Quotes about kindness (7466 quotes, page 39)

“A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid. And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it. Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

The Raven Cycle Series, The Dream Thieves (2013)

People , Secret , Time

“These burdens and frustrations are accepted by most Americans with maturity and understanding. They may long for the days when war meant charging up San Juan Hill-or when our isolation was guarded by two oceans — or when the atomic bomb was ours alone — or when much of the industrialized world depended upon our resources and our aid. But they now know that those days are gone — and that gone with them are the old policies and the old complacency's. And they know, too, that we must make the best of our new problems and our new opportunities, whatever the risk and the cost.
But there are others who cannot bear the burden of a long twilight struggle. They lack confidence in our long-run capacity to survive and succeed. Hating communism, yet they see communism in the long run, perhaps, as the wave of the future. And they want some quick and easy and final and cheap solution — now.
There are two groups of these frustrated citizens, far apart in their views yet very much alike in their approach. On the one hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of surrender-appeasing our enemies, compromising our commitments, purchasing peace at any price, disavowing our arms, our friends, our obligations. If their view had prevailed, the world of free choice would be smaller today.
On the other hand are those who urge upon us what I regard to be the pathway of war: equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness. If their view had prevailed, we would be at war today, and in more than one place.
It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead. Each side sees only "hard" and "soft" nations, hard and soft policies, hard and soft men. Each believes that any departure from its own course inevitably leads to the other: one group believes that any peaceful solution means appeasement; the other believes that any arms build-up means war. One group regards everyone else as warmongers, the other regards everyone else as appeasers. Neither side admits that its path will lead to disaster — but neither can tell us how or where to draw the line once we descend the slippery slopes of appeasement or constant intervention.
In short, while both extremes profess to be the true realists of our time, neither could be more unrealistic. While both claim to be doing the nation a service, they could do it no greater disservice. This kind of talk and easy solutions to difficult problems, if believed, could inspire a lack of confidence among our people when they must all — above all else — be united in recognizing the long and difficult days that lie ahead. It could inspire uncertainty among our allies when above all else they must be confident in us. And even more dangerously, it could, if believed, inspire doubt among our adversaries when they must above all be convinced that we will defend our vital interests.
The essential fact that both of these groups fail to grasp is that diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail. A willingness to resist force, unaccompanied by a willingness to talk, could provoke belligerence — while a willingness to talk, unaccompanied by a willingness to resist force, could invite disaster.”

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

1961, Address at the University of Washington

Men , Hate , War , People

“I began to write what I called 'rhythms' ie unrhymed pieces with no formal metrical scheme where the rhythm was created by a kind if inner chant.. Later I was told I was writing 'free verse' or Vers libre.”

Richard Aldington (1892–1962) English writer and poet

Introduction to Collected Poems, 1929

“On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. Cameras surrounded him. The energy in the room – and on Twitter – was electric. At last, the reluctant CEO is made to answer some questions! Except it failed. It was designed to fail. It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in Washington DC. It was a show that gave the pretense of a hearing without a real hearing. It was designed to deflect and confuse. … The worst moments of the hearing for us, as citizens, were when senators asked if Zuckerberg would support legislation that would regulate Facebook. I don’t care whether Zuckerberg supports Honest Ads or privacy laws or GDPR. By asking him if he would support legislation, the senators elevated him to a kind of co-equal philosopher king whose view on Facebook regulation carried special weight. It shouldn’t. Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. It has exposed at least 87 million people’s data, enabled foreign propaganda and perpetuated discrimination. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation. We should treat him as a danger to democracy and demand our senators get a real hearing.”

Zephyr Teachout (1971) American academic, political activist and candidate

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-hearing-sham?CMP=fb_gu (11 April 2018), The Guardian.

People , Law , Democracy , Question

“I pointed to the side of the road and then I pulled over and parked. When the guy got out of the car he was stripped to the waist. A typical young macho stud. He put his face within two inches of mine, and he was telling me what I was and what he was going to do to me. So I did the natural thing. I reached in and got a headlock on him, and I had him very firmly while he thrashed around. I felt I was doing just fine because I had stopped what was going on, but his girlfriend decided that he wasn't doing very well. So she ran and jumped on us. They both fell on top of me and my head crashed into the pavement. I landed on my left ear, got a hairline fracture and concussion.
[…]
It was like some kind of nether world. Most of the time I didn't know where I was. Like I'd wake up and find I. V. units in my arm, and I'd rip 'em out and say, "What kind of a hotel is this? You tell them I'm never coming here again."
[…]
When I came home from the hospital I was having terrible nightmares every night, sometimes to the point where I started not wanting to go to sleep. And I still have occasional migraines, dry eyes and short-term memory loss.
[…]
If I discovered anything in that strange, 10-month period of recovery, it's that music is the one thing that makes me sane.”

