Quotes about lack
page 9

Robert E. Howard photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Eugen Drewermann photo
Caldwell Esselstyn photo
Richard Leakey photo
Aristophanés photo

“Chremylus: And what good thing can [Poverty] give us, unless it be burns in the bath, and swarms of brats and old women who cry with hunger, and clouds uncountable of lice, gnats and flies, which hover about the wretch's head, trouble him, awake him and say, “You will be hungry, but get up!” […]
Poverty: It's not my life that you describe; you are attacking the existence beggars lead. […] The beggar, whom you have depicted to us, never possesses anything. The poor man lives thriftily and attentive to his work; he has not got too much, but he does not lack what he really needs. […] But what you don't know is this, that men with me are worth more, both in mind and body, than with [Wealth]. With him they are gouty, big-bellied, heavy of limb and scandalously stout; with me they are thin, wasp-waisted, and terrible to the foe. […] As for behavior, I will prove to you that modesty dwells with me and insolence with [Wealth]. […] Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy. […]
Chremylus: Then tell me this, why does all mankind flee from you?
Poverty: Because I make them better. Children do the very same; they flee from the wise counsels of their fathers. So difficult is it to see one's true interest.”

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Pl.+535
Plutus, line 535-539 & 548 & 552-554 & 558-561 & 563-564 & 567-570 & 575-578
Plutus (388 BC)

William the Silent photo

“Sire, have pity on the Spanish infantry, which, for lack of pay and out of sheer starvation, is scouring the low country round, plundering the peasantry in mere need of food. These disorders I cannot repress, much less can I punish them, for necessity has no law.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William to Philip II while William was in command of the forces round Philippeville (5 January 5 1556), as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, Ch. II, p. 20

Samuel R. Delany photo
Robert Silverberg photo
Kim Jong-il photo

“If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.”

David Stove (1927–1994) Australian philosopher

The Rationality of Induction, Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. Page 176, last paragraph.

François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.”

Nul ne mérite d’être loué de bonté, s’il n’a pas la force d’être méchant: toute autre bonté n’est le plus souvent qu’une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté.
Maxim 237.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Geert Wilders photo

“Islam and freedom are not compatible. You see it in almost every country where it dominates. There is a total lack of freedom, civil society, rule of law, middle class; journalists, gays, apostates — they are all in trouble in those places. And we import it.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Interview with USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/02/21/exclusive-usa-today-interview-with-dutch-anti-islam-politician-geert-wilders/98146112/ (21 February 2017)
2010s

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo

“Man, he suspected, had a particular genius for complicating things, for creating social hurdles that one must leap or be thought lacking.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 8 (p. 100)

Susan Faludi photo
Abbie Hoffman photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo

“It was not, however, a matter of interest to me only with respect to my divisions, since as a member of the Executive Committee, I was a kind of general executive and so had begun to think from the corporate viewpoint. The important thing was that no one knew how much was being contributed — plus or minus — by each division to the common good of the corporation. And since, therefore, no one knew, or could prove, where the efficiencies and inefficiencies lay, there was no objective basis for the allocation of new investment. This was one of the difficulties with the expansion program of that time. It was natural for the divisions to compete for investment funds, but it was irrational for the general officers of the corporation not to know where to place the money to best advantage. In the absence of objectivity it was not surprising that there was a lack of real agreement among the general officers. Furthermore, some of them had no broad outlook, and used their membership on the Executive Committee mainly to advance the interests of their respective divisions.
The important thing was that no one knew how much was being contributed—plus or minus—by each division to the common good of the corporation. And since, therefore, no one knew, or could prove, where the efficiencies and inefficiencies lay, there was no objective basis for the allocation of new investment.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 48-49

Annika Sörenstam photo
Owen Seaman photo

“Whene’er I walk the public ways,
How many poor that lack ablution
Do probe my heart with pensive gaze,
And beg a trivial contribution!”

Owen Seaman (1861–1936) Editor of Punch

"The bitter Cry of the great Unpaid" in In Cap and Bells (1899), p. 76. Compare "Whene’er I walk this beauteous earth, How many poor I see, But as I never speaks to them, They never speaks to me", from an anonymous travesty.

“A lack of clarity is food for failure.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 131

Camille Pissarro photo

“I don't know what to write Feneon about the theory of 'passages'. I will write him what seems to me to be the truth of the matter, that I am at this moment looking for some substitute for the dot [which was the 'heart of [w:Neo-Impressionism|Neo-Impressionist]] painting]; so far I have not found what I want, the actual execution does not seem to me to be rapid enough and does not follow sensation with enough inevitability, but it would be best not to speak of this. The fact is I would be hard put to express my meaning clearly, although I am completely aware of what I lack.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Paris, 20 February 1889, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 134-135
Rewald: 'This data was doubtless for an article in preparation. While the question of the 'passage', which was going to separate Camille Pissarro from pointillism and thus from Divisionism, was then the main preoccupation of the artist, Pissarro was still unable to express himself with precision on it.'
1880's

“Lack of clarity is always a sign of dishonesty.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

Roger Wolcott Sperry photo
Margaret Chase Smith photo
Alfred Jodl photo

“It is tragic that the Fuehrer should have the whole nation behind him with the single exception of the Army generals. In my opinion it is only by action that they can now atone for their faults of lack of character and discipline.”

Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) German general

August 10, 1938. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 347 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997.

Margaret Mead photo

“!-- This is my most misunderstood book, and I have devoted some attention to trying to understand why. … --> I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences … This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Preface of 1950 edition of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. xxvi <!-- ; 1977 editon, p. ix -->
[Anthropology demands] the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
As quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012) by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither<!-- cited in Coming of Age in Second Life : An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (2010) by Tom Boellstorff, p. 71 -->
1950s

Franz Kafka photo

“To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

"A Hunger Artist"
The Complete Stories (1971)

John Gray photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Kent Hovind photo
David Cameron photo
Ellen Willis photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“From the fact that a man or a community of men lacks the intellectual wherewithal or cultural and philosophical framework to conceive of property rights—it doesn't follow that he has no such rights, or that he has forfeited them. Not if one adheres to the ancient doctrine of natural rights.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Everyone Has Property Rights Whether He Knows It Or Not https://mises.org/blog/everyone-has-property-rights-whether-they-know-it-or-not," Mises Wire, October 11, 2017.
2010s, 2017

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Jack Kerouac photo

“The excursus upon the origin of Odysseus’ scar is not basically different from the many passages in which a newly introduced character, or even a newly appearing object or implement, though it be in the thick of a battle, is described as to its nature and origin; or in which, upon the appearance of a god, we are told where he last was, what he was doing there, and by what road he reached the scene; indeed, even the Homeric epithets seem to me in the final analysis to be traceable to the same need for an externalization of phenomena in terms perceptible to the senses. Here is the scar, which comes up in the course of the narrative; and Homer’s feeling simply will not permit him to see it appear out of the darkness of an unilluminated past; it must be set in full light, and with it a portion of the hero’s boyhood. … To be sure, the aesthetic effect thus produced was soon noticed and thereafter consciously sought; but the more original cause must have lain in the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. Nor do psychological processes receive any other treatment: here too nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed. With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it. Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly: Polyphemus talks to Odysseus; Odysseus talks to the suitors when he begins to kill them; Hector and Achilles talk at length, before battle and after; and no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which express logical and grammatical connections are lacking or out of place.”

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 5

Gerd von Rundstedt photo
Richard Bartle photo

“When it comes to computer games, many academics seem to be one step down from judges in their lack of engagement with the real world.”

Richard Bartle (1960) British writer

From Richard Bartle's blog http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2007/QBlog180507A.html, dated 18th May 2007

“What the Rajputs really lacked was a spirit of aggression so conspicuous among the Muslims, and a will to force the war in the enemy’s dominions and thus destroy the base of his power.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

Quoted from S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD.
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

Georges Bernanos photo
Harry Reid photo

“Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove. This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

Following the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General
Gonzales resigns as U.S. attorney general, MSNBC.com, August 27, 2007, 2007-08-27 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20459457/,

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Michael Crichton photo
Aneurin Bevan photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“What the Divine wants is for man to embody Him here, in the individual and in the collectivity… to realise God in life. The old system of yoga could not harmonise or unify Spirit and life; it dismissed the world as Maya or a transient play of God. The result has been a diminution of life-power and the decline of India. The Gita says, utsideyur ime loka na kuryam karma cedaham ["These peoples would crumble to pieces if I did not do actions," 3.24]. Truly 'these peoples' of India have gone to ruin. What kind of spiritual perfection is it if a few Sannyasins, Bairagis and Saddhus attain realisation and liberation, if a few Bhaktas dance in a frenzy of love, god-intoxication and Ananda, and an entire race, devoid of life, devoid of intelligence, sinks to the depths of extreme tamas?… But now the time has come to take hold of the substance instead of extending the shadow. We have to awaken the true soul of India and in its image fashion all works…. I believe that the main cause of India's weakness is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think… incapacity of thought or 'thought-phobia'…. The mediaeval period was a night, a time of victory for the man of ignorance; the modern world is a time of victory for the man of knowledge. It is the one who can fathom and learn the truth of the world by thinking more, searching more, labouring more, who will gain more Shakti. Look at Europe, and you will see two things: a wide limitless sea of thought and the play of a huge and rapid, yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe lies there. It is by virtue of this Shakti that she has been able to swallow the world, like our Tapaswins of old, whose might held even the gods of the universe in awe, suspense and subjection. People say that Europe is rushing into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions, all these upsettings are the initial stages of a new creation….. We, however, are not worshippers of Shakti; we are worshippers of the easy way…. Our civilisation has become ossified, our Dharma a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of intoxication. So long as this state of things lasts, any permanent resurgence of India is impossible…. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and so the Shakti has abandoned us…. You say what is needed is emotional excitement, to fill the country with enthusiasm. We did all that in the political field during the Swadeshi period; but all we did now lies in the dust…. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement, feeling and mental enthusiasm the base. I want to make a vast and heroic equality the foundation of my yoga; in all the activities of the being, of the adhar [vessel] based on that equality, I want a complete, firm and unshakable Shakti; over that ocean of Shakti I want the vast radiation of the sun of Knowledge and in that luminous vastness an established ecstasy of infinite love and bliss and oneness. I do not want tens of thousands of disciples; it will be enough if I can get as instruments of God a hundred complete men free from petty egoism. I have no faith in the customary trade of guru. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is that a few, awakened at my touch or at that of another, will manifest from within their sleeping divinity and realise the divine life. It is such men who will raise this country.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

