Quotes about last
page 60

“The moment I think of my father Jayachamaraja Wadiyar (that is how he used to sign), the last king of Mysore, the image that comes to mind is his tall (over 6 ft), handsome, regal bearing, with a slant when he walked and his goodness. All this and more is true of him.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

My daddy, His Highness, the Maharaja of Mysore

Thinking

“Tulsidas is the highest tree in the garden of Hindu poetry, though his name does not appear in Aeen-i-Akbari or any book of Muslim historians or even narratives of European writers who worked on information taken from Persian historians. Yet, Tuslidas was the greatest man of India of his time. In fact he can be called greater than Akbar because the victory that the poet registered in the hearts of thousands of millions of people was greater and more lasting than all the imperious victories put together…the Ramacharritamanas is such an enormous epic that its English adaptation by Growse is of 362 pages. The declinations in this epic are so similar to Christianity that on numerous spots, if Rama is replaced by Christ, there can be no question.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Vincent Smith in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", pp.34-35
On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas

People, Books, Question, Tree

“Briju Maharaj’s Baaz Bahadur displayed both Pathan strength and artistic ecstasy – in fact this last Muslim king of Malwa was a considerable poet and ended his days as a musician in the court of Emperor Akbar.”

Birju Maharaj (1938) Indian dancer

India's Kathak Dance, Past Present, Future

“What captured the heart and soul of the discerning listener was his uncanny craftiness and skill, the unfailing imaginative flights, rhythmic continuity and singular charm, making their lasting impact.”

Bhimsen Joshi (1922–2011) Indian vocalist

Critique

Making love, Soul, Imagination, Heart

“The record of progress of your State since my last visit eleven years ago is certainly remarkable. Those years have not been happy ones in the histories of the nations and they have closed in an economic crisis of the first magnitude. It was impossible that Mysore should escape altogether the worldwide depression. That she should have been able, despite it, to continue to develop her industries and provide for the welfare of her people in the way she has done must compel the admiration of all observers. Of the varied and interesting programme that you have prepared for me, there is no item that I look forward to with greater anticipation than my visit to the Krishnarajasagara.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

From Modern Mysore

Happiness, People, Way, History

“Friends, last night I watched the Hollywood (Paramount) movie Noah.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

It is much, much worse than I thought it would be—much worse. The director of the movie, Darren Aronofsky, has been quoted in the media as saying that Noah is “the least biblical biblical film ever made,” and I agree wholeheartedly with him. I am disgusted. I am going to come right out and say it: this movie is disgusting and evil—paganism! Do you really want your family to see a pagan movie that portrays Noah as a psychopath who says that if his daughter-in-law’s baby is a girl then he will kill her as soon as she’s born? And when two girls are born, bloodstained Noah (the man the Bible calls “righteous” in Genesis 7:1) brings a knife down to the head of one of the babies to kill her—and at the last minute doesn’t do it. And then a bit later, Noah says he failed because he didn’t kill the babies. How can we recommend this movie and then speak against abortion? Psychopathic Noah sees humans as a blight on the planet and wants to rid the world of people. I feel dirty—as if I have to somehow wash the evil off myself. I cannot believe there are Christian leaders who have recommended that people see this movie. "The Noah Movie is Disgusting and Evil: Paganism!" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/03/28/the-noah-movie-is-disgusting-and-evil-paganism/, Around the World with Ken Ham (March 28, 2014) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Night

“Of the experiments of previous years, those dealing with Matthiola annua and glabra, Zea, and Mirabilis were concluded last year. Their hybrids behave exactly like those of Pisum.”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Darwin's statements concerning hybrids of the genera mentioned in The variation of animals and plants under domestication, based on reports of others, need to be corrected in many respects.
Letter VIII, July 3rd, 1870.
Here Mendel alludes to the now-discredit ideas of blending inheritance and pangenesis
Letters to Carl Nägeli

“I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he is going to run for president, and he is going to create something.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

James Carville, James Carville: Ted Cruz Is The Most 'Fearless Republican' I've Seen In '30 Years' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/05/james-carville-ted-cruz_n_3219572.html, May 5, 2013.

Thinking

“Alvin Plantinga is arguably the greatest philosopher of the last century.”

Alvin Plantinga (1932) American Christian philosopher

2001-06-11
Mind Over Skepticism
John G.
Stackhouse
John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
Christianity Today
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/june11/19.74.html

“The strongest reason for the people to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against the tyranny of government.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

People

“Gheorghiu-Dej put more people in prison, but he had a motive. Ceausescu had no motive to do what he did. Things were worse under the last ten years of Ceausescu. It was terrible what he did.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Serban Ghica, as quoted in John Sweeney, The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu (Hutchinson, 1991), p. 75
About Ceaușescu

People, Motivation

“Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point....
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)

Music

“I just love Paul Scholes. He’s been the best footballer in our division for the last ten years. He’s a a wonderful player. If they get hold of him and stop him from playing I think Chelsea will beat them.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.talksport.co.uk/sports-news/football/premier-league/6395/0/exclusive-%E2%80%93-wilkins-%E2%80%98chelsea-will-beat-united-if-they-stop-scholes%E2%80%99
Ray Wilkins

Love, Making love, Thinking, Football

“My doctor has warned me that my nerves will not stand any further strain… I have begun to have blackouts, in which my actions become automatic. Sometimes these periods last several hours…. I had one of these blackouts at an official luncheon in Paris recently, and startled guests by suddenly crowing like a cock….”

