Quotes about involvement
page 11

“The rights of individuals to the use of resources (i. e., property rights) in any society are to be construed as supported by the force of etiquette, social custom, ostracism, and formal legally enacted laws supported by the states' power of violence of punishment. Many of the constraints on the use of what we call private property involve the force of etiquette and social ostracism. The level of noise, the kind of clothes we wear, our intrusion on other people's privacy are restricted not merely by laws backed by police force, but by social acceptance, reciprocity, and voluntary social ostracism for violators of accepted codes of conduct.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Source: Economic Forces at Work, 1977, p. 129-130 ; as cited in Eggertsson (1990; 34)

People, Law, Support, Clothes

“What are the dangers, then, involved in being a celebrity? On the one hand, there's … the true loss of the self by virtue of being over-democratized, over-saturated, over-loved, perhaps. Without an internally directed compass, an ego can drown in its own fascination, rendering the bearer unable to posit or hang anything actual onto themselves. This again is essentially the argument from commodification, which prescribes a kind of a ravenous, ecstatic feast upon a soul until it becomes defined purely in terms of its external ability to in fact be consumed.”

Jack Gleeson (1992) Irish actor

Speech at Oxford Union (2014)

Love, Soul, Loss

“I like the aliveness of it [theater] – that awful feeling of being on the spot. I must assume the responsibility for that moment, for those actions that happen at that particular time. I don't find theater that different from painting, and it's not that I think of painting as theater or vice versa. I tend to think of working as a kind of involvement with materials, as well as rather focused interest which changes.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Feeling, Thinking, Change, Time

“It would be bypassing the issue to say that the artist's business is how to work with this and that material and manipulate the findings of perceptual psychology, and that the rest should be left to other professions… The total scope of information he receives everyday is of concern. An artist is an isolated system,… he has to continuously interact with the world around him. Theoretically there are no limits to his involvement.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

Source: Art international, Vol. 13, (1969), p. 56; As cited in: Art Inquiry: Recherches Sur Les Arts. Vol. 1-4. (1999), p. 116

World, Business

“The definite mass ratios involved in reactions suggested a convenient method for counting the number of atoms of each element participating in the reaction. These results, summarized as the laws of chemical combination, provided overwhelming, if indirect, evidence for the existence of atoms and molecules.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

Law

“In addition to the obvious dangers, there is another subtle but by no means minor disadvantage to a pure deterrence posture: the threat of mutual suicide is a very uninspiring concept, no matter how logical it may seem. If it happened to involve explicitly the annihilation of all humanity it would also be totally immoral; one doubts if it could long remain an important part of United States policy.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Suicide, Parting

“Regulatory policies are inherently redistributive; that is, they involve the seizure of earned income for purposes of allocating this income in ways the government’s policymakers believe are more important than do those whose income has been seized.”

Tibor R. Machan (1939–2016) Hungarian-American philosopher

Source: Private Rights and Public Illusions (1994), p. 154

Way

“I’m not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 9 (p. 159)

Religion

“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully upon the destiny of the Republic; when our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendency and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice, and our name was a reproach and a byword to a mocking; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and the portents are nearly all in our favor.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom, Men, People, Hope

“Two centuries ago, our forbears would have known the precise history and origin of nearly every one of the limited number of things they ate and owned, as well as of the people and tools involved in their production. … The range of items available for purchase may have grown exponentially since then. but our understanding of their genesis has diminished almost to the point of obscurity. We are now as imaginatively disconnected from the manufacture and distribution of our goods as we are practically in reach of them, a process of alienation which has stripped us of myriad opportunities for wonder, gratitude and guilt.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 35.

People, Imagination, History, Understanding

“There is a bit of acting involved when you get in front of a camera for a video. Even when you perform onstage, you're putting on a show.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Attributed

“The language of men was involved with only one hemisphere in order to leave the other free for the language of the gods.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 5, p. 103-104
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Men, God

“The great thing about multiculturalism is it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures — the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I think was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

It's the Demography, Stupid (2006)

Feeling, Idea, Fraud, Thinking

“The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators. I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.”

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) American artist

Quotes of Sol Lewitt
Source: Art Institute of Chicago. Video Data Bank (1992), On Art and Artists. p. 1991

“BY primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, 1909, p. 23 (1962)

Life, Way, Feeling, Nature

“If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!”

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

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/435344902591770624 (17 February 2014) Twitter

“If we are to put interrogators to work in defence of liberal values, their role in the community must receive proper recognition. They will require intensive counselling to overcome the inevitable traumas that this difficult work involves. They must be enabled to see themselves as dedicated workers in the cause of progress. Psychotherapy must be available to help them avoid the negative self-image from which some torturers have suffered in the past.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

A Modest Proposal (2003)

Communication, Suffering, Past, Help

“Within the indigenous world the act of coming to know something involves a personal transformation. The knower and the known are indissolubly linked and changed in a fundamental way. …it is a dynamic and living process, an aspect of the ever-changing, ever-renewing process of nature.”

