Quotes about left
page 12

Silius Italicus photo

“Victorious Carthage measures the downfall of Rome by all the heap of gold that was torn from the left hands of the slain.”
Congesto laevae quodcumque avellitur auro metitur Latias victrix Carthago ruinas.

Book VIII, lines 675–676
This refers to the mass of rings Hannibal plundered from the Roman knights slain in the Battle of Cannae.
Punica

Jerome David Salinger photo

“I love to write and I assure you I write regularly… But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”

Jerome David Salinger (1919–2010) American writer

Interview in The Baton Rouge Advocate (1980), as quoted in "J.D. Salinger, author of 'Catcher in the Rye,' dies" in The Washington Post (28 January 2010) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012803177.html

Winston S. Churchill photo
Sarah Bakewell photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There is something in this universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, "You shall reap what you sow." This is a law-abiding universe. This is a moral universe. It hinges on moral foundations. If we are to make of this a better world, we've got to go back and rediscover that precious value that we've left behind.”

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

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Source: Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)

Nigel Cumberland photo

“Many people find it hard working with their boss and often leave their jobs because of their boss’ working style, behaviours and attitude. I once heard someone say, “I joined the company, but I left my boss.””

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

page 184
Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?id=p24GkAsgjGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?id=qZjO9_ov74EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id=4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false

Marianne von Werefkin photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Robin Williams photo
Ehud Barak photo

“The Left is acting like a young child, saying 'I want peace'… A child says 'I want candy right away,' an adult takes all of the factors into account and understands who he's dealing with.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Barak Fights Labor MKs over Goldstone http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134060 Israel National News, October 26, 2009.

Phil Brooks photo
Linus Torvalds photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.”

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

Conference on domestic violence https://web.archive.org/web/20010726225357/http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html in San Salvador, El Salvador (17 November 1998).
White House years (1993–2000)

Neil Young photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Jack Vance photo

“The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.”

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 11, section 2 (p. 968)

Hermann Hesse photo

“According to a stagist conception of progressive history (which is usually blind to its implicit teleology), the work of figures like Foucault, Derrida and other cutting-edge French theorists is often intuitively affiliated with a form of profound and sophisticated critique that presumably far surpasses anything found in the socialist, Marxist or anarchist traditions. It is certainly true and merits emphasis that the Anglophone reception of French theory, as John McCumber has aptly pointed out, had important political implications as a pole of resistance to the false political neutrality, the safe technicalities of logic and language, or the direct ideological conformism operative in the McCarthy-supported traditions of Anglo-American philosophy. However, the theoretical practices of figures who turned their back on what Cornelius Castoriadis called the tradition of radical critique—meaning anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist resistance—surely contributed to the ideological drift away from transformative politics. According to the spy agency itself, post-Marxist French theory directly contributed to the CIA’s cultural program of coaxing the left toward the right, while discrediting anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, thereby creating an intellectual environment in which their imperial projects could be pursued unhindered by serious critical scrutiny from the intelligentsia.”

Gabriel Rockhill (1972) philosopher

"The CIA reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left" (2017)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Niall Ferguson photo

“History is not politically correct. Many on the left therefore struggle with its findings.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

"On being called a racist" http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/7482658/on-being-called-a-racist/ The Spectator, December 17, 2011

Theresa Sparks photo

“The lack of political attention to candidates and issues, history has shown us, is a sure-fire way to end up left out of the policy debates altogether.”

Theresa Sparks (1949) American activist

The Transgender Community Needs to Reestablish Its Voice (2005)

A. James Gregor photo
Joseph E. Stiglitz photo

“My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

Stewart Lee photo
Michio Kushi photo

“Memory is merely the process of tuning into vibrations that have been left behind in space and time.”