James Bolivar Manson (1879–1945) British artist

At age 58, announcing his retirement as Tate director. Quoted in Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (1998), pp. 62–70. Tate Gallery Publishing, London. ISBN 1854372319.

“What hurts me the most, personally, is that I still promoted him to field marshal. I wanted to give him this final satisfaction… a man like that besmirches the heroism of so many others at the last moment. He could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow.”

Friedrich Paulus (1890–1957) German general

Adolf Hitler, about Paulus surrendering instead of committing suicide.

Hurt, Personality

“Most of the girls who dated us back then were these innocent chicks whose lives were changed forever after one of us came into it for however long it lasted. We were like a vacuum back then that sucked people up and spit them out; a ton of people around us fell by the wayside that way. Some people died, not because of anything we did, but as a side effect of being too close to the flame. People would get attracted to our fucked-up weird life and just get it wrong and drown in our riptide.”

Slash (musician) book Slash

Source: Slash (2007) by Anthony Bozza & Mason Segal,, p. 256.

Life, People, Way, Girl

“That man always made it a point to speak German, although he spoke English well enough. That was because he imitated Hitler to the last degree. He would say that his reason for speaking German instead of English during conferences with English-speaking representatives was that he wanted to concentrate on the subject in hand, and not on the language. Ribbentrop was a complete imitator of Hitler - even to the design of his cap. Originally he had a nice cap, but then he imitated the stationmaster type of cap preferred by Hitler.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Paul O. Schmidt to Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946.

“If anyone from Austrian fine art of the last fifty years could be called a star, then there is only one person who meets all the criteria: Gottfried Helnwein.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Presence and Time: Gottfried Helnwein's Pictures http://www.helnwein-museum.com/article2534.html, Stella Rollig, director of the Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz, 2006

Art, Star, Personality

“Without…Yehudi Menuhin, the West may not have found Indian classical music and decades later…thanks to Menuhin’s chance meeting and later lasting friendship with the master sitarist Ravi Shankar, the Wets witnessed the sublimity that the merging of the Western and Indian classical music could produce.”

Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player

[Wetzel, Richard, The Globalization of Music in History, http://books.google.com/books?id=kjS9PnHJUE4C&pg=PA26, 17 June 2013, Routledge, 978-1-136-62624-1, 26–]

Friendship, Music, Chance

“You know, comrades, that Konstantin Ustinovich has been gravely ill for a long time, and has been in the hospital in recent months. On the part of the Fourth Main Department, all necessary measures were taken in order to treat Konstantin Ustinovich. But the illness did not submit to the cure, it started to weaken his systems first slowly, and then faster and faster. It became especially aggravated as a result of pneumonia in both lungs, which Konstantin Ustinovich developed during his vacation in Kislovodsk. There were periods when we succeeded in alleviating the lung and heart insufficiencies, and during those periods Konstantin Ustinovich found enough strength to come to work. Several times he conducted Politburo sessions, and put in work days, although shortened ones. Emphysema of the lungs and the aggravated lung and heart insufficiency had worsened significantly in the last two or three weeks. Another, accompanying illness had developed—chronic hepatitis, i. e. liver failure with its transformation into cirrhosis. The cirrhosis of the liver and the worsening dystrophic changes in the organs and tissues led to the situation where not with standing intensive therapy, which was administered actively on a daily basis, the state of his health gradually deteriorated. On March 10 at 3:00 p. m., Konstantin Ustinovich lost consciousness, and at 19:20 death occurred as a result of heart failure.”

Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician

Yevgeni Chazov, spoken in a special session of the Central Committee one day after Chernenko died.

