Quotes about lifetime
page 5

“We may not know the whole story in our lifetime.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

On the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, quoted in Minute by Minute (1985)
Undated

“One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money; we also feel we need to work. That is why there is an enormous surge in the number of unpaid staff, volunteers. The needs are not going to go away. Business is not going to take up the slack, and government cannot.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

"New Priorities" Dancing Toward The Future, Context Institute http://www.context.org/, (1992) <br class="br">1990s and later

Money, People, Education, Feeling

“John F. Kennedy … murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy — maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows? A whole generation of American journalists is still embarrassed by their failure to answer that question. JFK's ghost will haunt the corridors of power in America for as long as the grass is green and the rivers run to the sea. Take my word for it, Bubba. I have heard his footsteps for 30 years and I still feel guilty about not being able to explain the biggest news story of my lifetime to my son.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
1990s

Feeling, Failure, Question, Grass

“Two lifetimes -- yours and mine.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Georgina and Michael
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life — much less intelligence — beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

"Credo" (1991); also in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! : Collected Essays, 1934-1998 (1999), p. 360
1990s

Life, Disappointment, Intelligence

“I have always been interested in oval or ovoid shapes. The first carvings were simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Gradually my interest grew in more abstract values – the weight, poise and curvature of the ovoid as a basic form. The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Here is a sufficient field for exploration to last a lifetime..”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1932 - 1946, The Studio 132:643', (1946), p. 279

Bird, Change

“From 'Anniversary Serenade'
The ring is closed. The rolling dice we cast
So long ago still roll, but not so fast.
The colours fade that we nailed to the mast.
We lose the future but we own the past.
We own the past?
From our first kiss, a lifetime to the last.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Poems and song lyrics

Kiss, Past, Future

“The concept of lifetime employment arose when Japanese managers and employees both realized that they had much in common and that they had to make some long-range plans.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 137.

“You could spend a lifetime reading in here.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Reading

“The eighteenth-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means that he would've read all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science. But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today, would've had to've read all Dan Brown's novels, two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography, The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson II by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson III by Jeremy Clarkson… his mind would be awash with bad metaphors and unsustainable, reactionary opinion; one long anecdote about the time that Comedy Dave put a pound coin in the urinal. In short, the man who had read everything published today would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. That's not a good state of affairs.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 1 Episode 1: "Toilet Books"

Books, Stupidity, World, Science

“Throughout our history we have been challenged to armed conflict by nations which sought to destroy our independence or threatened our freedom. The young men of America have risen to those occasions, giving themselves freely to the rigors and hardships of warfare. But the stamina and strength which the defense of liberty requires are not the product of a few weeks' basic training or a month's conditioning. These only come from bodies which have been conditioned by a lifetime of participation in sports and interest in physical activity. Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America. Thus, in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.”

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

1960, Sport at the New Frontier: The Soft American

Men, History, Sense, Sport

“Our mission is to advance a Culture of Life where everyone is welcomed in life and defended in law. Our objectives to that end are to reverse Roe and defeat Planned Parenthood. I believe both of these goals are achievable in our lifetime if we remain committed, focused, optimistic and strategic. Although of course, in the end, the battle is not ours -- our duty is to remain faithful to the calling before us. As you rightly say, we have to oppose the lie… and the best weapon in that effort is the light of truth.”

Charmaine Yoest (1964) American anti-abortion activist

Interview with AUL Action's Charmaine Yoest on 'Open Letter to Barack Obama' http://www.catholic.org/news/national/story.php?id=30332 (October 31, 2008)

Life, Truth, Lie, Faith

“Decision Points is based primarily on my recollections. With help from researchers, I have confirmed my account with government documents, contemporaneous notes, personal interviews, news reports, and other sources, some of which remain classified. There were instances in which I had to rely on memory alone. If there are inaccuracies in this book, the responsibility is mine. In the pages that follow, I have done my best to write about the decisions I got right, those I got wrong, and what I would do differently if given the chance. Of course, in the presidency, there are no do-overs. You have to do what you believe is right and accept the consequences. I tried to do that every day of my eight years in office. Serving as president was the honor of a lifetime, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to share my story.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. xii

Books, Decision, Memory, Chance

“We are supposed to be ruled by ourselves, but I have yet to see any evidence of it in our lifetime.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

