. They lowered them to the zero lower bound without having much effect; the fall in desired savings was too large. We are in a Keynesian liquidity trap. Central banks have tried to stimulate spending by actively increasing the money supply, raising fears of inflation in many circles. But no inflation has resulted as the cash sits idle in corporate coffers. Even at zero interest rates, business firms are reluctant to spend!
What to do? Many pundits say we must simply endure what they call secular stagnation. This is an unhappy prediction. Much better is the Keynesian insight that this is the perfect time for fiscal policy. In the U. S. again, there are immediate needs to repair roads and bridges, rebuild the energy grid, and modernize other means of travel. Keynesian fiscal policy expansion will benefit the economy in both the short and long run.”

Peter Temin (1937) American economist

Why Keynes is Important Today (2014)

Money , Fear , Travel , Business

“For a person of understanding, interacting with children is endlessly interesting. Here one sees the book of nature thrown open, stripped of artificiality.”

Adolph Freiherr Knigge book Über den Umgang mit Menschen

Der Umgang mit Kindern hat für einen verständigen Menschen unendlich viel Interesse. Hier sieht er das Buch der Natur in unverfälschter Ausgabe aufgeschlagen.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

Children , Books , Understanding , Nature

“… name association was big, as were my presumed interests in vaudeville and politics. In St. Louis the Bow tie was characterized as "very Charlie McCarthy", while in Chicago a young man defined it as "the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party."”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

On stereotypes of bowtie wearers, [Sedaris, David, David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Little, Brown and Company, Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?, 2008, 0316143472]
When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008)

“We are not interested in spookism which is what our spiritualism in Africa degenerated into. That is, invested in a spook estate up in the sky and paying little attention to real estate on this earth.”

Maulana Karenga (1941) Political activist

Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice (1977)

“Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 1 (Childhood).

Imagination , Learning

“I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas, as cited by Walter Sickert, in 'Post-Impressionism and Cubism', Pall Mall Gazette (1914-03-11).
According to Sickert, Degas had said this quote to him in 1885
1876 - 1895

Way , Study , Drawing

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men , Money , God , War

“The importance to Smith of the overall set of values in which the economy operates is generally ignored by his followers in the late twentieth century. His economics, based upon individual self-interest, is remembered, but his moral framework is not.”

Paul Ormerod book The Death of Economics

Part I, Chapter 1, Economics in Crisis, p. 14
The Death of Economics (1994)

“Lastly, let each of us consider how far he is bound in duty to others, and in good faith pay what we owe. In the same way, let the people pay all due honour to their rulers, submit patiently to their authority, obey their laws and orders, and decline nothing which they can bear without sacrificing the favour of God. Let rulers, again, take due charge of their people, preserve the public peace, protect the good, curb the bad, and conduct themselves throughout as those who must render an account of their office to God, the Judge of all… Let the aged also, by their prudence and their experience, (in which they are far superior,) guide the feebleness of youth, not assailing them with harsh and clamorous invectives but tempering strictness with ease and affability. Let servants show themselves diligent and respectful in obeying their masters, and this not with eye-service, but from the heart, as the servants of God. Let masters also not be stern and disobliging to their servants, nor harass them with excessive asperity, nor treat them with insult, but rather let them acknowledge them as brethren and fellow-servants of our heavenly Master, whom, therefore, they are bound to treat with mutual love and kindness. Let every one, I say, thus consider what in his own place and order he owes to his neighbours, and pay what he owes. Moreover, we must always have a reference to the Lawgiver, and so remember that the law requiring us to promote and defend the interest and convenience of our fellow-men, applies equally to our minds and our hands.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book II Chapter 8. Spurgeon.org. Retrieved 2015-02-25.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Love , Men , God , People

“He [ Renoir; Maillol made his bust] was very interested, watching me do his bust. He said to me: 'Every time you touch it, it becomes more alive.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Quote in Maillol's letter, 14th May 1887; as cited in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 245-246

Time

“We have to work sincerely and responsibly to thwart any attempt to divide the Arab nation into small groups, with which foreign countries would deal separately. This would eventually be in the interests of Zionism, which stands behind such policies, formulating the relevant theories and promoting distorted information to world politicians, especially in the West, in order to make them adopt an approach which is harmful to the Arab nation and is even against the legitimate interests of their own countries.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