April, 1920, Letter to Barin Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's brother, Translated from Bengali
India's Rebirth

Ambrose Bierce photo
Prito Reza photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo
Philip Schaff photo

“Luther's Qualifications. Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther's version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.
His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent judgment. What he lacked in scholarship was supplied by his intuitive genius and the help of Melanchthon. In the German tongue he had no rival. He created, as it were, or gave shape and form to the modern High German. He combined the official language of the government with that of the common people. He listened, as he says, to the speech of the mother at home, the children in the street, the men and women in the market, the butcher and various tradesmen in their shops, and, "looked them on the mouth," in pursuit of the most intelligible terms. His genius for poetry and music enabled him to reproduce the rhythm and melody, the parallelism and symmetry, of Hebrew poetry and prose. His crowning qualification was his intuitive insight and spiritual sympathy with the contents of the Bible.
A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Marianne von Werefkin photo

“I am a woman, I lack every [ability for] creation. I can understand everything and cannot create... I don't have the words to express my ideal. I am looking for the person, the man, who can give this ideal form. As a woman, wanting someone who could give the internal world expression, I met Jawlensky…”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

1895 - 1905
Variant: I am a woman, I lack every [ability for] creation. I can understand everything and cannot create.. .I don't have the words to express my ideal. I am looking for the person, the man, who can give this ideal form. As a woman, wanting someone who could give the internal world expression, I met Jawlensky...

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“An artist is someone who carries his center within himself. Whoever lacks such a center has to choose some particular leader and mediator outside of himself.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Ein Künstler ist, wer sein Centrum in sich selbst hat. Wem es da fehlt, der muss einen bestimmten Führer und Mittler ausser sich wählen.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 45

Jimmy Kimmel photo

“I don't believe that lack of intelligence and appreciation for lowbrow comedy go hand-in-hand necessarily.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

Associated Press (January 28, 2003) "Jimmy Kimmel is living it up", The Grand Rapids Press, p. B5.

José Martí photo
Ben Gibbard photo

“It wasn't quite what is seemed: a lack of pleasantries
(My able body isn't what it used to be)
I must admit I was charmed by your advances
Your advantage left me helplessly into you”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Title Track
We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes (2000)

“Fear comes from a lack of understanding how powerful you really are.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 131

Brooks Adams photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Statius photo

“For what cause, youthful Sleep, kindest of gods, or what error have I deserved, alas to lack your boon? All cattle are mute and birds and beasts, and the nodding tree-tops feign weary slumbers, and the raging rivers abate their roar; the ruffling of the waves subsides, the sea is still, leaning against the shore.”
Crimine quo merui, juvenis placidissime divum, quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos, nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror aequoris, et terris maria adclinata quiescunt.

iv, line 1
Silvae, Book V

Frederick Douglass photo

“We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, today, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered.”

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

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

Francis Escudero photo
Erich Fromm photo
Ethan Hawke photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Anthony Watts photo

“In my opinion, the premise of CO2 burial seems absurd not only because of the lack of supporting evidence for certain climate change, but also due to it's lack of foresight as to the effects of the burial scheme.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Carbon dioxide burial reaches a milestone http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/06/also-going-down-carbon-dioxide-burial-reaches-a-milestone/, wattsupwiththat.com, July 6, 2008.
Other

Philo photo
Alberto Giacometti photo

“A little after I started to do sculpture, I painted some of them, and then I destroyed them all. I've begun again several times. In 1951, I painted a whole series of sculptures. But in painting them, you see what the form lacks. And it's useless to paint over something that you don't believe in. I tried again a month ago. In painting them, the deficiencies of form came through.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti in: Paul Auster (trans.) " My life is reduced to nothing: David Sylvester talks to Alberto Giacometti about his struggle with proportion and the difficulties of making an eye https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/jun/21/art.artsfeatures1," theguardian.com, 21 June 2003.

Pythagoras photo
George D. Herron photo
Linda McQuaig photo
Ernest King photo
Werner Erhard photo

“When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. That keeps me working on my integrity. And the thing about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[Peter Haldeman, w:Peter Haldeman, The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help, The New York Times, November 28, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/fashion/the-return-of-werner-erhard-father-of-self-help.html?ref=fashion&_r=0]

“Boredom comes simply from ignorance and lack of imagination.”

Susan Ertz (1887–1985) British writer

Anger in the Sky (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943), p. 134.

“There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 218
1950s and later

George Soros photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo

“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”

La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain.
Aphorism 63
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

Hermann Hesse photo