“So great has been man's progress that today all civilized nations have their great universities, with highly trained specialists, who devote a lifetime to the study of some minute detail of a particular department. His ideas have become so extended and complex that hundreds of thousands of words are necessary to give expression to his thoughts, and libraries with millions of volumes contain only a fraction of his written convictions. …the knowledge of the average man on the street is incomparably higher than that of the eminent scholar of a few centuries ago.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 28

Idea, Knowledge, Study, Universe

“Favoritism, elitism, leader-worship, they crept back and cropped out everywhere. But she had never hoped to see them eradicated in her lifetime, in one generation; only Time works the great changes.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Day Before the Revolution” p. 265 (originally published in Galaxy, August 1974)
Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1974
Hugo nominee for Best Short Story in 1975
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Hope, Change, Time

“In early 1981 one of the most important moments in my life occurred. I entered a vivisection lab … In one of the cages, I saw a young Alaskan malamute … The dog tried to lick my face through the bars. Maybe he thought I had come to save him. I saw the infected stitches in the belly, oozing pus and blood. I saw the filthy, encrusted tube that was draining fluid out of his stomach. And as I held him, I saw the rotted stitches start to come apart and his guts start to spill out. As gently as I could, I let him down onto the floor of the cage and placed my hand on him, trying to comfort him in those last few moments of his life. I was still holding him when at last he took his final struggling breaths and died. It seemed to take a lifetime. I was close to tears as I looked at the body, and I thought, this isn’t science — this is madness. Standing there, looking at that gentle animal lying dead in a bloody cage, I made a promise to him and to myself, that I would never forget him, that I would keep on fighting vivisection until it was ended.”

Chris DeRose (1948) American actor and activist

"Chris DeRose: Vegan Easy Challenge Ambassador", interview with VeganEasy.org (2011) https://web.archive.org/web/20111012130026/http://veganeasy.org/Chris-DeRose.

Life, Dogs, Lying, Tear

“I'd like for them to say he took a few cups of love, he took one tablespoon of patience, teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern, and then, he mix willlingness with happiness, he added lots of faith, and he stired it up well, then he spreads it over his span of a lifetime, and he served it to each and every deserving person he met.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Response to George Plimpton, question at the end of an interview: "What would you like people to think about you when you've gone?" - Interview (video) http://youtube.com/watch?v=ebu0OBa1pus

Love, Happiness, Faith, Laughter

“In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power… Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise and fall of the blue-collar worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Country

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)

Truth

“The five minutes ticked away on Limaal Mandella’s fob watch and the tension wound tight around Corporation Plaza. Rael Mandella Jr., sweating in his father’s best championship suit, was horrified to realize how few of such brief five-minute periods went to make up a lifetime.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 47 (p. 238).

“Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book I, Canto VIII, II The Revelation.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Love, Men, Books, Reading

“Having made an utter failure of my life, I found myself one day, in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth. As I went over them one by one, examining and comparing them in my mind's eye, it suddenly came over me that those slips of girls – which is all they were then – were in every way, both morally and intellectually, superior to the 'grave and mustachioed signior' I am now supposed to have become. The realization brought with it an overpowering sense of shame and remorse, and for a while I was plunged in the deepest despair. There and then I resolved to make a record of all the recollections of those days I could muster – those golden days when I dressed in silk and ate delicately, when we still nestled in the protecting shadow of the Ancestors and Heaven still smiled on us. I resolved to tell the world how, in defiance of all my family's attempts to bring me up properly and all the warnings and advice of my friends, I had brought myself to this present wretched state, in which, having frittered away half a lifetime, I find myself without a single skill with which I could earn a decent living. I resolved that, however unsightly my own shortcomings might be, I must not, for the sake of keeping them hid, allow those wonderful girls to pass into oblivion without a memorial.”

Cao Xueqin (1724–1763) Chinese writer during the Qing dynasty

Cao Xueqin, as quoted in the introduction attributed to his younger brother (Cao Tangcun) to the first chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber, present in the jiaxu (1754) version (the earliest-known manuscript copy of the novel), translated by David Hawkes in The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days (Penguin, 1973), pp. 20–21

Life, Youth, World, Family

“Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 7).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Age, Imagination, Strong, Country

“Like I said before, there are windows of openness in our culture. And then our culture closes those windows down just as fast. And I’ve seen it in my lifetime, time and time again. Right now I’m enjoying the freedom that we all have. But it could really all end. What happened in Germany in the early ’30s, no one could have imagined that — except for the people who had lived through that kind of thing before. And it’s all cyclical. So we have a certain freedom now. And I’m not just talking about gay people. I’m talking about everyone. We have a certain freedom now. But that could all change in a heartbeat.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)

People, Imagination, Freedom, Change

“Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Attributed to Clarke on the internet, this has also been attributed to Isaac Asimov in published works.
Disputed

“The man of mark is never appreciated, either in his lifetime or in his own country.”

