Quotes about kindness (7474 quotes, page 33)

“When a promise is broken, the promise still remains. In one way or another, we are all unfaithful to each other, and physical unfaithfulness is not the worst kind there is.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Unfaithfulness , Way

“Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be the strangest thing of all, absolutely incomprehensible. For we are not familiar with this kind of living. We do not have solitary, isolated creatures. It is beyond our imagination to conceive of a single form of life that exists alone and independent, unattached to other forms.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

"The Youngest and Brightest Thing Around", p. 13
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

Life , Imagination

“Having written all that, I must admit that there is some soul searching going on in the economics profession. As obvious as the financial crisis seems after the fact, few economists saw it coming (with some notable exceptions). Virtually none anticipated how severe it might be. In the fall of 2005, several prominent economists wrote in a prestigious journal, “As of the end of 2004, our analysis reveals little evidence of a housing bubble.”
Wrong. Actually the article was worse than wrong, because it was written explicitly to refute the signs of a bubble that had become obvious to many laypeople—which is kind of like the fire department showing up at a house with smoke wafting from the roof and declaring, “No, that’s not a fire,” only to have flames start leaping from the attic twenty minutes later. There was a bubble. And it can be explained best by incorporating psychology into economics, namely the tendency of individuals to believe that whatever is happening now is what’s most likely to happen in the future.”

Charles Wheelan (1966) American politician

Introduction
Naked Economics (rev. and updated ed., 2010)

Soul , Search , Future , Housing

“My secret desire is for the whole world to eventually play games and for games to have the kind of influence that books and movies do. Games are a great place for the planet's collective subconscious to grow as we further our understanding of each other.”

Jeremy Soule (1975) American composer

Jeremy Soule Interview https://web.archive.org/web/20021026151734/http://www.stratosgroup.com/features/interviews.php?selected=200206jsbh (June 04, 2002).
Attributed

Secret , Books , World , Game

“Crowd mentality is a kind of simultaneous psychosis which may take possession of any group.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Farewell to Revolution (1935), p. xi, Foreword

“Do you dare
deny my
potency
my kindness
or forgiveness?”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The New Creatures

Forgiveness

“Between religion's "this is" and poetry's "but suppose this is" there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad

Religion

“He [Richter's art-mate, the German painter Sigmar Polke ] was very different, he was not cool... He had irony. He was very funny. The things we did together [around 1963 – 1970] were a kind of craziness... We thought everything was so stupid and we refused to participate. That was the basis of our understanding.... he was able to paint those little dots in his raster paintings by hand with such a patience while he was living with his two children and his wife in a small subsidized apartment.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), pp. 45-46, note 43

Children , Stupidity , Art , Understanding

“The compassion of Christ inclines Him to save sinners, —
the power of Christ enables Him to save sinners, — and the
promise of Christ binds Him to save sinners.
A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my Strength and Righteousness,
My Saviour and my All.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 82.

Christ

“As a little child, I remember having conflicts with other people over religion at 5-years-old, at 8-years-old, and without realising it. Certainly, not realising my whole life would be this whole argument. I would ask simple questions to my babysitter when I was a little boy, like, “How does Jesus turn water into wine? I know water is H2O. I know that wine is alcohol and fruit juice, and I don’t know what the chemical components of that are.” But as it turned out, when I grew up I looked it up. It is only the difference of a carbon atom. The molecules are much more complex. But they involve oxygen, hydrogen, and some additional carbons. That’s it. But all I knew at the time, water is H2O, and alcohol and fruit juice are something else. How does Jesus turn water from H2O into H2O and whatever else? I thought someone would give me some kind of intelligible answer. Like how Jesus does that, whether he uses telekinesis or whatever he does… But they don’t come up with explanations like that, they didn’t want explanations. They didn’t even want to believe people had explanations. When I was growing up, I found believers not only hated accurate scientific answers, but they hated any answer that sounded scientific. It was a funny thing. I was told all of the time that “sceptics were cynics” because we miss out on the big picture that only the believers can see.”

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

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Life , Hate , People , Alcohol

“Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves.”

