Quotes about know-how
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“We are best friends! I think our personalities balance one another extremely well — plus we know how to interact positively and productively with each other. We work hard at maintaining our partnership, but to be honest, it's just what we've come to know and depend on. I hardly remember my life without Scott!”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Tessa Virtue, Interview for Golden Skate (17 September 2007)
Partnership with Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue about Moir

Life, Thinking, Dependency, Personality

“Live with yourself: get to know how poorly furnished you are.”
Tecum habita: noris quam sit tibi curta supellex.

Persius (34–62) ancient latin poet

Satire IV, line 52.
The Satires

“This is street rad-i-o, For unsung hero,
Driving in the regal, trying to stay legal,
My daughter found Nemo, I found the new primo,
Yeah, you know how we do, we do it for the people.”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"The People", Finding Forever
Albums, Compilations, Singles, and Cameos

People, Daughters

“Do you know how many times, when I was a kid, going to Europe, having a Frenchman try to get on my case about Vietnam. And that wasn't the problem, do you know what it was like to have other kids, other American students go, "yeah, it's pretty bad, in Vietnam, we should, yeah". And I'd be like, 'but, mhmm, French Indochina.', and they'd be like, "Oh is that near Vietnam" (groans). We don't educate our young people, and then we send them out into the world, as ambassadors as lameness. So no, no world empire, I don't want to be responsible for the plumbing in Rwanda, but we do need to become as much of a student of them as they are of us. Because, here's the thing. Well, the problem with the global village, remember in the early 90's, with the term now, global village, well the problem with the global village is that a lot of people are waking up realizing that they are in the global villages ghetto. And now with media, we are broadcasting these images of our wealth, and our power, our society, and the people in the global village are looking up on the hill seeing that mansion, but we're not looking down into the slum, and we need to do that. There's just so many times you can drive slowly through the ghetto in a rich convertible before you get carjacked. So this is what I mean, we need to engage…”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

People, World, Education, Problem

“You haven’t wasted all your time in Rome,
Since you know how to defend yourself so gallantly:
You have wit, even if you haven’t courage.”

Pierre Corneille Nicomède

C'est n'avoir pas perdu tout votre temps à Rome,
Que vous savoir ainsi défendre en galant homme:
Vous avez de l'esprit, si vous n'avez du cœur.
Nicomède, act III, scene vi.
Nicomède (1651)

Courage, Time

“In the yearly days those nouvo riches were too busy. As they finally got their moneys grabbed, they started to look round and discovered emptiness, vacuum inside… It so happened that the whole new generation grew up with this feeling of emptiness. When, say, falling in love, such a person simply doesn’t know - how to experience an emotion. And then this question of Life’s reason arises. People don’t think about it until one day something happens. Then all of a sudden they find that their life is not particularly interesting. First they get bored, then get frightened. Because its frightening for one, after having got everything - houses, cars, stocks and funds, - to discover they haven’t a ground to stand on.”

Nina Shatskaya (1966) Russian singer

Ogonyok interview. Нина Шацкая, Огонек, 2011-01-01 http://www.ogoniok.com/4977/25/,

Love, Life, Money, People

“Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. … An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt.”

Walter Benjamin book Capitalism as Religion

Der Kapitalismus ist vermutlich der erste Fall eines nicht entsühnenden, sondern verschuldenden Kultus. ... Ein ungeheures Schuldbewußtsein das sich nicht zu entsühnen weiß, greift zum Kultus, um in ihm diese Schuld nicht zu sühnen, sondern universal zu machen, dem Bewußtsein sie einzuhämmern und endlich und vor allem den Gott selbst in diese Schuld einzubegreifen.
Translated by Chad Kautzer in The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers (2005), p. 259
Capitalism as Religion (1921)

God, Feeling, Universe

“Ah well—the boss didn’t have to know how to run the business. He only needed to know how to run the people who knew.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 18 (p. 103)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

People, Business

“You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1808-06-15) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

“I asked Mr. Honda to direct the next Godzilla film at a party that was held shortly before he died. He said that he would. I don't know how serious he was.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1993)

“[On presidential candidates not condemning the controversial MoveOn. org ad in The New York Times. ] If you're not tough enough to repudiate a scurrilous, outrageous attack such as that, then I don't know how you're tough enough to be president of the United States.”

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

As quoted in The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/16/sister_souljah_moments/ (16 September 2007) <br class="br">2000s, 2007

Time

“The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

Le succès de la plupart des choses dépend de savoir combien il faut de temps pour réussir.
Pensées Diverses

Success, Dependency

“The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

Influences of Matisse, exhibition catalog essay 1973, Aquavella Gallery NYC: On Henri Matisse
1970s

“Fools, they do not even know how much more is the half than the whole.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 40; often translated as "The half is greater than the whole."