F. David Peat (1938–2017) British physicist

The Blackfoot Physics (2006)

World, Way, Nature, Change

“Each ‘urban struggle’ must have its structural content specified, and be considered in terms of the role it plays vis-à-vis the various social classes involved. Then and only then will we know what we are talking about.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, 1977, p. 376

“The process in which something functions as a sign may be called '. This process, in a tradition which goes back to the Greeks, has commonly been regarded as involving three (or four) factors: that which acts as a sign, that which the sign refers to, and the effect on some interpreter in virtue of which the thing in question is a sign to that interpreter. These three components in semiosis may be called, respectively, the sign vehicle, the designatum, and the interpretant; the interpreter may be included as a fourth factor. These terms make explicit the factors left undesignated in the common statement that a sign refers to something for someone.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 3

Question

“Once helium burning has occurred… the next possible reaction—carbon burning—is not necessarily slow… This reaction involves …a strong as opposed to a weak interaction. …Carbon burning results in magnesium. …Taking a cross section of a highly evolved star would reveal a system of many layers. The inner layers have been subjected to the largest pressures, thereby forced to the highest temperatures, and burned the furthest; the outermost layers, by contrast, have not burned at all. Thus, as we proceed from outside in, there will be an outermost layer with the initial mix of hydrogen and helium, a layer of mostly helium, a layer of carbon, a layer of magnesium, and so on. …So we arrive at the picture of a star, in the latest stages of its evolution… now composed of mostly carbon nuclei and other explosive material.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Star, Strong

“The three major Middle Eastern religions are significantly different in their relations with the state and their attitudes to political power. Judaism was associated with the state and was then disentangled from it; its new encounter with the state at the present time raises problems which are still unresolved. Christianity, during the first formative centuries of its existence, was separate from and indeed antagonistic to the state with which it only later became involved. Islam from the lifetime of its founder was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Faith, Religion, History, Problem

“Please take my name off the candidate list. I’ve decided to stay in politics for good. Between the two choices of being the next king and being a politician, I will surely choose to involve myself in politics to lead Funcinpec ahead. I have decided to take to politics more than the throne. Prince Sihamoni has always supported my candidacy for the throne. I thank him for his support. But I have decided I am not a candidate. I like to be in politics.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

[LOR CHANDARA, https://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/prince-opts-for-politics-not-throne-27260/, Prince Opts For Politics, Not Throne, The Cambodia Daily, 14 November 2001, 15 February 2015]</ref>

Support

“The Definition in the Elements, according to Clavius, is this: Magnitudes are said to be in the same Reason [ratio], a first to a second, and a third to a fourth, when the Equimultiples of the first and third according to any Multiplication whatsoever are both together either short of, equal to, or exceed the Equimultiples of the second and fourth, if those be taken, which answer one another…. Such is Euclid’s Definition of Proportions; that scare-Crow at which the over modest or slothful Dispositions of Men are generally affrighted: they are modest, who distrust their own Ability, as soon as a Difficulty appears, but they are slothful that will not give some Attention for the learning of Sciences; as if while we are involved in Obscurity we could clear ourselves without Labour. Both of 300 which Sorts of Persons are to be admonished, that the former be not discouraged, nor the latter refuse a little Care and Diligence when a Thing requires some Study.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 388

Men, Study, Learning, Appearance

“Delegation means the conferring of a specified authority by a higher authority. In its essence it involves a dual responsibility. The one to vhom responsibility is delegated becomes responsible to the superior for doing the job. but the superior remains responsible for getting the Job done. This principle of delegation is the center of all processes in formal organization. Delegation is inherent in the very nature of the relation between superior and subordinate. The moment the objective calls for the organized effort of more than one person, there is always leadership with its delegation of duties.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 17

Nature, Effort, Personality

“The life of God — the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things — may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book The Phenomenology of Spirit

§ 19
The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

Love, Life, God, Pain

“The idea of where does an idea come from and who should get credit for it is pretty soft. But I think people are pretty good at dealing with that softness and recognizing contribution when they know the people involved. With collective ownership, we create a social situation where you can get to know a person by how they spin their intellect into source code statements.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People, Idea, Thinking, Personality

“In the field of ideas not involving productive activities it is easier to distinguish the division between material and spiritual necessity. For a long time man has been trying to free himself from alienation through culture and art. While he dies every day during the eight or more hours that he sells his labour, he comes to life afterwards in his spiritual activities.
But this remedy bears the germs of the same sickness; it is as a solitary individual that he seeks communion with his environment.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Life, Art, Idea, Time

“A digital computer can usually be regarded as consisting of three parts: (i) Store. (ii) Executive unit. (iii) Control…. The executive unit is the part which carries out the various individual operations involved in a calculation…. It is the duty of the control to see that… [the table of] instructions are obeyed correctly and in the right order…. A typical instruction might say—"Add the number stored in position 6809 to that in 4302 and put the result back into the latter storage position." Needless to say it would not occur in the machine expressed in English. It would more likely be coded in a form such as 6809430217. Here 17 says which of various possible operations [add] is to be performed on the two numbers…. It will be noticed that the instruction takes up 10 digits and so forms one packet of information…”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

Parting

“Listen, I'm no social scientist and haven't done a survey. I don't pretend to know what John Q citizen thinks about this. But I've lived in prison for a long time now and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them… was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception. Deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

Men, Motivation, Question, Thinking

“To become a vegan is by far the best way we have at this time in history to contribute to peace on Earth. Being a vegan in the world today is to be involved in a nonviolent, direct-action protest against cruelty and an affirmation of kindness.”

