Quotes about left (4060 quotes, page 2)

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

War , People , Secret , Fools

“In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state—capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Context: The workers' militias, based on the trade unions and each composed of people of approximately the same political opinions, had the effect of canalizing into one place all the most revolutionary sentiment in the country. I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragón one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state—capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me.

Men , People , World , Motivation

“I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

"Artistic Freedom"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)
Context: I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.

Freedom

“I prefer to win titles with the team ahead of individual awards or scoring more goals than anyone else. I'm more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world. When all this is over, what are you left with? When I retire, I hope I am remembered for being a decent guy.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Personality , Hope , World , Football

“So the only other reason you should ever have a conversation, or be friends, with anyone on the left is — and not even be friends — if you are in public in front of a large audience, and then your goal is to humiliate them as badly as possible. That is the goal of the conversation, the goal is not to convince the person, the goal is not to make friends with that person.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

Speech to Young America's Foundation at Reagan Ranch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZRuwjvAMuQ,
2015

Personality , Making love

“The feeling of motherhood in a woman becomes stronger as she grows older. In fact a time comes when every man is like a son in the eyes of a woman. There is not an ounce of sexual desire left in her heart. But his stage never comes in a man…he can never free himself from sexual desires.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

In the novel Bhoot quoted in page=92.
Portrayal of Women in Premchands Stories A Critique

Time , Feeling , Heart

“Sometimes defining friendship can be simple. If your heart still aches after someone has passed, then you were a true and close friend. They may have physically left this world, but they still walk among us in our hearts.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2018

World , Friendship , Heart

“We also know that populism can take dangerous turns -– from the extremism of those who would use democracy to deny minority rights, to the nationalism that left so many scars on this continent in the 20th century.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Remarks by the President to Parliament in London, United Kingdom (May 2011)

Democracy

“Left alone with the dial tone… excuse me, operator, why is no one listening?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Said often during his presidency (1981–1989)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Time

“That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.”

Alice Hoffman book Here on Earth

Source: Here on Earth

Time , Childhood

“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Perfection

“You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Feeling , Time , Animals

“He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.”

William Shakespeare King John

Source: King John

Parting , Perfection

“Had I left those images hidden in the emotions, I might have been torn to pieces by them.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“I was born when he kissed me, I died when he left me, I lived a few weeks while he loved me”

Dorothy B. Hughes book In a Lonely Place

Variant: I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.
Source: In a Lonely Place

Love , Kiss

“And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To Find in the left one
Its consolation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Love , Life , Death

“"How do you find America?"
"Turn left at Greenland.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

“If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Love , People

“I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Way

“Do not dwell upon the sins and mistakes of yesterday so exclusively as to have no energy and mind left for living rightly today, and do not think that the sins of yesterday can prevent you from living purely today.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

Source: Byways of Blessedness

Thinking

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books , World , Way , Thinking

“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Love , Communication , Fraud , Freedom

“He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pnin

Source: Pnin

Sleep , Night

“Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Guy , Loneliness

“All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy”, p. 101.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Context: To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire-builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

“Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Love , Heart

“Just when you thought that you already learned the way how to live, life changes - and you're left the same as you begun.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Life , Way , Learning , Change

“And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Women , Soul

“Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.

(Interview,, February 20, 2005)”

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

“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Time

“Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.”

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

World

“What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Life , Death , Fear , Birth

“Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful”

Michael Moorcock book Elric of Melniboné

Source: Elric of Melniboné

Success

“But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

People , Personality

“That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

“And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking Glass

Dreams

“as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love , Understanding , Water

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Books , Success

“Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

Evil

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Death , People , Fools

“I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

“FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT….”

Terry Pratchett book The Shepherd's Crown

Source: The Shepherd's Crown

Death , World

“I've found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you. Look at these things, then you find yourself again, and God, and then you regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

7 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

God , Faith , Beauty , Courage

“All tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Cars

“The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Love

“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Heartbreaking , Sad , Depressing , Heart Touching

“My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love , Books , Time , Waiting

“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators… The land is one organism.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.
1930s
Context: Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. … Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

Love , Hate , Game

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”

Maurice Maeterlinck book The Life of the Bee

Source: The Life of the Bee

Bee

“I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Hope , Soul

“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

World , Hope

“Anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: Boy Toy

Forgiveness , Time , Anger

“morning when I left. I checked my car for a GPS tag and yet somehow Creighton’s following me up Laurel Canyon Boulevard.” “Maybe it”

Michael Connelly book The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Source: The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Cars

“the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: The best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them.

Understanding

“If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Peaceful , Love , Peace , Problem

“Sometimes our questions are better left unanswered.”

