Quotes about interest (5681 quotes, page 35)

“The Seventh Men were completely without interest in the universal and the unseen. The beauty which they sought to create was ephemeral and very largely sensuous. And they were well content that it should be so. Personal immortality, said a dying sage, would be as tedious as an endless song.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XIII: Humanity on Venus; Section 2, “The Flying Men” (p. 199)

Men , Beauty , Universe , Personality

“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

“The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)

Understanding , Knowledge

“I am really interested in the different ways that language functions… When language begins to break down a little bit, it becomes exciting and communicates in nearly the simplest way that it can function: you are forced to be aware of the sounds and the poetic parts of words. If you deal only with what is known, you’ll have redundancy; on the other hand, if you deal only with the unknown, you cannot communicate at all. There is always some combination of the two, and it is how they touch each other that makes communication interesting.”

Bruce Nauman (1941) American artist

Source: Christopher Cordes, ‎John Yau (1989), Bruce Nauman, 1989 Bruce Nauman, prints 1970-89: a catalogue raisonné, p. xx: In answer of the question "How does your work reflect your views on the use of language today?"

Way , Communication , Parting

“I just looked in the phone book, and called up the Executive Officer of the Servomechanisms Laboratory (Al Sise) and said, "I'm a math graduate student and would like a summer job. If you could find an electrical engineering student, I'm sure by the end of the summer we could make you an electronic calculator that would beat the pants off that little mechanical thing that Wiener has put together. Are you interested?"”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1984), p. 17.

Books , Summer

“Tories and others set about the task of dealing with the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution by calling upon the power of Government to redress injustice…[The State] assumed the functions of protecting the common interest and safeguarding the interests of the weaker members of society.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

About the Industrial Charter (Conservative Political Centre, 1947), pp. 4-5.

“The proprietor should always direct his attention to obtain from his land a gradual increase of produce, or to augment its value continually. The farmer only desires the greatest profit during the continuance of his lease, without caring for the value of the land afterwards. "Whilst the proprietor can content himself with a trifling produce during a few years, in order to attain greater and more durable profit subsequently, the tenant must, on the contrary, endeavour to obtain the greatest produce, even though its amount should be diminished during the latter years of his lease; because the proprietor who wishes to farm on the best system, finds at the same time both pleasure and profit in laying out on his property as much capital as he can spare, whilst the tenant, on the contrary, withdraws as much of his pecuniary resources as possible, to employ it in other ways, or to place it at interest. The improvement of the land constitutes the pleasure of the proprietor, while the mere occupying farmer only thinks of augmenting his income. Thus the longer the lease may be, the more do the interests of the landlord and tenant become identified; the shorter the term, the more conflicting are those interests. With a lease of 24 years, a tenant ought, at least during the first two-thirds of its duration, to follow out the views of the proprietor. But the time will come when he will act on different principles, and endeavour to extract from the land a return in proportion to his outlay at the commencement.
To this must be added, that a tenant cannot have the means of laying out so much on the land as the proprietor, even if he wished to do so. The latter must pay the rent, whilst a proprietor anxious to improve can economize something from the net produce to expend on his property. The first may be compared to a merchant who trades on borrowed money; the second to one who speculates with his own funds. The former must first provide for his rent, the latter need only think of extending his speculations.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Thaer, cited in: Joseph Rogers Farmers Magazine Volume The Seventh http://books.google.com/books?id=8OnG6xwQkesC&pg=PA263, 1843, p. 263: Speaking of lease and covenants

Money , Pleasure , Way , Thinking

“No criticism can be brought against a branch of technical science from outside; no thought fitted out with the knowledge of a period and setting its course by definite historical aims could have anything to say to the specialist. Such thought and the critical, dialectical element it communicates to the process of cognition, thereby maintaining conscious connection between that process and historical life, do not exist for empiricism; nor do the associated categories, such as the distinction between essence and appearance, identity in change, and rationality of ends, indeed, the concept of man, of personality, even of society and class taken in the sense that presupposes specific viewpoints and directions of interest.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 145.

Life , Communication , Knowledge , Sense

“What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n'est souvent qu'un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n'est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes.
Maxim 1.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Women , Men

“More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Akio Morita (1989) in: Peter Krass ed. (2000) The Book of Management Wisdom: Classic Writings by Legendary Managers. p. 235.

People

“Institutionalization is a process. It is something that happens to an organization over time, reflecting the organization’s own distinctive history, the people who have been in it, the groups it embodies and the vested interests they have created, and the way it has adapted to its environment.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 34 (in 2011 edition)

People , Way , History , Time

“I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn’t violate the laws of physics, and that means that you’re limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it’s all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

About Seveneves, "Here's How Space Megastructures Will Look, According to Neal Stephenson" in Gizmodo, interviewed by Annalee Newitz, May 20, 2015 (pre-Zero)

Law , Star , Universe , Science

“Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, brooding over these things and nursing my loneliness, I say to myself: "There are cases when success is a tragedy." There are moments when I regret my whole career, when my very success seems to be a mistake. I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest. I was certainly brought up for one. The day when that accident turned my mind from college to business seems to be the most unfortunate day in my life. I think that I should be much happier as a scientist or writer, perhaps. I should then be in my natural element, and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have comforts to which I am now a stranger. That's the way I feel every time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College. The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no brains. Why, then, should I ascribe my triumph to special ability?”