Li Minqi (1969) Chinese economist

Source: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy (2008), Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"

People , Grass , Parting

“Wodehouse is very interesting. There must be all kinds of darknesses in that man's life.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Oblique dreamer (2000)

Life

“A guy called up, and in his lead, he said, "We've talked before. I used to be with US but now I'm for SELF." And I was like, "I guess we know everything now, don't we?" … I kind of laughed and I went, "I guess a lot of people are like that." And he paused and went, "Uhhh… what?"”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

And I said, "Oh, nothing."
"An Interview with Penn Jillette : The non-silent half of Penn & Teller discusses his career" http://movies.ign.com/articles/454/454422p1.html IGN (13 October 2003)
2000s

People , Guy

“Most lawyers are used to trying to win a case on some kind of technical or evidentiary ground. We had to teach them to rethink death cases. Most capital defendants are guilty.”

Morris Dees (1936) American activist

1990 Interview with Morris Dees https://www.jstor.org/stable/29759412?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Litigation (American Bar Association)

Death

“Suddenly, immediately, things took a certain shape a very brilliant creation was worked out in extraordinary detail, with marvellous experiences, contact with divine beings, and all kinds of manifestations which are considered miraculous; … One day, I went as usual to relate to Sri Aurobindo what had been happening — we had come to something really very interesting, and perhaps I showed a little enthusiasm in my account of what had taken place — then Sri Aurobindo looked at me... and said: 'Yes, this is an Overmind creation. It is very interesting, very well done. You will perform miracles which will make you famous throughout the world, you will be able to turn events on earth topsy-turvy, indeed, … ' and then he smiled and said: 'It will be a great success. But it is an Overmind creation. And it is not success that we want; we want to establish the Supermind on earth. One must know how to renounce immediate success in order to create the new world, the supramental world in its integrality.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Quoted in "Pondicherry", and also in The Mother: The Story of Her Life by Georges Van Vrekhem (2004) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=8hgG8aweqncC&pg=RA1-PT107, p. 107

World , Smile , Success

“If an abstraction is a kind of some other abstraction, or if it is exactly equal to the sum of its components, then inheritance is a better approach”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 116

“GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I may be allowed this occasion to say that, in undertaking to discharge the duties of the Chair, I relied for success rather upon your forbearance and kindly aid than upon any poor abilities of my own. That reliance, I am happy to say, has not failed me. On the contrary, the untiring efforts I feel I have made to perform the task in a becoming manner, have been met and sustained with a degree of liberality seldom equaled in any deliberative body. A striking illustration of this is seen in the fact, that notwithstanding the multiplied questions of parliamentary law and usage which have arisen, and in despite of errors into which I may have fallen, each and all the decisions of the Chair, with a single exception, (and that upon a question of minor importance,) have been generously sustained by this body. And as a further mark of respect and kindness, you have been pleased to adopt a resolution approving of my general conduct as the Presiding Officer of this body. In all this, I feel that I have been peculiarly fortunate; and for it all I beg you will accept my most sincere thanks.Allow me to congratulate you, gentlemen, upon the harmony and personal kindness which have so generally prevailed throughout this Hall. It must remain a source of unmixed pleasure to us all, that our conflicts of opinion here, however fierce they may occasionally have been, were not allowed materially to disturb our social relations; and that now, having finished our work, we part in peace. This House stands adjourned sine die.”

Linn Boyd (1800–1859) American politician

Journal Of the House of Representatives the United States: Second Session of the Thirty-Second Congress (1853-03-03)

Happiness , Pleasure , Peace , Law

“At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

"Elements That Are Wanted," Partisan Review (September/October 1940)

Faith , Perfection

“And lastly, if, after a day of rest, one should feel energised for recreation of an amorous kind, he or she must heed the cautionary chorus: ‘Never on a Sunday’.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

Feeling

“Am I to take my enjoyment of a movie as a basis for an attribution to the movie (that it is intrinsically enjoyable) or for an attribution to myself (that I have a specific kind of desire relevant to movies)? The inference as to where to locate the dispositional properties responsible for the effect is made by interpreting the raw data (the enjoyment) in the context of subsidiary information from experiment-like variations of conditions.”

Harold Kelley (1921–2003) American psychologist & academic

Source: "Attribution theory in social psychology." 1967, p. 194

“Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile — family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head — all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer — not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people.
And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all he is capable of becoming.
These are the sacred rights of Western society.”