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

As quoted in "Fischer: A Ferocious Teddy Bear" http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-03/entertainment/ca-1426_1_teddy-bear

World , Music , Cars , Guy

“Man lives in a paradoxical world where his human development is hamstrung by the fact that the only kind of free scientific inquiry he does not allow himself is the pursuit of human truth, and the only kind of audacity in engineering enterprise which is alien to his nature is the undertaking of moral intervention in the lives of others.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process (1971)

Truth , World , Nature

“In a big picture you can see what o'clock it is afternoon or morning if it's hot or cold winter or summer & what kind of people are there & what they are doing and why they are doing it. The sentiments run beyond words. If a man makes a hot day he makes it like a hot day he once saw or is seeing if a sweet face a face he once saw or which he imagines from old memories or parts of memories & his knowledge and he combines never creates but at the very first combination no man & less of all himself could ever disentangle the feelings that animated him just then & refer each one to its right place.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Benjamin Eakins (1868-03-03).

People , Feeling , Imagination , Knowledge

“Treating a person as though he were generally rather than specifically deviant produces a self-fulfilling prophecy. It sets in motion several mechanisms which conspire to shape the person in the image people have of him. It the first place, one tends to be cut off, after being identified as deviant, from participation in more conventional groups, even though the specific consequences of the particular deviant activity might never of themselves have caused the isolation had there not also been the public knowledge and reaction to it. For example, being a homosexual may not affect one’s ability to do office work, but to be known as a homosexual in an office may make it impossible to continue working there. Similarly, though the effects of opiate drugs may not impair one’s working ability, to be known as an addict will probably lead to losing one’s job… The homosexual who is deprived of a “respectable” job by the discovery of his deviance may drift into unconventional, marginal occupations where it does not make so much difference. The drug addict finds himself forced into other illegitimate kinds of activity, such as robbery and theft, by the refusal of respectable employers to have him around.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), p. 34.

People , Knowledge , Personality

“Kindness and friendliness become aspects of personalized service or of public relations of big firms, rationalized to further the sale of something. With anonymous insincerity, the Successful Person thus makes an instrument of his own appearance and personality.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Appearance , Success , Personality

“The Rifles were a new kind of regiment, prizing skill and intelligence above blind discipline.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Prey (2001)

Intelligence

“At fifteen years of age, when first my parents settled down in London (temporarily as they thought) I had never been in England, never had an English friend or English governess, or English tuition of any sort or kind. I did not speak one word of English. Then how did it all come about? Neo-Victorians and Neo-Georgians will put it down to destiny; others to predestination. I, in my humble way, put it down to the Will of God. And looking back on my long life and its many changes I can trace the links of my chain of life that began on the great plains of Hungary, continued through the heart of London, and find me now at this hour of writing this book in Monte Carlo jotting down all that I can remember of those links which led me one by one to the conception of my first literary work. If any one of those links had not been, if any turn of event in my life had been different, I would probably have ended my days in the country of my birth and known nothing of the happiness which comes from love, from the affection of friends (such as one meets in England) and from success in the work to which I devoted so many years of my life.”

Emma Orczy (1865–1947) Hungarian-British author of "The Scarlet Pimpernel"

Source: Links in the Chain of Life (1947), Ch. 1

Love , Life , God , Books

“Roger: Umm.. I don't know! It's kind of um.. a little more.. it's more in the darks of being really singy songy. It's nothing super blazing fast. There's not any super slow reggae kind of thing that we've done before. It's not like that. It's sort of in the tempo and sort of really poppy and really catchy. There's some really good stuff. There are some songs I'm really excited about. It's always been melody based I think. When we did our last record, we wrote like 32 songs and they ended coming out on two separate CDs. And this time we didn't really do that! We kind of just took 15 ideas and used those as the focal point and then we wrote around those and just improved on those 14 and kept bringing things in and out of those songs as opposed to having a whole bunch of songs. Whether that's better or not, I don't know. It definitely seems a bit more focused. We don't have a bunch of extra songs or anything like that. When is was time to actually record, we have everything pretty well sorted and that was cool. There's definitely some good stuff on there.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Idea , Thinking , Time

“I found at this point that effective acting wasn't what I wanted to do, that I didn't want to make effects, that I wanted, as it were, to leave an impression of a particular kind of human being.”

Paul Scofield (1922–2008) English actor

Quoted in Garry O'Connor, Paul Scofield: An Actor for All Seasons (Applause Books, 2002, ISBN 1-557-83499-7), ch. 22 (p. 131)

“Sea turtles of all kinds are peculiarly prone to eat plastic scraps and other buoyant debris and to tangle themselved in lines and netting discarded by fishermen, and records of such mishaps have increased markedly in recent years.”

Archie Carr (1909–1987) American university professor, zoologist, herpetologist, conservationist

[Impact of nondegradable marine debris on the ecology and survival outlook of sea turtles, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 18, 6, June 1987, 352–356, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X87800255] (quote from p. 352)

Sea

“The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning."”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."
Quoted in "John Gray at the Writers' Festival, part 1," http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2008/2284016.htm The Philosopher's Zone, a discussion with Alan Saunders on ABC Radio National (2008-06-28)