Robert Dugoni (1961)

My Sister's Grave

Question

“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Life , History

“There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”

Isabel Allende book Eva Luna

Source: Eva Luna

Death , People , Daughters , Forgetting

“If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

Feeling , Reality , Personality

“Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed quickly across his windshield but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl in her twenties. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks like him, but is it? Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Smile , Cars , Girl , Thinking

“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

World

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

God , Law , Thinking

“Now, my mom always said two wrongs don't make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.”

Hugh Laurie (1959) British actor, comedian, writer, musician and director

Moms

“Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)
Context: If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

Time

“I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Love , Heart

“Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.
It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

“An old farm is always more than the people under its roof. It is the past as well as the present, and vanished generations have built themselves into it as well as left their footsteps in the worn woodwork of the stair.”

Henry Beston book Northern Farm

Source: Northern Farm

People , Past

“You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: Tales of Power

Way , Feeling , Time , Personality

“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Suffering

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

War , Courage , Understanding , Memory

“No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it’s only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying, once gone, what is left is only an object.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Soul , Suffering

“Here's a newsflash from the only High Preistess you have left at this dang school: Zoey isn't dead. And believe me, I know dead. I've been there, done that, and got the frickin' T-shirt." - Stevie Rae”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

School , Dead

“So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“When the hunter sets traps only for rabbits, tigers and dragons are left uncaught.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

“He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

People

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Secret , Confidence , Light , Suffering

“Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the uprising of the Italian proletariat. From the time the [first world] war ended, there was an upward trend in the revolutionary movement in Italy, and in September 1920 it resulted in the seizure of factories and industries by the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was an actual fact; all that was lacking was to organize it and draw from it all the necessary conclusions. The social democracy took fright and sprang back. After its bold and heroic exertions, the proletariat was left facing the void. The disruption of the revolutionary movement became the most important factor in the growth of fascism. In September, the revolutionary advance came to a standstill; and November already witnessed the first major demonstration of the fascists”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

the seizure of Bologna
Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 2

War , World , Democracy , Betrayal

“There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. In the end such a man becomes impossible to get hold of, since he is wholly exterior, without kernel: a tattered, painted bag of clothes; a decked-out ghost that cannot inspire even fear and certainly not pity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Es gibt kein öderes und widrigeres Geschöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius ausgewichen ist und nun nach rechts und nach links, nach rückwärts und überallhin schielt. Man darf einen solchen Menschen zuletzt gar nicht mehr angreifen, denn er ist ganz Außenseite ohne Kern, ein anbrüchiges, gemaltes, aufgebauschtes Gewand.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

World , Fear , Painting , Clothes

“As one reads the scriptures of Christianity and Islam with a morally alert mind, one starts getting sick of the very sound of word ‘god’ which word is littered all over this literature like dead leaves in autumn. The deeds which are ascribed to or approved of by this God are quite often so cruel and obnoxious as to leave one wondering that if these are the doings of the Divine, what else is there which is left for the Devil to do.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

God , Literature , Autumn , Reading

“I'm very sorry to inconvenience you [ the art dealers G. and J. Berheim-Jeune ], but I find it impossible to supply you with any more Venice pictures. It was useless trying to persuade my self otherwise, the work that's left is too poor for exhibition. Don't insist... I've enough good sense in me to know whether what I'm doing is good or bad, and it' utterly bad, and I can't believe that people of taste, if they have any knowledge at all, could see any value in it. Things have been dragging on like this for far too long..”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in Monet's letter to his art-dealers [[wBernheim-Jeune|G. and J. Berheim-Jeune], Venice, 1912; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 72
1900 - 1920

People , Art , Knowledge , Sense

“We live in a troubled, but wonderful time. It is our good fortune to witness and benefit from scientific advances that would have been literally unimaginable to our grandparents. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rate of growth of scientific knowledge has been so great as to outstrip the ability of our society to assimilate it, the capacity of the educational system to teach it properly and the wisdom of government adequately to sustain and apply it. There is growing indifference to science among the young. Even medical science, which touches the lives of us all, is generally left to the practitioners. Whatever the reason for this disparity between the importance of science and the lack of general public understanding, it is important to address it.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

E. J. Corey, ‎Barbara Czakó, ‎László Kürti, Molecules and Medicine (2007). Introduction

Wisdom , Education , Understanding , Knowledge

“With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner… widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in… at first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker. Presently, details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand in suspense any longer, inquired anxiously "Can you see anything?", it was all I could do to get out the words "Yes, wonderful things".”

Howard Carter (1874–1939) British egyptologist

Tutankhamen and the Glint of Gold http://www.fathom.com/feature/190166/index.html
Diary, 26 November 1922.

