Quotes about kindness
page 52

“There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth… than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

Life, Truth, Art, Spring

“The kind of economic trouble that Asia experienced a decade ago, and that we're all experiencing now, is precisely the sort of thing we thought we had learned to prevent. In the bad old days big, advanced economies with stable governments-like Britain in the 1920s-might have had no answer to prolonged periods of stagnation and deflation; but between John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, we thought we knew enough to keep that from happening again.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Introduction
The Return of Depression Economics and The Crisis of 2008 (2009)

Learning

“I may still be a kind of a Marxist but I'm very realistic, I don't have these dreams of revolutions around the corner.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7d-m3ko_eg&feature=feedrec_grec_index

Dreams

“They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothes not you.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Comment on fame, quoted in Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress (1993) by Carl E. Rollyson, and in Symbolic Leaders: Public Dramas and Public Men (2006) by Orrin Edgar Klapp
Variant: People feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothing.
As quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40
Context: When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won't hurt your feelings — like it's happening to your clothes not you.

Feeling, Nature, Hurt, Clothes

“An explanation of the "institutional approach" to economic theory is a plea for a particular kind of theory. It is possible to come upon the same object from different angles; but more often those who take different routes chance upon different things. The "institutional approach" doubtless has some importance because it is a happy way to acceptable truth, but its significance lies in its being the only way to the right sort of theory. An appeal for "institutional economics" implies no attack upon the truth or value of other bodies of economic thought, but it is a denial of the claims of other systems of thought to be "economic theory." This, however, is no pointless struggle in method to be carried on by breaking syllogisms over concepts and by engaging in polemics over niceties in statement. On the contrary, it involves the very nature of the problems which the theorist should set himself; its real issue is over what economic theory is all about.”

Walton Hale Hamilton (1881–1958) Yale Law Professor

Source: The Institutional Approach to Economic Theory, 1919, p. 309: Introduction

Happiness, Truth, Way, Nature

“The demon of drink was as black as the demon of play, and nearly as hard to get rid of — especially as his kind friends did all they could to second the promptings of his own insatiable cravings.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXII : Traits of Friendship; Arthur to Helen

Drink

““What kind of stupid tale is that, when we just have to look at each other to know it isn’t true?”
“It has problems, I admit.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

Stupidity, Problem

“As parents, we can do a great deal to further this goal by helping our children develop alternative ways of knowing the world — verbally/analytically and visually/spatially. During the crucial early years, parents can help to shape a child's life in such a way that words do not completely mask other kinds of reality. My most urgent suggestions to parents are concerned with the use of words, or rather, not using words.”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.239

Life, Children, World, Way

“The album is very different from the all the other albums today. First of all, the album was one year delayed because I wasn’t happy and every time I did an album it was unofficially finished. I had some time to listen to some new songs and plug into some music programs and discovered this new song and delayed the release for a month, because I wanted to update the new tracks to these new sounds I found… so then when I did that all the other songs sounded like crap compared to the new ones! So I said f*** this I need to reproduce the other ones as well. Then I scrapped a few songs and produced new ones. So to produce this album I pretty much produced maybe about 50 tracks and picked out the best of them. You know when you buy an album from a producer/artist, you kind of hear the same sound repeating in each song, you hear the same sound repeating, but this album is like every song is individual. Like you wont find two songs which have the same sound. Each song is completely different which I think kind of represents what I do because I produce everything and I love producing everything. Sometimes I’m in the mood to produce you know a dance song, sometimes I’m in the mood to produce an R&B song, it’s just interesting because I just want to show people that I can deliver to all ears.”

Basshunter Calling Time

Guestlist interview with Ria Talsania (10 July 2013) https://guestlist.net/article/9219/catching-up-with-basshunter Calling Time

Love, Happiness, People, Music

“They choose what you’re watching and you don’t mind
They choose what you’re watching ‘cause they’re so kind
They choose what you’re watching and you don’t mind
Dunno what you’re watching and you don’t mind”

Dhani Harrison (1978) English musician

Choose what you’re watching
Lyrics, You Are Here (2008)

“I am thankful for the kind treatment during my captivity and I ask God to accept me with mercy.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

Last words, 10/16/46, quoted in "The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II" - Page 565 - by Jon E. Lewis - History - 2002

God

“Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.”

Nick Hornby book Songbook

Songbook (2003)

Feeling

“But what is the use of this history, what the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of this kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon one another's extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.”

Jean Henri Fabre (1823–1915) French entomologist and author

In 'Minotaurus typhoeus'

Life, People, Books, History

“This indictment is a kind of fever that flares up from time to time. It flared up after "Defender of the Faith," again after "Goodbye Columbus," and understandably it went way up — to about 107 — after "Portnoy's Complaint." Now there's just a low-grade fever running, nothing to worry about.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

On criticism of his writing, as quoted in "The Unbounded Spirit of Philip Roth" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-unbounded.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, interview with Mervyn Rothstein, The New York Times (1 August 1985), Late City Final Edition, section C, page 13, column 1

Faith, Way, Understanding, Time

“One should never be so formal that one loses life, but one should never be so informal that one becomes without form of any kind.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

Television documentary 'Queen Margrethe of Denmark', BBC & Jørgen Bonfils, 30:27, 28 April 1974.
Life Philosophy

Life

“Soldiers! I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we have cherished of a free and independent country, has vanished, and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your commander. After association of more than two eventful years, I part from you with a just pride, in the fame of your achievements, and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now at this moment of bidding you a final adieu accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard. Farewell. John S. Mosby, Col.”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter to the Mosby's Rangers (April 1865), as quoted in Mosby's Rangers, Simon and Schuster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671747452 (1991), Jeffry D. Wert, p. 289 Letter (1865)

Confidence, Time, Parting, Country

“We never really cared about all the things that other people cared about, you know? Like, people recognizing me on the street never interested me. I've always been kind of suspicious of the world, anyway, so it's pretty easy for me to live in my own little world.”