Death, Health, Failure, Change

“We are going through a crucial historical crisis in which each year poses more acutely the global problem of rationally mastering the new productive forces and creating a new civilization. Yet the international working-class movement, on which depends the prerequisite overthrow of the economic infrastructure of exploitation, has registered only a few partial local successes. Capitalism has invented new forms of struggle (state intervention in the economy, expansion of the consumer sector, fascist governments) while camouflaging class oppositions through various reformist tactics and exploiting the degenerations of working-class leaderships. In this way it has succeeded in maintaining the old social relations in the great majority of the highly industrialized countries, thereby depriving a socialist society of its indispensable material base. In contrast, the underdeveloped or colonized countries, which over the last decade have engaged in the most direct and massive battles against imperialism, have begun to win some very significant victories. These victories are aggravating the contradictions of the capitalist economy and (particularly in the case of the Chinese revolution) could be a contributing factor toward a renewal of the whole revolutionary movement. Such a renewal cannot limit itself to reforms within the capitalist or anticapitalist countries, but must develop conflicts posing the question of power everywhere.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

About the Situationist International movement
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

Way, Question, Problem, Relation ships

“What a player. What a man. What an absolute diamond of a footballer. The critics, the haters, they cannot touch Frank Lampard now. Not after last night. Not after that penalty. He won, they lost. He stood tall, they skulked in the background.”

Frank Lampard (1978) English association football player

Martin Samuel, writing in The Times on May 1, 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article3851215.ece

Penalty, Football, Night

“She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mariam, p. 370
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Love, Bad luck, World, Making love

“About Raja Rammohun Roy: There is no doubt that he was the first who held before us the ideal of freedom. He was the first to sound the note of freedom in every department of life and in every different culture that has met to-day in India. It may be that we have to modify that, it may we have to analyse that more carefully and more in details for the purpose of scientific study but it is enough for our purpose to say that he inaugurated many reforms – you might call that reforming activity. He inaugurated the reforms which again, in turn, gave rise to reaction which, again, gave rise to further reforms which made the nation turn on itself, till at last, it began to be self-conscious.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech delivered at Barisal on 14th October 1917. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
About others

Life, Study, Freedom, Self-confidence

“Lieutenant General Vlasov had looked and acted like a son of a bitch the last time Bokov and Shteinberg called on him. He seemed even less friendly now. For twenty kopeks, his expression said, both of the other NKVD men could find out how they liked chopping down spruces in the middle of Siberian winter.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 412

Men, Winter, Time, Bitch

“Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!
Preface to the Second Edition (1869)
Essays in Criticism (1865)

Truth, Age, Beauty, Perfection

“From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the city; a black peasant whose life had been hopelessly snarled in the city, and who had at last fled the city—that same city which had lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed of shores of knowing.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Life, Knowledge

“To give here an elaborate account of Pappus would be to create a false impression. His work is only the last convulsive effort of Greek geometry which was now nearly dead and was never effectually revived. It is not so with Ptolemy or Diophantus. The trigonometry of the former is the foundation of a new study which was handed on to other nations indeed but which has thenceforth a continuous history of progress.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

James Gow, A Short History of Greek Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=9d8DAAAAMAAJ (1884) p.308.

History, Effort, Study, Falseness

“His voice is an incredible instrument, angelic and powerful and mean at the same time. Tortured. He has been a huge inspiration and influence to me over the last two years. This tune is just unreal.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Jonny Lang – Blues artist, from Rolling Stone Magazine, issues #820, September 2, 1999

Angels, Time

“The death of John Barrymore made us think again for a minute of F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were very different men: a lot alike. Undoubtedly, they both worked hard, but there was the same sense of a difficult technique easily mastered (too easily perhaps); there was the same legend of great physical magnetism, working incessantly for its own destruction; there was the same need for public confession, either desperate or sardonic; and there was always a good deal of time wasted, usually accompanied by the sweet smell of grapes. We have seen Scott Fitzgerald when everything he said was a childish parody of his own talent, and the last time we saw John Barrymore he was busy with a sick and humiliating parody of his. The similarity probably ends there. Up to the day he died, we believe, Fitzgerald still kept his original and eager devotion to his profession, along, we like to think, with the strict confidence that he might still achieve the strict perfection that was so often almost his. Barrymore, on the other hand, had given up long ago.”

John Barrymore (1882–1942) American actor of stage, screen and radio

Wolcott Gibbs, Season in the Sun (1951)

Death, Men, Confidence, Business

“Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Books, Universe

“His death signified the passing of a certain approach. He was the last person who had the totally un-inhibited joy of driving a racing car.”

Gilles Villeneuve (1950–1982) Canadian racecar driver

Alan Henry, motorsport journalist and friend of Villeneuve - Donaldson, pp. 316-317

Death, Cars, Joy, Personality

“In a situation like that I know I would have been scared stiff. But I am sure that when Gilles felt his Ferrari take off, his last thought was anger, plain and simple, because he knew that he had spoiled that one perfect lap.”

Gilles Villeneuve (1950–1982) Canadian racecar driver

Eddie Cheever Formula One driver and Indianapolis 500 winner - Donaldson, pg. 318

Perfection, Anger

“I had reasoned dis out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when de time came for me to go, de Lord would let dem take me.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Modernized rendition: I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
The phrase "Liberty or Death" is a slogan made famous during the independence struggle of several countries.
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)

Death, Time, Fight

“The most significant halachic authority of the last 100 years, whose positions helped fashion a balanced and moderate Judaism.”

Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) Israeli rabbi

Obituary Jewish Chronicle, 11 Oct 2013 page 33.

Fashion, Help

“There is one compromise and one only, and that is the United Nations. If the United States and Britain go to the United Nations and the United Nations says we have concrete evidence of the existence of these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we feel that we must do something about it, we would all support it. … There is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like. And of course we must consider the men and the women around the president. Gen. Colin Powell commanded the United States army in peacetime and in wartime during the Gulf war. He knows the disastrous effect of international tension and war, when innocent people are going to die, young men are going to die. He knows and he showed this after September 11 last year. He went around briefing the allies of the United States of America and asking for their support for the war in Afghanistan. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, they are people who are unfortunately misleading the president. Because my impression of the president is that this is a man with whom you can do business. But it is the men who around him who are dinosaurs, who do not want him to belong to the modern age.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, Newsweek interview (2002)

Women, Men, War, People

“Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djam karet.”

Harlan Ellison book Eidolons

We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us.
"Eidolons" (1988)

Heart

“In their last ditch, the royalists object that this all too bloodless and practical; that people need and want the element of magic and fantasy. Nobody wants life to be charmless. But the element of fantasy and magic is as primitive as it is authentic, and there are good reasons why it should not come from the state.”

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

When orchestrated and distributed in that way, it leads to disappointment and rancour, and can lead to the enthronement of sillier or nastier idols.
1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

Life, People

“You are twenty-two years old, trained down to the last pound like a boxer. You do not over-eat, smoke or drink and you work six to eight hours a day at a piano with a special keyboard in which the keys are so hard to press down that when you come to your concert grand at night you seem, literally, to be riding a fleecy cloud, so easy is its keyboard action. Before each concert, of course, you eat nothing at all.”

George Antheil (1900–1959) American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor

Drink, Training, Night

“My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)

Love, Hate, People, Making love

“Westminster Review – a man, who although, through failing health and failing voice, he had virtually passed out of public life, yet retained to the last the affectionate veneration of the Canadian people as no other man of the time can be said to have done.”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 651, The Westminster Review Volume 137
His Character

Life, People, Health, Time

“The Aztecs were very sore, because Montezuma had no business giving the national treasury to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanted it. So Montezuma appeared on the roof of the palace and told them that Mexico had definitely turned the corner and everything would be all right from then on if they would just leave it to him. And one of the Aztecs picked up a big rock and hit Montezuma on the head with it, and that was the last of Montezuma II.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Montezuma

Business, Appearance

“Thus in these same five words aforesaid: I may make all things well, etc., I understand a mighty comfort of all the works of our Lord God that are yet to come. There is a Deed the which the blessed Trinity shall do in the last Day, as to my sight, and when the Deed shall be, and how it shall be done, is unknown of all creatures that are beneath Christ, and shall be till when it is done.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 32

God, Making love, Understanding, Christ

“The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.
Pt. 1, Ch. 4
Papa Hemingway (1966)

“Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch. 4: Boredom and excitement

“Which brings us again, after this long way about, to Jane Austen and her novels, and that troublesome question about them. She was great and they were beautiful, because she and they were honest, and dealt with nature nearly a hundred years ago as realism deals with it to-day. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material, and Jane Austen was the first and the last of the English novelists to treat material with entire truthfulness. Because she did this, she remains the most artistic of the English novelists, and alone worthy to be matched with the great Scandinavian and Slavic and Latin artists.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (1891), Chapter 15

Truth, Beauty, Way, Question

“A youth nursed up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,—a right Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters!”

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

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

God, Youth, Strong

“Although this last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands of those who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, I do not believe that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites or Utilitarians of that day, now relies mainly upon it for the general amendment of human conduct.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

“What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially. We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform. Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families. Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Children, Education, School, Family

“If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Money, Children, School, Family

“Even in terms of breaking down the barriers of segregation, there is still much to be done. It may be true, as I just said, figuratively speaking that old man segregation is on his deathbed. But history has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. And so segregation is still with us. We still confront it in the South in its glaring and conspicuous forms. We still confront it in every other section of this country in its hidden and subtle forms. But if democracy is to live, segregation must die, for racial segregation is a cancer in the body politic. Segregation must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Health, Democracy, History, Country

“We can assert, with entire plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects — Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included — but sprung from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once universal religion, which antedated the Vedaic ages — we speak of that prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism.The religion which the primitive teaching of the early few apostles most resembled — a religion preached by Jesus himself — is the elder of these two, Buddhism. The latter as taught in its primitive purity, and carried to perfection by the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, based its moral ethics on three fundamental principles. It alleged that 1, every thing existing, exists from natural causes; 2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and sin their own punishment; and, 3, that the state of man in this world is probationary... However puzzling the subsequent theological tenets; however seemingly incomprehensible the metaphysical abstractions which have convulsed the theology of every one of the great religions of mankind as soon as it was placed on a sure footing, the above is found to be the essence of every religious philosophy, with the exception of later Christianity. It was that of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Jesus, and even of Moses, albeit the teachings of the Jewish law-giver have been so piously tampered with.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter III