Camillo Federici (1749–1802) Italian actor and playwright (1749-1802)

L’uomo insigne non è mai apprezzato nè in vita, nè in patria.
I Preguidizi del Paesi Piccoli, Act II., Sc. V. — (L’Uffiziale).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 338.

Country

“I want to love, to love heedlessly!
To love for the sake of loving: Here…there…
This one, that other and everyone…
To love! To love! And love no one!
[…]
He who loves someone and says that love’s fire
Can last a lifetime is nothing but a liar!”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Eu quero amar, amar perdidamente!
Amar só por amar: aqui... além...
Mais Este e Aquele, o Outro e toda a gente...
Amar! Amar! E não amar ninguém!
[...]
Quem disser que se pode amar alguém
Durante a vida inteira é porque mente!
Citações e Pensamentos de Florbela Espanca (2012), p. 110
Translated by John D. Godinho
The Flowering Heath (1931), "Amar!"

Love

“When cybernated and automatic machinery can reduce toil to the near vanishing point, nothing is more meaningless to young people than a lifetime of toil. When modern industry can provide abundance for all, nothing is more vicious to poor people than a lifetime of poverty. When all the resources exist to promote social equality, nothing is more criminal to ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals than subjugation.”

Murray Bookchin book Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), introduction to the First Edition (p. vii of the third edition, 2004)

Women, People

“Cher had just been to see Sunset Boulevard. She hunted me down the next day through management to ask me out to dinner. I wouldn't break my first date with Scott which felt like the chance of a lifetime, so after a pause she said, "Fine, bring him." I drove my car, Scott rode his bike. Scott parked his bike down the street. And we all met up, and we had dinner with Cher, and we had a fab time. At the end of the evening she said to me: "Walk me to my car, you'll love it." As we're walking to the car arm in arm, the photographers just come out of… the bushes, you name it. And we walk to the car and she leanes over and she goes "When I get in the car, give me a kiss." And I'm like "Fine." – What gay man wouldn't want to give Cher a kiss? So we kiss and they catch it just at that moment. The next day in the tabloids I was her new toyboy. But little did they know that the boy with the bicycle who walked out after us went and unhooked his bike, I put her in the car, went off, got my Jag, opened the trunk, put his bike in the trunk and I took him home. That would've been the story! —And he stayed. For 18 years now.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

Fern Britton Meets John Barrowman BBC 2012

Love, Cars, Home, Boy

“Movies touch our hearts, and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places. They open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive.”

Martin Scorsese (1942) American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor

"The Film Foundation Main page".

Way, Memory, Change, Heart

“There existed long ago in Tibetan, Indian, and partly also in Chinese Buddhism the idea that the religious practice of meditation serves the goal of producing within the still-living and mortal body the diamond body into which you move, so to speak. Already in this lifetime you use your diamond body more and more as a dwelling place, so that at the moment of death, like a skin which falls off from a fruit, this mortal body falls away and the glorified body -or in Eastern language, the diamond body- is already there. The glorified body, a sort of immortal substance as carrier of the individual personality, is already produced by religious practice during one's lifetime. This same idea, which is strange to official Christian teaching, does come up vigorously in alchemical philosophy. The alchemists, too, strove from the beginning to produce such a glorified or diamond body, and Christian alchemists from the beginning identified it with the glorified body. In order to build up this glorified body, called the philosopher's stone, you must repeat the whole process of creation.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: Creation Myths (1972), Creation Renewed & Reversed, P. 331

Death, Idea, Personality

“There is such a thing as looking through a person's eyes into the heart, and learning more of the height, and breadth, and depth of another's soul in one hour than it might take you a lifetime to discover, if he or she were not disposed to reveal it, or if you had not the sense to understand it.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XI : The Vicar Again; Gilbert to Rose

Soul, Understanding, Sense, Learning

“The old “double standard” gave men a sexual liberty denied to women. Marxist feminists reduced the historical cult of woman’s virginity to her property value, her worth on the male marriage market. I would argue instead that there was and is a biological basis to the double standard. The first medical reports on the disease killing male homosexuals [i. e., AIDS] indicated men most at risk were those with a thousand partners over their lifetime. Incredulity. Who could such people be? Why, it turns out, everyone one knew. Serious, kind, literate men, not bums or thugs.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 27

Women, Men, Marriage, People

“…[B]eing part of The L Word made me realize how much more television can be that what I had experienced in my lifetime in terms of being able to be of service to people. I had so many fans come up to me who were really deeply appreciative of the show and what it had meant for them and their own sense of identity and their own sense of inclusion in our society and in our culture.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview with TV Drama Watch (4 February 2011) http://tvdramawatch.com/2011/02/04/the-chicago-code-interview-with-jennifer-beals/.