Meg White (1974) American musician

Jarmusch, Jim (2003). "The White Stripes: getting to know the most interesting band in music today" http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_4_33/ai_100572738/pg_4 FindArticles.com (accessed June 6, 2006)

People, World

“Ah, UNESCO is the most garbage. Any kind of organization for the good will of the people is impossible. It is necessary for the contrary. Young people need plenty of difficulties to achieve something, you know? If you receive a little money for this, a little money for that, everything becomes mediocre, and collapses ig-no-min-i-ously!”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Dali interviewed by Victor Bockris, 1974

Money, People

“Do what Jesus says,… what he commands through his ministers who are in the Church [see 1 Cor 6:4]. Be subject to his vicars, your leaders, not only those who are gentle and kind, but even those who are overbearing”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

see 1 Pt 2:18
Bernard of Clairvaux on the Life of the Mind, John R. Sommerfeldt, Newman Press (2004) ISBN 0809142031 ISBN 9780809142033, p. 67

“The Vice-President's Chamber is adjacent to the Senate Chamber, and so small that to survive it is necessary to keep the door open in order to obtain the necessary cubic feet of air. When the vice-president is in the room [the Capitol Guides] go by with their guests, stop and point him out, as though he were a curiosity.I stood this for about as long as I could, and then went to the door one day, and said: "If you look on me as a wild animal, be kind enough to throw peanuts at me; but if you are really desirous of seeing me, come in and shake hands." In that way I think I restored myself to the position I have always desired to occupy; that of an American, who looks up to nobody, looks down upon nobody, but tries to keep a conscience clean enough that he can look everybody in the face.”

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 XVII

Way, Thinking, Animals

“But there are altogether too many in the world who consciously or unconsciously do hold those views and follow that example. I believe such a position arises from a misconception of the meaning of life. They seem to think that authority means some kind of an attempt to force action upon them which is not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of others. To me they do not appear to understand the nature of law, and therefore refuse obedience. They misinterpret the meaning of individual liberty, and therefore fail to attain it. They do not recognize the right of property, and therefore do not come into its possession. They rebel at the idea of service, and therefore lack the fellowship and cooperation of others. Our conception of authority, of law and liberty, of property and service, ought not to be that they imply rules of action for the mere benefit of someone else, but that they are primarily for the benefit of ourselves. The Government supports them in order that the people may enjoy them.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life, People, World, Law

“I make a point of writing, if only a little, every day, as a kind of discipline so that it is not a whim but a piece of work.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

The Paris Review interview (1982)

“She broke in with a question that staggered him.
"Does your idea mean that the next world is a sort of great reservoir of truth, and that what is true in us just pours into it like raindrops?"
"Well!" said he, alarmed and puzzled: "the figure is not perfectly correct, but the idea is a little of that kind."
"After all I wonder whether that may not be what Niagara has been telling me!" said Esther, and she spoke with an outburst of energy that made Strong's blood run cold.”

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

Esther Dudley and George Strong in Ch. IX
Esther: A Novel (1884)

Truth, World, Idea, Question

“'A'isha said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say in this house of his, 'O Allah, anyone who is appointed over any of the affairs of my community and is hard on them, I will be hard on him. Anyone who is appointed over any of the affairs of my community and is kind to them, I will be kind to him."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 655
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Communication, Housing

“These kinds of habits, in good company, are so very nauseous and disgusting, that if we indulge ourselves in them, no one can be very fond of our acquaintance. So far from it, that even those, who are inclined to wish us well, must, by these and the like disagreeable customs, be entirely alienated from us.— Those ill-bred people, who expect their acquaintance to love and caress them, with all their foibles, are as absurd as a poor ragged cinder-wench; who should roll about upon an heap of ashes, scrabbling and throwing dust in the face of every one that passed by; and yet flatter herself that she should allure some youth to her embraces, by these dirty endearments; which would infallibly keep him at a distance.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 15

Love, People, Youth

“I think of Iraq as a kind of Pandora's box, the lid of which the US knocked open. The hope was that politicians could artfully manage the furies that were bound to emerge. That proved unfounded. The furies are now out there doing their terrible work. Eventually they will be tamed. The whole of history is evidence of that. But how long is "eventually?"”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Kanan Makiya speaks about Iraq 5 years later...", Washington Post (March 20, 2008)

Hope, History, Thinking, Box

“We all possess, in our unconscious minds, a kind of servant who performs certain automatic functions. When I learn to type or drive a car or learn a foreign language, I have to do it painfully and consciously; then, suddenly, my robot takes over and does it automatically; in fact, he does it far more quickly and efficiently than "I" could. The main trouble with this mechanical valet is that he often takes over functions I would prefer to keep for myself -- for example, when I am tired I eat "automatically," and so do not enjoy my food. In fact, this is the reason that so much of our experience seems oddly "unreal"; the robot has taken it over. When I am feeling low, I may live for whole days in a "robotic" state, so that experience flows off me like water off a duck's back. And because I am not receiving any "feedback" of pleasure or interest from my activities, I become duller than ever, and experience becomes progressively less interesting. (This is, of course, the mechanism of depression and nervous breakdown.) And this is also why explorers deliberately seek out hardship and danger -- to cheat the robot and "feel the life in them more intensely."”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 89

Life, Pleasure, Food, Cars

“The great mistake of the reformers is to believe that life begins and ends with health, and that happiness begins and ends with a full stomach and the power to enjoy physical pleasures, even of the finer kind.”

Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944) American writer

Source: Modes and Morals (1920), Ch. 1

Life, Happiness, Health, Pleasure

“Hither, thither, masterless
Ship upon the sea,
Wandering through the ways of air,
Go the birds like me.
Bound am I by ne’er a bond,
Prisoner to no key,
Questing go I for my kind,
Find depravity.”
Feror ego veluti sine nauta navis, ut per vias aeris vaga fertur avis, non me tenent vincula, non me tenet clavis, Quęro mihi similes, et adiungor pravis.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Feror ego veluti
sine nauta navis,
ut per vias aeris
vaga fertur avis,
non me tenent vincula,
non me tenet clavis,
Quęro mihi similes,
et adiungor pravis.
Source: "Confession", Line 17

Way, Bird, Sea

“I think that people imagine protocol and etiquette as some kind of great dragon that hovers behind the pageantries of the palace to pounce on you and eat you up if you aren't behaving as you should. But in fact etiquette is saying how to do when you meet people, saying good night to your parents before going to bed, opening a door to a woman, getting up if an older person wants to sit down on the bus and it's all full, that is etiquette, or protocol, if you wish. At the everyday level, all the time, all of us. It's a way of knowing what you've got to do so that you have your mind free to do other things and think of other things.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

Television documentary 'Queen Margrethe of Denmark', BBC & Jørgen Bonfils, 31:30, 28 April 1974.
Protocol

People, Way, Imagination, Thinking

“In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility… Print stresses individualized learning, competition, and personal autonomy. Over four centuries, teachers, while emphasizing print, have allowed orality its place in the classroom, and have therefore achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between these two forms of learning, so that what is valuable in each can be maximized. Now comes the computer, carrying anew the banner of private learning and individual problem-solving. Will the widespread use of computers in the classroom defeat once and for all the claims of communal speech? Will the computer raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue?”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)

Peace, Communication, Problem, Sense

“Whatever be the substance which takes possession of such a soul, it will produce the same result, and will change into a pretext for not conforming to any concrete purpose. If it appears as reactionary or anti-liberal it will be in order to affirm that the salvation of the State gives a right to level down all other standards, and to manhandle one's neighbour, above all if one's neighbour is an outstanding personality. But the same happens if it decides to act the revolutionary; the apparent enthusiasm for the manual worker, for the afflicted and for social justice, serves as a mask to facilitate the refusal of all obligations, such as courtesy, truthfulness and, above all, respect or esteem for superior individuals. … As regards other kinds of Dictatorship, we have seen only too well how they flatter the mass-man, by trampling on everything that appeared to be above the common level.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question

Truth, Justice, Soul, Affliction

“I believe that art has a kind of Rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false. And that's why classical paintings, which are right in their own terms, are so necessary for me. In addition to that there's nature, which also has this rightness.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 106, note 59

Art, Music, Nature, Painting

“I had one of those steel thermal mugs you carried everywhere with you as a kind of signifier of how busy, and therefore how important you were.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 4, p. 22

Business

“The positive and negative consequences of the various kinds of globalization and of economic growth versus economic stagnation are consistent with the Renewed Darwinism Theory's proposition that one's sense of dA fulfillment is relative to that of other people to whom one compares oneself. The innate insatiable drive to acquire cannot be fulfilled, even by a steady increase in wealth, if one is steadily falling behind others. This may be illogical—a Porsche is a Porsche, no matter what's parked in the driveway next door—but it is the way our minds have evolved to work.”

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

Excerpt from: " The Drive to Acquire’s Impact on Globalization http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-drive-to-acquires-impact-on-globalization," at hbswk.hbs.edu, 23 august 2010. Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, 2010

People, Way, Sense, Wealth

“One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth. … I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein's God (1997), p. 98

God, People, Truth, Feeling

“It's always been hard for me to understand how we say people who supports Osama Bin Laden or someone else like him – who are willing to give their lives to destroy the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia – how we can describe those people as people who hated freedom. It seems to me that their definition of freedom might be different than ours, but to oppose a dictatorship, one must want freedom in some kind of way.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Al-Jazeera TV on September 11 and 12, 2005
2000s

Hate, People, Way, Understanding

“A man can never dream these kinds of things
Especially when she came and spread her wings
Whispered in my ear the things I'd like
Then she flew away into the night.”

Liam Gallagher (1972) English musician and songwriter

Song Songbird

Dreams, Night

“No definite and permanent advance is made in any kind of work, whether with materials or men, until use is made of measurement.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Measurement of the human factor in industry (1917), p. 3.