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

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)

Life , Men , Pain , Children

“Roger: New bands.. old bands - whatever. It's kind of weird. I guess I stay out of the loop on new bands, younger bands an who's getting signed or how many records this band is making. Persoanlly I don't care about things like that. I like melodies and lyrics and songs and energy. Isn't that what's it all about?”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“Rules of simultaneous ensemble constraint can't be assumed a priori to be the kinds of rules or rest on the same foundations as rules for constraint on succession. They may well be similar, but they may well not be similar also. It seems to me that ensemble constraints must first be understood in their own terms, within musical cultures individually and comparitively, looking to what appear to be basic principles in each in light of the others, I would call such a study "comparative counterpoint.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.39.

Music , Study , Light , Appearance

“Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers, that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 1
On the Death of a Favourite Cat http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?textodfc (1747)

Art , Flowers

“I write to discover something, not so much to set down what I already know. I see ignorance and confusion all around me. I see these things in myself. I'm subject of all kinds of fears and conflicting desires. But one of those desires, the sanest one, is to see through the confusion.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

Fear

“I don't want to go to another roller-coaster ride of a movie. If I want that, I'll go to Magic Mountain. I'm really interested in the young directors that are doing different things in cinema. I think the movies people will hold onto are the Rushmores and the Being John Malkoviches. Those are the kind of films I want to do; that's what I'm passionate about.”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

Mean magazine http://www.fedge.net/~zdeschanel/articles/index.html (April 2001).

People , Mountain , Thinking , Passion

“It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor.
He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, kindness, and charity. No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention or be left to pass without its reward, even if the reward is only a word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate, though at the same time, he should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetency, and well meant shortcomings from heedless or stupid blunder.
In one word, every commander should keep constantly before him the great truth, that to be well obeyed, he must be perfectly esteemed.”

John Paul Jones (1747–1792) American naval officer

Statement long attributed to Jones, but now believed to have been written by Augustus C. Buell; Reef Points: 2003-2004, 98th Edition, U.S. Naval Academy (2003)
Misattributed

Truth , Stupidity , Education , Justice

“It is not necessary that a specific set of 2000 enzymes be assembled… Whenever a collection of chemicals contains enough different kinds of molecules, a metabolism will crystallize from the broth.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

Source: At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1996), p.45 as cited in: Gert Korthof (1998) "Kauffman at home in the Universe: The secret of life is auto-catalysis". Book review, 20 Oct 1998 ( online http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho32.htm)

“Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.”

Adam Lindsay Gordon book Sea Spray and Smoke Drift

Many quoters, including Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919), have "in our own" instead of "in your own".
Source: "Finis Exoptatus (A metaphysical Song)" (24 November 1866), Fytte 8 of Ye Wearie Wayfarer: Hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes, as published in Sea Spray and Smoke Drift http://books.google.com/books?id=xZUuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA47 (1867).

Life , Courage , Courageous

“About a year ago, I started seeing these ads in the paper for 'Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation'. First it was a little ad. The next week, it was twice as big. And after a month, it was a full page-it just took over. Something in that triggered a bunch of associations and projections. Like, what kind of activities do you have to engage in to get to the point where you need to bring a laser into the equation?”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Spin magazine, December 1999

“The way a new leader acts early in his or her job will show what kind of person he or she is. During that time frame, everyone develops their own long-lasting perception. And those perceptions—hard to change—determine how they respond to the new leadership long into the future.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 154.
On Building Trust

Way , Change , Time , Future

“…the remarkable thing about management is that a manager can go on for years making mistakes that nobody is aware of, which means that management can be a kind of a con job.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 154.

“This is a business that’s heavily promulgated by people who have a politically liberal bent. I don’t begrudge them that. I’m a libertarian; frankly, I think my liberalness goes far beyond theirs in a lot of ways. But yeah, we think differently, and maybe that’s cut me out of some things. I don’t care. People know I get along great with all kinds of directors, all kinds of actors. And I tell you, you hire me, I will show up, 24/7, and I will give you 100%. I will help you fix whatever problems come up. You hire me, I’m your boy. It’s just, it’s all about the work. And when that’s done, I am done.”

Kurt Russell (1951) American actor

Kurt Russell on 'Deepwater Horizon,' Hollywood and more http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/09/kurt_russell_on_deepwater_horizon_hollywood_and_mo.html (September 23, 2016)

People , Way , Boy , Business

“Claire threw her head and laughed. “There are all kinds of men. The only kind that’re worth anyone’s time are the ones I can’t mangle the first time out.””

