Quotes about last
page 61

Halldór Laxness photo
Fisher Ames photo

“Liberty has never yet lasted long in a democracy; nor has it ever ended in any thing better than despotism.”

Fisher Ames (1758–1808) American politician

American Literature (1805), in [Ames, Fisher, and Seth Ames, Works of Fisher Ames: with a selection from his speeches and correspondence, 1854, Little, Brown, 441, Boston, https://books.google.com/books?id=fjoOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA441#v=onepage]

Wendell Berry photo
Wendell Berry photo
Glenn Greenwald photo

“Everything the New York Times so proudly reported last night has been known for weeks, and was already reported in great detail, using extensive evidence, by a large number of people...”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda" (10 March 2019)

Simon Spurrier photo
José Martí photo

“Played in, and it comes out into Landon Donovan, who strikes again. What a golden goal for the USA, if you're just joining us? There it is, the moment. Deep, deep into the match! To give the USA surely, a place in the last sixteen. It is breathtakingly exciting!”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

United States v. Algeria http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=DALDkkXodRU (23 June 2010)
2010s, 2010, 2010 FIFA World Cup

Charles de Gaulle photo

“But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Appeal of June 18, Speech of June 18

Giovanni Morassutti photo

“Wine making is an artistic creation in which you deal with a variety of styles, colors, and inspiration therefore good wine, like good art, can evoke emotions, sensations and create an experience which leaves a lasting impression.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

Stated in the description of Video artwork Ribolla https://artelaguna.world/videoart/ribolla.30318/ , Arte Laguna World https://artelaguna.world/. Also quoted on visual art work Sauvignon https://www.wikiart.org/en/giovanni-morassutti/sauvignon, Series Wine & Art https://www.wikiart.org/en/giovanni-morassutti/all-works#!#filterName:Series_wine-art,resultType:masonry, Wikiart.org (28 April, 2020) https://www.wikiart.org/

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to "Let us have peace."”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

The expression of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from individual citizens of all nationalities; from all denominations — the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of the land — scientific, educational, religious or otherwise. Politics did not enter into the matter at all.
I am not egotist enough to suppose all this significance should be given because I was the object of it. But the war between the States was a very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the other had to yield principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be brought to an end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the victorious side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a representative of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.

Conclusion
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism. ... We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new. ... The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? ... Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. ... [O]ther countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them. ... In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10
1880s

Neville Chamberlain photo
Edward Carson, Baron Carson photo
Prince photo
Theodor Herzl photo

“Hindu [educational] institutions have no fundamental right to compensation in case of compulsory acquisition of their property by the state... a lasting solution to this problem lies only in amending Article 30 of the Constitution...”

K. R. Malkani (1921–2003) Indian politician

K.R. Malkani, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. 525 ff.

Paddy Ashdown photo

“Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.”

Paddy Ashdown (1941–2018) British politician and diplomat

As quoted in "Farewell, Sarajevo" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/02/warcrimes.politics (1 November 2005), The Guardian

Georges Clemenceau photo

“The enemy is at the gates of the city. The day is perhaps not far off when our breasts will be the last defence for our country. We are the children of the Revolution. Let us take inspiration from our fathers of 1792, and, like them, we will conquer.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Poster (23 September 1870) during the Franco-Prussian War, quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 38

Benjamin Creme photo

“For this last savior, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Eighth Air Force," lines 16-20
Losses (1948)

Robert Graves photo
Robert Graves photo
Paavo Väyrynen photo
David Sedaris photo
Prince photo
Newton Lee photo

“People like to hold onto life in many ways, but everything is transitory. This is it, right now. Youth doesn’t last forever, beauty doesn’t last forever, so appreciate it for the moment.”