Men

“The problem is, when Oprah lost all that weight, her head didn't get any smaller. And so she looks kind of like a person carrying a balloon.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Playboy interview, May 1990
Columns and articles

Problem, Personality

“He [Marcus Aurelius] has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few passages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the noblest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life, Men, Reality

“Free speech means being able to express an honest opinion—in case you didn't know—and my honest opinion is that Wahhabi Islam is such an obvious mental affliction, that science ought to be looking for a cure. It's a truly horrible, heartless and cruel ideology that despises human kind, especially the female half, and I believe its presence on this planet is a stain on all humanity; and when it finally passes, as one day it surely must, because nothing that unnatural and inhuman could possibly last forever, its memory will linger like a bad smell, as a warning for generations to come; like a ghostly gibbet by the roadside of history, a bony finger of death, beckoning us back to a more brutal and primitive past. It'll serve as a grim reminder of what happens to human beings when religion is allowed to go too far.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Can I say this?" (27 May 2012) http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlhxadPHt4s · transcript http://dotsub.com/view/d1843b5a-19d8-4bd0-8e91-2b84ee780b61/viewTranscript/eng 2012

Death, Religion, History, Affliction

“It was developing countries where people are more cheery, wasn't it? … Well, because when people are materially disadvantaged, maybe they're more optimistic, because they know that their destiny's not entirely in their own hands. And so they just have to hope for the best. Whereas in the developed world, where materially we've got plenty of stuff, and lots of opportunities, we know that the only thing stopping us from being happy is ourselves, which of course is a kind of downward spiral into disillusionment and hopelessness, isn't it, really? Because you can't -- you're never gonna get rid of yourself, so if you're basically unhappy, you're always gonna be unhappy, and in the remaining time that you've got left, you're either gonna be in despair about the fact that you've wasted your life, or maybe a bit cheerful about the fact that it's nearly over.”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, 8 January 2011

Life, Happiness, People, World

“Over the last 24 hrs I have gone through lots of emotions. Scared, Anger, Heartache, Compassion and many others. I truely dont understand why a person would want to take the life of another. Something has changed in this country and in this world lately that is scary to see. This world is becoming the kind of place i am afraid to raise my children in. At the end of the day we arent Democrats or Republicans, Whites or Blacks, Men or Women. We are all humans and we are all Americans and its time to start acting like it and stand together as ONE! That is the only way we will ever get this Country to be better than it has ever been, but we have a long way to go and we have to start now. My heart aches for the Victims and their families of this Senseless act. I am so sorry for the hurt and pain everyone is feeling right now and there are no words i can say.”

Jason Aldean (1977) American country music singer

As quoted in "Jason Aldean releases a statement of unity following Las Vegas shooting" http://us995.cbslocal.com/2017/10/02/jason-aldean-releases-a-statement-of-unity-following-las-vegas-shooting/ (2 October 2017), by Kimmie Caruba, CBS Local

Life, Women, Men, Pain

“Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, &c. Consider every act of this kind, as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

Exercises, Courage

“I'm not making any progress with the book that you were so kind to lend me [about techniques of etching]; the desire to study tie facts for etching from a book does not exist with me…. if you would rather give me some lessons, so that I can get some information, I will be glad.. [which happened February / March 1891] (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson's brief:) Met het boek welk U zoo vriendelijk waart mij ter leen te geven [boek over de techniek van het etsen] schiet ik niet hard op; de lust om de gegevens voor het etsen uit een boek te bestudeeren, bestaat bij mij niet.. ..[mocht u] liever nog mij eenige lessen geven , waardoor ik eenigszins op de hoogte kome, dan zal het mij aangenaam zijn.. [dat gebeurde in februari / maart 1891]
In her letter to , 12 Jan. 1890; as cited in Suze Robertson, ed. Anna Wagner en Herbert Henkels; Nijgh & van Ditmar, 1984, p. 10
before 1900

Books, Study

“In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Pleasure, Soul

“And as every one of their dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgements; and gentleness for dullness; and silence -- which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism -- above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

The narrator, LXII
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Sex, Silence

“There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind … the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed.”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader

Where Is Jazz Going? Music Journal (1962) Reproduced in The Duke Ellington Reader, ISBN 978-0-19-509391-9.

Music, Success

“Man is the animal with a soul who thinks and builds; his penetrating insights into the laws of nature are there for any child to learn, and his impressive mastery of the materials of the earth stands ready to be imitated by anyone, but the home he has built for his own kind is still a lonely and impoverished place for many people. There is nothing about that loneliness that wisdom cannot change; there is nothing in that poverty that strength cannot overcome. Separated from each other, the thinker is a stranger in his own house, and the builder is a beggar at his own door. Together, they can bring the warmth of love and the helpfulness of power into the daily market place of living, taking a human position that is eternal and without compromise. In the midst of the obvious and the commonplace, and only in this birthplace of human contentment and happiness, the thinker and builder can leave the monastic cell and relinquish barracks mobility to claim the world in the name of human beings. When they do so, man can expect a human harvest equal to his dreams, and measured to the nobility of his posture.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Psychoanalysis and Civilization

Love, Wisdom, Happiness, People

“I have not been keeping up with it as much as I should have maybe, because it’s certainly—This and Paris Hilton are the kind of issues that seem to get a lot more attention than maybe some of us think they deserve.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

On being asked whether O. J. Simpson could get a fair trial in the robbery case, in a televised interview http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20838374/ on Hardball with Chris Matthews, 17 September 2007 2000s, 2007