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 1, Section 3 (p. 22)

Men , Time

“In Denver, Nugget Coach Dan Issel said, "As I grew up, Wilt the Stilt was the player. Just the things he was able to do. I guess one year they told him he couldn't make as much money as he wanted because he couldn't pass the ball, so he went out and led the league in assists. "Watching Wilt, you always kind of got the idea he was just playing with people. That he was on cruise control and still 10 times better than anybody else that was playing at that time."”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

[Stewart, Larry, Giant Towered Over the Rest, The Los Angeles Times, 1999-10-13]
Scoring

Money , People , Idea , Time

“As soon as you establish concrete intention, you begin to notice all kinds of things in your world that relate to that intention. Ideas and opportunities seem to appear from nowhere, almost as though by magic.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

World , Idea , Appearance

“If I never make another film, I don't care as long as I'm true to what I believe in, which is being kind.”

Sienna Miller (1981) British-American actress

As reported by ALISON BOSHOFF Evening Standard, http://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-girl-who-wooed-jude-6973678.html

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain (1940)

Love

“You can say with safety that nowadays women have finally acknowledged their position of not liking men. We could say now that women don't like men. They can acknowledge that they prefer the company of their own kind. I think we can also say generally that most men do not like other men. Most men prefer to like women. So women are the most liked by the most people. Men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters. A one-way slide. There is little going back the other way. Can hamsters love children? I leave you to deduce the rest.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Palmira
8 1/2 Women

Love , Women , Men , Children

“Zeev Sternhell has conclusively demonstrated that nearly all the ideas found in fascism first appeared in France. The fusion of racial nationalism with revolutionary and semicollectivist socioeconomic aspirations first occurred there, and in parallel fashion France was the first major country in which the revolutionary left rejected parliamentarianism while supporting a kind of nationalism.”

Stanley G. Payne (1934) American historian

Source: Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980), A History of Fascism, 1914—1945 (1995), p. 291

Idea , Fashion , Support , Appearance

“Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?”
“No trouble at all,” said Calvin, annoyed. “Why do you think I want to cause trouble?”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“Because you are awake.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 4.

Thinking

“If you're involved with imagination and the creative process, it's not such a difficult thing to believe in a God. But I'm not involved in any religions, and I've never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

"Interview with Nick Cave" http://www.musicomh.com/music/features/nick-cave_0308.htm, musicOMH (March, 2008)
God and religion

God , Religion , Imagination

“I would say off the cuff that I am an anxious person. I worry about everything. I need to know everything. I tend to live in a state of anxiety with the feeling that life is some kind of great catastrophe. I feel the desire, or rather the intense need, to do something useful for society, and that is what stimulates me. In every situation I always look for what is positive and beneficial for my fellow citizens. I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy — but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

As quoted in "Antoni Tapies" by Serafin Garcia Ibanez in the UNESCO Courier (June 1994) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1994_June/ai_15630919/print?tag=artBody;col1.
1991 - 2000

Life , Feeling , Study , Personality

“Since World War Two, Britain's elite has suffered from a collective collapse of cultural nerve. Many things contributed: postwar exhaustion, the collapse of the British Empire (and therefore of national purpose), and post-colonial flagellatory guilt of the kind that white western liberals have made their specialty. This left the British establishment vulnerable to the revolutionary ideology of the New Left, at the core of which lay a hatred of western society. As a consequence, the British elite decided not only that the British nation was an embarrassment but also that the very idea of the nation was an anachronism.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

"The Country That Hates Itself" http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-country-that-hates-itself (June 16, 2006)

War , World , Idea , Suffering

“Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

May 25, 1932
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Love , Pleasure , World , Art

“Pseudo‑events spawn other pseudo‑events in geometric progression. This is partly because every kind of pseudo-event (being planned) tends to become ritualized, with a protocol and a rigidity all its own. As each type of pseudo-event acquires this rigidity, pressures arise to produce other, derivative, forms of pseudo‑event which are more fluid, more tantalizing, and more interestingly ambiguous.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 33.

“He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle — a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"Philip Lamantia — S.F. Surrealist poet", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/11/BAG4MBNRMF1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-03-11.: On her late husband, the poet Philip Lamantia.
2000s

World , Night

“the question to ask, in other, is not "What is the multitude?" but rather "What can the multitude become?" … common condition, of course, does not mean sameness or unity, but it does require that no differences of nature or kind divide the multitude.”