Fools

“The Lord, marks the fall of the smallest sparrow. He knows how so many in authority treat the infirm and the aged. Look at the Napoleons, Caesars and the like. Rather than casting themselves in God's image they made Gods of themselves. and were destroyed. ( Edgar Cayce On the Millennium Chapter One - The great new planet earth. )”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

God, Spirituality

God, Age

“Ha ha! We are just poking a little friendly fun at Germany, which is famous for enjoying a good joke, or as the Germans say, "Sprechnehaltenzoltenfussenmachschnitzerkalbenrollen." Here is just one hilarious example of what we are talking about:
First German: How many Polish people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Second German: I don't know! How many?
First German: Let's invade Poland and find out!
Millions of Other Germans: Okay!”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (1991)

People, Light

“"I don't know how you do it, Archie," Carter was forced to admit. "Simple, Carter, simple." Archie reveled in the moment, basking in Carter's admiration, Carter who had humiliated him at The Vigils meeting. Someday he'd get even with Carter but at the moment it was satisfying enough to have Carter regarding him with awe and envy. "You see, Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect setup here. The greed part- a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty bucks of chocolates. The cruel part- watching two guys hitting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards."”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 241

People, Guy, Chance, Envy

“From my point of view, he can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting himself justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of others.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)

Nature, Time

“In addition to preventing many chronic diseases … comprehensive lifestyle changes can often reverse the progression of these illnesses. … Changing lifestyle actually changes your genes—turning on genes that keep you healthy, and turning off genes that promote heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and diabetes—more than five hundred genes in only three months. People often say, “Oh, it's all in my genes. There's not much I can do about it.” But there is. Knowing that changing lifestyle changes our genes is often very motivating—not to blame, but to empower. … [Our approach is] not like there was one set of dietary recommendations for reversing heart disease, a different one for reversing diabetes, and yet another for changing your genes or lengthening your telomeres. In all of our studies, people were asked to consume a whole-foods, plant-based diet … It's as though your body knows how to personalize the medicine it needs if you give it the right raw materials in your diet and lifestyle. … And what's good for you is good for our planet. To the degree we transition toward a whole-foods, plant-based diet, it not only makes a difference in our own lives; it also makes a difference in the lives of many others across the globe.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=KfeoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PP12 to Marco Borges, The 22-Day Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2015).

People, Disease, Food, Motivation

“At 13, I was fearless. I looked at everything so positive. When you're older and been through it all, you know how bad it can get. There is a fear of failing.”

Michelle Kwan (1980) American figure skater

http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Kwan_Michelle.html

Fear

“I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Tales of a Traveler http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13514, To the Reader http://books.google.com/books?id=6R0GAAAAQAAJ&q=%22I+am+always+at+a+loss+to+know+how+much+to+believe+of+my+own+stories%22&pg=PR13#v=onepage (1824).

Loss

“I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.”

Primo Levi book If This Is a Man

If This Is a Man (1947)

“Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 12.

“The man to watch, the man to put your money on, is not the man who wants to make "a survey" or a "more detailed study" but the man with the notebook, the man with the alternative hypotheses and the crucial experiments, the man who knows how to answer your Question of disproof and is already working on it.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

John R. Platt (1964). Cited in: William M. Block, M. Dale Strickland, Bret A. Collier, Markus J. Peterson (2008) Wildlife Study Design. Springer. p. 20 among other places.

Money, Question, Study

“Scott London: How did you begin to explore the connection between management and science?
Meg Wheatley: I didn't have an interest in the new science. I had a realization that in my profession — which was vaguely labeled "organizational change," "organizational development," or "management consulting" in general — none of us knew how organizations change. When I talked to other consultants, I noticed that if we had an organizational change effort that was successful, it felt like a miracle to us.
I realized with a great start one day that we weren't even geared up for success. It didn't matter that we didn't know how to change organizations. We were all professionals who didn't hope to achieve what we were selling or suggesting to clients. The field was really moribund.
At the same time — and this is the serendipity of life — I had a friend and educator whom I had worked with for many years who said casually one day "Meg, if you're interested in systems thinking, you should be reading quantum physics." He didn't know where I was in my despair over my professional failings. But I said, "Okay, give me a book list."”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

He gave me ten titles. I read eight of those and I was off. I always credit him with that casual, helpful comment that changed my life. <br class="br">Scott London (2008) " The New Science of Leadership: An Interview with Margaret Wheatley http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/wheatley.html" in Quantum21. management journal, Spring 2008.

Life, Books, Education, Hope

“God knows how ardently I wish I had ten lives”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

In a letter to Charles Babbage, as quoted in The Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel by Günther Buttmann, p. 14

God

“Other days, other ways! For myself I would desire a combination of old romance and modern machinery. No housewife would wish to the return to the era when everything, had to be made at home by candlelight and which lost to us who knows how many women poets and painters!”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

August Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Women, Way, Home

“It is the business of the production engineer to know every single item that constitutes his finished product, and every step involved in the handling of every piece. He must know what is the most advantageous manufacturing quantity of every single item so as to secure uniformity of flow as well as economy of manufacture. He must know how long each step ought to take under the best attainable working conditions. He must be able to tell at any time the exact condition as regards quantity and state of finishedness of every part involved in his manufacturing process.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

Source: "Industrial Engineering," 1905, p. 67

Business, Time, Parting

“If each member of society can be induced or impelled to do his allotted task by associating it with some motive that appears to him adequate, then he need never know how he is contributing to the real end, and need not even be aware of the end at all. It is this problem of organization that we shall call the Economic Problem. It is in fact the real subject matter of political economy.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Source: The Economic Problem (1925), Chapter I, "The Problem Profounded", p. 3.