People, Sense, Parting

“This book is about three Frenchmen who lived and wrote against the grain of these three ages of irresponsibility. They were very different men and would have been surprised to think of themselves as a group, yet they have something rather distinctive in common. All three played an important role in the France of their lifetime but lived at a slightly awkward tangent to their contemporaries. For much of his adult life each was an object of dislike, suspicion, contempt, or hatred for many of his peers and contemporaries; only at the end of their long lives were Léon Blum and Raymond Aron, for quite different reasons, able to relax into the comfort of near-universal admiration, respect, and, in some quarters, adulation. Camus, who had experienced all three by the age of thirty-five, died twelve years later an insecure and much-maligned figure; it would be thirty years before his reputation would recover.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Introduction: The Misjudgment of Paris
The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (1998)

Life, Men, Books, Age

“Knowing how to die costs a lifetime.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

“…when the test results came back, everything went silent. I don't know if it was from pure astonishment or the overwhelming gratitude of finally having an answer, but a lifetime of words all disappeared except for one. Epilepsy.”

DeBarra Mayo (1953) American martial artist

Living with Epilepsy, Stayhealthy.com, Nov. 9, 1999

Gratitude

“As such, I think that it would be in derogation of our respective oaths and our institutional obligations to our country to engage in uncivil behavior. It would also be demeaning to any of us who engages in such conduct. Having worn the robe, we have a lifetime obligation to conduct ourselves as having deserved to wear the robe in the first instance.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Behavior, Thinking, Country

“I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[diu2g2$dc1$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

“In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, The Death of the West (2002)

God, Country

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

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

1960s, I am Prepared to Die (1964)

People, Hope, Personality

“Democracy prevents the politician's fulfillment of his obligations to the nation. Even the most well-meaning politician becomes, in a democracy, the slave of his supporters, because either he satisfies their personal interests or they destroy his organization. The politician lives under the tyranny and permanent threat of the electoral bosses. He is placed in a position in which he must choose between the termination of his lifetime work and the satisfaction of the demands of party members. And the politician, given such a choice, opts for the latter. He does so not out of his own pocket, but out of that of the country. He creates jobs, sets up missions, commissions, sinecures--all rostered in the nation's budget--which put increasingly heavy pressures on a tired people.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

People, Democracy, Support, Personality

“Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep.”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Preface To the 1983 Edition, p. xxvii
Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991)

Feeling, Reading

““Do you not understand that I want to give this to you—and to Hain and the other worlds—and to the countries of Urras? But to you all! So that one of you cannot use it, as A-Io wants to do, to get power over the others, to get richer or to win more wars. So that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good.”
“In the end, the truth usually insists upon serving only the common good,” Keng said.
“In the end, yes, but I am not willing to wait for the end. I have one lifetime, and I will not spend it for greed and profiteering and lies. I will not serve any master.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 345-346)

War, Truth, World, Understanding

“He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Matsuo Bashō, Collected Haiku Theory, eds. T. Komiya & S. Yokozawa, Iwanami, 1951 (Unknown translator)
Statements

“It's only about once in a lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it does, you don't want people taking all the colour out of it. I remember at school having to read that stuff where that chap, Othello, tells the girl what a hell of a time he'd been having among the cannibals and what not. Well, imagine his feelings if, after he had described some particularly sticky passage with a cannibal chief and was waiting for the awestruck "Oh-h! Not really?", she had said that the whole thing had no doubt been greatly exaggerated and that the man had probably really been a prominent local vegetarian.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

People, School, Feeling, Imagination

“My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years — 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime, to the service of your neighbors and your nation. Many are already serving, and I thank you. If you aren't sure how to help, I've got a good place to start. To sustain and extend the best that has emerged in America, I invite you to join the new USA Freedom Corps. The Freedom Corps will focus on three areas of need: responding in case of crisis at home; rebuilding our communities; and extending American compassion throughout the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

World, Home, Communication, Freedom

“Once in a lifetime, you find that power
To break out and run from the devils deep clutch;
All that you need it's the finest hour
Is to believe in the magic touch.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Islands (1987)

“If it could save a person’s life, could you find a way to save ten seconds off the boot time? If there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year.”