Sharon Gannon (1951) American yoga teacher

Simple Recipes for Joy (2014)

World, Peace, Way, History

“I have already remarked that the 'theory of scarcity has been a dominating influence in many of our economic policies. In the case of taxation, however, there is involved the 'theory of plenty' and there must now be involved the 'theory of plenty more.' Every dollar of the billions that are being indiscriminately spent without accountability is a mortgage on the income, the savings, as well as the security of the people. There must be brought home to the consciousness of all that the more the government takes, the less each one has no one can possibly escape.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

New York Times interview, 1935

People, Home

“At the moment, money from Gombe tourism goes into one pot for Tanzania National Parks and it has to pay for the whole infrastructure of everything. But through our TACARE [community development] programme, we’ve benefited local people hugely.
The thing is about tourism and research is that they can both focus attention on the place and help to preserve it. It’s tourism involvement with the mountain gorillas that saved them.
During the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, people on both sides were being told, “Don’t touch the gorillas”, as it was the second biggest foreign exchange earner after tea in the country. So both sides hoped to win and continue exploiting gorillas.
So the government can see the value of tourism, but the danger is they over-exploit it. They say, “We’re getting all this money for [gorilla-tracking groups of] six people, now we’ll let it be 12”, and they get more money for tours, so they make it 20. That’s the danger; that they end up killing what people have come to see.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Wanderlust interview (2009)

Money, People, Hope, Mountain

“[War] isn't a Nintendo game… There's no hitting reset and coming back to life. If you turn your head around the corner in the streets of Baghdad and take one between the eyes, your brain is gone. Maybe you turn around the corner and you take one in your chest and it'll sever your spinal cord and you can spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. That's war! Maybe you step on a landmine and there goes your leg, you lose an arm, you lose eyesight. That's war! And we're talking about going to war. There better be a hell of a good reason for this. There better be a reason worthy of the sacrifice we're asking Americans to make. And you know, it's not just going to be Americans dying in this war; we're going to be killing Iraqis, by the thousands. I have to tell you, as a former Marine, I was involved with the worlds most efficient killing machine. We were the best led, best trained, best equipped warriors anybody's ever seen, and we are today. When we go to war we will slaughter those who oppose us, because that's what we do, and we do it better than anyone else. If you get in my way, I will kill you. You try hurt one of my marines, I'm taking you down. And I will continue to go until my government tells me to stop. We are the dogs of war and when we are unleashed there is nothing but hell. That's the reality of war. For God's sake, don't unleash the dogs of war unless there's an absolute necessary to do so.”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

Keynote address, California Institute of Technology http://sass.caltech.edu/events/ritter.shtml November 13, 2002 2000

Life, God, War, World

“"And here's some legislation: Thank the good lord that this passed before the break for vaycay. No cloning! No cloning! Urgent! Big red rubber stamper! Let's get this out of the way! Let's deal with this! The no cloning issue. Uhm, I wasn't really worried about it. I don't know about anybody else, but it really wasn't keeping me up nights. I think I'll worry about it when we finally get our jetpacks and our food pills for five course meals. I think then we'll deal with that because I think during Roddenberry times we were promised those two things and I haven't seen them, but just in case that wasn't enough for you, for Congress to get involved, the Vatican had something to say about it. The Vatican Counsel met, and I took this out of the New York Times, here's what they said after a big meeting, " 'Human cloning would not lead to identical souls because only God can create a soul,' a panel set up by Pope John Paul has concluded." Right on! They also took care of a couple other things that were burning issues. Apparently Trix are indeed for kids, and one other thing. After much deliberation it has been decided that no you cannot tackle the kid after he releases the ball in Smear The Queer. Can't do it. So we got that out of the way."”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

self-titled TV comedy special, 1997
Standup routines

God, Food, Way, Soul

“I don't think that Kandinsky was ever really a communist. He just happened to be in Russia [Kandinsky went to Russia in 1914, because of the outbreak of the war, ànd his Russsian nationality] and to become involved in some revolutionary artistic activities because of his reputation as a revolutionary in the arts. In any case, he left Russia as soon as an opportunity arose. But we had parted, by that time, and I prefer not to express any opinion on Kandinsky's later ideas and beliefs, with which I was never familiar.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), pp. 118-119

War, Art, Idea, Thinking

“The goal of ending poverty is within reach and everyone can contribute to it by getting involved or supporting organizations that are already working to give the poor a better life.”

Ronaldo (1976) Brazilian association football player

Speech for the United Nations. http://www.undp.org/goodwill/ronaldo.shtml

Life, Support

“In a theory in which parameters are added to quantum mechanics to determine the results of individual measurements, without changing the statistical predictions, there must be a mechanism whereby the setting of one measuring device can influence the reading of another instrument, however remote. Moreover, the signal involved must propagate instantaneously, so that such a theory could not be Lorentz invariant. Of course, the situation is different if the quantum mechanical predictions are of limited validity. Conceivably they might apply only to experiments in which the settings of the instruments are made sufficiently in advance to allow them to reach some mutual rapport by exchange of signals with velocity less than or equal to that of light. In that connection, experiments of the type proposed by Bohm and Aharonov, in which the settings are changed during the flight of the particles, are crucial.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (1964)

Light, Change, Reading

“Mainly the fact that I love animals and don’t want to be involved in anything that causes or contributes to animal suffering. Also, I never really liked meat that much, unless it neither looked [n]or tasted like meat. Like taco filling. But, mainly because I love animals and don’t want them to suffer. Death is unavoidable, suffering is avoidable.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