Gronk (artist) (1954) American artist

On the loss of site-specific artwork in “Gronk by Marisela Norte” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/gronk/ in BOMB Magazine (2007 Jan 1)

Terrance Hayes photo

“I have a line in the last book about how to draw an invisible man, and it says, “I’m trying to be transparent.” I don’t actually want to be invisible, which is the dilemma of people of color, but I would like to be transparent, so people can see what my issues are, good and bad. I just try to be transparent and very present, and then see what happens.”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On seeking transparency in “Terrance Hayes on Shakespeare, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and What Makes a Good MFA” https://lithub.com/terrance-hayes-on-shakespeare-ol-dirty-bastard-and-what-makes-a-good-mfa/ in Lit Hub (2018 May 9)

Maria Weston Chapman photo

“If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere.”

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885) American abolitionist

As a mob was poised to disrupt a meeting, as quoted in [Maria Weston Chapman: American Abolitionist, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Weston-Chapman, Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 January 2019]

Nate Silver photo

“Since December 2015, there have 10 incidents that killed 10 or more people. That’s more than there was in 30 years between 1982 and 2011. And five of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern American history have all happened in the last five years.”

Nate Silver (1978) American statistician and writer

August 11, 2019 on ABC's This Week (['This Week' Transcript 8-11-19, ABC News, August 11, 2019, This Week, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-11-19-sen-cory-booker/story?id=64908165])
2010s, 2019

Jim Peebles photo

“I have been working in cosmology for 55 years ... I'm the last man standing, so to speak, from those early days.”

Jim Peebles (1935) Canadian-American astronomer

as quoted by Kenneth Chang and Megan Specia in: [8 October 2019, Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Studies of Earth's Place in the Universe, NY Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/science/nobel-physics.html]

Yehoshua Sobol photo

“Theatre is almost the last place in the world of culture where living people meet living people.”

Yehoshua Sobol (1939) Israeli dramatist

Source: [Interview with Joshua Sobol In Residence at Israeli Stage, Israeli Stage, 6 April 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUAhlp2yLZ8] (quote at 11:17 of 18:14)

Faiz Ahmad Faiz photo
Muhammad photo

“I have been given the keys of eloquent speech and given victory with awe (cast into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping last night, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me till they were put in my hand.”

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

Sunni Hadith
Source: Narrated in Bukhari by Abu Huraira, Vol. 9, Book 87, Hadith 127 http://sunnah.com/bukhari/91/17

Frederick Douglass photo
Steven Best photo

“We now face the grim choice posed by revolutionaries over the last two centuries, which involved "revolution or barbarism."”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Our situation has deteriorated so dramatically that we must choose between revolution or ecological collapse, mass extinction, and possibly our own demise. The twenty-first century is a time of reckoning.
Conclusion: "Reflections on Activism and Hope in a Dying World and Suicidal Culture" (p. 162)
The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014)

Mark Manson photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's window with the following label: “Only 2l. 2s. Hume's History of England in eight volumes, highly valuable as an introduction to Macaulay.””

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

I laughed so convulsively that the other people who were staring at the books took me for a poor demented gentleman. Alas for poor David!
Journal entry (8 March 1849), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), p. 253
1840s

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Peace with Germany and Japan on our terms will not bring much rest to you and me (if I am still responsible). As I observed last time, when the war of the giants is over, the war of the pygmies will begin.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Telegram to FDR, March 18, 1945 http://www.churchillarchiveforschools.com/themes/the-themes/anglo-american-relations/just-how-special-was-the-special-relationship-in-the-Second-World-War-Part-2-1942-44/the-sources/source-7
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Joyce Kilmer photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Michael Moorcock photo
J.B. Priestley photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Helena Roerich photo
Helena Roerich photo
Dorothy Thompson photo

“The object of liberty is to give men and women a chance to be their best selves. That is its first and last purpose.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 77

Dorothy Thompson photo

“Today in Germany the winner of the last Nobel peace prize is considered a traitor, and to attend any peace meeting would make one a candidate for a concentration camp. Today in Italy there is only one morality: the power and glory of Italy. Today in Russia all children are brought up to despise and hate ‘the class enemy.’”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 35