Thinking

“One result of the nobility and gentry becoming more mobile and mixing more together was new kinds of parties. From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, whenever people decided to entertain, they did so in much the same way. They gave either a dinner on its own, or a dinner combined with dancing. The latter combination started with a meal, sometimes enlivened by music. After dinner the company retired to a withdrawing room, and passed an hour or so by taking tea or dessert, or playing cards, or listening to more music. They then returned to the room where they had dined, for dancing or as it tended to be called, a ball; in the early eighteenth century as few as seven couples dancing together could be described as a ball. After dancing there was normally some kind of light refreshment, and then everybody went home. The refreshments at the end might, according to the century, be described as a banquet or a supper, the room for dinner and dancing a great chamber or a saloon; the dances danced, the music played and the food eaten changed, but the pattern remained much the same. The guests did one thing at a time, and they all did it together.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

People, Food, Music, Way

“Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he's an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he's a kind of miracle.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

On Norodom Sihanouk, (June 1973), as quoted in Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011) p. 100
Intervista con la Storia

Age, Imagination, Fraud, Thinking

“Nature has only a limited number of procedures at her disposal and that the kinds of procedure which Nature uses at one level of reality are bound to reappear at different levels.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Source: Myth and Meaning (1978), Chapter 1 : The Meeting of Myth and Science

Nature, Reality

“We're going to have to make it clear that we don't want to use the kinds of tools that we have. We don't want to engage in a different kind of warfare. But we will defend the citizens of this country.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Country

“Modern militarism is the result of capitalism. In both its forms it is the “vital expression” of capitalism — as a military force used by the capitalist states in their external conflicts and as a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes for suppressing every kind of movement, economic and political, of the proletariat.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 191–201.
Collected Works

“I'd like for them to say he took a few cups of love, he took one tablespoon of patience, teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern, and then, he mix willlingness with happiness, he added lots of faith, and he stired it up well, then he spreads it over his span of a lifetime, and he served it to each and every deserving person he met.”

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

Response to George Plimpton, question at the end of an interview: "What would you like people to think about you when you've gone?" - Interview (video) http://youtube.com/watch?v=ebu0OBa1pus

Love, Happiness, Faith, Laughter

“My own life has convinced me that the limitations most of us encounter in our relations with other animals reflect not their shortcomings, as we so often assume, but our own narrow views about who they are and the kinds of relationships we can have with them. And so I conclude by urging anyone with an interest in animal rights to open your heart to the animals around you and find out for yourself what it's like to befriend a nonhuman person.”

Barbara Smuts (1950) American anthropologist

Source: Reflections (1999), p. 120

Life, Heart, Animals, Personality

“the Legion of little Souls does exist, and they did become manifest in the Little Flower. True, they get on our nerves more than they edify us - precisely that awful Martin family with their pompous self-preoccupation, their insufferable family worship, a perpetual mutual admiration society - but, say what you will, such people really do have religion, in the strictest sense of the word - living contact, authentic conversation with God. They do live out of their trust in him, are honestly concerned with seeking and doing his will, they take pains about being kind to their neighbours, for his sake. Is this really not enough? To hell with all esoterics!”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

God, Pain, People, Family

“The food you put into your body is the single most powerful factor that determines your health and well-being. … I was transformed from a chronically ill young man to a person who could be considered the picture of health. At fifty-nine years of age (I was born in 1947), I continue to reap the benefits of fueling my body with the right foods. How many grandpas do you know who regularly windsurf in the deep blue ocean or strap their grandson into a backpack to carry him on a mountainous hiking adventure? Because of proper diet, this is the kind of health I enjoy today.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

Digestive Tune-Up (Healthy Living Publications, 2006), Introduction, pp. x https://books.google.it/books?id=EVql0RH7LwwC&pg=PR10-xi.

Health, Age, Food, Mountain

“Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Way, Help

“A fight between several parties of the British people: Nothing of the kind! A fight between two or three big money combines, that and nothing else. Without the weight of money behind the party machines, in an electoral battle today determined purely by principle and by the number of active workers…British Union could fight and beat today the old parties over the whole electoral field. But you know and I know, the battle is nothing of the kind. The battle is between big money combines who spend a thousand pounds or more on every constituency they fight. Or when they speak democracy, they don't mean government by the people…they mean financial democracy, in which money counts and nothing but money.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Speech in Earls Court (July 1939). http://www.oswaldmosley.com/audio/earlscourt.m3u

Money, People, Democracy, Fight

“Right discrimination is of two kinds — analytical and synthetical. The first leads one from the phenomena to the Absolute Brahman, while by the second one knows how the Absolute Brahman appears as the universe.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 862

Universe, Appearance

“His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Men, Pleasure, World, Religion

“I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk- maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IX, paragraph 14, lines 22-27 ( see also eugenics)

Marriage, Family, Success

“One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes — possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VI

Women, Men, Dogs

“To be conservative in politics is to take one’s bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Kenneth Minogue " The Elusive Oakeshott: Michael Oakeshott taught conservatism as practical wisdom, not philosophy http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-elusive-oakeshott/" on theamericanconservative.com, October 1, 2009.