On what inspired him to go vegan, from an " Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1x3ol1/i_am_musician_dj_photographer_and_director_moby/; as quoted in "Vegan Veteran Moby Reveals on Reddit Why He Eschews Eating Animals", in Ecorazzi (6 February 2014) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2014/02/06/vegan-veteran-moby-reveals-on-reddit-why-he-eschews-eating-animals/

Love, Death, Suffering, Animals

“Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Cited in: Richard K. Betts (1982) Surprise attack: lessons for defense planning. p. 158
Principles of Operations Research (1975)

“Education is a process by which the individual is developed into something better than he would have been without it. … The very though seems in a way the height of presumption. For one thing, it involves the premise that some human beings can be better than others.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Education and the individual,” p. 43.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Education, Way

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Men, Fate, Happiness

“There are indications because of new inventions, that 10, 15, or 20 nations will have a nuclear capacity, including Red China, by the end of the Presidential office in 1964. This is extremely serious... I think the fate not only of our own civilization, but I think the fate of world and the future of the human race, is involved in preventing a nuclear war.”

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

Third Nixon-Kennedy Presidential Debate (13 October 1960)
1960

Fate, War, World, Thinking

“Few people of the Commonwealth fully realised that the European crisis might involve hostilities in Australian waters – that war might be something that would come to Australia, and not merely something that was happening 12,000 miles away.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

In speech to the Constitutional Club of Sydney, October 1938
Early career (1934-1939)
Source: https://www.jewishnews.net.au/menzies-an-enemy-of-tyranny-and-friend-of-freedom/29309

Hostility, War, People, Water

“Charles is life itself — pure life, force, like sunlight — and it is for this that I married him and this that holds me to him — caring always, caring desperately what happens to him and whatever he happens to be involved in.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

War Within and Without (1980)

Life

“Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favour some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Equality (1931)

Life, Education, Democracy

“When Morris Louis showed in 1958, everybody [like in 'Art News', by Tom Hess ] dismissed his work as thin, merely decorative. They still do. Louis is the really interesting case... In every sense his instincts were Abstract Expressionist, and he was terribly involved with all of that, but he felt he had to move, too.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Frank Stella in: The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 319 note 68
quote of Stella, 1960's, concerning the position of stain painting
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Art, Sense

“So no, I'm not in that camp, but I do think that statutory regulation is not required, and most of the heinous crimes that came up and have made such a splash in front of this Inquiry have already been illegal. Contempt of court is illegal. Phone tapping is illegal. Taking money from - policemen taking money is illegal. All of these things don't need a code. We already have laws for them. The fact that these laws were not rigorously enforced is, again, due to the behaviour of the police, the interaction of the police and News International, and - I mean, let's be honest about this - the fact that our politicians have been very, very involved, in ways that I think are not sensible, with senior News International people, and I hope you'll be calling the Prime Minister and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to explain how that comes down from the top.”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

At the Leveson Inquiry, 17 January 2012.

Money, People, Law, Hope

“The movie is not that violent. There are ideas in the movie that are scary, but the film isn't about violence, the glorification of violence or the embracing of violence. In the movie, violence is a metaphor for feeling. It's a film about the problems or requirements involved with being masculine in today's society.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

Fightin Words (1999)

Feeling, Idea, Problem

“When I was fifteen, I became a professional musician. I got involved with people and did certain things which led me to start making records and touring. And leaving Belfast and going to London and America, one thing led to another and I got caught up in the life that I'm living now…I was very young and i followed something.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

1993
As quoted in Can You Feel the Silence? Van Morrison: A New Biography (2003) by Clinton Heylin

Life, People

“Political theorists often fail to appreciate that arguments about how politics ought to be organized typically depend on relational claims involving agents, actions, legitimacy, and ends.”

Ian Shapiro (1956) American political theorist

The Flight from Realityin the Human Science (2005), Chapter 4. Gross Concepts in Political Argument.

Dependency

“A genuine, enlightened patriot discerns, that the welfare of his own country is involved in the general progress of society; and, in the character of a patriot, as well as of a Christian, he rejoices in the liberty and prosperity of other communities, and is anxious to maintain with them the relations of peace and amity.”

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

War (1816)

Peace, Communication, Country

“That risks were involved, all of us knew; but none, so far as we could foresee, that were too great. Otherwise, as leader of a big polar expedition, and subject to all the responsibilities implicit in command, I could not have gone. That I miscalculated is proved by the fact that I nearly lost my life. Yet, I do not regret going.”