World , Sincerity , Country

“Those who wish, in the interest of morality, to reduce Leonardo, that inexhaustible source of creative power, to a neutral or sexless agency, have a strange idea of doing service to his reputation.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Leonardo da Vinci (1939), Ch. Two: 1481-1490

Idea

“When I have contemplated these adjustments of business and editorial policy, it has always seemed to me that American newspapers are peculiarly representative of the practical idealism of our country. Quite recently the construction of a revenue statute resulted in giving publicity to some highly interesting facts about incomes. It must have been observed that nearly all the newspapers published these interesting facts in their news columns, while very many of them protested in their editorial columns that such publicity was a bad policy. Yet this was not inconsistent. I am referring to the incident by way of illustrating what I just said about the newspapers representing the practical idealism of America. As practical newsmen they printed the facts. As editorial idealists they protested that there ought to be no such facts available.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Way , Business , Country

“Grammar little by little is not a thing. Which may gain.
There. Make twenty-five be a woman. The meaning of that does not interest me. It is a complexion that interests that makes ridiculous because that does not make it something else. But it does make them which is again me.
Make twenty-five be a woman. I do not lose it. The color is there. Do you see. Dependent entirely upon how one word follows another. Who knows how Howard likes hearing. I can do it so easily it always makes grammar but is it grammar. Forget grammar and think about potatoes. Grammar after all has to do with why they were presented.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

How to Write (1931), Ch. 4: A Grammarian [Dover, 1975, ISBN 0-486-23144-5] p. 109

Color , Thinking , Dependency , Forgetting

“I knew that he prayed a great deal, of course for help in the examinations. But subsequent clinical experience has convinced me that God is not particularly interested in examinations, just as he won't be dragged into the Stock Market, or being a backer in show business.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 1, section 13.
The Cunning Man (1994)

God , Business , Help

“They aren't interested in the fact that whenever they kick up dirt, the dirt rubs off on every one of us.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

How To Get Along In Hollywood (1948)

“I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of.”

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

A reply to Olbers' 1816 attempt to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem. As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) Edited by J. R. Newman

“The Conservative Party is the parent of trade unionism, just as it is the author of the Factory Acts. At every stage in the history of the nineteenth century it is to Toryism that trade unionism has looked for help and support against the oppressions of the Manchester School of liberalism, which cared nothing for the interests of the state, and regarded men as brute beasts whose labour could be bought and sold at the cheapest price, irrespective of all other considerations.”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Introduction to H. Hills and M. Woods, Industrial Unrest: A Practical Solution (1914)

Men , School , History , Support

“But he was a keen-eyed observer. He noticed that the Portuguese had landed artillery to protect the area in which Christians lived. On a visit to a Portuguese vessel to see Father Coelho he observed that the ship, though small, was heavily armed. He was also well aware of the interest that the western daimyos were manifesting in the arms and equipment of the Portuguese and of their attempts to strengthen themselves by friendship with the foreigners. Hideyoshi acted with firmness and in 1587 the activities of the missionaries were prohibited throughout the length and breadth of Japan.”

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

Friendship

“The great superiority of debating, as the schools should look upon it, lies in the fact that it adds to many of the elements of the present absorbing interest in athletics those educational values which contribute directly to the highest type of citizenship.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. viii

Education , School

“If there exists one unique great imperial power which is always convinced that its most brutal interests coincide with the Good; if it is true that every year the USA spends more on their military budget than Russia, China, France, England and Germany put together; and if that Nation-State, devoted to military excess, has no public idol other than wealth, no allies other than servants, and no view of other peoples apart from an indifferent, commercial and cynical one; then the basic freedom of States, peoples and individuals consists in doing everything and thinking everything in order to escape, as much as possible, from the commandments, interventions and interference of that imperial power.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

From Philosophy and the 'war against terrorism in Infinite Thought: truth and the return of philosophy. London: Continuum, 2003. ISBN 0826467245.

People , Thinking , Freedom , Indifference

“All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Source: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1963/1991, p. 65

“Adams could no more interest Algernon Swinburne than he could interest Encke's comet. To Swinburne he could be no more than a worm. The quality of genius was an education almost ultimate, for one touched there the limits of the human mind on that side; but one could only receive; one had nothing to give — nothing even to offer.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education

“We came up with the idea of people who are attracted to criminals, especially those who might write to a criminal in jail saying, “I understand you, I sympathize with what you’re going through,” and they just sort of pin all their hopes and dreams on somebody who they think is misunderstood but who is in fact rather dangerous. The fact that Harley might have gone from this intelligent, cool therapist to this crazed clown woman was both very interesting and very tragic to us. We thought that had the makings of a great Batman villain — like Batman himself, his villains start off human but then some tragedy happens and warps them into what they are today.”