Animals

“p>Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

Eduardo Galeano book The Book of Embraces

The Nobodies; Cied in Mother Jones Magazine (1991) The Book of Embraces. March-April 1991. p. 71
The Book of Embraces (1991)

Life , Children , World , Religion

“Some part of life – perhaps the most important part – must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Life , Death , Parting

“Let me move over here. (Jay would then move barely a few inches to the left or right. He generally repeats this a few times per show)”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

Self-degradation

Time

“I was obviously floating in the atmosphere; companioned not only by the strange child and the radiant pair, but by a constantly increasing throng of half-luminous, vine-crowned youths and maidens with wind-blown hair and joyful countenance. We slowly ascended together, as if borne on a fragrant breeze which blew not from the earth but from the golden nebulae, and the child whispered in my ear that I must look always upward to the pathways of light, and never backward to the sphere I had just left.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Youth , Light

“We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)

Life , Men , Children , People

“My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/DSS/Addams/pb7.html

War

“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”

Óscar Romero (1917–1980) Fourth Archbishop of San Salvador

Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love http://data.plough.com/ebooks/ViolenceOfLove.pdf (1977).

Love , Christ , Selfishness

“I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)

Wisdom , Hate , World , Beauty

“Some more in this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to get away from slavery. They have said so to me, and it is understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit. Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts? Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska? Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already oppressed race? "Woe unto them," it is written, "that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed."”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Can we afford to sin any more deeply against human liberty?
From the Speech Delivered Before the First Republican State Convention of Illinois, Held at Bloomington (1856); found in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 (1894), J. M. Dent & Company, p. 56.
Also quoted by Ida Minerva Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources and Containing Many Speeches, Letters, and Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished, and Illustrated with Many Reproductions from Original Paintings, Photographs, etc, Volume 4 (1902), Lincoln History Society http://lincolnhistoricalsociety.org/; and by William C. Whitney; in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v. 2' . (1905) Lapsley, Arthur Brooks, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons
1850s

Men , Freedom , Strong

“Once centenarian teacher who had the body of an adolescent told me he had studied martial arts. "Me, too," I answered. We were in Notre Dame, and he said, "Attack me." I put myself in a combat position, and he moved his left hand in such an incredibly beautiful way that while I looked at it, fascinated, he gave me a big slap. "Beauty is the most dangerous weapon," he warned. It took me a long time to understand. He used a secret Chinese practice, which consists of drawing a snake in the air with your hand to distract the enemy. And that is how beauty is: the most awful weapon.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Secret , Beauty , Art , Way

“When Matisse died, he left me his Odalisques 'as a legacy', he proclaimed.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

after the death of Matisse (1954); as quoted in Matisse & Picasso, By Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 7
1950s

“Keynesian economics at a minimum provides a license for welfare state measures and other government efforts towards redistribution of wealth. The license is the faith that macroeconomic stabilization and prosperity are compatible with a wide range of social policies, that modern capitalism and democracy are robust enough to prosper and progress while being humane and equitable. That faith conflicts with the visions of extreme Right and Left, which agree that extremes of wealth and poverty, of security and insecurity, are indispensable to the functioning of capitalism. Keynesian policies helped to confound those dismal prophecies in the past; I think they will do so again.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

James Tobin, "Keynes' Policies in Theory and Practice", Challenge (1983).
1970s and later

Faith , Democracy , Thinking , Effort

“If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

In this way, the story of the Baudelaire orphans is like an onion, and if you insist on reading each and every thin, papery layer in A Series of Unfortunate Events, your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes. Even if you have read the first twelve volumes of the Baudelaires' story, it is not too late to stop peeling away the layers, and to put this book back on the shelf to wither away while you read something less complicated and overwhelming. The end of this unhappy chronicle is like its bad beginning, as each misfortune only reveals another, and another, and another, and only those with the stomach for this strange and bitter tale should venture any farther into the Baudelaire onion. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.”

Daniel Handler book The End

Source: The End (2006), Chapter 1

Life , Books , Way , Tear

“In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Um aber unsere Klassiker so falsch beurteilen und so beschimpfend ehren zu können, muß man sie gar nicht mehr kennen: und dies ist die allgemeine Tatsache. Denn sonst müßte man wissen, daß es nur eine Art gibt, sie zu ehren, nämlich dadurch, daß man fortfährt, in ihrem Geiste und mit ihrem Mute zu suchen, und dabei nicht müde wird.
(A. Ludovici trans.), § 1.2
Untimely Meditations (1876)

People , Way , Search , Courage

“Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory.”

Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist

Source: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents (1988), p. 197.

Knowledge

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Quotes about left
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