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) Medal of Honor recipient and United States Navy officer

Source: Alone (1938), Ch. 1

Life

“When one says, for example, that superiority and inferiority is a formation to be found in every human association, though the proposition certainly involves very profound insight into the essence of human nature and human relationship, yet the assertion is so general that it affords little knowledge of particular societary formations. In order to reach such particular knowledge we must study separate types of superiority and inferiority, and we must master the special features of their formation, which in proportion to their definiteness of course lose generality of application.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: Superiority and Subordination as Subject-matter of Sociology (1896), p. 169

Nature, Knowledge, Study

“Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Pain, Pleasure, Knowledge, Nostalgia

“Students today should begrudge every moment of time. This dewlike life fades away; time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

V, 8
Shobogenzo Zuimonki (1238)

Life, Way, Study, Time

“The function of a blog is on some level to start a conversation that you're not involved in any more because you've already had your say. That thing of coming right off the news — did you see what I saw this morning, can you believe it?”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

has a kind of fun appeal. Quoted in Emma Brockes, "Everything Is Copy" http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2025098,00.html, The Guardian (3 March 2007)

“As Locke sees, equality in authority entails denying to the legal system's administrators—and thus to the legal system itself—any powers beyond those possessed by private citizens:The law of nature is in that state put into every man's hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation…. For in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do.Lockean equality involves not merely equality before legislators, judges, and police, but, far more crucially, equality with legislators, judges, and police.”

Roderick Long (1964) American philosopher

"Equality: the Unknown Ideal" (2001)

Law, Nature, Perfection

“Production functions involving only land, labor and capital… never work and never explain economic development.”

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

Kenneth Boulding (1990). "Taxonomy as a Source of Error." in Methodus Vol 2. p. 17-21, as cited in: Deirdre McCloskey (2013) " What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/editorials/boulding.php" 1990s and attributed

“The stand of the "realist" school, and its objections to further or faster involvement in the Libya crisis, can be fairly summarized…The actual evidence, however, is that Qaddafi senior has reached his Ceausescu moment: a full-dress (in the literal sense) meltdown into paranoia, megalomania, and delusion. His recent speeches and appearances have shown him stinking with madness and hysteria. His age and condition, at any rate, set a very sharp limit to the duration of his regime. If that regime implodes while he is still "in place," then all the grim consequences foreseen by the realists will be incurred in any case. Weapons will get into the wrong hands; divide-and-rule tactics (already a stock in trade) will intensify; religious and tribal passions will be deliberately inflamed. The main difference will be that we merely watched this happen.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

Age, School, Sense, Appearance

“The rational scrutiny of religious faith involves asking believers only two questions:

How do you know that?

What makes you so sure that the claims of your faith are right and the claims of other faiths are wrong?”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 25

Faith, Question

“The Darwinians have coined the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy to designate the finality which they at the same time deny. Appearances are deceptive, they say; the materials of life are always the work of chance. What some take for finality is only the result of the ordering of random materials bynatural selection. Even were this to be true, as it is not, the demon of finility would still not have been exorcized. For natural selection is, in essence and function, the supreme finilizing agent. Actually, the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy are the homage paid to finality, as hypocrisy pays homage to virtue. Giard (1905), himself a shrewd scholar but blinded by a foolish anticlericalism, went so far as to abjure Lamarckism and write, "To account for the wondrous adaptations such as those we observe between orchids and the insects that fertilize them, we have hardly any choice but the bare alternative hypotheses: the intervention of a sovereignly intelligent being, and selection." He cannot have seriously subjected his supposed dilemma to critical scrutiny or he would have seen that he was substituting for the dethroned divinity just such another, a sorting and finalizing, in sum transcendental, agent, natural selection. Paul Wintrebert, a convinced and even intractable atheist, did not fall into the same trap but realized perfectly that Giard's alternative involves, whatever opinion be held, recognizing the intervention of a purposive guiding agent. Giard's concept, which is that held by many atheists and "freethinkers", gives a singular and belittling idea of God. The Almighty, obliged to remodel and retouch His own handiwork.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 165
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Life, God, Intelligence, Idea

“In the year 1775, the Paris Academy found it necessary to protect its officials against the waste of time and energy involved in examining the efforts of circle squarers. It passed a resolution… that no more solutions were to be examined of the problem of the duplication of the cube, the trisection of the angle, the quadrature of the circle, and the same resolution should apply to machines for exhibiting perpetual motion. an account… drawn up by Condorcet… is appended. It is interesting to remark that the strength of the conviction of Mathematicians that the solution of the problem is impossible, more than a century before an irrefutable proof of the correctness of that conviction was discovered.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), pp. 3-4

Problem, Effort, Time

“The realities of globalization can be seen in something as simple as the investigation of a car crash. If a patrolman investigated a fatal accident in the 1970s, the victims and the witnesses were both likely from the local community; and if the officer climbed into the wreckage, to look for some malfunction in the vehicle, he would probably see from the serial numbers that the car was made in the U. S. He could put all that together, and make his case. But Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

The New Paradigm: Merging Law Enforcement and Intelligence Strategies (2006)

Death, Cars, Communication, Reality

“He has that uniqueness to respond to a tough situation with ease. He does not involve himself much emotionally, and that’s his quality. India are lucky to have a captain like Dhoni.”

V. V. S. Laxman (1974) former Indian cricketer

On Captaincy of MS Dhoni.

“I hope that you will have learned from the pain and suffering which you have endured in the past few decades, and have realized how to cherish the blessings of liberty. You will therefore know that freedom does not mean that the people should be licentious and behave in an arbitrary fashion, but that it also involves certain limits, since if there are no constraints no one will be free, and the strong will enslave the weak.”