People , World , Way , History

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937).
1937

Love , Children , People , World

“The sad fact is that not only is the youth exposed to rock, but rock is coming into the church. So called Christian rock; and it’s being sung by the choir. You actually hear now and then about a rock mass or a rock service. I spoke a few years ago at a church which was…I’ll never be asked about. A very large church with a plant that was equal to a small college campus, and I don’t mean too small of a college, a fair sized one. They had a number of choirs; they had one man in charge of all the music in the church, overall music director, a very brilliant, very intelligent man, but as wrongheaded as I’ve ever seen. Because he told me that his belief was that the only kind of music that should be played or sung or used in a church or any place was throw away music; that was his term. Music that was hip, so up to the moment, that it would capture the mood of the youth who were listening to the latest on television or radio. Music which six months down the line would be out of date because it would be throw away music, music of the moment, in order to speak to the youth. And I tried to get through this point to him, that speaking to them in terms of what’s of the moment is not what it’s all about it, it’s speaking from the Lord with eternal truths.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

Truth , Youth , Sadness , Music

“We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It's the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

World , Smile , Feeling , Help

“This is organized crime and there is a network all over the country. It's been going on for centuries and is passed down from generation to generation. The mothers teach their daughters… The psychics you see in the storefront who are dressed kind of shabby and don't have that much money actually are the same people who when they drive away go live in a million dollar house on the Intracoastal and they're driving around in a Maserati… It leaves the victims penniless and emotionally broken.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

Bob Nygaard: Boca Raton private investigator says south Florida is a hotbed for fake fortune tellers https://web.archive.org/web/20160414094952/https://www.wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-beach-county/boca-raton/a-boca-raton-private-investigator-says-south-florida-is-a-hotbed-for-fake-fortune-tellers, WPTV West Palm Beach (14 April 2016)

Money , People , Housing , Daughters

“No, I wasn’t very smart, this I knew, but I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, I was some kind of crazy-loco genius, burro genius. I mean, to have been able to hold on to my Spirit for this long had to mean something.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Thinking

“Everything has an ending: there will be
An ending one sad day for you and me,
And ending of the days we had together,
The good companionship, all kinds of weather.”

Katharine Tynan (1859–1931) Irish poet

Everything has an Ending.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sadness , Weather

“My journey began with me. I was the one who came into this world, and learned how to walk, and how to fall. I was the one who had to live with me every single day of my life. The world told me, 'There is something out there for you. Go look for it.' But somebody who was very kind and very generous said to me, 'For the answer, look within. Within you is where your journey begins and ends.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Paris, France June 1997
1990s

Life , World , Learning

“We're extremely fortunate
not to know precisely
the kind of world we live in.
One would have
to live a long, long time,
unquestionably longer
than the world itself.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"We're Extremely Fortunate"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The End and the Beginning (1993)

World , Time

“'A'isha reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Allah is kind and loves kindness and gives for gentleness what he does not give for harshness nor for anything else."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 634
Sunni Hadith

Love , Peace

“I learn from thinking about the future, what hasn't been done yet. That's kind of my constant obsession.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale Quotes, inspirationalstories.com, 16 November 2012 http://www.inspirationalstories.com/quotes/t/john-cale/,

Thinking , Learning , Future

“I can’t really imagine war. I can imagine having to fight some swarm of zombie machines or snarling horde of posthuman fast-burn wreckage or whatever, but not two or more actual human societies actually fighting each other. I’m aware that people did that, before history, before the Moon, but it seems irrational. One side would have to believe they had something to gain from destroying or damaging the other, which just doesn’t make sense: it runs up against the law of association. And more to the point, each individual on any side would have to believe that they benefited from participating even if they died, which doesn’t make sense either. I suppose kin selection could make genes prevalent that made people vulnerable to that kind of illusion, but that only makes sense with animals that don’t have foresight. Even crows aren’t that stupid, at least not the ones that can talk. You have to get down to ants and such like before you see that kind of genetic mechanical mindlessness.”

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 9 “Red Sun Circle” (pp. 134-135)

War , People , Stupidity , Law

“What would happen to a reptile if you put him in the Garden of Eden and let him live to be 900 years old? You'd have a big lizard - a really big lizard! Dinosaurs were big lizards that lived with Adam and Eve before the Flood came. You can get these Jackson chameleons right now at the pet store. What's he going to look like at about 15 tons? Probably some kind of triceratops.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

““I hate students,” [Zizek] said, “they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.
In a recent interview at this year’s Zizek Conference in Ohio, Zizek talked about his personal life before delving into his thoughts on teaching. “I hate giving classes,” Zizek said, citing office hours and grading papers as his two biggest peeves. “I did teach a class here [at the University of Cincinnati] and all of the grading was pure bluff,” he continues. “I even told students at the New School for example… if you don’t give me any of your shitty papers, you get an A. If you give me a paper I may read it and not like it and you can get a lower grade.” He received no papers that semester. But it’s office hours that are the main reason he does not want to teach.
“I can’t imagine a worse experience than some idiot comes there and starts to ask you questions, which is still tolerable. The problem is that here in the United States students tend to be so open that sooner or later, if you’re kind to them, they even start to ask you personal questions [about] private problems… What should I tell them?”
“I don’t care,” he continued. “Kill yourself. It’s not my problem,””

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

As quoted by Eugene Wolters, " Professor of the Year: 'If You Don't Give Me Any of Your Shitty Papers You Get an A http://www.critical-theory.com/professor-of-the-year-if-you-dont-give-me-any-of-your-shitty-papers-you-get-an-a/'", Critical-Theory.com, May 26 2014; square brackets and lack of accent marks as in orginal

Life , Hate , People , Stupidity

“There are only two kinds of arguments for euthanasia. The first is based on owning your life. Already in the last century, some philosophers and novelists began to talk of suicide as the ultimate act of self-control or self-possession. That is, of course, an illusion, for death is the surrender of all control or possession; and killing oneself is always an act of despair. It means a person has given up all hope. The second kind of argument is based on escaping from suffering. In actual fact, pain control is so far advanced now that suffering can be alleviated in almost all cases. The fear of suffering, however, creates a strong case for accepting a “right to die.””