Abraham Cahan book The Rise of David Levinsky

The Rise of David Levinsky (1917)

Life , Men , World , Beauty

“In practice [the A. R. F.'s strategy] abandons the fate of our people to the caprice of the "Western" powers, particularly the U. S. A.—and these are states whose interests are opposed to ours.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 57.

Fate , People

“Both the personnel and the motives of this singular body invested it with a status the roots of which were securely grounded in the private sphere of strictly commercial interest.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace

Motivation

“And through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed and interested him.”

Jack London book The Sea-Wolf

Source: The Sea-Wolf (1904), Chapter Twelve

Life , Wolf

“Gallery visitors did not tell Picasso to invent cubism. Jazz fanatics did not suggest that Miles Davies should work with hip-hoppers. Moviegoers did not propose to Lars von Trier, the Danish film director, that he make Breaking the Waves. And customers sure as hell did not come up with the idea for CDNow or Amazon. com. If you want to do something really interesting and revolutionary, learn to ignore your customers.”

Jonas Ridderstråle (1966) Swedish business theorist

Source: Funky Business Forever, 2007, p. 184

Idea , Hell , Learning

“Historically, labor unions arose when people had gotten a taste of a different lifestyle and were willing to pay a lot more for their basic livelihood and had gotten into a fix they couldn't get out of – because they had accepted the unacceptable to begin with. Accepting something you have to form a labor union to fight after the fact only tells me that people were acting against their own best (or even good) interests for a long time. I don't see any rational, coherent explanation for this sort of behavior in humans, but it's all over the place.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: source access vs dynamism http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/9f52849f233672f4 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People , Behavior , Time , Fight

“I believe […] that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. […] I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and—if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills—on the businessman's special to Tokyo.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life

Preface, p. 16
Wonderful Life (1989)

People , Books , Hope , Intelligence

“From Aristophanes to Aristotle, the attack on the demagogues always falls back on the one central question: in whose interest does the the leader lead?”

Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 43

Question

“In the excitement and rigours of the game or battle with words and shapes, self-interest is mislaid and objective truth may often be revealed.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Tiger and the Rose, 1971

Truth , Game

“Iraq strives to safeguard the interests of her sons within the framework of true national unity and the general interests of its brothers within the Arab framework. I ask you, are there any frontiers of a foreign country between us and Syria? Is there any foreign country between us and Syria? Where is it? Are there any frontiers of a foreign country between Egypt and Sudan, or between Egypt and Libya? All are the frontiers of our brothers.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers' College (1959)

Country

“… as a matter of fact it is nice to paint a happy picture after a sad one. I think there is a kind of loneliness in a lot of them which I don't think about as the fact that I'm lonely and therefore I paint lonely pictures, but I like kind of lonely things anyhow; so if the forms express that to me, there is a certain excitement that I have about that.... What I try to do is to create the painting so that the overall thing has the particular emotion; not just the forms in it.... in other words, there's a particular static or heavy form that can have a look to it, an experience that translated through the form; so then it does have a mood. And when that is there, well then it becomes it becomes a painting whereas all the other pictures that have far more interesting shapes and so on, don't become that to me.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

n.p.
1960's, Living Art, 1963

Sadness , Mood , Thinking , Painting

“My desire to work is not stimulated by the classical proportions of Greek architecture, but by functional silos and hangars... The confusion of places, cluttered with art and culture chokes my inspiration. What stimulates and interests me is the natural noise of a busy city, and the practical lay-out of a harbor or factory which has come into being without consideration of any aesthetic principles.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Quote from 'Private Notebooks of Fritz Wotruba'; transl. Peter Foges & Haakon Chevalier – Neuchatel, Editions du Griffion, 1961.

Art , Business , Nature

“Every animal has his or her story, his or her thoughts, daydreams, and interests. All feel joy and love, pain and fear, as we now know beyond any shadow of a doubt. All deserve that the human animal afford them the respect of being cared for with great consideration for those interests or left in peace.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

"Every Week There is More Reason to Feel Empathy for Animals" https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ingrid-newkirk/every-week-there-is-more_b_216409.html, Huffington Post, 17 July 2009.
2009

Love , Pain , Fear , Peace

“Nick: I'm sorry if my behaviour last night caused your wife anxiety, but I've a burning desire to sleep with every woman I meet.
Prentice: That's a filthy habit and, in my opinion, very injurious to the health.
Nick: It is, sir. My health's never been the same since I went off stamp-collecting.
Prentice: We have an overall moral policy in this clinic from which even I am not exempt. Whilst you're with us I shall expect you to show an interest in no one's sexual organs but your own.
Nick: I would miss a lot of fun that way.
Prentice: That is the object of the exercise.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act I

Health , Way , Exercises , Sleep

“…soldierly simplicity of character that has always represented the military at its best. In the higher ranks it is different. The higher a man is placed, the broader his point of view. Different interests and a wide variety of passions, good and bad, will arise on all sides. Envy and generosity, pride and humility, wrath and compassion - all may appear as effective forces in this great drama.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

Appearance , Passion , Envy

“I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can't—think it can't be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is that by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear, the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Describing a theory held by some that President George W. Bush knew about the 9-11 attack coming to America. The Diane Rehm Show, public radio station WAMU, December 1, 2003. Quoted by Timothy Noah, "Howard Dean: Whopper of the Week" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2003/12/whopper_howard_dean.html, December 13, 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2016.