Mohammad Ali Foroughi (1877–1942) Iranian politician

Radio broadcast (October 1941)

Pain, People, Hope, Fashion

“Much of the skill of the true mathematical physicist and of the mathematical astronomer consists in the power of adapting methods and results carried out on an exact mathematical basis to obtain approximations sufficient for the purposes of physical measurements. It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of Mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in Physics, Engineering Science, and Astronomy, and no doubt it would be possible to develop, to some extent at least, a species of Mathematics on these lines. Such a system would, however, involve an intolerable awkwardness and prolixity in the statements of results, especially in view of the fact that the degree of approximation necessary for various purposes is very different, and thus that unassigned grades of approximation would have to be provided for. Moreover, the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration, the ideals of exactitude and logical rigour, as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form. The history of the actual movements of mathematical thought through the centuries shows that these ideals are the very life-blood of the science, and warrants the conclusion that a constant striving toward their attainment is an absolutely essential condition of vigorous growth. These ideals have their roots in irresistible impulses and deep-seated needs of the human mind, manifested in its efforts to introduce intelligibility in certain great domains of the world of thought.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), pp. 285-286; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 229): Mathematics and Science.

Life, World, History, Intelligence

“The city is very different from the country, girl. It is a kind of shared consciousness that begins its work on you as soon as you enter it, if not well before, a consciousness that begins to separate you from the country possibly even before you decide to journey toward it. It encircles you with forces much greater than the walls and gates which imitate tinier villages or towns. People who come to it come seeking the future, not realizing all that will finally affect them in it is their own, only more or less aware, involvement with the past. The way we do things here—really, that’s all there is to be learned in our precincts. But in the paving of every wide, clear avenue, in the turnings of every dark, overhung alley, in the ornaments on every cornice, in the salt-stained stones of each neighborhood cistern, there are traces of the way things once were done—which is the key to why they are done as they are today.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 5, “Of Matrons, Mornings, Motives, and Machinations” (p. 104)

People, Way, Girl, Learning

“I feel more important to just encourage people to get involved, one way or another. If I can inspire some leaders, that would be great. I don't know if I want to be a leader.”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

"Q & A: 'Joe the Plumber'" interview by Sarah Pulliam, in Christianity Today (May 2009) Web-only article

People, Way, Feeling

“It is in 1958 that the discussion becomes, I believe, more complex and starts to get really dangerous. This is the time when Mattei begins, in addition to the attack on U. S. oil interests, an attack on traditional Italian foreign policy. He opens up a foreign policy of greater detachment from NATO, greater opening toward the Third World, and potential neu¬tralism. This was the framework of the neo-Atlanticism in which Mattei, Fanfani, and Gronchi were involved, and oddly, also Christian Democratic right-wingers, for their own reasons, namely Guido Gonella and Giuseppe Pella”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The Strategic Stakes in Mattei's Flight, p. 25

World, Time

“The management science approach to organizational decision making is the analog to the rational approach by individual managers. Management science came into being during World War II. At that time, mathematical and statistical techniques were applied to urgent, large-scale military problems that were beyond the ability of individual decision makers. Mathematicians, physicists, and operations researchers used systems analysis to develop artillery trajectories, antisubmarine strategies, and bombing strategies such as salvoing (discharging multiple shells simultaneously). Consider the problem of a battleship trying to sink an enemy ship several miles away. The calculation for aiming the battleship's guns should consider distance, wind speed, shell size, speed and direction of both ships, pitch and roll of the firing ship, and curvature of the earth. Methods for performing such calculations using trial and error and intuition are not accurate, take far too long, and may never achieve success.
This is where management science came in. Analysts were able to identify the relevant variables involved in aiming a ship's guns and could model them with the use of mathematical equations. Distance, speed, pitch, roll, shell size, and so on could be calculated and entered into the equations. The answer was immediate, and the guns could begin firing. Factors such as pitch and roll were soon measured mechanically and fed directly into the targeting mechanism. Today, the human element is completely removed from the targeting process. Radar picks up the target, and the entire sequence is computed automatically.”

Richard L. Daft (1964) American sociologist

Source: Organization Theory and Design, 2007-2010, p. 500

War, World, Error, Mathematics

“I conclude that there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases. And we should try again to say how convention in any important sense is involved in language; or, as I think, we should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions.”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Davidson, Donald. " A nice derangement of epitaphs http://www.hf.uio.no/csmn/english/research/news-and-events/events/davidson_derangement.pdf." Philosophical grounds of rationality: Intentions, categories, ends 4 (1986): 157.

Communication, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975. Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 514
1970s

People, Loss

“Revolution did not necessarily involve sanguinary strife. It was not a cult of bomb and pistol.”

Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary

Letter published in The Tribune (25 December 1929), with some reference to lines from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
Context: Revolution did not necessarily involve sanguinary strife. It was not a cult of bomb and pistol. They may sometimes be mere means for its achievement. No doubt they play a prominent part in some movements, but they do not — for that very reason — become one and the same thing. A rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately lead to that end.
The sense in which the word Revolution is used in that phrase, is the spirit, the longing for a change for the better. The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit. Otherwise degeneration gains the upper hand and the whole humanity is led stray by the reactionary forces. Such a state of affairs leads to stagnation and paralysis in human progress. The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march. Old order should change, always and ever, yielding place to new, so that one “good” order may not corrupt the world. It is in this sense that we raise the shout “Long Live Revolution.”