Life, People, World, Family

“…the film [Elvis ’56] is moving to me because it shows his vital uniqueness walking—a new kind of old American, innocent, with old American experience, and that’s always been our formula, our innocence, plus a unique kind of experience that other people haven’t had in other lands—walking with all of that, plus physical beauty, into Rear Window—down-the-drain-land.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

People, Beauty

“As of right now I am a vegan. I put that off until after I was done with this tournament. And then I'm gonna go home and I'm probably gonna take over the loan on my stepdad's Prius and I'm gonna drive a clean car. And I'm gonna get a surfboard and learn how to surf, teach myself. I made up this long list of stuff that I couldn't do while I was training that normal people do. It's kind of too late to go to prom, but you know, I'll find something to make up for it.”

Ronda Rousey (1987) American judoka, mixed martial artist, professional wrestler and actress

After became the first U.S. woman to earn an Olympic medal in judo, and asked what she would do next, as quoted in "Rousey Is 1st U.S. Woman to Earn A Medal in Judo", in The Washington Post (14 August 2008) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/13/AR2008081303517.html

People, Cars, Home, Learning

“Thare iz sich a thing az being alwus too quick--i am one ov that kind miself, i alwus miss a rale rode train bi being thare a haff an our too soon.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Training

“A great many people have tunnel vision. Now tunnel vision is when you have a problem with the eyes so that you can only see a little spot ahead of you. You don’t have a broad range of vision. It is a very sad kind of eye defect. But Ford Schwartz was telling me a while back how some years ago when he spent a while in Mexico he stayed with some people in a village, the only non Mexican there. He found them to be very kindly and gracious people, but very limited, because all they could see was to do things exactly as every one else did so that their daily food was limited, day after day, to tortilla and beans, but they were living on the edge of the ocean. And he said day after day he caught fish in a matter of minutes, excellent eating, tasty varieties. But the Mexicans rarely ever touched the fish. They did things only as they had done them generation after generation. Now that is tunnel vision. That is a lack of any real vision. And that is exceedingly common. We can see it in the Mexicans, but we don’t see it in ourselves.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Decadence and the New Age (March 10, 1989)

People, Sadness, Food, Problem

“"When you're a head coach, you don't know where to stand," Edwards said. "You're screwed up. You go on the field, no one's talking to you. `Somebody's gonna talk to me.' You don't know what to do. So you go over and talk to the other head coach, and kind of shake his hand, then you go, `Where do I stand?'"—In an interview with South Florida Sun-Sentinel Reporter Ethan J. Skolnick.”

Herm Edwards (1954) American football player, coach and analyst

With Kansas City

Sun

“A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the Right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional – a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Apartheid South Africa: Reality vs. Libertarian Fantasy" http://praag.org/?p=12425, Praag.org, December 20, 2013. 2010s, 2013

History, Idea, Reality

“What I really want to do, it seems, is to paint a single form in the middle of a canvas... That's all a painter is, an image maker, is he not? And one would be a fool, some kind of fool, to want to paint a picture. The most powerful instinct is to paint a single form in its continuity, which is after all what a face is. This happens constantly on a picture. I remember last year I became so nervous about what I was doing that I finally reduce it down to the can on the palette with brushes in it. Well, that's real, tat can with brushes. And I painted the an with brushes sticking in it, and I couldn't tolerate it. I couldn't face it. It was as if it didn't contain enough of my thoughts or feelings about it.... I became signs. Exactly.... It seemed to become signs and symbols and I don't like signs.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), pp. 95

Fools, Feeling, Painting

“(Man in bar) The kind of woman I want just isn't around anymore. (Sylvia) Perhaps if you wait for a full moon.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 24

Waiting

“Knowledge, action, and actor are declared in the science of the gunas to be of three kinds only, according to distinctions of gunas; hear them also duly.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Bhagavad Gita, Ch XVIII, verse 19
Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Ch. XIII-XVIII, 2015

Knowledge, Science

“In principle, a self-organising system cannot be constructed, since its organisation and behaviour cannot be prescribed and created by an external source. It emerges autonomously in certain conditions (which cannot be prescribed either). The task of the researcher is to investigate in what kind of systems and under what kind of conditions self-organisation emerges.”

Rein Vihalemm (1938–2015) Estonian philosopher of chemistry

Source: Chemistry as an Interesting Subject for the Philosophy of Science, 2001, p. 195

“There is only one kind of painting: landscape. It is the most difficult. It has also, I believe, the most simple kind of composition. Because no one can stop us from imagining the world in the way that pleases us most.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Quote from Derain's letter to Maurice de Vlaminck, c. 1906; as cited in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by Cleo Nisse and Francesca Whitlum-Cooper http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 5

World, Way, Imagination, Painting

“You know, these things interested me before I became a businessman and I kind of neglected them during twenty, twenty-five years, while I was engaged in making money, because running a hedge fund takes, you know, a hundred percent of your attention on Saturday morning, and so I didn't get involved in these issues very much. It's only when I was rather successful at it and I've made enough money for my personal needs and to look after my family that we established this interest and, by now, it is more important to me than my business.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Interview with Mark Shapiro (2000)

Money, Family, Business, Success

“I grew up in the Bible Belt — not the buckle end, as the cliche goes, but the other end where all the holes are. You know what kind of holes. I don't mean to underestimate them, but if you laugh at these idiots enough — show them up as the phonies most of them are — they'll go away.
I'm concerned about another kind of religious fundamentalism: environmentalism. The Greenies have no more respect for scientific truth and individual liberty than the Goddies do. Both operate on faith, rather than fact. And neither of them has any qualms about dusting off the rack, the pincers, the Iron Maiden, and the red hot branding irons in order to see their mythology ensconced as beyond question.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

Interview, Ari Armstrong, "Catching Up with L. Neil Smith," http://www.freecolorado.com/2006/12/lneil.html 7 December 2006.