Truth , Thinking , Time

“The transition from integrable to non integrable systems is quiet interesting to observe.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 4, From Computation To Geometry, p. 100.

“I am in myself so little that what they do with me scarcely interests me.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Estoy tan poco en mí, que lo que hacen de mí, casi no me interesa.
Voces (1943)

“My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art work which is also wordless and silent.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

In 'On a Clear Day', 1973; as quoted by Julie Warchol on website Smith College Museum of Art https://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/Collections/Cunningham-Center/Blog-paper-people/Agnes-Martin-On-a-Clear-Day,
1970's

Art

“I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now… And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak…" And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

Love , Life , Women , Men

“Thanks to its chokehold on the nation’s culture, liberalism is thus in power whether its politicians are elected or not; it rules over us even though Republicans have prevailed in six out of the nine presidential elections since 1968; even though Republicans presently control all three branches of government; even though the last of the big-name, forthright liberals of the old school (Humphrey, McGovern, Church, Bayhm, Culver, etc.) either died or went down to defeat in the seventies; and even though no Democratic presidential nominee has called himself a "liberal" since Walter Mondale. Liberalism is beyond politics, a tyrant that dominates our lives in countless ways great and small, and which is virtually incapable of being overthrown.Conservatism, on the other hand, is the doctrine of the oppressed majority. Conservatism does not defend some established order of things: It accuses; its rants; it points out hypocrisies and gleefully pounces on contradictions. While liberals use their control of the airwaves, newspapers, and schools to persecute average Americans — to ridicule the pious, flatter the shiftless, and indoctrinate the kids with all sorts of permissive nonsense — the Republicans are the party of the disrespected, the downtrodden, the forgotten. They are always the underdog, always in rebellion against a haughty establishment, always rising up from below.All claims of the right, in other words, advance from victimhood. This is another trick the backlash has picked up from the left. Even though republicans legislate in the interests of society’s most powerful, and even though conservative social critics typically enjoy cushy sinecures at places like the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal, they rarely claim to speak on behalf of the wealthy of the winners in the social Darwinist struggle. Just like the leftists of the early twentieth century, they see themselves in revolt against a genteel tradition, rising up against a bankrupt establishment that will tolerate no backtalk.Conservatism, on the other hand, can never be powerful or successful, and backlashers revel in fantasies of their own marginality and persecution.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid.(pp. 119-120).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

School , Way , Success

“I'm really calling for major jobs, because the wealthy are going create tremendous jobs. They're going to expand their companies. They're going to do a tremendous job. I'm getting rid of the carried interest provision. And if you really look, it's not a tax -- it's really not a great thing for the wealthy. It's a great thing for the middle class. It's a great thing for companies to expand.”

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

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

“…I don't feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all. There are many things to object to in any society. But take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable. […] There are even better examples than China. But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act? Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al. http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm" in New York, December 15, 1967; Republished at chomsky.info, accessed May 23, 2014.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1960s

Feeling , Communication , Understanding , Thinking

“He has borne the burdens few other men have borne in the history of the world, without hope or desire or thought to escape them. He has sought consensus but he has never shrunk from controversy. He has gained huge popularity but he has never failed to spend it in the pursuit of his beliefs or in the interest of his country.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On LBJ (June 3, 1967); quoted in "The World Turned Upside Down" http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1968/03/25/page/20/article/the-world-turned-upside-down

Men , World , Hope , History

“We have had landlord rule longer, far longer than the life of the oldest man in this vast assembly, and I would ask you to look at the results of that rule. The landowners have had unlimited sway in Parliament and in the provinces. Abroad the history of our country is the history of war and rapine: at home, of debt, taxes, and rapine too. In all the great contests in which we have been engaged we have found that this ruling class have taken all the honours, while the people have taken all the scars. No sooner was the country freed from the horrible contest which was so long carried on with the Powers of Europe, than this law, by their partial legislation, was enacted—far more hostile to British interests than any combination of foreign powers has ever proved. We find them legislating corruptly: they pray daily that in their legislation they may discard all private ends and partial affections, and after prayers they sit down to make a law for the purpose of extorting from all the consumers of food a higher price than it is worth, that the extra price may find its way into the pockets of the proprietors of land, these proprietors being the very men by whom this infamous law is sustained…”

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

Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 142.
1840s

Life , Men , Hostility , War

“It is a fascinating story to those who care for their Bible. It is the life-history of the greatest of books, diversified by interesting episodes which appeal to our human sympathies; and we venture to think that the result is reassuring. It may be disturbing to some to part with the conception of a Bible handed down through the ages without alteration and in unchallenged authority; but it is a higher ideal to face the facts, to apply the best powers with which God has endowed us to the solutions of the problems which they present to us; and it reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scripture, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 144