John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Prosanta Chakrabarty photo
Frédéric Chopin photo

“Now I am going to wash myself. Please do not embrace me as I have not washed yet. And you? Even were I to anoint myself with fragrant oils from Byzantium, you would not embrace me—not unless forced to by magnetism. But there are forces in Nature! Today you will dream that you are embracing me! You have to pay for the nightmare you caused me last night!”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Translation 2: I'm going to wash myself, don't kiss me yet, while I haven't washed myself yet. – You? even when I would rub myself with Byzantine oil, you wouldn't kiss me, unless I'd force you with magnetic powers. There's a certain power in nature. Today you will dream you are kissing me. Payback time for the bad dream you caused me last night.
Translation 1: Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376, pp. 109 https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT109– 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT110.
da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna (19 November 2018). "An Ingenious Frédéric Chopin" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/books/review/fyderyk-chopin-alan-walker-frederic-chopin-biography.html in The New York Times.
Oltermann, Philip and Walker, Shaun (25 November 2020). "Chopin's interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims: Journalist says he has found overt homoeroticism in Polish composer’s letters" https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/25/chopins-interest-in-men-airbrushed-from-history-programme-claims in The Guardian.
Picheta, Rob (29 November 2020). "Was Chopin gay? The awkward question in one of the EU's worst countries for LGBTQ rights" https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/29/europe/chopin-sexuality-poland-lgbtq-debate-scli-intl/index.html at CNN.
Chilton, Louis (30 November 2020). "Frédéric Chopin’s same-sex love letters covered up by biographers and archivists, claims new programme: Swiss radio documentary explored evidence of the great composer’s attraction to men" https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/chopin-frederic-composer-gay-letters-b1761548.html in The Independent.
From Chopin's Polish letters
Original: (pl) Idę się umywać, nie całuj mię teraz, bom się jeszcze nie umył. Ty? chociażbym się olejkami wysmarował bizantyjskimi, nie pocałowałbyś, gdybym ja Ciebie magnetycznym sposobem do tego nie przymusił. Jest jakaś siła w naturze. Dziś Ci się śnić będzie, że mnie całujesz. Muszę Ci oddać za szkaradny sen, jakiś mi dziś w nocy sprowadził.
Source: Polish: To Tytus Woyciechowski in Poturzyn (1830-09-04) https://chopin.nifc.pl/en/chopin/list/675_to-tytus-woyciechowski-in-poturzyn at Fryderyk Chopin Institute website.

Arthur Caplan photo

“When was the last time anybody made a billion of anything safely and reliably? Never. Plants go offline, crap breaks, you can't find a part. There's a ton of things that can go wrong just on manufacturing”

Arthur Caplan (1950) American academic

a billion COVID-19 vaccines
Source: Arthur Caplan (2020) cited in " This Is How We’ll Vaccinate the World Against COVID-19 https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/this-is-how-well-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid19" on IEEE Spectrum, 15 December 2020.

Théodore Guérin photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Thomas Jackson photo
Mitch McConnell photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“Surrender is forbidden. Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution toward the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

In a message to General Paulus https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/defeat/catastrophe-stalingrad.htm, 24 January 1943
1940s

Mashrafe Mortaza photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The delay of the Divine Justice — this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, — this was the soul of their religion.
"The Fugitive Slave Law", a lecture in New York City (7 March 1854), The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904), p. 238

Jon Ossoff photo
Michael Bloomberg photo
Michael Bloomberg photo
Edouard Manet photo

“Christ on the cross – what a symbol. A symbol of love surpassed by sorrow, which lies at the root of human condition, the main symbol of human poetry.. ..but that's enough of that, I'm getting morbid. It's Siredey's fault [his doctor during his last years, when Manet was seriously ill: syphilis]. Doctors always remind me of undertakers. Though I must say, I feel a lot better this evening.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 232
1880s
while working on Antonin Proust's portrait https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PeinturesMus%C3%A9eFabre089-Manet.jpg in 1881-82