Truth, Faith, Question

“Gay marriage… I'm a traditionalist. I'm older than most people in the audience. I kind of like tradition, and it's always been a man and a woman. I'm thinking, 'I don't quite get it.”

Bruce Jenner (1949) American reality television personality and retired Olympic decathlete champion

On The Ellen Degeneres Show http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/02/19/caitlyn-jenner-have-gotten-more-flack-for-being-republican-than-have-for-being/.

Marriage, People, Thinking

“Well, it's the only picture I ever wanted to own ['Three Bathers' of Cézanne ]. It's a Cézanne and the joy of my life. I saw it about a year ago in an exhibition and I was stunned by it. I didn’t sleep for two or three nights trying to decide whether to... To me it is marvelous. Monumental... It's not perfect, it’s a sketch. But then I don't like absolute perfection. I believe one should make a struggle towards something one can't do rather than do the thing that comes easily. Perhaps another reason is why I fell for it is that the type of woman he portrays is the same kind as I like. Each of the figures I could turn in into a piece of sculpture, very simple. Not young girls but that wide, broad, mature woman. Matronly.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1955 - 1970

Life, Girl, Sleep, Joy

“We were the kids that made America famous.
The kind of kids that long since drove our parents to dispair.
We were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost confused, and copping out.
Convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

What Made America Famous?
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Parent, Future

“I was really nervous to read it because I really wanted to like it, you know, 'cause I've had this problem in my life before. I'll get offered something by people I respect and want to work with, but I can't pretend I like it… Hank's just a horrible guy and he's so sad, and he hates himself and he never does the right thing. But I had to admit that it was kind of the challenge I was looking for.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/01/AR2007110100750.html (2007-11-02) On Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) 2005&ndash;2009

Life, Hate, People, Sadness

“I think what's happening now is people want to forget. There was Vietnam, there was Watergate, there was Iran – we were beaten, we were hustled, and then we were humiliated. And I think people got a need to feel good about the country they live in. But what's happening, I think, is that that need – which is a good thing – is gettin' manipulated and exploited. And you see the Reagan reelection ads on TV – you know: "It's morning in America." And you say, well, it's not morning in Pittsburgh. It's not morning above 125th Street in New York. It's midnight, and, like, there's a bad moon risin'. And that's why when Reagan mentioned my name in New Jersey, I felt it was another manipulation, and I had to disassociate myself from the president's kind words.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

Rolling Stone magazine (December 1984)

People, Feeling, Thinking, Country

“I thought, well. when I step off it's just going to be a little step — a step from there down to there — but then I thought about all those 400,000 people who had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it's going to be a big something for all those folks and, indeed for a lot of others that weren't even involved in the project, so it was kind of a simple correlation.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

On what inspired him to say his famous words, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
60 Minutes interview (2005)

People

“[I was] a little boy with a patch over one eye, who sang and danced along the street. I had what’s called a lazy eye, so I had to wear the patch. You tend to be a prodded kind of kid when you look like that, but it makes you much stronger in the end.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

Hooray For Hollywood http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=481 by Paul Simper at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

Boy, Dance

“Talk of secularism is meaningful when it refers to the weakness of traditional religious belief or the lack of power of churches and other religious bodies. That is what is meant when we say Britain is a more secular country than the United States, and in this sense secularism is an achievable condition. But if it means a type of society in which religion is absent, secularism is a kind of contradiction, for it is defined by what it excludes. Post-Christian secular societies are formed by the beliefs they reject, whereas a society that had truly left Christianity behind would lack the concepts that shaped secular thought.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 267-8)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Religion, Sense, Country

“I know lots of people like Albert. I might be like him myself. He was a hopeless romantic, he lived on anticipation. He was always yearning for the next thing. He was always envisioning some wonderful life with somebody else, while grimly enduring life with the woman he was with. If I think about it, I would say that that was kind of the key to his psychology, that he had the lure of the perfect situation, the perfect person. Of course if you're Einstein, you want everything that you want your way and then you want to be left alone. So you want love, and you want affection, you want a good meal, but then you don't want any interference outside of that, so you don't want any obligations interfering with your life, with your work. Which is a difficult stance to maintain in an adult relationship; it doesn't work. Everything has to be a give and take.
Einstein always felt Paradise was just around the corner, but as soon as he got there, it started looking a little shabby and something better appeared. I've known a lot of people like Albert in my time, I have felt lots of shocks of recognition. I feel like I got to know Albert as a person in the course of this, and I have more respect for him as a physicist than I did when I started, I have more a sense of what he accomplished and how hard it really was to be Einstein than I did before. It's a great relief to be able to think of him as a real person. If he was around I'd love to buy him a beer ….. but I don't know if I'd introduce him to my sister.”