Paul Dini (1957) writer

Paul Dini reflects on 25 years of Harley Quinn http://ew.com/books/2017/09/05/paul-dini-25-years-of-harley-quinn/ (September 5, 2017)

People , Dreams , Hope , Intelligence

“Romantic love interests almost everybody, because almost everybody knows something about it, or would like to know.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Preface
The Ruling Passion http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/rlpsn10.txt (1901)

Love

“The Roman historian Tacitus once said, that the health and the disease of a state can be measured in the number of its laws. If we Germans nowadays look at the huge number of laws, we have to say, that it's not health, but death that we're approaching. … It is strange that it is Social Democracy of all movements, which in the old state complained about exceptions, that now issues exception laws itself. These exception-laws are means of force and are created in the parliaments with the help of supranational financial powers. …
In the old state an interest rate of more than 6 percent was deemed usury. Today this usury is legalized. It was YOU, the men of the left -- who always pretend to fight against capitalism and exploitation -- who accomplished this. It will be your downfall!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der römische Geschichtsschreiber Tacitus hat einmal gesagt, dass man die Gesundheit und die Krankheit eines Staates nach der Zahl seiner Gesetze ermessen könne. Wenn wir Deutsche heute die große Zahl unserer Gesetze betrachten, dann müssen wir sagen, dass wir nicht der Gesundheit, sondern dem Tode entgegengehen. … Es ist sonderbar, dass ausgerechnet die Sozialdemokratie, die sich im alten Staat immer über Ausnahmen aufgeregt hat, jetzt selbst Ausnahmegesetze erläßt! Diese Ausnahmegesetze sind Zwangsmittel und werden in den Parlamenten mit Hilfe überstaatlicher Finanzmächte geschaffen. …
Im alten Staate galt ein Zinsfuß von mehr als 6 Prozent als Wucher. Heute ist dieser Wucher gesetzlich genehmigt. Das haben SIE, meine Herren von der Linken, die Sie immer vorgeben, Kapitalismus und Ausbeutung zu bekämpfen, fertiggebracht! Daran werden Sie zugrunde gehen!
04/20/1926, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Death , Men , Health , Disease

“We may also, I think, congratulate ourselves on the part that the British Empire has played in this struggle, and on the position which it fills at the close. Among the many miscalculations of the enemy was the profound conviction, not only that we had a "contemptible little Army," but that we were a doomed and decadent nation. The trident was to be struck from our palsied grasp, the Empire was to crumble at the first shock; a nation dedicated, as we used to be told, to pleasure-taking and the pursuit of wealth was to be deprived of the place to which it had ceased to have any right, and was to be reduced to the level of a second-class, or perhaps even of a third-class Power. It is not for us in the hour of victory to boast that these predictions have been falsified; but, at least, we may say this—that the British Flag never flew over a more powerful or a more united Empire than now; Britons never had better cause to look the world in the face; never did our voice count for more in the councils of the nations, or in determining the future destinies of mankind. That that voice may be raised in the times that now lie before us in the interests of order and liberty, that that power may be wielded to secure a settlement that shall last, that that Flag may be a token of justice to others as well as of pride to ourselves, is our united hope and prayer.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Pleasure , Lie , World , Justice

“As he sat alone at his corner table drinking a gin and Dubonnet, Ewing watched the stranger sitting on the barstool and examined his appearance for a while because there was no one else interesting or attractive to watch in Wayne's bar that evening.”

Robin Maugham (1916–1981) British novelist, playwright and travel writer

Incipit
The Wrong People (1971)

Drink , Appearance

“I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.
The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these several various agencies.
If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 1 : Out to Sea

Sincerity , Dead

“When I'm elected I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there's a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats. … After a full and partial and long — really long overdue security assessment we will develop a responsible immigration policy that serves the interests and values of America.”