Age, World, Religion, Law

“Dawn has come at last,
Twenty-five years, honey just in one night, oh yeah.
Well, Im twenty-five years older now
So I know we can't be right
And Im no better, baby,
And I cant help you no more
Than I did when just a girl.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969)

Girl, Help, Baby, Night

“We humans have a deep need to think highly of ourselves. If that opinion of our goodness, greatness, and brilliance diverges enough from reality, we become grandiose. We imagine our superiority. Often a small measure of success will elevate our natural grandiosity to even more dangerous levels. Our high self-opinion has now been confirmed by events. We forget the role that luck may have played in the success, or the contributions of others. We imagine we have the golden touch. Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last. Look for the signs of elevated grandiosity in yourself and in others—overbearing certainty in the positive outcome of your plans; excessive touchiness if criticized; a disdain for any form of authority. Counteract the pull of grandiosity by maintaining a realistic assessment of yourself and your limits. Tie any feelings of greatness to your work, your achievements, and your contributions to society.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 11 : Know Your Limits
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Bad luck, Making love, Feeling, Imagination

“Sometimes the changes that are generated in a revolutionary period are rather trivial and do not last past the cycle. But sometimes, from a strong crisis, a revolution forges something new that lasts for centuries and represents progress toward values that are more rational and empathetic. In seeing this historical pattern, we must recognize what seems to be an overall human spirit that transcends any particular time and that keeps us evolving. If for any reason the cycle stopped, we would be doomed.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 17 : Seize the Historical Moment
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Strong, Change, Time, Past

“The Holy Spirit through blessed John the evangelist makes a terrible threat against those who add anything to or take anything from divine scripture when he says in the last chapter of Revelations [22:18–9], "If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues which are in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book."”

William of Ockham (1285–1349) medieval philosopher and theologian

We clearly gather from all these that nothing should be added to sacred scripture nor anything removed from it. To decide by way of teaching, therefore, which assertion should be considered catholic, which heretical, chiefly pertains to theologians, the experts on divine scripture.
You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.
Vol. I, Book 1, Ch. 2.
Dialogus (1494)

Life, God, Books, Making love

“I came into the room which was half-dark and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience, and realised that I was in for trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the Earth, where my views conflicted with his.
To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful glance at me.
Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source [of heat] was discovered. That prophetic utterance referred to what we are now considering tonight, radium! Behold! The old boy beamed upon me.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

As quoted in "Rutherford's Timebomb" in The New Zealand (15 May 2004) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3566551

Age, Boy, Bird, Parting

“Then some one spake: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time."
Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame."
And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;
A little grain of conscience made him sour."
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

To which an answer peal'd from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.
"The Vision of Sin", sec. 5 (1842)

Hope, Sense, Time, Cry

“It's a scientific-cum-sporting murder proposition with enough guns at last to account for the birds, and the Hun is having a very sickly time of it. He has the erroneous idea that he is being hurt, whereas he won't know what real pain means for a long time. I almost begin to hope that when we have done with him there will be very little Hun left.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Letter to L. C. Dunsterville, September 1916. Quoted in Lord Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978 (p.271).

Pain, Hope, Idea, Bird

“I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves. Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. … Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth. In some of us, perhaps, it is a noble and merciless asceticism, which would root out of our hearts the last vestige of worship and adoration, lest the old gods should return and terrify us again. For my part, I cling to this final religion, and discover in it a content and stimulus more lasting than came from the devotional ecstasies of youth.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (2002) edited by John Little, Ch. 1 : The Shameless Worship of Heroes

Life, Men, God, Youth

“Last quarter, we had our best Mac quarter ever. We shipped 1.33 million Macs last quarter. We are really, really happy about this, but even better, was the growth rate because the growth rate was dramatically faster than the rest of the industry which means we are gaining market share.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, WWDC 2006

Happiness, Relation ships

“The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.”

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

1990s
Source: Foreword for Discovering the Brain (1992) by Sandra Ackerman, p. iii; often paraphrased: "The brain is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe."

Universe

“Perhaps there is some hope that its capacity for death and terror among the defenseless may restrain nations from using the atom bomb against each other, just as in the last war such fears made them avoid employment of the new and deadlier poison gases developed since World War I. However, I am forced to a reluctant conclusion that for the security of my own country which has been the guiding principle in my approach to all problems faced during my career, there is but one course open to us: Until the United Nations, or some world organization, can guarantee- and have the power to enforce that guarantee- that the world will be spared the terrors of atomic warfare, the United States must have more and better atomic bombs than any potential enemy.”