Life , God , Books , Age

“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The New York Times Magazine (9 October 1960)

Beauty , Beauty

“I wish I could paint more... I do dozens of sketches for oils.... if I do one that interests me I go on to make a painting but that happens only two or three times a year.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Quote in 'Travelling Man', Time January 1948
1941 - 1967

Time , Painting

“A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 29, § 377
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

“Because it's exactly this kind of role reversal that I'm interested in, and then it actually makes it a challenge for the viewer. Also, because most artists work in a completely different way.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

Emily Wasik asked Isa here: You once said in an interview, 'I want to animate the viewers, hold a mirror up to them.' Why do you believe it's important to put yourself [as an artist] in the viewer's shoes and create art that transforms them?
after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)

Way

“It might come as a surprise to many, but the truth is that Islam today no longer has a living and evolving theology. In fact, with few exceptions, Islam’s last genuine theologians belong to the early part of the 19th century. Go to any mosque anywhere, whether it is in New York or Mecca, and you are more likely to hear a political sermon rather than a theological reflection. In the highly politicized version of Islam promoted by Da’esh, al Qaeda, the Khomeinists in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Nigeria, God plays a cameo role at best. Deprived of its theological moorings, today’s Islam is a wayward vessel under the captaincy of ambitious adventurers leading it into sectarian feuds, wars and terrorism. Many, especially Muslims in Europe and North America, use it as a shibboleth defining identity and even ethnicity. A glance at Islam’s history in the past 200 years highlights the rapid fading of theologians. Today, Western scholars speak of Wahhabism as if that meant a theological school. In truth, Muhammad Abdul-Wahhabi was a political figure. His supposedly theological writings consist of nine pages denouncing worship at shrines of saints. Nineteenth-century “reformers” such as Jamaleddin Assadabadi and Rashid Rada were also more interested in politics than theology. The late Ayatollah Khomeini, sometimes regarded as a theologian, was in fact a politician wearing clerical costume. His grandson has collected more than 100,000 pages of his writings and speeches and poetry. Of these, only 11 pages, commenting on the first and shortest verse of the Koran, could be regarded as dabbling in theology, albeit not with great success.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The mad dream of a dead empire that unites Islamic rebels" http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/the-mad-dream-of-a-dead-empire-that-unites-islamic-rebels/, New York Post (June 14, 2014).
New York Post

God , War , Truth , School

“The main thing is to make up your mind. If you're going to do it, do it, and if you're just going to halfway do it don't even try. This is a very demanding thing. I stay simple, I didn't get a whole lot of education, so most of it's just coming from what I gathered up. If you stay honest we've all got in common that we're all different. If you stay real deadly honest and write about some very interesting things then you'll be a good one. A lot of people just don't like to get honest but it's the cheapest psychiatrist there is. I think that's the way to look at it.”

Billy Joe Shaver (1939) American singer-songwriter

Statement made by Shaver when asked for an advice to young musicians
A Conversation with Billy Joe Shaver (2014)

People , Education , Way , Thinking

“I believe the creator may have a specific reason for wanting a universe that has life in it, and, indeed, as you say, for wanting multiple sentiences to emerge simultaneously. But it seems clear beyond dispute that the creator takes no interest in specific individuals.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 17 (p. 170)

Life , Universe

“In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man's life. I have been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American citizens.”

Upton Sinclair book The Brass Check

The Brass Check (1919)

Life , Law , Time , Falseness

“I read with great interest all that you have written me about what is called Colonialism, namely: bringing forward backward races and opening up the jungles. I was brought up to feel proud of much that we had done. Certainly in India, with all its history, religion and ancient forms of despotic rule, Britain has a story to tell which will look quite well against the background of the coming hundred years. … I am sceptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet.”

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

Letter to President Eisenhower (8 August 1954), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 1040-1041. Cf. Lord Salisbury: "You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots".
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Religion , Feeling , Democracy , History

“It finally dawned on me that if I was going to do my own show, all those things I lectured about and obsessed about would make for an interesting world”

Stephen Hillenburg (1961–2018) American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, storyboard artist, director, producer, and writer

World

“Psychology, speaking for emotion and instinct, has reduced intellect to impotence over life. Metaphysics has subordinated it to will. Bergson and his followers have charged it with falsehood and issued a general warning against its misrepresentations; while with pragmatists and instrumentalists it has sunk so low that it is dressed in livery and sent to live in the servant's quarters. It is against this last indignity in particular that I wish to speak a word of protest, to the end that the intellect may be accorded full rights within the community of human activities and interests.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

Life , Communication

“The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state…The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"…take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive…The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"…Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea…I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech the Hampshire Monday Club in Southampton (9 April 1976), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 165-166
1970s

Lie , Disappointment , Democracy , Imagination

“I am confident, however old-fashioned this may sound, that funds left in the hands of the public will come into the Exchequer with interest at the time in the future when we need them.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 28, 1962, page 51.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Confidence , Fashion , Time , Future

“Liberation from enslavement to interest on money is the clear motto for the global revolution, for the liberation of productive labor from the chains of the supragovernmental money-powers.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" (1919)

Money

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared." I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.”

