Quotes about left
page 40

Emmanuel Macron photo
Ali al-Hadi photo

“If one of you gives (charity) with his right hand, let him conceal that from his left hand, and if he prays, let him conceal that.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

[Baqir Shareef al-Qarashi, Abdullah al-Shahin, The Life of Imam ‘Ali al-Hadi, Study and Analysis, A Maxim from Jesus Christ, 2007, 161]
General subjects

Joseph Goebbels photo
George III of the United Kingdom photo

“Once vigorous measures appear to be the only means left of bringing the Americans to a due submission to the mother country, the colonies will submit.”

George III of the United Kingdom (1738–1820) King of Great Britain and King of Ireland

From George III's letter of February 15, 1775 to Lord North, quoted in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> (July 1867) from the originals at Windsor.
Source: Google Books, The Edinburgh Review volumes 126–126, February 13, 2020 https://books.google.com/books?id=qpiQgE49-P8C&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=Once+vigorous+measures+appear+to+be+the+only+means+left+of+bringing+the+Americans+to+a+due+submission+to+the+mother+country,+the+colonies+will+submit&source=bl&ots=mL-ddKwu1s&sig=ACfU3U1guuvPa24Ta-4K5vWkF6OP4D6HXA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjel-HFgM_nAhUB2FkKHUaSBEkQ6AEwCXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&f=false,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

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

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

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

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Learned Hand photo
T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Ralph Nader photo
Céline Sciamma photo
Umar II photo

“O people, you were not created in vain, nor will you be left to yourselves. Rather, you will return to a place in which Allah will descend in order to judge among you and distinguish between you. Destitute and lost are those who forsake the all-encompassing Mercy of Allah, and they will be excluded from Paradise, the borders of which are as wide as the heavens and the Earth. Don't you know that protection, tomorrow, will be limited to those who feared Allah [today], and to those who sold something ephemeral for something permanent, something small for something great, and fear for protection? Don't you realize that you are the descendants of those who have perished, that those who remain will take place after you, and that this will continue until you are all returned to Allah? Every day you dispatch to Allah, at all times of the day, someone who has ded, his term having come to an end. You bury him in a crack in the earth and then leave him without a pillow or a bed. He has parted from his loved ones, severed his connections with the living, and taken up residence in the earth, whereupon he comes face to face with the accounting. He is mortgaged to his deeds: He needs his accomplishments, but not the material things he left on earth. Therefore, fear Allah before death descends and its appointed times expire. I swear by Allah that I say those words to you knowing that I myself have committed more sins than any of you; I therefore ask Allah for forgiveness and I repent. Whenever we learn that one of you needs something, I try to satisfy his need to the extent that I am able. Whenever I can provide satisfaction to one of you out of you of my possessions, I seek to treat him as my equal and m relative, so that my life and his life are of equal value. I swear by Allah that had I wanted something else, namely, affluence, then it would have been easy for me to utter the word, aware as I am of the means for obtaining this. But Allah has issued in an eloquent Book (Quran) and a just example Sunnah by means of which He guides us to obedience and proscribes disobedience.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 98/99, also quoted in Umar Bin Abd Al-Aziz, p. 708-710
Last Sermon delivered to People

Donald J. Trump photo

“I was left with a great idea gutted by critical examination. But that's good. That's how we make ideas better—by trying to poke holes in them and then finding ways to fix the holes.”

Greg Craven American teacher and writer

Source: What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate (2009), Chapter 1 "The Decision Grid" (p. 31)

Robert B. Reich photo
Ounsi el-Hajj photo
Diane Abbott photo

“I think that's what we were referencing when we talked about easy movement [of workers after the UK has left the EU's single market] - less bureaucracy; it's good for migrants but it's also good for business”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

Diane Abbott: Listen to CBI and NHS' on Brexit migration https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42384346 BBC News (17 December 2017)
2010s

Daniel Hannan photo

“History is reinterpreted, and it is taken as axiomatic that fascism must have been Right-wing, the logic seemingly being that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists were nasty.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