Motivation, Problem, Appearance

“It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"The voice of the turtle", p. 250
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Men, World, Nature

“He [ Jackson Pollock ] just jumps in before he knows how to swim. [when Morandi sees paintings of Pollock for the first time]”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in Morandi 1894 – 1964, published by Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco - 2008; p. 298
1945 - 1964

Time, Painting

“We're all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he's grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. What is he likely to know about what goes into the processing of the natural gas that fuels his oven? For that matter, what does he know about oven manufacture? Then, there are all the ingredients he uses -- flour, sugar, yeast, vanilla and milk. Is he likely to know how to grow wheat and sugar and how to protect the crop from diseases and pests? What is he likely to know about vanilla extraction and yeast production? Just as important is the question of how all the people who produce and deliver all these items know what he needs and when he needs them. There are literally millions of people cooperating with one another to ensure that the baker has all the necessary inputs. It's the miracle of the market and prices that gets the job done so efficiently. What's called the market is simply a collection of millions upon millions of independent decision makers not only in America but around the world. Who or what coordinates the activities all of these people? Rest assuredly it's not a bakery czar.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

People, World, Disease, Question

“O Mother, I throw myself on Thy mercy; I take shelter at Thy Hallowed Feet. I do not want bodily comforts; I do not crave name and fame; I do not seek the eight occult powers. Be gracious and grant that I may have pure love for Thee, a love unsmitten by desire, untainted by any selfish ends — a love craved by the devotee for the sake of love alone. And grant me the favour, O Mother, that I may not be deluded by Thy world-bewitching māyā, that I may never be attached to the world, to "woman and gold", conjured up by Thy inscrutable māyā! O Mother, there is no one but Thee whom I mav call my own. Mother, I do not know how to worship; I am without austerity; I have neither devotion nor knowledge. Be gracious, Mother, and out of Thy infinite mercy grant me love for Thy Lotus Feet.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 731

Love, World, Knowledge, Selfishness

“If you like poetry let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Camp[b]ell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good and avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting, you will never wish to read them over twice.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Letter to Ellen Nussey, 4 July 1834.
The letters of Charlotte Brontë (edited by Margaret Smith), Vol. I: 1829–1847, p. 130

Men, Evil, Reading

“The great quality teacher, Shoji Shiba, often tells people that the biggest barrier to changing understanding is the following word: IAKI, which is not a Japanese word at all. It is an acronym for I ALREADY KNOW IT… Professor Shiba then goes on to say: “Yes, you may know it, but you don't know how to do it!” There is an enormous difference between knowledge and know-how… Too many executives believe that if they listen to a lecture or read a book they will know how to do something…. Nobody ever became a great lover by just reading a book or watching a video. You have to get in and do it. There are some things you can only learn through experience.”

Myron Tribus (1921–2016) American academic

Myron Tribus "You Cannot Lead What You Do Not Understand — You Do Not Understand What You Haven't Done". Journal of Innovative Management, Fall 1996; As quoted in: William J. Altier (1999) The Thinking Manager's Toolbox. p. 9

People, Books, Lovers, Understanding

“God is the one who leads me and elevates me to that state. I do not go to it on my own, for by myself I would not know how to want, desire, or seek it. I am now continually in this state. Furthermore, God very often elevates me to this state with no need, even, for my consent; for when I hope or expect it least, when I am not thinking about anything, suddenly my soul is elevated by God and I hold dominion over and comprehend the whole world. It seems, then, as if I am no longer on earth but in heaven, in God.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, pp. 214-216

God, World, Hope, Soul

“Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Love, World, Making love, Painting

“You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)

Children, Girl, Boy, Parent

“No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

"Risky Genetic Fantasies" in The Los Angeles Times (29 July 2001), p. M4

“It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15; translated by W. K. Marriot

“Do you know how fat you are, do you? No, you don't, 'CAUSE YOUR FACE IS AN ISLAND TRAPPED IN A SEA OF FLAB! I would stab you to death… but I can't afford to take the two weeks off work!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On relationships with fat people.
Like, Totally (2006)

Death, Sea

“When we are children, we think that adults know how the world works. When we become adults, we know enough about the world to know that we know nothing about it…”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Zire Notes (May 2004 - December 2006)

Children, World, Thinking

“Capitalism has been fully restored in Yugoslavia, as is well-known, but this capitalism knows how to disguise. Yugoslavia portrays itself as a socialist state, but of a special kind, as the world has never seen it before! The Titoites even boast that their state has nothing in common with the first socialist state which emerged from the socialist October Revolution and which was founded by Lenin and Stalin on the basis of the scientific theory of Marx and Engels.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Writings, Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice

World

“I don’t know how I’ve survived the onslaughts of the government. It almost makes me believe in the Deity. I’m a Catholic, but I’m a Catholic-atheist, because the tragedies in life have overwhelmed me.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

Life

“In [the early 1980s], making electronic music was a big job, particularly the way that I was doing it. To get the sounds I wanted, I might have 24 synthesizers playing one synth line, all programmed, all analogue and all drifting out of tune. It used to take hours and hours and hours. I don't know how we ever got through it.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

The Telegraph, Martin Rushent, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/technology-obituaries/8562220/Martin-Rushent.html, The Telegraph, 7 June 2011

Music, Way

“You know how a boy is. There comes a time for departure, a point where he sees confirmed the suspicion he’d had for some time that his father is not a god, not even a oracle. He sees that he no longer has any right to any such father. So Vheissu becomes a bedtime story or fairly tale after all, and the boy a superior version of his merely human father.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Seven, Part VII

God, Boy, Departure, Time

“I don't know how long this thing will last… We can still lose this war. That's a real clear statement. I wouldn't be a goddamned bit surprised but that we can still lose it. And then you can just write those casualties off and those ever-increasing names on those ever-increasing monuments… You can keep putting them on the monuments and giving out all this crap, all this posthumous DSCs and Purple Hearts… but there's no end to this thing.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Letter from Patton to his wife, written on November 10, 1968. As quoted in Growing Up Patton (2012) by Benjamin Patton, p. 295

War, Heart

“I sometimes wonder if my requests are legitimate. So I'm honest with God. I say, "Lord, I don't know if I have the right to ask for this. I don't know how I should pray about it. But I hand it over to your now, and if you'll tell me how to pray, I'll pray your way."”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God, Way

“And because this Experimental Science is wholly ignored by the general run of students, for that reason I can not convince people of its utility unless I show at the same time its excellence and its property. This science alone, then, knows how to test perfectly by experience what can be done by nature, what by the industry of art, what by imposture; what the incantations, conjurations, invocations, deprecations, sacrifices (which are magical devices) seek and dream of; and what is done in them, so that all falsity may be removed and that only the truth of art and nature be retained. This science alone teaches one to consider all the insanities of magicians, not that they may be confirmed but that they may be avoided, just as logic considers sophistical argument.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

6th part Experimental Science, Ch.2 Tr. Richard McKeon, Selections from Medieval Philosophers Vol.2 Roger Bacon to William of Ockham
Opus Majus, c. 1267

People, Truth, Dreams, Art

“This man knows the legislative process as few others have learned them. He knows that legislation is compromise, he knows that there must be give and take, and he knows how legislative work is accomplished.”

Carl Hayden (1877–1972) American federal politician

Morris Udall
Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. pp 155. ISBN 0-8165-2203-0.
About

Learning

“Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

Lovers

“The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

The Creole Village published in The Knickerbocker magazine (November 1836). This is origin of the expression almighty dollar. See Edward Bulwer-Lytton for "the pursuit of the almighty dollar". Compare: "Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice,—almighty gold", Ben Jonson, Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.

Universe, Housing

“Why does he not know how to select servants? The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

Que ne sait-il choisir ses gens? La marche ordinaire du XIXe siècle est que, quand un être puissant et noble rencontre un homme de cœur, il le tue, l'exile, l'emprisonne ou l'humilie tellement, que l'autre a la sottise d'en mourir de douleur.
Vol. I, ch. XXIII
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Fools, Feeling

“The song is about knowing the end result of every situation you're in, and being able to play it out in your mind and see it before it happens. It's about addiction, really, about knowing how it's all going to end up. In that sense, you're watching a movie of yourself all the time – and then you want out of that movie.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

About Movies of Myself, [July 28, 2011, http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=376772359546, Want One Bio, December 1, 2009]

Sense, Time

“I do not understand your silence you know all the same how interested I always am in what you are doing. you also know that there are not many of us who understand each other we have always got on well together. I have seen and I see every day how little people like us[. ] Between ourselves there are things we cannot say to others…. you cannot imagine how little I find myself in sympathy with other people….- I do not want to lose another day, one hour this year I have no hope I have lost it and you know how unlike me that is. at the moment I have several studies to do at the Louvre order[s] which are going to bring me many others [p. 2] as soon as this time has passed I want to do two large pictures for the Salon[. ] I think of nothing else… I am becoming more and more the Fantin of the old days you know here I am today but neither discouraged nor bored. I have my own views now nothing can distract me..”

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) painter from France

quote from a letter of Fantin-Latour, Paris, July/September 1868, to James Whistler in London; from The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler - Repository: Glasgow University Library http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?cid=1085&nameid=Fantin_Latour_IH&sr=0&rs=76&surname=&firstname= - System Number: 01085; Call Number: MS Whistler F 16.