Michio Kushi (1926–2014) Japanese educator

Source: Spiritual Journey: Michio Kushi's Guide to Endless Self-Realization and Freedom (1994, with Edward Esko), p. 62

William Morris photo
James Thurber photo

“I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Journal (24 February 1873)
Letters, etc

Marlon Brando photo

“On the day Kazan showed me the completed picture I was so depressed by my performance that I got up and left the screening room.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Speaking of his performance in On the Waterfront (1954). Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994)
"If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is."- Eli Kazan on Brando's performance in On the Waterfront, published in Marlon Brando, Portraits and Film Stills 1946-1995 (1996)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Translated from the 2d German ed. by E.B. Speirs, and J. Burdon Sanderson: the translation edited by E.B. Speirs. Published 1895 p. 49-50
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1 (1827)

Germaine Greer photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
George Santayana photo

“All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"Materialism and Idealism" p. 175 ( Hathi Trust http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3923968?urlappend=%3Bseq=191)
Character and Opinion in the United States (1920)

Neil Gorsuch photo

“I immediately lost what breath I had left. And I am not embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t see the rest of the way down the mountain for the tears.”

Neil Gorsuch (1967) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Gorsuch describing his reaction after receiving a cell telephone call while skiing informing him that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. Quote from "In Judge Neil Gorsuch, an Echo of Scalia in Philosophy and Style." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-nominee.html?_r=0 The New York Times. January 31, 2017.

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher photo

“We left our element, the sea, to make ourselves into a conscript nation fighting on the Continent with four million soldiers out of a population of forty millions.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

p. 53. https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/53/mode/1up
Memories (1919) https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/n0/mode/2up

Mihira Bhoja I photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Langston Hughes photo

“When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Final Curve"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

“There are earth-shattering events going on around you, Lydia. men are scheming, debating, plotting, intriguing for the future of our country but, despite all their talk, it is the little children who are really creating the future. While these big men spend hours talking and arguing, you and your friends are busy building a nation. I don't exaggerate: all societies must be based on justice, love, trust and sharing. Though only 3, you are already practising them in your playgroup. Left to yourselves, you black and white children are actually doing that, while the politicians nervously insert clauses into bills to guard their investments and vested interest, or to protect people from people. You don't need to be protected from children of other races, because to you they are simply your friends, and you accept them totally for what they are. Your playgroup is based on trust. That is a precious commodity. I hope you never lose it. When men in Namibia act on that lesson we too, like you, can begin to build a nation.”

Colin Winter (1928–1981) Bishop of Damaraland noted for opposing apartheid; exiled Bishop of Namibia; Irish-British Anglican bishop

"An Open Letter to Lydia Morrow" Pro Veritate, V.15, No. 4 (September 1976) http://disa.nu.ac.za/articledisplaypage.asp?filename=PVSep76&articletitle=An+open+letter+to+Lydia+Morrow+from+Colin+Winter%2C+Bishop+of+Damaraland+in+exile+++++++++&searchtype=browse. Pro Veritate http://disa.nu.ac.za/journals/jourpvexpand.htm was a Christian monthly journal published in South Africa from 1962 to 1977. Lydia Morrow was the small daughter of Winter's friends and associates, Edward and Laureen Morrow.

Julius Streicher photo
Kóbó Abe photo
Bobby Fischer photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Daniel Dennett photo
Rebecca Solnit photo
Toby Keith photo

“Lately I've been lookin' through the windows of my soul
And I can see there's not much left to hold
Just an empty space surrounded by the pieces of
A badly broken heart that's forgotten how to love.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

A Woman's Touch, written with Wayne Perry.
Song lyrics, Blue Moon (1996)

David Horowitz photo
Jean Froissart photo

“This greyhound Math left the King and went to the Duke of Lancaster, showing him all the marks of affection which he used to show to the King. He placed his forepaws on his shoulders and began to lick his face. The Duke of Lancaster, who had never seen the dog before, asked the King: "What does this greyhound want?"…"The dog is hailing and honouring you today as the King of England which you will be, while I shall be deposed."”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Ce lévrier nommé Blemach…laissa le roy et s'en vint tout droit au duc de Lancastre, et luy fist toutes les contenances telles que en devant il faisoit au roy Richart, et luy assist ses deux pies sus les epaules et le commença moult grandement à conjouir. Adont le duc de Lancastre qui point ne congnoissoit le lévrier, demanda au roy et dist: "Mais que veult ce lévrier faire?"…"Cestuy lévrier vous recueille et festoie aujourd'huy comme roy d'Angleterre que vous serés, et j'en seray déposé."
Book 4, p. 453.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Roger Wolcott Sperry photo
Akio Morita photo