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

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Death , Men , Truth , World

“After doing the imaginary landscapes until say 1956, in ’57 I came out with the first Burst painting… There was a different type of space than I had ever used and it was a further clarification of what I was trying to do. The thing that was interesting that it was a return to a focal point, but it was a focal point with the kind of space that existed in traditional painting. Because this was like a solitary image or two images that were just floating in the canvas space. They had to hold the space and they also had to create all the movement – that took place within the rectangle.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

Painting

“It is not in our interest to govern you. We would like you to govern yourselves in your own country. A democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity in Judea and Samaria and economic viability, which would conduct normal relations of tranquility, security and peace with Israel. Abandon the path of terror and let us together stop the bloodshed. Let us move forward together towards peace.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Address by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference, December 18, 2003; cited in: Terje Rød-Larsen, ‎Fabrice Aidan, ‎Nur Laiq (2014), The Search for Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. p. 373
2000s

Peace , Country

“One of the problems that we have in the human rights community is that special interests often forget the interests of other victims, and there’s competition among victims expressions that are unnecessary.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

UN expert on democracy highlights importance of free expression, information http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=46355&Cr=information&Cr1=#.Um9rdr_3DjA.
2013

Communication , Problem , Forgetting

“Writing in 1944, the year of the Bretton Woods Conference, Polanyi suggested that the extension of the institutions of the market over the course of the nineteenth century aroused a political reaction in the form of associations and lobbies that ultimately undermined the stability of the market system. He gave the gold standard a place of prominence among the institutions of laissez faire in response to which this reaction had taken place. And he suggested that the opening of national economic decision making to parties representing working-class interests had contributed to the downfall of that international monetary system. In a sense, this book asks whether Polanyi’s thesis stands the test of time. Can the international monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century be understood as the further unfolding of Polanyian dynamics, in which democratization again came into conflict with economic liberalization in the form of free capital mobility and fixed exchange rates? Or do recent trends toward floating rates and monetary unification point to ways of reconciling freedom and stability in the two domains?”

Barry Eichengreen Introduction

Source: Globalizing Capital (2008), Chapter 1. Introduction

Books , Way , History , Decision

“This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.”

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

Article on Encyclopedia, as translated in The Many Faces of Philosophy : Reflections from Plato to Arendt (2001), "Diderot", p. 237
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

Men , Feeling , Parting

“On the question of Israel, I talk about what I saw during his trip to Israel, how I saw his (Barack Obama) understanding of the relationship with Israel - he would describe it as a commitment of the head and heart. He looks at Israel and sees us as being two countries with common values. But he also looks at Israel and sees that whatever threatens Israel also happens to threaten the United States. So we have a [common] interest, because we end up facing the same threats.”

Dennis Ross (1948) American diplomat

Understanding , Question , Heart , Country

“Critics frequently cry 'Dada' after attending one of my concerts or hearing one of my lectures. Others bemoan my interest in w:Zen. One of the liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and Dada. It is possible to make a connection between the two, but neither Dada nor Zen is a fixed tangible. They change; and in quite different ways in different places and times, they invigorate action. What was Dada in the 1920's is now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art. What I do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement with Zen... I doubt whether I would have done what I have done... I often point out that Dada nowadays has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formerly lacked. What nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote in 'Silence: lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, x/SILENCE
1960s

School , Art , Way , Change

“It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value.”

Frank Miller (1957) American writer, artist, film director

p 276
Eisner/Miller (2005)

Beauty , Art , Communication

“Not only the tools of manual labour, but also the tools of human thought — words — are subject to the laws of historical development. The history of the meanings of words is outside the area of interest of formal logic, and could not be fruitfully studied by the methods of that discipline.
The history of language in what is its most essential content is the history of language as a social instrument of thought; it is historical epistemology which cannot be studied within the scope of any other discipline.
The linguist is of necessity only marginally interested in all conventional terminology, whereas certain votaries of formal logic are inclined to investigate domains which are alien to linguistics and even to some extent in contradiction to its basic assumptions!”

Witold Doroszewski (1899–1976) Lexicographer and linguist

As cited in Schaff (1962;7).
"Comments on Semantics", 1952

Law , History , Study

“Figure 12-6 pulls together in a simplified way the main elements of income determination. Without saving and investment, there would be a circular flow of income between business and the public: above, business pays out wages, interest, rents, and profits to the public in return for the services of labor and property; and below, the public pays consumption dollars to business in return for goods and services.
Realistically, we must recognize that the public will wish to save some of its income, as shown at the spigot Z. Hence, businesses cannot expect their consumption sales to be as large as the total of wages, interest, rents, and profits.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

8th ed., 1970, p. 218
1940s, Economics (1948-)

Way , Business

“Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 5 (p. 43)

“I am astonished at those who are afraid of the people: one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries."
"Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"
"There is a single legal personality for the EU, the primacy of European law, a new architecture for foreign and security policy, there is an enormous extension in the fields of the EU's powers, there is Charter of Fundamental Rights.”