People, Hope, Imagination, Understanding

“Oh yeah, there was a point where they said they thought the threat had probably or had possibly been overstated, and then they started to question their sources, and blah, blah, blah. But I don't know how it was resolved, you know? But they were serious about it. And what can you say? I mean, gee, there were a lot of man-hours spent doing that gig, so the least I can say is, "Thank you very much."”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

GQ Interview (2005)

Question

“There are many things in this world I do not know. I do not know how butterflies get out of their cocoons without damaging their wings. I do not know why anyone would boil vegetables when roasting them is much tastier. I do not know how to make olive oil, and I do not know why dogs bark before an earthquake, and I do not know why some people voluntarily choose to climb mountains where it is freezing and difficult to breathe, or live in the suburbs, where the coffee is watery and all of the houses look alike.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

People, World, Dogs, Mountain

“I have made a great study of the spine ever since I had my spine trouble, and now I know what to do and it doesn’t involve doctors, operations or anything like that. Why, in Puerto Rico last winter I helped 29 people who had back trouble and one of them was a doctor who couldn’t get medical relief. Ask Willie (Stargell), ask Danny Murtaugh what I did for them. They had back trouble and I fixed them, not by any tricks or anything, but because I know how to manipulate and bring relief. A lot of people think if you have a pain or tightness here, it can be worked out by rubbing that area. It can’t. The way to do it is to know the trigger points. Sometimes you have to manipulate a few inches from the spot that’s hurting because that's maybe where the muscle that controls the soreness is. It’s all very complicated, but believe me, it works.

I was suffering so bad I could hardly walk [in 1957]. All the x-rays and medical doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong. Then a man in St. Louis, a chiropractor, called me and offered to help. The ballclub was against it and said they wouldn’t be responsible, but I was desperate and the pain was driving me crazy. But the man, who told me I had a curvature of the spine, was able to fix me up. It was after that I became interested in studying the human back and ever since I’ve never had trouble I couldn't take care of. Back trouble is a painful thing and people who don’t have the problem don’t know how lucky they are.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente a Doc" by Red Foley, in The New York Daily News (October 10, 1971), pp. 69, 75
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Pain, People, Way, Problem

“Gene Ray: Another thing, did you know your father is a fish?
Interviewer: No, I did not know my… [laughter]
Gene Ray: You know how salmon swim upstream, the male fertilizes the female eggs laid in the water?
Interviewer: Yes.
Gene Ray: The sperm fish swims upstream just like the salmon fertilizes female eggs laid in the water.”

Gene Ray (1927)

Radio KoL interview, April 9, 2004

Fish, Laughter, Water

“Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Variant translation: Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

“[Lloyd George] was still pessimistic about the war—said we were fighting better brains than our own—that there was not one really first-class man on our side. The Germans had shown that they had better training than we, and he knew the value of training—he had seen examples of it in the House of Commons, when Labour members competed against men of better education than themselves—they were just as good fellows, but they hadn't the training. And [Lloyd George] says that it is training that is wanting on our side—among the generals. He says our soldiers are the best in Europe, but they are being wantonly sacrificed because those in authority do not know how to make the best use of them.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Frances Stevenson's diary entry (16 December 1914), A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 17
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men, War, Education, Fight

“Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

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

Source: Alone (1938), Ch. 2

World

“How much do you think it costs to go to college? Most people are likely to answer by adding together their expenditures on tuition, room and board, books, and the like, and then deducting any scholarship funds they may receive. Suppose that amount comes to $15,000.
Economists keep score differently. They first want to know how much you would be earning if you were not attending college. Suppose that salary is $20,000 per year. This may seem irrelevant, but because you give up these earnings by attending college, they must be added to your tuition bill. You have that much less income because of your education. On the other side of the ledger, economists would not count all of the university’s bill for room and board as part of the costs of your education. They would want to know how much more it costs you to live at school rather than at home. Economists would count only these extra costs as an educational expense because you would have incurred these costs whether or not you attend college. On balance, college is probably costing you much more than you think. And, as we will see later, taking opportunity cost into account in any personal planning will help you to make more rational decisions.”

Alan Blinder (1945) economist

William Baumol and Alan Blinder, Economics: Principles and Policy (2011), Ch. 1 : What is Economics?

People, Books, Education, School

“After all, in the poets love has its priests, and sometimes one hears a voice which knows how to defend it; but of faith one hears never a word. Who speaks in honor of this passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits rouged at the window and courts its favor, offering to sell her charms to philosophy. it is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a trifle. To go beyond Hegel's is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Love, Faith, Understanding, Passion

“If you're a parent, you know how incredibly good it feels when one of your children spontaneously thanks you for something. God is our Father, and he, too, is moved when we express our thanksgiving.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God, Children, Feeling, Parent

“I never was against wearing fur because I truly did not know how these animals were tortured and killed in order to have these coats and accessories. I am done with fur forever and I have now found so many amazing faux fur lines that are great alternatives for women who love the look and love animals. I love that PETA is all about individuals taking baby steps in becoming aware of animal rights. I am not a full vegetarian but I have not eaten red meat or pork in over 10 years. … I am also extremely careful now not to purchase products that are tested on animals. I have started with fur but I hope that over time I will become a full vegetarian.”

Khloé Kardashian (1984) American television personality

"My PETA Billboard Has Been Unveiled!!!!!" https://archive.fo/gSKe, on her blog Khloekardashian.celebuzz.com (10 December 2008).