William D. Leahy (1875–1959) United States admiral, ambassador to France, Chief of Staff

Source: I Was There (1950), p. 442

Death, War, World, Fear

“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

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

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Life, Truth, World, Making love

“I'm reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general calls up Churchill and says, 'It's over,' and Churchill says, 'How can it be? You got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?'”

Chris Matthews (1945) American news anchor

He said, 'It's over.'
comparing Bernie Sanders winning the Nevada caucus to the Nazi invasion of France
2020-02-24
Chris Matthews rebuked by MSNBC colleague for comparing Sanders win to Nazi invasion
Igor Derysh
Salon
https://www.salon.com/2020/02/24/chris-matthews-rebuked-by-msnbc-colleague-for-comparing-sanders-win-to-nazi-invasion/

Reading, Summer, Night

“Loss is a defending human experience. Nothing in the physical world lasts forever. Memory of what has been lost ca be both ennobling and painful.”

Michael Hamilton Morgan (1951) American writer

Lost History, p. 1

Pain, World, Memory, Loss

“Looking back, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have contemplated having both a nurse and a servant, but they were considered essentials of life in those days, and were the last things we would have thought of dispensing with. To have committed the extravagance of a car, for instance, would never have entered our minds. Only the rich had cars.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Part V: War, §IV
An Autobiography (1977)

Life, Cars

“The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law. The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties. The old Israel had been both — the chosen people of God and a national community, and it was therefore his will that they should meet force with force. But with the Church it is different: it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression. Otherwise evil will be heaped upon evil. Only thus can fellowship be established and maintained.
At this point it becomes evident that when a Christian meets with injustice, he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs. He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone. Again, his witness to this exclusive adherence to Jesus creates the only workable basis for fellowship, and leaves the aggressor for him to deal with.
The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a stand-still because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last ounce of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 141

God, People, Law, Way

“When 1% of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 90%, the last people you should be asking for economic advice are the people who created that situation.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (26 Nov 2019) Williamson's quotes in social media

People, Wealth

“In reality, artists are no more courageous or noble or single-minded than the farmers who go to extreme lengths, in extreme weather, to protect their herd. Or a restaurateur who—having waved goodbye to her last customer at midnight—hauls herself out of bed at 4 A.M. the following morning to make sure she’s at the market in time to buy the best produce. Or, for that matter, a master bricklayer who has calloused fingers and an aching back from days spent building a house.”

Will Gompertz (1965) British journalist

Think Like an Artist (2015)

Making love, Courage, Reality, Time

“Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace, and wit, reminders of order, calm, and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep, and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still, and absorbed.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

"Still in Melbourne, January 1987", as quoted in [Fred R Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations, https://books.google.com/books?id=ck6bXqt5shkC, 2006, Yale University Press, 0-300-10798-6, 324]
Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989)

Pleasure, World, Home, Light

“There is, too, a sort of relief in admitting defeat. Struggling to drag a mountain from my path, acknowledging at last the mountain would remain, lying down beneath the mountain, thankful for the shade of it.”

Tanith Lee book Quest for the White Witch

Book Two, Part I “In the Wilderness”, Chapter 2 (p. 234)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Mountain, Lying

“On the day when the human conscience shall lose its bearings, on the day when success shall carry the day before that forum, all will be at an end. The last moral gleam will reascend to heaven. Darkness will be in the mind of man. You will have nothing to do but to devour one another, wild beasts that you are!”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part First, III
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Success

“There has never been a time, until the last fifty years, when a majority of any population had regular and constant access to drama, and used this access. . . . It seems probable that in societies like Britain and the United States more drama is watched in a week or weekend, by the majority of viewers, than would have been watched in a year or in some cases a lifetime in any previous historical period. It is clearly one of the unique characteristics of advanced industrial societies that drama as an experience is now an intrinsic part of everyday life, at a quantitative level which is so very much greater than any precedent as to seem a fundamental qualitative change. Whatever the social and cultural reasons may finally be, it is clear that watching dramatic simulation of a wide range of experiences is now an essential part of our modern cultural pattern.”

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) philosopher

Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Life, Change, Time, Parting

“This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
[...]
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
[http://aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Notesonpoem.htm#fiftysevensixty In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
]Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
[http://aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Notesonpoem.htm#sixtyonesixtytwo Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear]
[http://aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Notesonpoem.htm#sixtyfoursixtythree As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose]
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)

Death, Men, Hope, Star

“So I don’t know what the record attendance is in this arena, but I was told that we broke it by a lot. And you got the people outside. Are we allowed to tell them who we would like them to vote for? Because you’re allowed to skip. All right, so wait a minute, let’s do a poll. We do this for the fake news back there. Ready? Who would be the best candidate for us? Not for them. We’re ready. Ready? So let’s go through them just quickly. We won’t include Steyer because he’s a loser. He’s out, okay? We won’t include him. Who would be the best? This is a real poll. This isn’t one of those fake polls taken by … In all fairness, I love you, Fox, taken by Fox, the worst pollster. This guy … this pollster hates Trump’s guts. I was losing the last election by a fortune. They said, “He did great with women.””