Jean-Claude Juncker (1954) Luxembourgian politician

On the Lisbon Treaty, Le Soir L'invité du lundi Jean-Claude Juncker : « Succès objectif, déception atmosphérique », 2 July 2007, Le Soir, 2 July 2007, page 18 Bruno Waterfield, Brendan Carlin: 'Don't tell British about the EU treaty' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/03/weu103.xml, Telegraph, 3 July 2007.
2007

People , Law , Intelligence , Drawing

“If I were writing the Bill of Rights now there wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment.... This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Warren E. Burger (1907–1995) Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986

Interview (from min 7:49) https://vimeo.com/157433062 at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, PBS television broadcast (Dec. 16, 1991)

Fraud

“As I think back on those years, I find it interesting that many people seemed to have trouble with their identities as black men. Having had to accept my blackness in the caldron of ridicule from some of my black schoolmates under segregation, then immediately thereafter remain secure in that identity during my years at all-white seminary, I had few racial identity problems. I knew who I was and needed no gimmicks to affirm my identity. Nor, might I add, do I need anyone telling me who I am today. This is especially true of the psycho-silliness about forgetting my roots or self-hatred. If anything, this shows that some people have too much time on their hands.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Men , People , Problem , Thinking

“Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher.”

Peter Agre (1949) American chemist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Peter Agre's speech at the Nobel Banquet http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2003/agre-speech-e.html, December 10, 2003

Life , Education , Teachers

“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 10
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men , Time

“I wouldn't be so interested in her fingers.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“Fortunately, the less you have to rely on art materials – what are considered classic art materials which are all overpriced anyway – the more you can rely on materials at large in the culture and the more you should rely on them. The more free you are because you're not tied down to a higher-priced set of materials. That's the advantage of getting out in to the streets. I find that work I'm interested in now is made out of things which have been discarded by people – metals and things which I find in vacant lots. I don't want all of it. I want only certain kinds for certain purposes. But this is of interest to me now, just so I won't get into a trap where I have to work and continue with more and more expensive materials.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 25

People , Art

“You know the real world, this so-called real world, is just something you put up with. Like everybody else. I'm in my element when I am a little bit out of this world. Then I'm in the real world – I'm on the beam. Because when I'm falling, I'm doing all right. When I'm slipping, I say: he, this is interesting. It's when I'm standing upright that bothers me.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

Quote from film script Sketchbook 1, Time inc; 1960.
1960's

World

“Overthrow of the Government by force and violence is certainly a substantial enough interest for the Government to limit speech. Indeed, this is the ultimate value of any society, for if a society cannot protect its very structure from armed internal attack, it must follow that no subordinate value can be protected.”

Fred M. Vinson (1890–1953) American politician and Supreme Court justice

Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951)

“One ground for suspicion of apparently sincere moral convictions is their link with some special interest of those who hold them. The questions cui bono and cui malo are appropriate questions to raise when we are searching for possible contaminants of conscience. Entrenched privilege, and fear of losing it, distorts one's moral sense.”

Annette Baier (1929–2012) New Zealand philosopher

Source: Knowing Our Place in the Animal World, p. 63

Fear , Search , Question , Sense

“[children's art] is completely opposed to what interests me, because it's an effort to assimilate culture..”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

In an interview with John M. MacGregor, later published in 'Raw Vision 7' (Summer 1993)
posthumous

Children , Art , Effort

“This experience and the historical experiences gained by the Party since its founding can be summarized as follows: Our Party must always represent the requirements for developing China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. These are the inexorable requirements for maintaining and developing socialism, and the logical conclusion our Party has reached through hard exploration and great praxis.”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

Work report at the Communist Party of China Congress (8 November 2002), as quoted in Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, Eng. ed., FLP, Beijing, 2013, Vol. III, p. 519.
2000s

People

“So like we say, our weakness is our strength too. It maybe makes it hard as hell on a day-to-day basis. There's (always) some kind of tribulations or trials going on with us, whether it's in our inner camp or just inner demons of our own. It's definitely not an amazingly functioning unit at all times. There's no bull---t with that. Behind the scenes is as interesting as what people are seeing up front.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Alan Sculley (September 2, 2005) "The Used Overcome Conflicts, Achieve Success", The Press of Atlantic City, p. 23.

People , Hell , Time

“Lincoln seemed to me to be familiar with the name, character, and reputation of every officer of rank in the army and navy, and appeared to understand them better than some whose business it was to do so; he had many a good story to tell of nearly all, and if he could have lived to write the anecdotes of the war, I am sure he would have furnished the most readable book of the century. To me he was one of the most interesting men I ever met; he had an originality about him which was peculiarly his own, and one felt, when with him, as if he could confide his dearest secret to him with absolute security against its betrayal. There, it might be said, was 'God's noblest work an honest man,' and such he was, all through. I have not a particle of the bump of veneration on my head, but I saw more to admire in this man, more to reverence, than I had believed possible; he had a load to bear that few men could carry, yet he traveled on with it, foot-sore and weary, but without complaint; rather; on the contrary, cheering those who would faint on the roadside. He was not a demonstrative man, so no one will ever know, amid all the trials he underwent, how much he had to contend with, and how often he was called upon to sacrifice his own opinions to those of others, who, he felt, did not know as much about matters at issue as he did himself. When he did surrender, it was always with a pleasant manner, winding up with a characteristic story.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 283