So total is the Left's cultural ascendancy that no one likes to mention the socialist roots of fascism (February 16, 2013), The Telegraph
2010s

Alastair Reynolds photo
William Cobbett photo
Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr photo
William Cobbett photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Wendell Berry photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Janis Joplin photo

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free...
And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues.
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Me and Bobby McGee" another of her greatest hits, the song was actually written by Kris Kristofferson, and first released as sung by Roger Miller
Misattributed

“I don't like playing politics, I don't like having bosses and being told what to do, I don't like competition, I have no desire to manage other people, so I've instinctively avoided or quickly left any places that were even remotely maze-like.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a8wjKNSGCPSzdWMMa/how-to-escape-from-immoral-mazes#tggw3zpPyuGgrAttt on LessWrong, January 2020

Rodrigo Duterte photo

“If I make it, God willing, to the presidency, I will be the first Left president in this country.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Excerpt from the Speech of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, Lyceum of the Philippines University 64th Commencement Exercises https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ_J36h-47Y&t=76(April 24 2016)

Alan Turing photo

“The machine may also change the square which is being scanned, but only by shifting it one place to right or left.”

On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamberger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!”

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

As quoted by * 2020-04-26

'Hambergers' and 'Noble prizes': Trump attacks press in furious Twitter rant riddled with spelling errors

Alex Woodward

Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-latest-coronavirus-hamburger-nobel-prize-russia-a9485006.html
2020s, 2020, April

Hendrik Willem Mesdag photo

“And you know, if my wife haven't said some forty years ago: do it, let's go to Brussels to study painting, [with a. o. Willem Roelofs ], then I probably would never have left my business [in banking].”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) En zie je, als mijn vrouw zo'n veertig jaar geleden niet gezegd had: doe 't maar, laten we maar gaan naar Brussel om te gaan studeren in schilderen, bij o.a. nl:Willem Roelofs, dan was 'k waarschijnlijk nooit uit mijn zaken getrokken.

Quote of Mesdag; as cited by nl:Marie Joseph Brusse, in his article 'Onder de menschen. Een gouden schilders-bruiloft', in Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant', 11 March, 1906
after 1880

Bulleh Shah photo
Bulleh Shah photo
Bobby Sands photo
Jacques Delors photo
Donald Ervin Knuth photo

“In a way, you'd say my life is a convex combination of English and mathematics. ... And not only that, I want my kids to be that way: use left brain, right brain at the same time – you got a lot more done. That was part of the bargain.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

AI Podcast, December 30, 2019, Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and The Art of Computer Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8,

Henry Kissinger photo

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Meeting of the "40 Committee" on covert action in Chile (27 June 1970) quoted in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974); the quotation was censored prior to publication due to legal action by the government. See New York Times (11 September 1974) "Censored Matter in Book About C.I.A. Said to Have Related Chile Activities; Damage Feared" by Seymour Hersh

[Omi, M., Winant, H., Racial Formation in the United States, Taylor & Francis, 2014, 978-1-135-12751-0, https://books.google.com/books?id=T7LcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA239, harv, 2018-11-02]
1970s

Natalie Wynn photo

“I see myself as sort-of the left’s ‘immune system’; no more than that.”

ContraPoints, Miscellaneous, Contrapoints Is De-Radicalizing Young, Right-Wing Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k (Vice News, 2019)

Jackson Browne photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Prince photo
Mary H.K. Choi photo

“It doesn’t get any less scary. All that happens is that you have less life left. It helps if you do your falling early, and it really helps if you do your reaching early.”