Francis George (1937–2015) Catholic cardinal

Right or no right, we will all die. The basic question, therefore, is always: since I must die, what is the meaning of life?
"Cardinal's Column", The Catholic New World (December 27, 1998)

Life , Death , Pain , Fear

“'A'isha reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Allah is kind and loves kindness in every matter."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 633
Sunni Hadith
Variant: Anas reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "O Allah, there is no life but the life of the Next World."

Love , Peace

“You just can't have this kind of war. There aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

In 1957, as quoted in No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_klAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=%22there+aren%27t+enough+bulldozers+to+scrape+the+bodies+off+the+streets%22&source=bl&ots=g2f8x1zwaq&sig=JxpjSjWSWqsTKHpxnfAjjmW2ibU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMI6cCQsa6SxgIVAWitCh3TUwty#v=onepage&q=%22there%20aren't%20enough%20bulldozers%20to%20scrape%20the%20bodies%20off%20the%20streets%22&f=false, by Thomas M. Nichols.
1950s

War

“Mama and Daddy King represent the best in manhood and womanhood, the best in a marriage, the kind of people we are trying to become.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the parents of her husband, in The Christian Science Monitor (2 July 1974)

Marriage , People

“But neither approach seems to lead to the kind of answer which those who ask the question are seeking. What they seem to want to know is—Are the Modern Greeks the same as the Ancient Greeks? Are their racial and national characteristics the same? Do the Modern Greeks behave in the same kind of way as the Ancient Athenians, Spartans, and Corinthians behaved? If one looks among the Modem Greeks will one find the equivalents of Pericles and Sophocles and Plato? By their nature such questions are vague and contain within them a host of assumptions—about human nature, genetics and race, the influence of environment on behaviour, and the reliability of our knowledge of ancient history—all of which are questionable and some of which are simply unfounded.”

William St Clair (1937) author

Source: That Greece Might Still be Free (1972), p. 15-16.

Way , History , Question , Nature

“When it was clear that I was leaving Ajax [in 1973], I was sent all kinds of poisonous messages and lots more of that kind of nonsense. But the worst thing for me was that Ajax gave my mother, who had always done her best for the club, an inferior seat in the stadium. Behind a pole. That absolutely crushed me.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in Johan Cruyff (2016). My Turn: The Autobiography.

“"We treat each other well" In strong families, positive strokes outnumber negative broadsides by a wide margin. Members regularly express appreciation: "Thanks for fixing the drainpipe." "you look so nice in that dress." "The dinner was great" Criticism is offered gently. After all, strong families figure, if we can be kind to strangers, why not to one another.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)

Family , Strong

“I looked at the high walls where once-white paint had grayed and then peeled. Barbara had always said the house had good bones, and she was right about that; but it had no heart, not with us living inside it. In place of laughter, trust, and joy, there was a hollow emptiness, a kind of rot, and I marveled at my blindness. Was it the alcohol, I wondered, that had made it bearable? Or was it something else, some inner failing? Maybe it was neither. They say that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he'll hop right out. But put the same frog into cold water and slowly turn up the heat, and he'll sit quietly until his blood begins to boil. He'll let himself be cooked alive. Maybe that's how it was for me. Maybe I was like that frog.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 31.

Alcohol , Laughter , Water , Heart

“I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of human kind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context… I can see such a use for the future as representing the really progressive character of the idea of understanding art when it is related to the life of humankind within the social body in the future.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Beuys, in Studio International Vol. 195, (1981), p. 46
1980's

Life , Art , Idea , Understanding

“A business process is a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer. A business process has a goal and is affected by events occurring in the external world or in other processes.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 35

World , Business

“The vegan diet in the western industrial society is important to me because I feel that if you open yourself up to eating dairy and meat then you’re taking part in basically a holocaust for animals. You know it’s very different if you’re in some tribal situation where people are fishing — like how we used to live. Maybe we would have eaten meat sometimes. But this kind of American idea we have of traditional eating is the cause of so much torture and misery. I don’t want to eat that – it’s gross. Animals are my friends and so it feels weird to eat them.”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Daniela Sea Won't Take Part In An Animal Holocaust http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/09/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-daniela-sea-wont-take-part-in-an-animal-holocaust/", interview with Ecorazzi (9 December 2008).