Men , God , War , Secret

“The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception (1954)

World , Question , Problem , Time

“Even General Ludendorff would know that on all occasions when an appeal is made to the people, an appeal that concerns the vital interests of this land, the 'Socialist Marxists' feel and vote as Germans.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Article (2 March 1924), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 318
1920s

People , Feeling

“Remembrance of Things Past is too long and difficult, and what is interesting is the seventh volume, Time Regained. Otherwise, Proust’s work is concerned with irony, social criticism, worldliness, and the passage of time, which are not my preoccupations.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

Time , Past

“To further weaken Pale, I proposed that the Dayton agreement include a provision moving the Bosnian Serb capital to Banja Luka. Milosevic seemed interested in this proposal but, to my surprise, Izetbegovic demurred. Even though he hated the leadership in Pale, he seemed to think he could work with them, especially his old associate from the Bosnian Assembly, Momcilo Krajisnik. Izetbegovic also saw value in keeping the capitals of the two entities close to each other so that Sarajevo remained the only important political center in Bosnia. He may also have feared that if the Bosnian Serb capital moved to Banja Luka, which is closer to Zagreb than Sarajevo, it would accelerate the permanent division of the country and only strengthen Tudjman. Whatever Izetbegovic's reasons for not wanting to close Pale, it was a mistake. The mountain town was solely a wartime capital, established by an indicted war criminal and his henchmen. It was the living symbol - and headquarter - of his organization. We should have pushed Izetbegovic harder to agree to establish the Serb capital at Banja Luka. It would have made a big difference in the effort to implement the Dayton agreements.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 293

Hate , War , Fear , Mountain

“The intensity of Melissa’s loyalty troubled Snake. She had never known anyone who was so completely oblivious to self-interest. Perhaps Melissa could not yet think of herself as someone with a right to her own dreams; perhaps so many of her dreams had been taken from her that she no longer dared to have them.”

Vonda N. McIntyre book Dreamsnake

Source: Dreamsnake (1978), Chapter 10 (p. 224)

Dreams , Thinking , Loyalty

“Well sure, my sculptures are floor pieces. Each one, like any area on the surface of the earth, supports a column of air that weighs – what is it? – 14.7 pounds per square inch. So in a sense, that might represent a column. It's not an idea, it's a sense of something you know, a demarked place. Somehow I think I always thought of it going that way, rather than an idea of a narrowing triangle going to the center of the earth… I have nothing to do with Conceptual art [in contrast to his Physical Art, as Carl Andre called his sculpture art already in 1969]]. I'm not interested in ideas. If I were interested in ideas, I'd be in a field where what we think in is ideas… I don't really know what an idea is. One thing for me is that if I can frame something in language, I would never make art out of it. I make art out of things which cannot be framed in any other way. [quote from a talk with the audience, December 1969]”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 12

Art , Way , Quotes , Idea

“The common view that internal freedom makes for humane and moral international behavior is supported neither by evidence nor by reason. The United States has a long history of imposing oppressive terrorist regimes in regions of the world within the reach of its power, such as the Caribbean and Central American sugar and banana republics […]. Since World War II, with the great extension of U. S. power, it has borne a heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neofascism, state terrorism, torture and repression through large parts of the undeveloped world. The United States has globalized the “banana republic.” This has occurred despite some modest ideological strain because the developments serve the needs of powerful and dominant interests, state and private, within the United States itself.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 1.

War , World , Behavior , History

“Everybody caught one another's eye with a 'Spot the loon' look when [Tony] Benn was talking. The show was probably true to life, since each minister had a vested interest in briefing the journalist chosen to play him. It's a sweet technique for getting at the truth, so I imagine someone will put a stop to it soon enough.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Wini und Wolf'
Essays and reviews, The Crystal Bucket (1982)

Life , Truth , Imagination

“I was always interested in architecture, but the editors [of the magazines who demanded these subjects for the illustrations of Hopper] wanted people waving with their arms.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940
Source: 'Wake of the News, Washington Square North Boasts Strangers Worth Talking to', by Archer Winston, 'New York Post', November 26, 1935

People

“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

The Assault on Integrity http://homepage.mac.com/tomdalekeever/greenspanintegrity.html 1963
1950–60s

Men , Fear , Law

“An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind. […] We were very conscious of this when studying the Western dismantlement of Yugoslavia, where the Western media quickly fell into line and treated with aggressive condemnation any departures from the accepted truth and de facto party-line.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Peterson and Herman, “The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification: Imperial Truth-Enforcement, British Branch” https://mronline.org/2010/01/22/the-oliver-kamm-school-of-falsification-imperial-truth-enforcement-british-branch/, MR Online, January 22, 2010.
2010s

Truth , Departure , Study , Strong

“It would be ridiculous to claim that gay men are interested only on other gay men and would never ogle straight men in barracks showers. When I heard this one on TV, I burst out laughing. Anyone who belongs to a health club knows better. Sexual tension and appraisal are constants, above all among gay men, who never stop cruising everything in sight. Seduction of straight studs is a highly erotic motif in gay porn.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 87

Men , Health

“You should not expect politicians to promote freedom of information. Why should they? They have a vested interest in controlling the public's access to information and thereby maintaining their grip on power.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 285.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Freedom

“On principle i relative prices will be lowered in the interests of external balance and domestic expenditure will be inflated in the interests of internal balance. Internal balance will be very quickly restored although there is no net change in external balance. Relative prices must, therefore, continue to be lowered, which will tend now to produce a boom at home. The inflationary financial policy must, therefore, be replaced by a deflationary policy. In the end relative prices will be substantially lowered, while there may be a small net inflation or deflation of domestic expenditure by financial policy.”