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

(105-106)
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Question , Nature

“Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

Heart

“Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 186
Faith and Politics (2006)

People , World , Heart

“Herman Cain: My reaction is, that is very insensitive. There are some words that do not basically inspire the kind of negativity like that particular word. And I know that you've refrained from saying that word, so I'm going to say what the word was on the rock. The name of the place was called "Niggerhead". That is very insensitive. And since Governor Perry has been going there for years to hunt, I think that shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking that word off of that rock and renaming the place. It's just a basic case of insensitivity.
Christiane Amanpour: It was painted over.
Herman Cain: Yes, it was painted over. But how long ago was it painted over? So I'm still saying that it is a sign of insensitivity.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Thinking , Time , Painting

“I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

On playing the Man With No Name character
Source: Clint: The Life and Legend (1999), p. 133.

Feeling , Imagination , Time , Past

“The true love is a state of half-madness, of some kind of soft obsession, ruling a so delicate kind of feeling that can lead a person from the greatest happiness to the most dreadful pain.”

Lima Barreto book Clara dos Anjos

Clara dos Anjos (1948)

Love , Pain , Happiness , Feeling

“We had two masters of the spoken word in South Africa, General Smuts and his lieutenant J. H. Hofmeyr, whose life I wrote. Smuts spoke in a high-pitched voice, not the kind of voice that one would expect from a famous soldier, but he too could hold an audience in the hollow of his hand, partly because he was Smuts, partly because he could say nothing trite or shallow, partly because he knew how to speak to ordinary men and women.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Alan Paton on Smuts's oratory, in Paton's final essay, A Literary Remembrance, published posthumously in TIME, 25 April 1988, p. 106.

Life , Women , Men

“Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. …it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most nonscientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve. …by the time science becomes a closed—that is, computerizable—project, it is not science anymore. It is not in the area of the exploration of errors.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978)

Age , Error , Feeling , Imagination

“It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character came of the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), pp. 17

Justice , Way , Reality

“Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 381 (17 May 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750
Leader of the Opposition

People , Truth , History , Communication

“Formal debate is a kind of game. In the time limit, the order of speakers, the alternation of sides, the give and take of rebuttal, the fixed rules of conduct, the ethics of the contest, the qualifications for success, and the final awarding of victory, debate has much in common with tennis.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 281

Game , Time , Success , Victory

“What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.”

Michael Swanwick (1950) American science fiction author

Source: In the Drift (1985), Chapter 4, “Mutagen Fair” (p. 130)

Men , People , World , Law

“Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man.”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

Larry King interview (2005)

Life , Change

“My sense of rhyme used to be more involved in my songwriting than it is… Still staying in the unconscious frame of mind, you can pull yourself out and throw up two rhymes first and work it back. You get the rhymes first and work it back and then see if you can make it make sense in another kind of way. You can still stay in the unconscious frame of mind to pull it off, which is the state of mind you have to be in anyway.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Bob Dylan: The Song Talk Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/1991zollo.htm by Paul Zollo (1991)

Way , Sense

“These days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 32 “The Fir-Cones” (p. 174)

Knowledge , Passion , Future

“A structure-less painting is, to me, a painting that does not matter. Structure mirrors your degree of responsibility toward the work. You can’t just let it float around in pretty colors. It needs a kind of core. But this is an inner structure. It does correspond to being a geologist — the metaphor may be trite, but it works. Like when you see these breathtaking mountains in strange colors in eastern Greenland. As a geologist, you want to know what exactly they’re doing.”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

1995 and later, interview in Kirkeby’s home studio, Copenhagen (2012)

Color , Mountain , Painting

“No, there is no world-wide standard for the determination of provincialism. There is only one standard by which to judge men and women, and that standard is not so much one of brains and education as it is of culture and heart. Kindness seems to be the one golden metewand by which to measure how really civilized and catholic one may be.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter VI

Women , Men , World , Education

“Had the Pilgrim Fathers been met on Plymouth Rock by immigration officials; had their children been placed immediately in good free schools, and given the care of doctors, dentists, and nurses; had they found themselves in infinitely better circumstances than they had ever enjoyed in England, indulging in undreamed-of luxuries, and taught by kind-hearted philanthropists,—what pioneer virtues would they have developed, what sons would they have bred, what honours would history have accorded them? If our early settlers were masterful, they earned the right to mastery, and the price they paid for it was endurance. To the sacrifices which they made, to their high courage and heroic labours, we owe law, liberty, and well-being.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "The Modest Immigrant" (1916)