Love, Women, Hope, Time

“They carved your name into a stone and then they put it in the ground.
I run my fingers through the grooves when no one's around,
Drink till I'm sick and I talk to myself in the dog days of the summer.
Then I feel you coming but I don't know how…”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

September
29 (2005)

Dogs, Feeling, Drink, Summer

“So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven." Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament. "Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you." A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason's mind, his body, his spirit- he wasn't sure which or where but he was suddenly jolted thoroughly. Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch. "You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Horror, disbelief in his voice.
Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 137-138

“"I'm not sure I ever 'got it' when it comes to how to live my life in a way that was original and free," reflected Steven Salt, a retired businessman. "Of course, like most men, I always believed I had the answers and that I was not going to live my life the stupid way other men do. I was going to be unique and avoid their mistakes, but instead I'm just another male stereotype. I started off thinking that being an achiever and a 'winner' would be the key to real freedom. So all my energy went that way and I faked everything else when it came to caring about other people. Then I thought I'd marry the 'perfect' woman and be the 'perfect' dad and husband, not like the other married men. I'd be different. But no matter how I tried I was forcing it and probably fooling no one but myself. My wife finally left and I barely know who my kids really are. When we talk it's mainly 'business.' I fell into all the traps. Now that I'm in my seventies, I'm becoming just like all those guys I felt sorry for when I was younger— guys with no real friends and with no patience for anyone else's ideas or opinions. I can barely stand to talk to anyone and yet I'm still looking to fulfill myself by meeting the 'perfect' woman. I've become a macho cliché. It's taken me this long to realize that even if she existed I really wouldn't know how to be with her and make it feel good anyway."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, p. 9
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Life, Men, People, Stupidity

“Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

RS, on some of his favorite female artists such as Ani DiFranco and Bjork

Life, Art, Perfection

“[If] we equip the programmed computer with transducers so it can interact freely with a natural environment and a linguistic one, as well as the power to make inferences, it is far from obvious what if any latitude the theorist (who knows how the transducers operate and therefore what they respond to) would still have in assigning a coherent interpretation to the functional states so as to capture psychologically relevant regularities in behavior. If the answer is that the theorist is left with no latitude beyond the usual inductive indeterminism all theories have in the face of finite data, it would be perverse to deny that these states had the semantic content assigned to them by the theory.”

Zenon Pylyshyn (1937) Canadian philosopher

Source: Computation and cognition, 1984, p. 44

Behavior, Nature

“Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Sorrows of Werther, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love

“Uh, cause everyday she's struggling
she be hustling
day and night
I don't think you know how it feels
when you're an orphan yeah”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"The Orphan" (track 5)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Feeling, Thinking, Night

“Everything great has already been said. But the person who knows how to stimulate his soul with the magnificence of it is always something new.”

Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) Swedish poet

Source: The Second Light (1986), p. 14

Soul, Personality

“A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major principles but finding room for compromises that can bring people together. A great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don't drown every bill in pork barrel bridges to nowhere. I know how to stand my ground — but I also know that Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground to stand on as well.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), p. 96

People

“The single greatest influence on my work as a filmmaker has been the celebrated Interviews with Francis Bacon (1980) by David Sylvester. Sylvester is a master of the art of complicity: he knows how to manipulate and exploit it. Complicity requires being cautiously intellectual yet profoundly human in the sense that the interviewer must act as the concerned midwife, allowing the interviewee to express himself while at the same time guiding his thoughts to a satisfactory conclusion through sensitive provocation.”

Damian Pettigrew book I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon

I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon (2003)

Art, Sense, Time

“Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing like that must know how to love indeed.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Les musiciennes sont presque toujours amoureuses. Celle qui chantait ainsi devait savoir bien aimer.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Love, Singing

“I am not a Jacob wrestling with God, but a Job lying on his dung-hill. I have assimilated Western thought and its clarity, but, in fact, I am solidly rooted in the passive Eastern nature and remain rebellious to any action. The book, the cell, the presence at the altar and at lengthy church ceremonies, and above all the solitude and withdrawal from the world -- this is the atmosphere which suits me; it is there that I feel like a fish in the water. I cannot lead an active and contemplative life at the same time. You know how much I love the Jesuits, but their ideal (to unite contemplation with action) is not within my means.”

Leonid Feodorov (1879–1935) Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church

Fr. Paul Mailleux, "Exarch Leonid Feodorov," page 181.
In a letter to Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky.

Love, Life, God, Books

“Before I came, I went to visit Jane Austen's grave in Winchester Cathedral to pay my respects, you know, and tell her about the grosses. [Laughter] I don't know how she would react to an evening like this, but I do hope -- I do hope she knows how big she is in Uruguay.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

68th Academy Awards speech (1996)

Hope, Laughter

“From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 164.

People

“[S]poken or colloquial Chinese is […] in fact the language of a child. Now as a proof of this, we all know how easily European children learn colloquial or spoken Chinese, while learned philogues and sinologues insist in saying that Chinese is so difficult. Chinese, colloquial Chinese, I say again is the language of a child. My first advice therefore to my foreign friends who want to learn Chinese is "Be ye like little children, you will then not only enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but you will also be able to learn Chinese."”