People , Feeling , Idea , Fish

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

War , Children , Age , Peace

“[Trump] keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all and sort of avoiding this issue of Russia as if we're some kind of fools for asking the question. Really? Your opposition was hacked and the Russians were responsible for it and your people were on the phone with Russia on the same day it was happening and we're fools for asking the questions? No sir. We are not fools for asking this question, and we demand to know the answer to this question. You owe this to the American people. Your supporters will support you either way. If your people were on the phone, what were they saying? We have a right to know, we absolutely do and that you call us fake news and put us down like children for asking these questions on behalf of the American people is inconsequential. The people deserve an answer to this question at very least.”

Shepard Smith (1964) television news anchor from the United States

As quoted in "Fox News' Shep Smith to Trump: You owe the American people answers" http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-shep-smith-to-trump-you-owe-the-american-people-answers/ar-AAn1RFA?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp (February 16, 2017), by Brooke Seipel, The Hill
2010s

Children , People , Fools , Way

“A definitely undesirable rationale sustaining the cult of simplicity is of a metaphysical nature: namely, the wish to attain the ultimate atoms of experience and/or reality … this drive, which feeds metaphysical fundamentalism, is dangerous because it leads to postulating the final simplicity of some form of experience or some kind of substance thereby barring any inquiry into their structure.”

Mario Bunge (1919) Argentine philosopher and physicist

Mario Bunge, The myth of simplicity, 1963, p, 86-87; As cited in: Colin E. Gunton (1993), The One, the Three and the Many, p. 44
1960s-1990s

Nature , Reality

“Your Bible has been revised several times. The Jewish Bible has been revised several times. Not the Qur'an, though. They still live in the seventh century. 'Kill homosexuals. Cut the clitoris off women. Put women in dark clothing. Cut off anyone's head who doesn't agree with you.' What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate. Don’t tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation. I don't need reeducation. Deportation, not reeducation.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2007

Women , Hate , Books , World

“This spectrum is of the type known in spectroscopy as a line-spectrum. Its appearance is that of a group of bright lines on a dark background, indicating that the radiation divides itself between a number of clearly defined frequencies, and that there is no radiation in between. Before Bohr's explanation appeared, these frequencies had been supposed to belong to some sort of vibration taking place in the hydrogen atom - like frequencies of the musical note which is heard when a bell or piano wire is made to vibrate. It now became clear that they had an entirely different origin. The energy exhibited in the spectrum was not liberated by a vibration, or any kind of continuous motion, but by the sudden jump of an electron to an orbit of lower energy, and its frequency was determined by the compulsion put upon it to form a single quantum.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Music , Appearance

“We’re best at the long high throws. Like when you take four or five steps and rip it— It’s almost like a shotput approach, the steps, four or five quick, one over the other, kind of sideways-like—and then you slash away with that fucker, it’s such a violent act, throwing that white thing, you’re first cradling it to your breast and then you whip that fucker as hard as you can while keeping it level, keeping it straight, but otherwise with everything you can send with it you whip that fucker like it had blades on it and you wanted it to cut straight through the paperblue sky like a screen, rip through it and have it be blood and back space beyond.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“The US owes the world. The US "superpower" cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"A Bankrupt Superpower," CounterPunch (2008-03-18)

Money , War , World , Cats

“There seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i. e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentify themselves with the ego, by realising its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.”

Wei Wu Wei (1895–1986) writer

Fingers Pointing Towards The Moon (1958)

Understanding , Fish , Happiness

“I am locked in a race with someone who is continually described almost in Homeric fashion. The reason I say that is because Homer had this way of attaching epithets to all the characters, so he would never say Achilles, it would always have to be "Valorous, Brave Achilles" or something, or "Swift Footed Achilles" and things of this kind. He would never say Odysseus, it was always "Manly Wild Odysseus" or something; he would always have a little name in front. And you've noticed that my opponent Barack Obama, the media always puts a little epithet in front of him. "The Democrat Rising Star, Barack Obama," "Rising Star Barack Obama." And they tell me that they are not biased. I'm locked in a little battle with the Illinois media right now, because I've had the nerve to identify them as minions of the Democrat party. And they are all upset with me about this — but I have this bad habit of opening my eyes and seeing what's in front of them.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

National Federation of Republican Assemblies, NYC, August 31, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_08_31nfra.htm.
2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race

Way , Star , Fashion

“This country does not discriminate. No president, no officer in this country should hold office that has any hint of treating people differently because of the color of their skin or where they came from and that kind of thing. We believe in equality and fair treatment and that's the moral principle that we adhere to as a nation.”