Dennis Overbye (1944) American writer

On Albert Einstein, in Sex and Physics : A Talk with Dennis Overbye (2001) http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/overbye/overbye_print.html

Love, Life, People, Way

“Why do serious scholars persist in believing in the Aryan invasions?… Why is this sort of thing attractive? Who finds it attractive? Why has the development of early Sanskrit come to be so dogmatically associated with an Aryan invasion?… Where the Indo-European philologists are concerned, the invasion argument is tied in with their assumption that if a particular language is identified as having been used in a particular locality at a particular time, no attention need be paid to what was there before; the slate is wiped clean. Obviously, the easiest way to imagine this happening in real life is to have a military conquest that obliterates the previously existing population! The details of the theory fit in with this racist framework… Because of their commitment to a unilineal segmentary history of language development that needed to be mapped onto the ground, the philologists took it for granted that proto-Indo-Iranian was a language that had originated outside either India or Iran. Hence it followed that the text of the Rig Veda was in a language that was actually spoken by those who introduced this earliest form of Sanskrit into India. From this we derived the myth of the Aryan invasions. QED. The origin myth of British colonial imperialism helped the elite administrators in the Indian Civil Service to see themselves as bringing `pure' civilization to a country in which civilization of the most sophisticated (but `morally corrupt') kind was already nearly 6,000 years old. Here I will only remark that the hold of this myth on the British middle-class imagination is so strong that even today, 44 years after the death of Hitler and 43 years after the creation of an independent India and independent Pakistan, the Aryan invasions of the second millennium BC are still treated as if they were an established fact of history.”

Edmund Leach (1910–1989) British anthropologist

Sir Edmund Leach. "Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245.

Life, Death, Way, Imagination

“It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Lecture II: Of Free Inquiry, considered as a Means for obtaining Just Knowledge
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)

Women, Men, Sex

“As I have said many times, for me an artist is a person who says he's an artist, and an artwork is what an artist says is an artwork. Although for myself, I am not interested in ideas as the burden of art.... the important thing about art is how it stimulates us. I think the more you are stimulated by more different kinds of art, the more demanding you're going to become on the level of your stimulation. The key to art is experience of it and proximity to it.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 14

Art, Idea, Thinking, Time

“When Paul’s Foundations was published in the 1940s, readers experienced a kind of revelation that created a sensation. This brings to mind the post-WWI public’s similar reaction to Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Critics compared Proust’s prolific writings to those of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. But, what a difference in Proust’s and Paul’s dispositions!”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

3.Paul Samuelson is a Mentor.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

Past

“One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian.”

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) French painter

Bouguereau (1895); Attributed in: Jefferson C. Harrison (1986) French paintings from the Chrysler Museum. Chrysler Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Ala.). p.45.

Truth, Beauty, Painting, Perfection

“There is … a good deal of empirical evidence for saying that rationalistic men are more intolerant than “prejudiced” men. The former take the position that their judgments are reasoned conclusions, and why should one swerve or deflect from what can be proved to all reasonable men? Such are often the authors of persecutions, massacres, and liquidations. The man who frankly confesses to his prejudices is usually more human and more humane. He adjusts amicably to the idea of his limitations. A limitation once admitted is a kind of monition not to try acting like something superhuman. The person who admits his prejudices, which is to say, his unreasoned judgments, has perspective on himself. … When H. L. Mencken wrote his brilliant series of essays on men, life, and letters, he gave them a title as illuminating as it was honest—Prejudices. What he meant … was that these were views based on such part of experience as had passed under his observation. There was no apology because some figures were praised and others were roundly damned, and there was no canting claim to “objectivity.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Mencken knew that life and action turn largely on convictions which rest upon imperfect inductions, or sampling of evidence, and he knew that feeling is often a positive factor.
“Life without prejudice,” p. 10.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Life, Men, Feeling, Idea

“As a writer, I must keep writing, poems can never be forced, the muses will not be raped, so I feel this kind of prose (autobiography), however inadequate, share some of the exploratory features of the poetic use of language.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Tiger and the Rose, 1971

Feeling

“What I did was restate the law. I was talking about a situation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes smashing into a house, doesn't say who they are, and their guns are out, they're shooting, and they're in the wrong place. This has happened time and time again. The ATF has gone in and gotten the wrong guy in the wrong place. The law is that if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they are a law enforcement officer, if they are in the wrong, does not mean you are obliged to allow yourself to be killed so your kinfolk can have a wrongful death action. You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. If you're going to do that, you should know that they're wearing body armor so you should use a head shot. Now all I'm doing is stating the law, but all the nuances in there got left out when the story got repeated.”

G. Gordon Liddy (1930) American lawyer in Watergate scandal

On his 1994 comments on taking head shots at ATF agents, as quoted in a 2003 interview at Right Wing News http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/liddy.php

Death, Alcohol, Law, Guy

“Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

Nature

“Total experiences, of which there are many kinds, tend again and again to be apprehended only as revivals or translations of the religious imagination. To try to make a fresh way of talking at the most serious, ardent, and enthusiastic level, heading off the religious encapsulation, is one of the primary intellectual tasks of future thought.”

Susan Sontag book Styles of Radical Will

“The Pornographic Imagination,” p. 69
Styles of Radical Will (1966)

Way, Imagination, Future

“While decisions are constrained by the kinds of organizations and the kinds of knowledge involved, the Impetus for decisions comes from the internal preferences and external incentives facing those who actually make the decisions.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 1 : The Role of Knowledge

Knowledge, Decision

Quotes about kindness page 52

Quotes about kindness
page 52