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

Everything was wrong. And they never replaced this guy. But watch this. You ready?
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

Love, Women, Hate, People

“We are stronger, we are better, but while we are building a great future, the radical left Democrats in Washington are trying to burn it all down. They have spent the last three years, and I can even go further than that, three years since the election, but we go before the election, working to erase your ballots and overthrow our democracy. But with your help, we have exposed the far left’s corruption and defeated their sinister schemes and let’s see what happens in the coming months. Let’s watch. Let’s just watch. Very dishonest people. Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.””

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

They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

People, Democracy, Future, Help

“Instead of rescuing the dirty industries of the last century, we should be boosting the clean ones that will lead us into safety in the coming century (Green New Deal). If there is one thing history teaches us, it's that moments of shock are profoundly volatile. We either lose a whole lot of ground, get fleeced by elites, and pay the price for decades, or we win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to lose our nerve.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Quoted in 'We Know This Script': Naomi Klein Warns of 'Coronavirus Capitalism' in New Video Detailing Battle Before Us https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/we-know-script-naomi-klein-warns-coronavirus-capitalism-new-video-detailing-battle, by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, (17 March 2020)

History, Time, Victory

“And oft I thought (my fancy was-so strong)
That I, at last, a resting-place had found:
'Here: will I dwell,' said I,' my whole life long,
Roaming the illimitable waters round;
Here will I live, of all but heaven disowned.
And end my days upon the peaceful flood—
To break my dream the vessel reached its bound;
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XLI

Life, Peace, Food, Dreams

“Do you think that during the first five hours of the day you are the same as you are in the last five hours? No way. You’re tired, and if you’re tired, you stop listening, and the decisions you make are risky.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: 10 Productivity Tips From the King of Cashmere, Brunello Cucinelli https://medium.com/@om/10-productivity-tips-from-the-king-of-cashmere-brunello-cucinelli-79c9cf74d9de Medium, Om Malik, April 27, 2015

Making love, Way, Thinking, Decision

“Bucky: "The last time I cooked you complained."
Rob: "Setting a bologna sandwitch on fire is not 'cooking'."”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Satchel: "It was pretty good, though."

Groovitude, page 166 and daily strip for September 1, 2000
Dialogue

Time, Cooking

“Facts are more insistent than theories, and in the last resort it is the nature of things which determine the course of our actions.”

Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer

p. 77 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89009314162&view=1up&seq=81 Determinism or Free-will? (1912)

Nature

“Of the four terms ... Praise, Blame, Punishment, and Responsibility, the cardinal and governing one is the last.”

Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer

p. 68 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89009314162&view=1up&seq=72 Determinism or Free-will? (1912)

“It's tough, the 400, I won't lie. The first 200 is pure speed and then the last 200, it shows who's got that speed endurance training in their legs. And obviously the last 50, you've just gotta pray because lactic is hitting hard. You need to be able to hold that endurance. … A lot of people had doubted me when I first became vegan, but my energy levels increased incredibly and my iron, my B12, everything that people said would become deficient, were amazing. I thought, I'm gonna make sure I'm beating them all on the track. I mean, we're all friends, but it was pretty cool to finish my Australian domestic season undefeated. And to win the nationals was obviously that little cherry on top.”

Morgan Mitchell (1994) Australian athlete

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

People, Lie, Making love, Speed

“The last scene came really, really early, disconnected from even the idea of a woman painter…I wanted to write a love story and I thought, ‘What do I want to tell?’ And that scene came up really, really quickly, alone, by itself. The weird compass of the film was its last scene. That’s a compass, but it’s a high pressure one.”

Céline Sciamma (1978) French director and screenwriter

On her creative process for Portrait of a Lady on Fire in “‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ Filmmaker Céline Sciamma Is Trying to Break Your Heart” https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-filmmaker-celine-sciamma-interview-1202193537/ in IndieWire (2019 Dec 05)

Love, Making love, Idea

“This is the Last Abode; we appoint it for those who desire not exorbitance in the earth, nor corruption. The issue ultimate is to the godfearing.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

Quran: Chapter 28, verse 83, quoted in History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 102
Last Sermon delivered to People, Last Words

“One reason for the increased interest in studies of identity in anthropology may be the fact that issues to do with the nature of groups have become hugely important in politics worldwide in the last decades.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 9 : Social Identity

Nature, Study

“In the last few days the progress of the (COVID-19) virus, especially in some countries, especially human-to-human transmission, worries us (WHO). Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

Tedros Adhanom (2020) cited in "Coronavirus: Death toll rises as virus spreads to every Chinese region" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51305526, BBC News, 30 January 2020.