Mary H.K. Choi American author and journalist

On trying to achieve your dreams in “Mary H.K. Choi, Author of ‘Emergency Contact’ (Interview)” https://ilymag.com/2018/05/08/mary-h-k-choi-author-of-emergency-contact-interview/ in Ily Magazine (2018 May 8)

Newton Lee photo

“Ignorance and apathy will eventually lead to the annihilation of humanity if left unchecked.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Francis Bacon photo
Francis Bacon photo

“Let not judges also be ignorant of their own right, as to think there is not left to them, as a principal part of their office, a wise use and application of laws.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Judicature

Ibn Hazm photo
Mark Manson photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
James K. Morrow photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Coventry Patmore photo
Lila Downs photo

“I also come from a matriarchal family. My grandmother was left alone, not by choice. And then my mother as well. We lost my father when I was 16; he died. I was an adolescent figuring out that you’re not really worth much when you’re all women…”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On how her village shunned Downs’ solely female household in “Lila Downs Reminds Us of the Strength Women Bring to Latin America and its History” https://sheshredsmag.com/lila-downs-14/ in She Shreds (2018 May 3)
Womanhood

Francis Bacon photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo
Willis Allan Ramsey photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.”

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

And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."
St. 4
The Revenge (1878)

Joseph Goebbels photo

“According to the idea of the NSDAP [Nazi party], we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership block„.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Der Angriff (The Attack), (6 December 1931), quoted in Wolfgang Venohr’s book: Documents of German existence: 500 years of German national history 1445-1945, Athenäum Verlag, 1980, p. 291, In German: „Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhaßter als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock https://historyuncensored.wixsite.com/history-uncensored/historical-quotes
1930s

Murray Bookchin photo

“People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights—this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left, and I feel much closer, ideologically, to such individuals than I do to the totalitarian liberals and Marxist-Leninists of today.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

“Reason Interview: Murray Bookchin: A controversial anarchist talks about government, the Libertarian Party, Ayn Rand, and the evolution of his own ideas” http://reason.com/archives/1979/10/01/interview-with-murray-bookchin/1, Leslee J. Newman, Reason magazine, (October 1979) pp. 34-39.

Tucker Carlson photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“Mohammedanism has the only organization and pretty nearly the only ambition hostile to us that is left in India.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Letter to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (25 June 1877), quoted in David Steele, Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography (2001), p. 122 and Shih-tsung Wang, Lord Salisbury and Nationality in the East Viewing Imperialism in Its Proper Perspective (2019)
1870s

Lauren Jauregui photo

“I rekindled a ­friendship I hadn't had in a long time and I was reminded of all the parts of me that had left. I was like, 'Wow, I love to paint and to write, and to be outside...'”

Lauren Jauregui (1996) Cuban-American singer and songwriter

Billboard Cover: Fifth Harmony on Surviving Pop-Star Fame and 'Finally Having a Damn Voice', Billboard, May 5, 2016 https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/cover-story/7356880/fifth-harmony-billboard-cover-story-fame-challenges-new-album-the-x-factor,

Sheyene Gerardi photo
Alicia Witt photo
Bill O'Reilly photo

“Most people showed up, and I think there were, like, 1,300 of them, to hear what the woman had to say. These far-left Nazis— and that's what they are, OK?”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

came in, not only insulted Ms. Coulter but violated the rights of the people who came to hear what she had to say. This is unacceptable on every level. And it's unacceptable to do what they do on their websites: to defame, to lie, to do whatever, you know, sleazy thing they can think of to people with whom they disagree.
2005-12-08
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShowByDate&date=20051208#6
2005-12-09
O'Reilly: UConn students, certain websites are "far-left Nazis"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200512090009
2011-02-10
about University of Connecticut students chanting insults during an appearance by Ann Coulter

George Galloway photo

“I am on the anti-imperialist left.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Stalinist left? "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."
Simon Hattenstone, " Saddam and me http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,792765,00.html", The Guardian, September 16, 2002
2000s

Gregory Benford photo

“I started out with nothing and still have most of it left.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Short fiction, Aspects

Gregory Benford photo

“Wars don’t determine who’s right, only who’s left.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Source: Short fiction, Vortex, p. 110

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo
John Barrymore photo
David Lloyd George photo

“If I am to die, I would rather die fighting on the left.”

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

Remark to Herbert Samuel, explaining his opposition to Liberal politicians joining the National Government (5 October 1931), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 301
Leader of the Independent Liberals

Muhammad photo

“O my uncle! by God if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this course, until God has made me victorious, or I perish therein, I would not abandon it.”