Justin Barrett photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Greg McKeown (author) photo
African Spir photo
Ron English photo

“Last place is first place in the very next race.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Ron English photo

“Last place gets to stay in the race longer.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Ron English photo

“He who laughs last may be the joke.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Clint Eastwood photo

“The roles that Eastwood has played, and the films that he has directed, cannot be disentangled from the nature of the American culture of the last quarter century, its fantasies and its realities.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Author Edward Gallafent, commenting on Eastwood's impact on film from the 1970s to 1990s
Gallafent, Edward (1994). Clint Eastwood. p. 10. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0826406653.

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“The goal towards which the advance will probably be made at an accelerated pace, is that in the direction of which the legislation of the last quarter of a century has been tending—the intervention, in other words, of the State on behalf of the weak against the strong, in the interests of labour against capital, of want and suffering against luxury and wealth.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

‘The Revolution of 1884’, The Fortnightly Review, No. CCXVII, New Series (1 January 1885), quoted in T. H. S. Escott (ed.), The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XXXVII, New Series (1 January – 1 June 1885), p. 9
1880s

Massin Akandouch photo

“No matter how young you are, stand up, and speak up. Take action before it’s too late! We are the last generation with a chance to solve this broken world, so let’s all do it together!”

Massin Akandouch (2001) Amazigh activist

October 23, 2019. Massinissa Akandouch's's message at the 2019 Global Climate Strike in Barcelona. https://www.instagram.com/p/B3-PFWOoQ66

“America represented to my father, as Lincoln put it, "the last, best hope of earth."”

Peter W. Schramm (1946–2015) American academic

I would like to be able to say that this made my father a remarkable man for his time and his circumstances. For, in many ways, he truly was a wonder. But this is not one of those ways. Among the Hungarians I knew—aside from those who were true believers in the Communists—this was the common sense of the subject. It was self-evident to them.
"Born American, But in the Wrong Place" (2006)

Graham Linehan photo
Felix Adler photo
Felix Adler photo
Richard Crossman photo

“The last ten years have proved that the most backward totalitarian form of Socialism is superior to the decadent type of Capitalism we have in the Western World.”

Richard Crossman (1907–1974) British Member of Parliament

Letter to The Guardian (1 December 1961), quoted in Bryan Magee, The New Radicalism (1963), p. 102, n.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo
John Vianney photo
William Stanley Jevons photo
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg photo
Marilyn Monroe photo
Gautama Buddha photo
Elbert Hubbard photo
Chuck Norris photo
David Lloyd George photo

“There was something fundamentally wrong with our economic system. It was based upon injustice and could not last.”

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

Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
Source: Speech to the Welsh National Liberal Federation in Rhyl (9 July 1926), quoted in The Times (10 July 1926), p. 16

Arthur C. Brooks photo

“People often have trouble finding lasting satisfaction from worldly rewards, because as soon as we acquire something, our desire resets and we are looking to the next reward.”

Arthur C. Brooks (1964) American policy analyst and musician

" Stop Keeping Score, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/01/checklist-achievements-happiness-boxes/617756/" The Atlantic (21 January 2021)

Megan Whalen Turner photo

“Nothing mortals make lasts; nothing the gods make endures forever.”

An unnamed goddess
The Queen of Attolia (2000)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Yang Yuanqing photo

“We want to transform ourselves from a PC market-share leader into a PC-plus innovation leader. This will ensure we have sustained growth, profitability, and the strong foundation to build a great global company that can last for generations.”

Yang Yuanqing (1964) Chinese businessman

Thriving in a ‘PC-plus’ world: An interview with Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/thriving-in-a-pc-plus-world# in McKinsey & Company (1 June 2013)