Children , School , Law , History

“When Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!" said he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

34 Philip
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Success

“Here sees he the illustrious dead
Who fighting for their country bled;
Priests who while earthly life remained
Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained;
Blest bards, transparent souls and clear,
Whose song was worthy Phoebus' ear;
Inventors who by arts refined
The common lot of human kind,
With all who grateful memory won
By services to others done:
A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 217

Life , Art , Soul , Memory

“Wadih el-Hage was one of our brothers whom God was kind enough to steer to the path of relief work for Afghan refugees. I still remember him, though I have not seen him or heard from him for many years. He has nothing to do with the U. S. allegations. As for Mohamed Rashed al-'Owhali, we were informed that he is a Saudi from the province of Najd. The fact of the matter is that America, and in particular the CIA, wanted to cover up its failure in the aftermath of the events that took place in Riyadh, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Capetown, Kampala--and other places, God willing, in the future--by arresting any person who had participated in the Islamic jihad in Afghanistan. We pray to God to end the plight, and we are confident they will be exonerated.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'But all those arrested are said to have been associated with you.'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

God , Confidence , Failure , Future

“The standard Christian conscience does not permit the believer to look upon the self and find beauty, goodness, natural kindness, strength. Self-knowledge is tainted with self-hatred. The rules of the game of the Christian conscience are such that, when I look within, I must take the blame for all evil, all hardness of the heart that I find, but give God all the credit for any evidence of love. … It is not surprising that the practice of meditation … has remained under a cloud in the West, and that we have, consequently, created a culture of extroverts.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 162

Love , God , Beauty , Game

“What we have now come to regard as typical of Middle Eastern regimes is not typical of the past. The regime of Saddam Hussein, the regime of Hafiz al Assad, this kind of government, this kind of society, has no roots either in the Arab or in the Islamic past. It is due and let me be quite specific and explicit it is due to an importation from Europe, which comes in two phases.
Phase one, the 19th century, when they are becoming aware of their falling behind the modern world and need desperately to catch up, so they adopt all kinds of European devices with the best of intentions, which nevertheless have two harmful effects. One, they enormously strengthen the power of the state by placing in the hands of the ruler, weaponry and communication undreamt of in earlier times, so that even the smallest petty tyrant has greater powers over his people than Harun al-Rashid or Suleyman the Magnificent, or any of the legendary rulers of the past.
Second, even more deadly, in the traditional society there were many, many limits on the autocracy, the ruler. The whole Islamic political tradition is strongly against despotism. Traditional Islamic government is authoritarian, yes, but it is not despotic. On the contrary, there is a quite explicit rejection of despotism. And this wasn't just in theory; it was in practice too because in Islamic society, there were all sorts of established orders in society that acted as a restraining factor. The bazaar merchants, the craft guilds, the country gentry and the scribes, all of these were well organized groups who produced their own leaders from within the group. They were not appointed or dismissed by the governments. And they did operate effectively as a constraint.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

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

People , World , Communication , Time

“Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as Speed, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-1994 of Speed (10 June 1994)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Personality , Speed

“My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 375)

Pleasure

“My memoirs "On the Mechanical Theory of Heat" are of different kinds. Some are devoted to the development of the general theory and to the application thereof to those properties of bodies which are usually treated of in the doctrine of heat. Others have reference to the application of the mechanical theory of heat to electricity. …Other memoirs… have reference to the conceptions I have formed of the molecular motions which we call heat. These conceptions, however, have no necessary connexion with the general theory, the latter being based solely on certain principles which may be accepted without adopting any particular view as to the nature of molecular motions. I have therefore kept the consideration of molecular motions quite distinct from the exposition of the general theory.”

Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) German mathematical physicist

Preface (August, 1864)
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Nature

“Iraqis have not had a permanent constitution since 1958. This process of engaging society as a whole in its own future, engaging it once again in the idea of a permanent constitution, is a beginning, it seems to me, of creating the kind of civil society that we hope to see flourish in Iraq once again.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"This way to the promised land", Globe and Mail (April 10, 2003)

Hope , Idea , Future

“What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Bomb-O-Gram, p. 31
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