Jeff Sessions (1946) Former United States Attorney General

Interview with Matt Murphy http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/03/jeff_sessions_on_donald_trump.html (2016)

People , Color , Country

“1/2 cup of hope and 1/2 cup of kindness seem like a litmus test by asking "Is the glass half empty or half full?" Nature shows us in every waking moment that where there is life, there is hope. And to quote the movie Horns starring Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple, "Man is not born evil. The Devil himself was a fallen angel," there is kindness in everyone if you dig deep enough.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Life , Hope , Angels , Quotes

“The technical literature on structural engineering abounds with theoretical works of a mathematical nature, but few publications are concerned with the various kinds of structures or the fundamental reasons for their existence.”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

p, 125
Philosophy of Structures (1958)

Literature , Mathematics , Nature

“Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Il y a deux musiques: une petite, mesquine, de second ordre, partout semblable à elle-même, qui repose sur une centaine de phrases que chaque musicien s'approprie, et qui constitue un bavardage plus ou moins agréable avec lequel vivent la plupart des compositeurs.
Massimilla Doni http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Massimilla_Doni (1839), translated by Clara Bell and James Waring

Life , Music , Understanding

“As with other modern artists, his readings provided not an organized outlook but a kind of metaphysical hum that surrounded his mental operations. His thinking was truly systematic only when it dealt with achieving the reality of the art object as a "creation out of nothing," which was a common theme in New York art after the last war and the break with the European past.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 58, "Newman: Meaning in Abstract Art II" : On Barnett Newman

War , Art , Thinking , Reality

“You who witnessed these horrors, you who saw your parents, wives, children fall under German bullets, how could you be expected to understand and stand idly by if today, after our victory, there were people sufficiently blind to advise you to leave unpunished the actions of such outrages, and to allow Germany to keep the indemnities she owes…That kind of behaviour…was encouraged or tolerated by all Germans; all Germans abetted the sacking and firing of the unfortunate provinces in the North and East…We shall see to it that they repair the damage”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Speech at Triaucourt (c. 1922), quoted in Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870-1940 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 172.

Children , People , Understanding , Parent

“Today we have media … which actually specialize in the kind of obscenity which the cultivated, not the prurient, find repugnant. … It is contended that such material is the raw stuff of life, and that it is the duty of the organs of public information to leave no one deceived about the nature of the world. The assertion that this is the real world begs the most important question of all. The raw stuff of life is precisely what the civilized man desires to have refined, or presented in a humane framework, for which sentiment alone can afford the support. … One of the great conspiracies against philosophy and civilization, a conspiracy immensely aided by technology, is just this substitution of sensation for reflection.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), pp. 28-30.

Life , World , Question , Support

“The truth is that Masonry is undoubtedly a religious institution, its religion being of that universal kind in which all men agree.”

Albert Mackey (1807–1881) U.S. writer on freemasonry

Quoted in: Chalmers Izett Paton (1872) Freemasonry and its jurisprudence, p. 56.

Men , Truth , Religion , Universe

“All kinds of things set us back, but life goes on. You don’t shoot yourself. Soon this will be old news. People got lives to live, bills to pay, mouths to feed. Maybe a plane will go down with ninety people on it. Or a great man will be assassinated. That will be more important than Ali losing. I never wanted to lose, never thought I would, but the thing that matters is how you lose. I’m not crying. My friends should not cry.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Press conference, March 9, 1971, following his defeat by Joe Frazier, quoted in The Intercept, June 6, 2016 https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/

Life , People , Cry

“I think something very weird's going on now, 'cause the power that is permitted to youth is quite extraordinary. And they are sort of run by that kind of power.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Referring to the 60's youth movements
Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Youth , Thinking

“Consider what kind of authority [can be ascribed to] any principle which it open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regimen of asceticism and fasting … for reasons of health … What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose … but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 42.

Health

“Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. … The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

"Age of Ignorance" New York Review of Books, March 20, 2012 http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/03/20/age-of-ignorance/

Truth , Lie , Education , Democracy

“Yes! We believe in a higher principle than your virtue and the kind of morality you speak of so paltrily and without much conviction. We believe that there is no imperative or reward for virtue for the soul because it simply acts according to the necessity of its inherent nature. The moral imperative expresses itself in an ought and presupposes the concept of an evil next to that of good. P. 43”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

Philosophy and Religion 1804)

Soul , Nature , Evil

“What is called "sponge stone" or "Pompeian pumice" appears to have been reduced by burning from another kind of stone to the condition of the kind which we see. The kind of sponge-stone taken from this region is not produced everywhere else, but only about Aetna and among the hills of Mysia which the Greeks call the "Burnt District," and in other places of the same peculiar nature. …it seems to be certain that moisture has been extracted from the tufa and earth, by the force of fire, just as it is from limestone in kilns.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VI, Sec. 2-3

Nature , Appearance

“…even more ominous … is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. … he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals … A visual is more interested in style than in content … A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.”

John Fowles book The Aristos

The Aristos (1964)

War , People , World , Feeling

“The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a President of the United States.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 75
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

World , History

“We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident, 2011

People , Law , Game , Change

“No man loves God who hates his kind,
Who tramples on his brother's heart and soul;
Who seeks to shackle, cloud, or fog the mind
By fears of hell has not perceived our goal.

God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
To give the heavy laden rest
And peace from sorrow, sin, and strife.

Behold the Universal Spirit came
To all the churches, not to one alone;
On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame
Round each apostle as a halo shone.

Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed,
We oft have battled for an empty name,
And sought by dogma, edict, cult, or creed,
To send each other to the quenchless flame.

Is Christ then twain? Was Cephas, Paul,
To save the world, nailed to the tree?
Then why divisions here at all?
Christ's love enfolds both you and me.

His pure sweet love is not confined
By creed which segregate and raise a wall.
His love enfolds, embraces human kind,
No matter what ourselves or Him we call.