“There are only four Hindu writers on algebra whose names are particularly noteworthy. These are Āryabhata, whose Āryabhatiyam (c. 510) included problems in series, permutations, and linear and quadratic equations; Brahmagupta, whose Brahmasiddhānta (c. 628) contains a satisfactory rule for solving the quadratic… Mahāvīra, whose Ganita-Sāra Sangraha (c. 850) contains a large number of problems involving series, radicals, and equations; and Bhāskara, whose Bija Ganita (c. 1150)… extends the work through quadratic equations.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, Ch. 6: Algebra

Problem

“I have used the word 'flow' at many places without really elaborating its meaning. What is this flow? And what are these joys? I could call them moments of magic. I see an anology between these moments and the high that you experience when you play badminton or go jogging. Flow is a sensation we experience when we act with total involvement. During flow, action follows action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention on the part of the worker. There is no hurry, there are no distracting demands on one's attention. The past and the future disappear. So does the distinction between self and the activity.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 91.

Past, Future, Joy, Parting

“The concepts of social power and social control are closely interrelated, since the process of social control involves the exercise of the bases and resources of power. But both terms also have their negative and even threatening connotations. All of us, or at least most of us, like to think that we are independent agents, and being subjected to social power restricts that sense of independence. The thought of being "socially controlled" also brings forth strong negative feelings. Yet, when we consider it more carefully, power and influence are part of our everyday interaction and contribute to individual and collective benefit. Similarly for social control.”

Bertram Raven (1926) American psychologist

Source: "Influence, Power, Religion, and the Mechanisms of Social Control," 1999, p. 161

Feeling, Exercises, Thinking, Sense

“The Dutch historian and indologist Andre Wink writes, referring to Prof. Sharma's chief claim to fame, his book on Indian Feudalism in the early medieval period : 'R. S. Sharma's Indian Feudalism has misguided virtually all historians of the period… Sharma's thesis essentially involves an obstinate attempt to find 'elements' which fit a preconceived picture of what should have happened in India because it happened in Europe (or is alleged to have happened in Europe by Sharma and his school of historians whose knowledge of European history is rudimentary and completely outdated)… The methodological underpinnings of Sharma's work are in fact so thin that one wonders why, for so long, Sharma's colleagues have called his work 'pioneering.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Books, School, History, Knowledge

“SHELLEY JACKSON: You began as a writer, moved to performance art, then architecture. I’d like to follow the traces of writing through your career, and see whether your late work could be rethought as a radically materialist practice of writing. What made you want to write?
VITO ACCONCI: I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. I thought, there’s no reason to go to different parts of our world, because you can write them. You can stay home, stay in a little room, and imagine all these worlds. And I wanted to do that. Why did I want to do that, I’m not sure if I can tell.”

Vito Acconci (1940–2017) Designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist

Shelley Jackson talks with Vito Acconci http://www.believermag.com/issues/200612/?read=interview_acconci, in: The Believer, Nr. 12. 2006.

World, Art, Home, Imagination

“Creativity is not limited to people practising one of the traditional forms of art, and even in the case of artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their art. Each one of us has a creative potential, which is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. To recognize, explore and develop this potential is the task of the School. Creation – whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony or novel – involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination and application, but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres.”

Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) German author, novelist, and short story writer

Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll (1972), cited in: Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys, exh.cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979. p. 278.

People, School, Art, Exercises

“My thighs have been involved in many accidents,
And now I can't get insured,
And I don't need to be lured by you.
My cunt is built like a wound that won't heal,
And now you don't have to ask
Because you know how I feel.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Out of Habit
Song lyrics

Feeling

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll (1972), as cited in Joseph Beuys, exh. cat., Caroline Tisdall, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979. p. 278
1970's

People, School, Art, Exercises

“Hayek expressed the greatest praise for Popper. Whether this was Hayek’s ultimate view or a reflection of a deep, though subordinate, strain of personal modesty and humility that ran through him is an open question. Hayek’s support was vital in Popper’s career. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hayek was involved with an unsuccessful effort to obtain the Nobel Prize in Literature for Popper.”

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

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

Literature, Question, Support, Effort

“There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Loving v. Virginia http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-African-Science-Explodes-Myth/dp/1633880184/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 (1967). 1960s

Marriage, Freedom, Personality

“All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number of people. Through their cooperation, the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be. The work always shows signs of that cooperation.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 1.

People, Art

“Does the cycle that goes, interest in something, involvement in it, tiring of it, and rejection of it, looking into something else, get shorter every decade?”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 9 - Countdown

“There were people who got me very involved in politics. But then there was also a book. It was a trilogy, a biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher, which made a very deep impression on me and gave me a love of political biography for the rest of my life.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Cahal Milmo, " Blair reveals an unexpected influence: Trotsky http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blair-reveals-an-unexpected-influence-trotsky-468385.html", The Independent, 3 March 2006. Speech to the Commonwealth Club, London, 2 March 2006. 2000s

Love, Life, People, Books

“Legends abound of the truly great leapers who could touch the top of the board. Almost always the feat involves money-claims that the player could grab a dollar bill off the top of the board, or could pluck off a quarter and leave two dimes and a nickel change… "I defy anyone to say they took change off the top of the backboard," Chamberlain said. "I could. Someone would put a quarter up and I'd snatch it down. I've heard stories about Jackie Jackson doing it, but I've never seen anyone (but himself) come close." Sonny Hill, a Philadelphia leaping legend of the '60s, backs Wilt, saying, "The only man that's been to the top, that's Wilt. I asked Kareem if he ever did, and he could jump a little bit. He told me, `Sonny, no.'"”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Dunking