People , History

“I came to MIT from Harvard University, where I was a lecturer. I had been at the Harvard Psychoacoustic Laboratory during World War II and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer, mainly doing research, but also a little bit of teaching—statistics and physiological psychology—subjects like that.
Then there came a time that I thought that I had better go pay attention to my career. I had just been having a marvelous time there. I am not a good looker for jobs; I just came to the nearest place I could, which was in our city. I arranged to come down here and start up a psychology section, which we hoped would eventually become a psychology department. For the purposes of having a base of some kind I was in the Electrical Engineering Department. I even taught a little bit of electrical engineering.
I fell in love with the summer study process that MIT had. They had one on undersea warfare and overseas transport—a thing called Project Hartwell. I really liked that. It was getting physicists, mathematicians—everybody who could contribute—to work very intensively for a period of two or three months. After Hartwell there was a project called Project Charles, which was actually two years long (two summers and the time in between). It was on air defense. I was a member of that study. They needed one psychologist and 20 physicists. That led to the creation of the Lincoln Laboratory. It got started immediately as the applied section of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which was already a growing concern at MIT.”

J. C. R. Licklider (1915–1990) American psychologist and computer scientist

Licklider in: " An Interview with J. C. R. LICKLIDER http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107436/1/oh150jcl.pdf" conducted by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg on 28 October 1988, Cambridge, MA.

Love , War , World , Hope

“The image that creates this thinking gives rise to a feeling of evidence and a conviction that it is not based on reason. This kind of thinking explains the reaction we so often note among our contemporaries: when someone asks them to give the reason for their opinions, they answer: "It’s evident." This thinking, which creates prejudices and stereotypes, is the domain of the unquestionable. Obviously you cannot dispute with an image, and you cannot challenge the hero of a film. But this extends to the mental images produced by the film: there is no criticism or debate possible, because these involve differing methods of thought. What produces immediate assent cannot bear the discussion process. The conviction acquired in this way can only be attacked on its own ground: by other images.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 213
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

Way , Feeling , Thinking

“Pollock was terrific. I think he freed himself of all kinds of worry about this world. Ran around and dripped, and then he managed to express ecstasy.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1980 - 2000, Perfection Is in the Mind', 1995

World , Thinking

“Architecturally, the town looked like the worst of all possible cheap-and-sleazy tract developments, but the psychic texture it projected was even more depressing, more like that of one of those ghastly retirement communities, one of the innumerable Leisure Worlds or Sun Manors, those childless joyless retreats where colonies of that other kind of living dead collected to await the last trumpet.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Short fiction, Born with the Dead (1974)

World , Communication , Sun , Dead

“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”

Neil Gaiman book Coraline

Coraline (2002)

“The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they’ve been at other times.”

Angus Wilson (1913–1991) british author

Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series (New York: Viking Press, [1958] 1959) p. 261.

People , World , Time

“Two currents of ideas are very prominent in modern thought and culture. On the one hand, there is an intense commitment to truthfulness--or, at any rate, a pervasive suspiciousness, a readiness against being fooled, an eagerness to see through appearances to the real structures and motives that lie behind them. Always familiar in politics, it stretches to historical understanding, to the social sciences, and even to interpretations of discoveries and research in the natural sciences.
Together with this demand for truthfulness, however, or (to put it less positively) this reflex against deceptiveness, there is an equally pervasive suspicion about truth itself: whether there is such a thing; if there is, whether it can be more than relative or subjective or something of that kind; altogether, whether we should bother about it, in carrying on our activities or in giving an account of them. These two things, the devotion to truthfulness and the suspicion directed to the idea of truth, are connected to one other. The desire for truthfulness drives a process of criticism which weakens the assurance that there is any secure or unqualifiedly stateable truth.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 1; Chapter 1: The problem

Truth , Lie , Fools , Motivation

“The history of the Romanovs is an Elizabethan tragedy that lasts for three centuries. Its keynote is cruelty, a barbaric, pointless kind of cruelty that has always been common in the East, but that came to Europe only recently, in the time of Hitler.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs (1964), p. 61-62

History , Time

“Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectifications of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Hope , Idea , Past

“That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.”

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

"In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens." http://www.johannhari.com/2004/09/23/in-enemy-territory-an-interview-with-christopher-hitchens, Interview with Johann Hari (2004-09-23): On the Bosnian War
2000s, 2004

War , People , Support , Change

“When taken as a way of modeling cognitive architecture, connectionism really does represent an approach that is quite different from that of the classical cognitive science that it seeks to replace. Classical models of the mind were derived from the structure of Turing and Von Neumann machines. They are not, of course, committed to the details of these machines as exemplified in Turing's original formulation or in typical commercial computers—only to the basic idea that the kind of computing that is relevant to understanding cognition involves operations on symbols.. In contrast, connectionists propose to design systems that can exhibit intelligent behavior without storing, retrieving, or otherwise operating on structured symbolic expressions. The style of processing carried out in such models is thus strikingly unlike what goes on when conventional machines are computing some function.”