Then why not take Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds which tear apart?
But one thing matters, be it heard
That brother love fill every heart.

There's but one thing the world has need to know.
There's but one balm for all our human woe:

There's but one way that leads to heaven above--
That way is human sympathy and love.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

Creed or Christ (1909)
Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm

Love , Life , God , Hate

“This country is very rich indeed and has enormous resources. If this House and this Government wanted to, resources could be found to provide a house for everybody in this country. There need be nobody sleeping on the streets; there need be no homelessness and no evictions because people cannot meet the kind of rents being demanded. What is required to do that is control on profiteering, and funding for local authorities to enable them to build what is required. It needs a Government determined to put in train the construction of the council houses needed for rent, rather than the pitiful level of 15,000 which have been completed this year. It is with great anger that I ask the House tonight to vote against this disgraceful order, one of the most disgraceful orders I have seen during the time I have been in this House, and one which will cause untold misery throughout this country. It is a disgrace that it should be debated in the middle of the night, when the media are not here to report this travesty of justice.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/21/rent-officers in the House of Commons (21 March 1989).
1980s

People , Justice , Sleep , Time

“Know that the figures employed by prophets are of two kinds: first, where every word which occurs in the simile represents a certain idea: and secondly, where the simile, as a whole, represents a general idea, but has a great many points which have no reference whatever to that idea: they are simply required to give to the simile its proper form and order, or better to conceal the idea: the simile is therefore continued as far as necessary, according to its literal sense. Consider this well.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Introduction

Idea , Sense

“What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument http://www.holycross.edu/departments/english/sluria/wjspeech.htm (31 May 1897)
1910s, Memories and Studies (1911)

Men , Peace , Courage , Time

“A severe morality holds that intercourse (and may hold this of eating, too) has something wrong about it if it is ever done except explicitly as being required for that preservation of human life which is what makes intercourse a good kind of action. But this involves thoroughly faulty moral psychology. God gave us our physical appetite, and its arousal without our calculation is part of the working of our sort of life. Given moderation and right circumstances, acts prompted by inclination can be taken in a general way to accomplish what makes them good in kind and there's no need for them to be individually necessary or useful for the end that makes them good kinds of action. Intercourse is a normal part of married life through the whole life of the partners in a marriage and is normally engaged in without any distinct purpose other than to have it, just as such a part of married life.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life , God , Marriage , Way

“There was not after all a single kind of strife, but on earth there are two kinds: one of them a man might praise when he recognized her, but the other is blameworthy.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 11.

“I'll tell you what harms the vast majority of Muslims that love freedom and hate terror: Muslim theocracy does. Muslim intolerance does. Wahabism does. Salafism does. Islamism does. Jihadism does. Sharia law does. The mere conservatism of traditional Islam does. We're not talking about only jihadists hating homosexuals and thinking they should die, we're talking about conservative Muslims. The percentage of British Muslims polled who said that homosexuality was morally acceptable was zero. Do you realize what it takes to say something so controversial in a poll that not even 1% of those polled would agree with it? There's almost no question that extreme that you will ever see in a poll that gets a zero, but ask British Muslims whether homosexuality is morally acceptable, and that's what you get. And the result is more or less the same in dozens of other countries. It's zero in Cameroon, zero in Ethiopia. 1% in Nigeria, 1% in Tanzania, 1% in Mali, 2% in Kenya, 2% in Chad. 1% in Lebanon, 1% in Egypt, 1% in the Palestinian territories, 1% in Iraq, 2% in Jordan, 2% in Tunisia, 1% in Pakistan. But 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh: that bright spot in the Muslim world where they are regularly hunting down and butchering secular writers with machetes. The people who suffer under this belief system are Muslims themselves. The next generation of human beings born into a Muslim community who could otherwise have been liberal, tolerant, well-educated, cosmopolitan productive people are to one or another degree being taught to aspire to live in the Middle Ages, or to ruin this world on route to some fictional paradise after death. That's the thing we have to get our heads around. And yes, some of what I just said applies with varying modifications to other religions and other cults. But there is nothing like Islam at this moment for generating this kind of intolerance and chaos. And if only a right wing demagogue will speak honestly about it, then we will elect right wing demagogues in the West more and more in response to it. And that will be the price of political correctness: that's when this check will finally get cashed. That will be the consequence of this persistent failure we see among liberals to speak and think and act with real moral clarity and courage on this issue. The root of this problem is that liberals consistently fail to defend liberal values as universal human values. Their political correctness, their multiculturalism, their moral relativism has led them to rush to the defense of theocrats and to abandon the victims of theocracy and to vilify anyone who calls out this hypocrisy for what it is as a bigot. And to be clear, and this is what liberals can't seem to get, is that speaking honestly about the ideas that inspire Islamism and jihadism, beliefs about martyrdom, and apostasy and blasphemy and paradise and honour and women, is not an expression of hatred for Muslims. It is in fact the only way to support the embattled people in the Muslim community: The reformers and the liberals and the seculars and the free thinkers and the gays and the Shiia in Sunni-majority context and Sufis and Ahmadiyyas, and as Maajid Nawaz said, the minorities within the minority, who are living under the shadow, and sword rather often, under theocracy. […] If you think that speaking honestly about the need for reform within Islam will alienate your allies in the Muslim community, then you don't know who your allies are.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2
2010s

Love , Death , Women , Hate

“People see you one way and think, 'That's not her real thing, she's just putting that on now.' But that is! That's where my creativity really resides. Where it all springs. My characters are really bizarre. They're kind of dark and not really considered great people. It all comes from the same dark place, it's just filtered through comedy.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

People , Way , Spring , Thinking

“She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone, or despise.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

My Love. iv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Listen, Marxist: The organization we try to build is the kind of society our revolution will create. Either we will shed the past - in ourselves as well as in our groups - or there will simply be no future to win.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

Listen, Marxist!