Money, Change

“Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting anti-trust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens–to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

A 1973 Interview with Milton Friedman – Playboy Magazine
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

Way, Game

“The spectacle of human beings fighting each other for whatever reason, including, at certain well-publicized times, staggering sums of money, is enormously disturbing because it violates a taboo of our civilization. Many men and women, however they steel themselves, cannot watch a boxing match because they cannot allow themselves to see what it is they are seeing. One thinks helplessly, This can’t be happening, even as, and usually quite routinely, it is happening. In this way boxing as a public spectacle is akin to pornography: in each case the spectator is made a voyeur, distanced, yet presumably intimately involved, in an event that is not supposed to happening as it is happening. The pornographic "drama," though as fraudulent as professional wrestling, makes a claim for being about something absolutely serious, if not humanly profound: it is not so much about itself as about the violation of a taboo. That the taboo is spiritual rather than physical, or sexual — that our most valuable human experience, love, is being is being desecrated, parodied, mocked — is surely at the core of our culture’s fascination with pornography.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

On Boxing (1987)

Love, Women, Men, Money

“Innovation is usually not a gigantic step but a series of small jumps involving various enterprising people whose names are soon forgotten.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

People

“The neoclassical theory of wage determination, which I taught for 30 years and have tried to explain in my textbook … has nothing to say about fairness…. Beginning in the mid-1970s, I began to find myself in a series of roles in which I have participated in setting or controlling wages and salaries. These included sitting on three wage stabilization bodies during the Nixon and Ford administrations, as a director of two corporations, as a provost of a private university, as a president of a foundation, and as a trustee of a liberal arts college. In one of the corporations I serve as chairman of the compensation committee.
In none of these roles did I find the theory that I taught so long to be the slightest help. The factors involved in setting wages and salaries in the real world seemed to be very different from those specified in the neoclassical theory. The one factor that seemed to be of overwhelming importance in all these situations was fairness.”

Albert Rees (1921–1992) American economist

“The Role of Fairness in Wage Determination.” Journal of Labor Economics (1993)

World, Art, Universe, Help

“I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Men, Cars

“There appears to exist a general systems laws which apply to any system of a certain type, irrespective of the particular properties of the system and of the elements involved.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 37

Law, Appearance

“Do women avoid fields like engineering because of the tendency of male-dominated fields to discriminate against women? Probably not. Prior to the women's movement, engineering was no more male-dominated than medicine and law. And women have entered medicine and law by the droves. When women enter male-dominated fields, they tend to enter the more glamorous occupations. And the media reinforces this. There was L. A. Law, but no L. A. Engineering. ER doesn't mean Engineering Room. Women receive six layers of encouragement to enter fields involving engineering, computers, and math and science: first, better starting salaries than men's; second, special programs for girls in high school; third, female-only government scholarships; fourth, female-only corporate grants and scholarships; fifth, the advertising that reaches out to women to create a more female-supportive atmosphere; and sixth, special grants for science programs at leading women's colleges.”

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

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 25.

Women, Men, School, Law

“It is really a kind of a slap in [God's] face to refuse to use the abilities He gave us just because there is danger involved. Just because adultery exists is no reason to avoid marriage. Just because gluttony exists is no reason to quit eating. We shouldn't be anhedonics under the guise of spirituality. -Appalachian Melody.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

God, Marriage

“[Koko is negotiating the terms by which he can behead Nanki-Poo in his place, and they involve letting the latter be married to his fiance until he is executed]
Koko: But my position during the next month will be most unpleasant, most unpleasant!
Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Mikado (1885)

“Speaking involves inflection, it involves an understanding of the language. Too many young people today play their instruments most wonderfully – they have such command of their instrument – but it’s as though they’re speaking a foreign language, phonetically. They pronounce all the words, but they have no idea of what they’re saying. And I think that’s one of the big differences between the great artists of the time and this level of expertise that is constantly expanding and rising. As I’ve said for a long time, the level of mediocrity is constantly rising.”

Leon Fleisher (1928) American conductor and pianist

Interview with pianist Leon Fleisher http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-pianist-leon-fleisher by Elijah Ho (October 1, 2014)

People, Idea, Understanding, Thinking

“If President Obama had consulted Congress, as our Constitution requires him to do, perhaps we could have debated these questions before hastily involving ourselves in yet another Middle Eastern conflict. While the President is the commander of our armed forces, he is not a king. He may involve those forces in military conflict only when authorized by Congress or in response to an imminent threat. Neither was the case here.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

3/28/11 - Sen. Rand Paul Responds to President Obama's Address
YouTube
2011-03-28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrrV_Txg47Q
2011-03-31
regarding US participation in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya
2010s

Question

“I’m not going to be silenced on yet another attack involving Islamic extremism - especially one occurring in the state I am representing in the Senate, Australians know what the problem is. It's time this government wakes up and starts looking after Australians' welfare before those from other countries.”

Pauline Hanson (1954) Australian politician

After the death of Mia Ayliffe-Chung at Shelly’s Backpackers in Home Hill. http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/25/09/51/hanson-seizes-on-hostel-tragedy (August 25, 2016)

Problem, Silence, Time, Country

Quotes about involvement page 11

Quotes about involvement
page 11