Gu Hongming book The Spirit of the Chinese People

page 103
The Spirit of the Chinese People (1915), Chinese Language

Children, Learning

“Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.”

Willa Cather book The Song of the Lark

Part VI, Ch. 11
The Song of the Lark (1915)

Truth, Stupidity, Sense

“Johnson: Well, they’d impeach a president, though, that would run out, wouldn’t they?
Russell: I don’t think they would. I don’t know how in hell you’re going to get out, unless they [the South Vietnamese government] tell you to get out.
Johnson: Wouldn’t that pretty well fix us in the eyes of the world and make us look mighty bad?
Russell: Well, I don’t know, we don’t look too good right now, going in there with all the troops, sending them all in there, I’ll tell you it'll be the most expensive adventure this country ever went into.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Telephone call with Senator Richard Russell (May 27, 1964)

World, Hell, Thinking, Country

“I'm amazed to be here still and doing all this. But then I look at Oscar Niemeyer in Rio, who was a hero of mine when I was a student at Manchester. Oscar's still busy at work at 102, so there's hope. In any case, I just wouldn't know how to stop.”

Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank (1935) British architect

theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/29/norman-foster-interview.

Hope, Business

“There's a queer performance going on in the other world,' he said. 'It's unbelievable. I never dreamed of such a thing. I — I don't quite know how to put it, and I don't know how to explain it, but — but I am becoming aware that there are other beings — other minds — moving in Space besides mine.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Space (1912)

World, Dreams

“Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"Stop Those Hiccoughs!", My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” he returned. It was a phrase of hers that he had adopted “It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, and there’s this couple lying naked in bed reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more ‘numinous’ than the Resurrection. Do they know how to have a good time or don’t they?”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 9 (p. 154)

Lying, Time, Reading

“Fruit-bearing involves cross-bearing. We know how the Lord Jesus became fruitful – not by bearing His Cross merely, but by dying on it. Do we know much of fellowship with Him in this?”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(J. Hudson Taylor. Fruit Bearing. Philadelphia: Overseas Missionary Fellowship).

“[How is it consistent with what you advocated this evening in terms of a vision for peace, that you continued to allow the building of settlements in the West Bank, during your primeministership? ] Let me tell you, first of all, during my term as a Prime Minister, we have not built a single new settlement. I ordered the dismantling of many voluntary -- I don't know how to call it -- new settlements that had been set on top of hills in different parts of the West Bank, basically. But, I allowed contracts, contracts that had been signed, legally, in Israel, beforehand. To build new neighborhoods in some big cities in the West Bank, cities with 25,000 or 30,000 people. And very few new homes, in small settlements, where youngsters, who came back from the army service, asked to build their home near the home of their parents. Now, Israel is a law-abiding state, you cannot break contracts, there is Supreme Court. If the government behaves in a way that is not proper, any individual can appeal and change whatever we decide. Realizing that this is a sensitive issue from the Palestinian side, I talked to Arafat, at the beginning of my term as a Prime Minister, and I told him: Mr. Chairman, I know that you are worried about it, it creates some problems, in your own constituency. But let me tell you, we have a great opportunity here to put an end to the whole conflict, in a year and a half. When President Clinton that invested unbelievable amount of energy and political capital in trying to solve it, and he's still in power. Now, I understand your problem with settlement if there is no end, there is no time limit, and you are afraid that maybe the accumulation of new settlements will change the nature of the situation, for the worse, from your position. So I tell you, out of our own considerations, independent of you, we have decided not to set even a single new settlement. We will not allow anyone to establish his own private initiatives on the hills, for our own reasons, not because of you. But at the same time I will respect any contract that has been signed, under law, in Israel. But -- and here is a point -- bearing in mind that we can put an end to the conflict, to reach an agreement within a year and a half, why the hell it will matter? To build a new building in Israel takes more than a year and a half, so you won't see any building that is not already emerging from the ground, having it's roof before we can reach an agreement. Now if such a building happens to be in a settlement that will become, under the agreement, part of the new independent Palestine, why the hell you have to care? Take it, use it, put some refugees in it. And if it will happen to be a part of what will be agreed, as Israel, in a mutual agreement that is signed by you, why the hell do you care, if you agree? I believe that that simple answer would not solve his public -- or internal political -- problems, but it would solve the real issue if the will was there to make peace, and not just to politically maneuver and manipulate.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

People, Peace, Law, Way

“I don't believe that anybody / Feels the way I do / About you now
All the roads that lead you there are winding / And all the lights that light the way are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you / But I don't know how.
Maybe / You're gonna be the one that saves me”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Wonderwall
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