Country

“Sometimes all you need to do is look around for one last time and start moving forward.”

Albara Almerf (2000)

Time

“Why just before last Christmas
My baby went away
And I find it real surprising
For myself to hear me say
That everything is cool
Everything's okay”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

"Everything is Cool"
Song lyrics, The Missing Years (1991)

Christmas, Baby

“That was the universe: you could beat it once, you could float a message in a bottle across half of eternity, but the universe would always find a way to have the last laugh.”

Alastair Reynolds book Pushing Ice

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 36 (p. 492)

Way, Universe

“The suffering that animals undergo while being caught and eaten may be intense and the process by which they are killed may last for a quarter of an hour or more. Because the number of predators worldwide is enormous, and because, like us, many of them must eat with considerable frequency, the aggregate amount of suffering in the world at any time that is caused by predation is unimaginably vast.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" The Moral Problem of Predation http://jeffersonmcmahan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-Moral-Problem-of-Predation.pdf" (2014), p. 10

World, Suffering, Time, Animals

“Even though there are mobile devices in the favela, people still need fixed centers like Telecenters and LAN houses. Such centers are points of reference for Internet access where people keep their profiles on social networking sites and download enough music, photos and videos to last until they can return. Not only for Internet access, these centers become important spaces where people share different experiences with their phones and tablets and eventually empower themselves.”

David Nemer

(p. 84)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

People, Music, Photo, Housing

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Health, Making love, Home, Failure

“A country that promises it is committed to democracy has never faced the fact that in the enterprise we don’t have democracy. We have a tiny group of people making all the decisions. And that’s not a good idea. And maybe now we can face that the decisions they’ve made, individually and collectively, have plunged us into a situation where we cannot afford the luxury of not facing basic questions about how our economy is organized. We should have done it for the last 50 years. Maybe this new generation of young people coming into the Congress will begin that conversation and, hopefully, bring us along into a national debate on these subjects, which is long overdue.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

We Need a More Humane Economic System—Not One That Only Benefits the Rich (December 26, 2018)

People, Making love, Democracy, Idea

“We have a lot of employment, but the quality of the jobs has collapsed over the last 10 years. The people who work now used to be people who had a job with good income, good benefits and good security. The jobs, overwhelmingly, created have none of those things: low wages—that’s why our wages have gone nowhere; bad benefits—those are shrinking, pensions and so on; and the security is virtually gone. One of our biggest problems in America is people don’t know one week to the next what hours they’re working, what income they’ll get. You can’t have a life like this. So, what we’ve done is we’ve ratcheted down the quality of jobs. We’ve made people use up their savings since the great crash of 2008, so they’re in a bind. They have really no choice but to offer themselves at lower wages or at less benefit or at less security than before, which is why there’s the anger, which is why there was the vote for Mr. Trump in the first place, because this talk of recovery really is about that stock market with the funny money that the Fed Reserve pumped in, but is not about the real lives of people, which are in serious trouble, hence the numbers, like a average American family can’t get a $400 emergency cost because it doesn’t have that kind of money in the background. So, you’ve undone the underlying economy, you have this frothy stock market for the 1 percent, and this is an impossible tension tearing the country apart.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

We Need a More Humane Economic System—Not One That Only Benefits the Rich (December 26, 2018)

Life, Money, Bad luck, People

“[O]ne may confidently hope, that this will not be the instance, in which the last blow will be struck at that manly, that generous mode of terminating quarrels between the common people, a mode by which the common people of England have, for ages, been distinguished from those of all other countries. ... [T]he occasion calls for some remark upon those exertions, which, of late, have been, and which yet are, making in every part of the country, with the obvious, and, in many instances, with the declared, intention, of utterly eradicating the practice of boxing; than which, I am thoroughly persuaded, nothing could be more injurious, whether considered as to its effects in civil life, or in its higher and more important effects on the people regarded as the members of a state, and, of course, always opposed to some other state, and therefore always liable to be called upon to perform the duties of war.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 195
1800s

Life, War, People, Age

“Something is wrong if workers do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures. Even last month’s manual should be out of date.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

“I need to say first of all that foreigners are wrong in regarding the DMZ as the "Last Frontier of the Cold War" which is sort of separating a failed and anachronistic communist state from a proud high-tech capitalist one.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

War

“Having said all this, I acknowledge that “I got mine” from the government over the course of many years. Thus, as I say so long,” one component of my last-gasp disquiet stems from pompously worrying about biologists who are starting out or are in mid-career.”

Jeffrey C. Hall (1945) American geneticist and chronobiologist

As quoted in A 2017 Nobel laureate says he left science because he ran out of money and was fed up with academia https://qz.com/1095294/2017-nobel-laureate-jeffrey-hall-left-science-because-he-ran-out-of-funding/ (October 5, 2017) Akshat Rathi, Quartz.

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Quotes about last
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