James Meade (1907–1995) British economist

Source: The balance of payments, 1951, p. 160; As cited in: Metaxas & Weber (2013, p. 22)

Home , Change

“What is never discussed at all it is never considered is an offense committed by a non-Muslim in a non-Muslim country. That, according to the unanimous opinion of all of the doctors of the holy law is no concern of Islamic law, which brings us back to the case of Denmark. Does this mean that Denmark, along with the rest of Europe is now considered part of the Islamic lands, and that the Danes, like the rest, are therefore dhimmis, non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state? I think this is an interesting question, which can lead to several possible lines of inquiry.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Law , Question , Thinking , Parting

“It is the common vice of all, in old age, to be too intent upon our interests.”

Terence Adelphoe

Act V, scene 8, line 30 (953).
Adelphoe (The Brothers)

Age

“I don’t really think there is any kind of a reasonable argument against intervention in Syria. Quite the opposite: There is a moral and a human imperative to act that is larger than any nation’s interests and larger than any strategic calculation. That is so obvious it is an embarrassment to have to say it. This is how I thought about intervention in Iraq 20 years ago and it is how I think about what needs to be done in Syria today.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Intervention In Syria is a Moral and Human Imperative", New Republican (February 24, 2012)

Thinking

“Proceeding on the assumption that the reader of this preface is interested in the development of my musical talent, I will try to explain, as concisely as I can, how, in this respect, my personal wheels go round. To begin with, I have only had two music lessons in my life. These were the first steps of what was to have been a full course at the Guildhall School of Music, and they faltered and stopped when I was told by my instructor that I could not use consecutive fifths. He went on to explain that a gentleman called Ebenezer Prout had announced many years ago that consecutive fifths were wrong and must in no circumstances be employed. At that time Ebenezer Prout was merely a name to me (as a matter of fact he still is, and a very funny one at that) and I was unimpressed by his Victorian dicta. I argued back that Debussy and Ravel had used consecutive fifths like mad. My instructor waved aside this triviality with a pudgy hand, and I left his presence forever with the parting shot that what was good enough for Debussy and Ravel was good enough for me. This outburst of rugged individualism deprived me of much valuable knowledge, and I have never deeply regretted it for a moment.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Preface, The Noël Coward Song Book, pp. 12–13.

Life , School , Music , Knowledge

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Love , Wisdom , Money , Children

“I was interested in achieving a creative freedom, a style that I could express with Seurat's.... color technique [color-divisionism], but shaped to my own needs. Proof that I found it is in my paintings of that period, among which is the famous 'Pan-Pan a Monico' [Severini painted in 1912]. My preference for Neo-Impressionism dates from those works. At times I tried to suppress it, but it always worked its way back to the surface.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 53; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003.

Color , Way , Freedom , Time

“For the man who considers himself the best critic generally studies sound and unsound composition with equal interest, being no more greedy for lofty utterances to praise than for contemptible ones to ridicule. In this way technique, grandeur, and propriety in the use of the Latin language are particularly underrated by the armchair critics, who, with an insensibility which goes hand in hand with scurrility, and wishing to read only what they may criticize, cannot, by their very abuse of literature, be making a proper use of it.”
Nam qui maxume doctus sibi videtur, dictionem sanam et insanam ferme appetitu pari revolvit, non amplius concupiscens erecta quae laudet quam despecta quae rideat. atque in hunc modum scientia pompa proprietas linguae Latinae iudiciis otiosorum maximo spretui est, quorum scurrilitati neglegentia comes hoc volens tantum legere, quod carpat, sic non utitur litteris, quod abutitur.

Sidonius Apollinaris (430–489) Gaulish poet, aristocrat and bishop

Lib. 3, Ep. 14, sect. 2; vol. 2, p. 59.
Epistularum

Way , Literature , Study , Reading

“The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. Lagrange is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are general they are easy to follow. Laplace on the other hand explains nothing, is indifferent to style, and, if satisfied that his results are correct, is content to leave them either with no proof or with a faulty one. Gauss is as exact and elegant as Lagrange, but even more difficult to follow than Laplace, for he removes every trace of the analysis by which he reached his results, and studies to give a proof which while rigorous shall be as concise and synthetical as possible.”

W. W. Rouse Ball (1850–1925) English mathematician

W. W. Rouse Ball, History of Mathematics, (London, 1901), p. 463;

Study , Perfection , Indifference

Quotes about interest page 35

Quotes about interest
page 35