“A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Akio Morita, cited in: John Raymond Phillips (1994) The future of labor-management cooperative programs. p. 6.
Made in Japan (1986)

Ehud Olmert photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Maimónides photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“I am left to defend the 'dead' Constitution.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On a living Constitution: Speech at Marquette University in Milwaukee (13 March 2001).
2000s

“The Government of the fort of Kohram and of Samana was made over by the Sultan to Kutbu-d din… [who] by the aid of his sword of Yemen and dagger of India became established in independent power over the countries of Hind and Sind' He purged by his sword the land of Hind from the filth of infidelity and vice, and freed the whole of that country from the thorn of God-plurality, and the impurity of idol-worship, and by his royal vigour and intrepidity, left not one temple standing”

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

Kuhram and Samana (Punjab) . Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 216-217 . Also partially quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Daniel Tosh photo
Tony Buzan photo
Ben Gibbard photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Malala Yousafzai photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Okay, I get it. You people destroy billions of brain cells on a daily basis with your excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, over-the-counter as well as prescription medication—the latter of which, chances are, aren't even yours—and a veritable laundry list of substances that you shove into your soft little bodies day after day. The reason I bring up your chemically-induced mind is because I think the lot of you have forgotten my accomplishments, so please allow me to jog your ailing memory: I am the only three-time straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in WWE history, I am the only Superstar in WWE history to win back-to-back Money in the Bank Ladder Matches at WrestleMania, and don't forget I am the man that did you, the WWE Universe, a favor that you didn't even deserve when I got rid of the Charismatic Enabler Jeff Hardy from this company…forever. But that runs a close #2 to my crowning achievement of using my Anaconda Vice and, for the first time, making the Undertaker [makes the motion on his chest] tap out—I did that. Me. I did that, and I did it all without drugs, I did it all without alcohol, and above all else, I did it all without any help from any of you. So I want somebody, anybody in a position of power to come out here right now and treat me with the respect I have earned, not only as the face of SmackDown, but the poster boy of the entire company, and as the choice of a new generation, I deserve to know who my next opponent is now that I have defeated the all-powerful Undertaker. [Waits amidst the boos of the crowd] Oh, that's right. There isn't anybody left!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 25, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Calvin Coolidge photo
Colm Tóibín photo
Martin Farquhar Tupper photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Dave Barry photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Malachy McCourt photo
Saki photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Phillip Guston photo
Zoran Đinđić photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Han-shan photo
Eugen Drewermann photo
Aimee Mann photo

“Tell me why I feel so bad, honey
Fighting left me plenty of money
But didn't keep the promise of memory lapses
Like a building that's been slated for blasting
I'm the proof that nothing is lasting
Counting to eleven as it collapses”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Video" · Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPG9_01srI
Song lyrics, The Forgotten Arm (2005)

Richard Pipes photo
Harry Turtledove photo
William Morris photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

An unpublished paper of 1907, as quoted in The Rising American Empire (1960) by Richard Warner Van Alstyne, p. 201; also quoted in On Power and Ideology (1987) by Noam Chomsky; accounts of this as being from a lecture of 15 April 1907 seem to be incorrect.
1900s

Hunter S. Thompson photo
André Malraux photo
Daniel Dennett photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Sarah Palin photo

“We must win, because Ohio, the far-left wing of the Democrat Party, not mainstream Democrat ideology, the values, the planks in the platform of the Democrat Party. It's the far-left wing of the party is getting ready to take over the entire federal government.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Campaign speech in Lakewood, Ohio, November 3, 2008 http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/03/palin-%E2%80%98far-left-wing-of-the-democrat-party%E2%80%99-getting-ready-for-takeover/
2008