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

https://hawzah.net/fa/Magazine/View/2689/3869/29058
Sunni Hadith

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Thaddeus McCotter photo

“They’re trying to keep the populists of both left and right apart with cultural issues, and they’re doing it to insulate themselves from any combination or constituency that can come after their power, perks and wealth. They’re dividing and conquering.”

Thaddeus McCotter (1965) American politician

Exclusive — Thaddeus McCotter: Elites’ Greatest Fear Is Left-Right Populist Unity https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2021/07/27/exclusive-thaddeus-mccotter-elites-greatest-fear-is-left-right-populist-unity/ (27 July 2021)

Park Geun-hye photo
Michael J. Byrnes photo

“I cannot come in with preconceptions of any issue. I need to listen what we can do to resolve and heal the wounds left in the community.”

Michael J. Byrnes (1958) American Roman Catholic archbishop

An interview with Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes https://www.postguam.com/news/local/an-interview-with-coadjutor-archbishop-michael-byrnes/article_4718c446-a175-11e6-aa88-ab3f00f938d3.html (November 4, 2016)

Suraj Sani photo

“Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. Now that I am experiencing these things with you in real life, It’s as if these fairy tales left out the most interesting parts of their stories.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10937455-nothing-could-have-prepared-me-for-the-reality-of-the/

John Steinbeck photo
Liz Truss photo

“If we didn't have quotas there would be overfishing and we would have no fish left.”

Liz Truss (1975) British Conservative Party politician

EU referendum: Leavers 'want to have cake and eat it', Elizabeth Truss claims https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36512743 BBC News (12 June 2016)
2016

Cicely Tyson photo
Bhaskar Sunkara photo
Chigozie Obioma photo

“That story, as all good stories, planted a seed in my soul and never left me.”

Chigozie Obioma (1986) Nigerian writer

The fishermen (2015)

Emma Goldman photo
Hugh Gaitskell photo

“So long as production is left to the uncontrolled decisions of private individuals, conducted, guided and inspired by the motive of profit, so long will Poverty, Insecurity and Injustice continue.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

'Why I Am a Socialist', South Leeds Worker (December 1937), quoted in Philip Williams, Hugh Gaitskell: A Political Biography (1979), p. 68

Donald J. Trump photo

“We’re not going to have a country left in three years, I’ll tell you that.”

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

"Donald Trump Predicts America Will End Within 3 Years" https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-predicts-america-end-002940784.html, quoted by David Moye, Yahoo News, 15 September 2021
2021, September 2021

“My own experience with my films has been that the more I’m left alone, the better I do. It isn’t that I think I’m smarter than anyone, or anything like that. It’s just that whatever my instincts are, it’s better for me to be able to put those into play in my own work.”

Joan Micklin Silver (1935–2020) American film director

Primary Source - Directors Guild of America’s Visual Oral History Program - Interview by Michael Pressman - Chapter 3 - Visual History with Joan Micklin Silver https://www.dga.org/Craft/VisualHistory/Interviews/Joan-Micklin-Silver.aspx?Filter=Full%20Interview - 19 September 2005 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210911133653/https://www.dga.org/Craft/VisualHistory/Interviews/Joan-Micklin-Silver.aspx?Filter=Full+Interview
Secondary Sources -
New York Times article by Anita Gates - Joan Micklin Silver, Director of ‘Crossing Delancey,’ Dies at 85 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/movies/joan-micklin-silver-dead.html - 1 January 2021 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210911135615/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/movies/joan-micklin-silver-dead.html
MSN Entertainment article by Tyler Aquilina - Joan Micklin Silver, boundary-breaking director of Crossing Delancey, dies at 85 https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/joan-micklin-silver-boundary-breaking-director-of-crossing-delancey-dies-at-85/ar-BB1cq6Pn - 2 January 2021 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210911134333/https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/joan-micklin-silver-boundary-breaking-director-of-crossing-delancey-dies-at-85/ar-BB1cq6Pn