Zenon Pylyshyn (1937) Canadian philosopher

Jerry A. Fodor, and Zenon W. Pylyshyn. "Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis." Cognition 28.1-2 (1988): 3-71.

Way , Behavior , Intelligence , Idea

“[On inspiration]: I think it comes from anxiety. That is to say, either the mind or the body is already rather highly charged and in need of some kind of expression, some way to crystallize and relieve the pressure. And it seems to me that if you’re in that condition and an idea, an insight, an association occurs to you, then that energy is released through the expression of that insight or idea, and after the poem is written, you feel a certain resolution and calmness. Well, I won’t say a “momentary stay against confusion” (Robert Frost’s phrase) but that’s what I mean. I think it comes from that. You know, Bloom says somewhere that poetry is anxiety.”

A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet

Paris Review interview (1996)

Way , Feeling , Idea , Thinking

“Yoga teaches that whatever we want in life we can have if we are willing to provide it for others. So if yogis want to be free, they understand that to deprive others of freedom will ultimately not benefit their project—to be free themselves. Following that logic, yogis abhor slavery and examine their own lives to find ways that they themselves might be condoning slavery and then eradicate those ways of acting. The fact is that animals who are raised for food are slaves. Making kind choices when it comes to the food we eat is one of the most basic ways to begin to ensure our own happiness and freedom. The cause for our own happiness, health, and freedom lies in how happy and free we can make the lives of others. The definition of others includes other animals.”

Sharon Gannon (1951) American yoga teacher

Simple Recipes for Joy (2014)

Life , Happiness , Health , Food

“and liars kill their kind
but' her, my 'love creates love only' our”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), XXXII

Love

“Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842)

Life , Health , Error , Communication

“It is seen as the application of a systematic “scientific method” involving wearing a white coat and being dull. I feel that too many young people come into science with this view, and that too many fields degenerate into the kind of work which results: automatic crank-turning and data-collecting of the sort which Kuhn calls “normal science” and Rutherford “stamp-collecting”. In fact, the creation of new science is a creative act, literally, and people who are not creative are not very good at it.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

in Some ideas on the Aesthetics of Science, address presented by Philip W. Anderson as the Nishina Memorial Lecture at the 50th Anniversary Seminar of the Faculty of Science&Technology, at Keio University (Tokyo), on May 18, 1989.

People , Feeling , Science

“There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction… The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Source: My View of the World (1951), Chapter 4

Wisdom , Falseness

“Our love is kind of stalled, baby.
But it ain't about the sex.
I'd trade the roses and the negligees
If we could just connect.
I go deeper when you look into my eyes.
There's a place where neither one of us can hide.
And it's up to us to reinvent the game.
Love it when you call my name.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

I Got the Feelin (1968)
Song lyrics

Love , Sex , Game , Baby

“I understand where Bill Maher is coming from when he says, basically, the world is destroying itself over a bunch of fairy tales about talking snakes and men who are alive inside fishes. I'm very sympathetic to it, but at the same time, given the cosmos that we're living in, it's very persuasive, the idea that there is some kind of first cause that's running things. It might not be the god of Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, it might not be the god of al-Qaida, and it might not be the god of Abraham, but something very well could be running things. The order of the universe as we see it, the interlocking nature, and the way things work together, are persuasive of the idea that there may be some overarching first cause.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

[John, Marks, http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/10/23/stephen_king/print.html, Stephen King's God trip, Salon.com, 2008-10-23, 2008-10-23]

Men , God , World , Way

“Now, that brings me to the Liberal Party. I gather that during the last few days there have been some ill-natured jokes about their new symbol, a bird of some kind, adopted by the Liberal Democrats at Blackpool. Politics is a serious business, and one should not lower the tone unduly. So I will say only this of the Liberal Democrat symbol and of the party it symbolises. This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. And now for something completely different.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108217. Partially quoting from Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#Dead_Parrot_Sketch.
Third term as Prime Minister

Business , Nature , Bird