Past , Future

“Since liberalism has become a kind of official party line, we have been enjoined against saying things about races, religions or national groups, for after all, there is no categorical statement without its implication of value, and values begin divisions among men. We must not define, subsume, or judge; we must rather rest on the periphery and display “sensibility toward the cultural expressions of all lands and peoples.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

This is a process of emasculation.
Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 59.

Men , People , Religion

“Work is the antonym of free time. But not of leisure. Leisure and free time live in two different worlds. We have got into the habit of thinking them the same. Anybody can have free time. Free time is a realizable idea of democracy. Leisure is not fully realizable, and hence an ideal not alone an idea. Free time refers to a special way of calculating a special kind of time. Leisure refers to a state of being, a condition of man, which few desire and fewer achieve.”

Sebastian de Grazia book Of Time

Of Time, Work, and Leisure (1962)

World , Way , Democracy , Idea

“A superpower is a cold war term. When people today say that Russia aspires to have this status, I interpret it in the following way: they want to undermine trust in Russia, to portray Russia as frightening, and create some kind of image of an enemy. … Russia is in favor of a multipolar world, a democratic world order, strengthening the system of international law, and for developing a legal system in which any small country, even a very small country, can feel itself secure, as if behind a stone wall. … Russia is ready to become part of this multipolar world and guarantee that the international community observes these rules. And not as a superpower with special rights, but rather as an equal among equals.”

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

http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/01/18/0726_type82914type82916_117126.shtml
2006- 2010

War , People , World , Law

“Vegan is a term that refers to people who have chosen a way of living guided by ahimsa (nonharming) and reverence for life. … Vegans recognize the value of life to all living creatures and extend to them the compassion, kindness, and justice in The Golden Rule. Vegans see animals as free entities in nature, not slaves or vassals, nor as chattel, pieces of goods to be bought and sold. An animal has feelings, an animal has sensitivity, an animal has a place in life, and the vegan respects this life that is manifest in the animal. Vegans do not wish to harm the animal any more than they would want the animal to harm them. This is an example of The Golden Rule precisely as it should be applied.”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics

"Go Vegan for the Animals" (adapted from "Let’s Talk about Veganism" in Powerful Vegan Messages, 2014), in the American Vegan Society website http://www.americanvegan.org/animals.html.

Life , People , Justice , Way

“After my speech, the President detached himself from the group of appalling old waxworks who accompanied him and took his place at the lectern. He then gave a kind of "propaganda" speech which was loudly cheered by the bussed-in party faithful at the suitable moment in the text.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Katie Nicholl, Dominic Turnbull, "Appalling waxworks", Mail on Sunday, 13 November 2005, p. 1.
Entry in private journal about the handover of British sovereignty in Hong Kong in 1997 referring to President Jiang Zemin of China. The contents were disclosed in the Mail on Sunday in November 2005.
2000s

Faith

“If a man can take any pleasure in recalling the thought of kindnesses done.”
Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas Est homini.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

LXXVI, lines 1–2
Carmina

Pleasure

““[Thanksgiving is] my favorite holiday, I think. It's without a doubt my favorite American Holiday. I love Christmastime, Chanuka etc. But Thanksgiving is as close as we get to a nationalist holiday in America (a country where nationalism as a concept doesn't really fit). Thanksgiving's roots are pre-founding, which means its not a political holiday in any conventional sense. We are giving thanks for the soil, the land, for the gifts of providence which were bequeathed to us long before we figured out our political system. Moreover, because there are no gifts, the holiday isn't nearly so vulnerable to materialism and commercialism. It's about things -- primarily family and private accomplishments and blessings -- that don't overlap very much with politics of any kind. We are thankful for the truly important things: our children and their health, for our friends, for the things which make life rich and joyful. As for all the stuff about killing Indians and whatnot, I can certainly understand why Indians might have some ambivalence about the holiday (though I suspect many do not). The sad -- and fortunate -- truth is that the European conquest of North America was an unremarkable old world event (one tribe defeating another tribe and taking their land; happened all the time) which ushered in a gloriously hopeful new age for humanity. America remains the last best hope for mankind. Still, I think it would be silly to deny how America came to be, but the truth makes me no less grateful that America did come to be. Also, I really, really like the food.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

"Thanksgiving" http://web.archive.org/web/20041126231505/http://www.nationalreview.com:80/thecorner/04_11_24_corner-archive.asp (24 November 2004), The Corner, National Review
2000s, 2004

Love , Life , Children , Health