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

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

World , History , Understanding

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope, p. 25

Children , People , Feeling , Question

“I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man’s 'time' limits him; it does not truly liberate him. Our age – it is of science – of mechanism – of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of graphic homage.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Clyfford Still in an interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201
1960s

Death , Age , Science , Time

“I do not see in what way the face of a man should be a less interesting landscape than any other. A man, the physical person of a man, is a little world, like any other a country, with its towns, and suburbs... As a rule what is needed in a portrait is a great deal of the general, and very little of the particular.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

Source: 1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967, p. 63-73

World , Way , Personality , Country

“True, it returns ' ' for false, but ' ' is an even more interesting number than 0.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Falseness

“We're not interested in gimmicks, clever rhetoric or conventional thinking.”

Kazuo Hirai (1960) Japanese businessman

Thinking

“It is surely unnecessary to dwell on the interest and importance of a study which instructs us that every pebble we tread upon bears the impress of the Almighty's hand, and affords evidence of Creative wisdom; that every grain of sand, every particle of dust scattered by the wind, may be composed of the aggregated skeletons of beings, so minute as to elude our unassisted vision, but which possessed an organization as marvellous as our own;—a science discoveries have realized the wildest imaginings of the poet,—whose realities far surpass in grandeur and sublimity the most imposing fictions of romance;—a science whose empire is the earth, the ocean, the atmosphere, the heavens;—whose speculations embrace all elements, all space, all time;—objects the most minute, objects the most colossal;—carrying its researches into the smallest atom which the microscope can render accessible to our visual organs,—and comprehending all the phenomena in the boundless Universe, which the powers of the telescope can reveal.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Wisdom , Imagination , Reality , Study

“When a man make of his personnal interests the mainspring of his life and he is greedy to make use of everything that can benefit him, he naturally enters into conflict with other persons, acting also in their interests, hence the disagreements that can become a hundred years old, and drive whole generations to a mutual hate.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 42.

Life , Hate , Nature , Personality

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Political will is what it takes to make the impossible possible. Interest and passion for meaningful change can catalyze a new world order that provides opportunity for all. Just imagine all the money the world could save from corruption, and the landmark achievements we could accomplish with the political will to distribute these funds to help reach the people who need it most.”

Geovanny Vicente (1986) Political Strategist, lawyer, international consultant, columnist and university professor

Money , People , World , Way

“If there was anyone who actually fit the category of conservative, if there was such a category of people, they would have a very easy way to deal with the fact that 60% of the children under 2 [in Nicaragua] are suffering probable brain damage. Namely, by paying their debts. Simple conservative principle. But that's beyond unthinkable. Compassionate conservatives might want to go beyond that, if they existed. But they're much more interested in making political capital over the fact that a woman in a vegetative state shouldn't be allowed to die in dignity.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, March 22, 2005 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEvIDiVheys.
Quotes 2000s, 2005

Children , People , Way , Suffering

“The problem of directing a user to stored information, some of which may be unknown to him, is the problem of "information retrieval"… In information retrieval, the addressee or receiver rather than the sender is the active party. Other differences are that communication is temporal from one epoch to a later epoch in time, though possibly at the same point in space; communication is in all cases unidirectional; the sender cannot know the particular message that will be of later use to the receiver and must send all possible messages; the message is digitally representable; a "channel" is the physical document left in storage which contains the message; and there is no channel noise because all messages are presumed to be completely accessible to the receiver. The technical goal is finding in minimum time those messages of interest to the receiver, where the receiver has available a selective device with a finite digital scanning rate.”

Calvin Mooers (1919–1994) American computer scientist

Calvin Mooers (1950). " Information retrieval viewed as temporal signaling http://www.mathunion.org/ICM/ICM1950.1/Main/icm1950.1.0565.0576.ocr.pdf#page=8". Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians. Vol. 1, S.572-573

Communication , Problem , Time

“Libertarian philosophy lowers the logical and evidentiary standards for libertarian social science: if one believes that redistribution and regulation are immoral anyway because they violate self-ownership rights, then it is understandable that one would have a cavalier attitude about proving that redistribution and regulation cause unhappiness or “disorder,” or that they always serve the venal interests of politicians and bureaucrats. The orthodox libertarian schema implies that these consequentialist arguments are superfluous.”

Jeffrey Friedman (political scientist) (1959) American political scientist

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 445

Understanding , Science

“If the West is genuinely interested in democracy then they will have to suffer hundreds of Al Jazeeras. There is Abu Dhabi television, Al-Arabiya (but that is under Saudi patronage), and there is a channel out of Lebanon (but they are politically close to Hezbollah). They are all very good as journalists but they are all part of the state.”

Samir Khader Iraqi journalist

Democracy , Suffering , Parting