Way, Feeling, Light

“Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.
Russell: Well, frankly, Mr. President, it’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it. I just don’t know what to do.
Johnson: Well, that’s the way I have been feeling for six months.
Russell: Our position is deteriorating and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they are willing to do for themselves. It is a mess and it’s going to get worse, and I don’t know how or what to do. I don’t think the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. If I was going to get out, I’d get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem [the Vietnamese prime minister who was overthrown and assassinated in 1963] to get rid of these people and to get some fellow in there that said we wish to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out.
Johnson: How important is it to us?
Russell: It isn’t important a damn bit for all this new missile stuff.
Johnson: I guess it is important.
Russell: From a psychological standpoint. Other than the question of our word and saving face, that’s the reason that I said that I don’t think that anybody would expect us to stay in there. It’s going to be a headache to anybody that tries to fool with it. You’ve got all the brains in the country, Mr. President—you better get ahold of them. I don’t know what to do about this. I saw it all coming on, but that don’t do any good now, that’s water over the dam and under the bridge. And we are there.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Telephone call with Senator Richard Russell (May 27, 1964)

Life, War, People, Fools

“But I'm telling you, it's going to change lives. I don't know how—I don't know what's going to happen, quite honestly — but it's going to change lives. It is a life-changing, and I think, a planet course-altering event and I would invite you to join us either physically or virtually.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010s, 2011

Life, Thinking, Change

“We know how to speak many falsehoods which resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.”

Hesiod Greek poet

We know to tell many fictions like to truths, and we know, when we will, to speak what is true.
We know how to tell many lies that pass for truth, and we know, when we wish, to tell the truth itself.
Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), lines 27–28. Variant translations:

“He is Karna, whom the world has abandoned. Karna Alone. Condemned goods. A prince raised in poverty. Born to die unfairly, unarmed and alone at the hands of his brother. Majestic in his complete despair. Praying on the banks of the Ganga. Stoned out of his skull.
Then Kunti appeared. She too was a man, but a man grown soft and womanly, a man with breasts, from doing female parts for years. Her movements were fluid. Full of women. Kunti, too, was stoned. High on the same shared joints. She had come to tell Karna a story.
Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened.
Red-eyed, Kunti danced for him. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, Kunti said, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun.
The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, Kunti said, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhirata, a charioteer. And named Karna.
Karna looked up to Kunti. Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.
Kunti bowed her head. She's here, she said. Standing before you.
Karna's elation and anger at the revelation. His dance of confusion and despair. Where were you, he asked her, when I needed you the most? Did you ever hold me in your arms? Did you feed me? Did you ever look for me? Did you wonder where I might be?
In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, green the face, red the eyes, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss. Did you know how much I missed you? Rahel could see it coursing through his veins, as clearly as an egg travelling down an ostrich's neck.
A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is them that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

pages 232-233.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Women, God, Secret

“In short, individual freedom of speech leads to a stronger society. But knowing that principle is not enough. You have to know how to put it to use on the Net.”

Mike Godwin book Cyber Rights

"Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age": 17.
Cyber Rights

Freedom

“I dont know how to add things to my own wikipedia page.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

25 Feb 2011
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

“From this Legionary school a new man will have to emerge, a man with heroic qualities; a giant of our history to do battle and win over all the enemies of our Fatherland, his battle and victory having to extend even beyond the material world into the realm of invisible enemies, the powers of evil. Everything that our mind can imagine as more beautiful spiritually; everything the proudest that our race can produce, greater, more just, more powerful, wiser, purer, more diligent and more heroic, this is what the Legionary school must give us! A man in whom all the possibilities of human grandeur that are implanted by God in the blood of our people be developed to the maximum. This hero, the product of Legionary education, will also know how to elaborate programs; will also know how to solve the Jewish problem; will also know how to organize the state well; will also know how to convince other Romanians; and if not, he will know how to win, for that is why he is a hero. This hero, this Legionary of bravery, labor, and justice, with the powers God implanted in his soul, will lead our Fatherland on the road of its glory.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), The Legion

God, People, World, Education

“Poor devils, they'll wake up in hell without knowing how they got there.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Black Vulmea's Vengeance" (1938)

Hell

“So much of acting is technical. Actually, I don’t want people to think that acting is technical, that you don’t need to have a rich fountain of emotional life and all those kinds of things, and know how to focus and concentrate and have good imagination and all of the other things that really make up an actor. One of the things they teach you, for example, in acting class is respond to your instinct, to your moment-to-moment instincts. If they just did that, they’d never get the shot, you know? Because you’d be walking all over… You’d be doing it differently every time. And the camera guys and the light guys, they need to know what you’re going to do. That’s what I mean by, if you just followed your instinct, or follow your impulses, which is what they say to you in acting class, you have to do that but you have to do it in a very confined window.”

Tobin Bell (1942) American actor

Interview: Tobin Bell Discusses His Career and His New Horror Film Dark House https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/interview-tobin-bell-discusses-his-career-and-his-new-horror-film-dark-house/ (March 14, 2014)

Life, People, Guy, Imagination

“A woman saying yes to a date with a man is literally insane and ill-advised, and the whole species' existence counts on them doing it. I don't know how they…how do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We're the number one threat to women. Globally and historically, we're the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. We're the worst thing that ever happens to them. That's true! You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Oh My God

Women, Men, Disease, Guy

Quotes about know-how page 14

Quotes about know-how
page 14