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

As quoted in Steve Jobs (2011) by Walter Isaacson, p. 123
2010s

Life, People, Way, Time

“Many individuals spend a considerable portion of their lifetimes in terror of one imagined catastrophe or another. The classic is that your immortal soul will be consigned to eternal torment in the never-ending subterranean barbecue if you fail to follow the whacky edicts of one particular set of puckered dogwhistles or another. You may recall from the great movie Strange Days that a "dogwhistle" is a guy whose asshole is so tight that when he farts, only dogs can hear him.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Bad Guys," http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?p=136 28 April 2009.

Dogs, Guy, Soul, Imagination

“I know of people living in this country right now who think that white people came from Adam and Eve, and that there are all these other races that are separate creations and that aren't related at all. And I know from prior research that many different religious groups have believed this sort of thing for thousands of years, but the idea that any seemingly educated official would believe that during my lifetime is rather disturbing.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

People, Education, Idea, Thinking

“A lifetime of blows tends to make a person unenthusiastic about any unnecessary interchange that might lead to more. Nothing friendly has been said or even hinted at and much hostility has been shown.
Phædrus the wolf. It fits.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30

Hostility, Wolf, Personality

“The good news is that marketing takes a day to learn. The bad news is that it takes a lifetime to master!”

Philip Kotler (1931) American marketing author, consultant and professor

Source: Marketing Insights from A to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know, 2011, p. xiv

Learning

“One such evolutionary system, or ridge, encompasses panhuman emotional faculties, or affective "programs." These include the basic, or primary, emotions that Darwin first identified: surprise, fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and perhaps contempt. Certain reactions characteristic of the neurophysiology of surprise and fear are already evident in reptiles, and the other primary emotions are at least apparent in monkeys and apes. Then there are the secondary, mostly "social" emotions, such as anxiety, grief, guilt, pride, vengeance, and love. These may be unique to humans-hence, at the lower level in our evolutionary mountain landscape and somewhat more liable to cultural manipulation and variation than the primary, "Darwinian" emotions. Thus, only humans seek revenge or redemption across lifetimes and generations, whatever the cost, although the nature of the deeds that trigger insult or remorse may vary considerably across societies, and the means to counter them may range even wider.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 11
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Love, Sadness, Fear, Mountain

“The attentive reader may have noticed that the core period of Jasper's Axial age—the lifetimes of Pythagoras, Confucius, and the Buddha—corresponds almost exactly to the period in which coinage was invented.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Nine, "The Axial Age", p. 224

Age

“There’s a theory that if you have an interesting childhood then you have enough material to last a lifetime. But that implies that art is always autobiographical when reinvention and imagination are the most important elements. But it doesn’t hurt to have a mad family! Of course I didn’t notice until I’d escaped – when I left home as a teenager on a diplomatic scholarship – how odd my family were.”

Carole Morin British writer

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse (2013)

Family, Art, Home, Imagination

“Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective. Changes that can affect us can happen in our lifetime in our world—not just changes like wars but bigger and more sweeping events. I believe that without recognizing it we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change; that we are at the end of nature. By the end of nature I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say 'nature,' I mean a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it.”

Bill McKibben book The End of Nature

Source: The End of Nature (1989), p. 7

War, World, Confidence, Idea

“The first sentence of the actual Life of Alexander lives up to Plutarch's warning words. 'Alexander's descent, as a Heraclid on his father's side from Caranus, and as an Aeacid on his mother's side from Neoptolemus, is one of the matters which have been completely trusted.' While the Heraclid and Aeacid descent went unquestioned by ancient writers, the citation of Caranus as the founding father in Macedonia and so analogous to Neoptolemus in Molossia was not only controversial but must have been known to be controversial by Plutarch. For he was conversant with the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. which had looked to Perdiccas as the founding father in Macedonia. Caranus was inserted as a forerunner of Perdiccas in Macedonia only at the turn of the fifth century: he appeared as such in the works of fourth-century writers, such as Marsyas the Macedonian historian (FGrH 135/6 i- 14) who on my analysis was used by Pompeius Trogus (Prologue 7 'origines Macedonicae regesque a conditorc gentis Carano'). Thus the dogmatic statement of Plutarch, that Caranus was the forerunner, should have been qualified, if he had been writing scientific history. But because the statement conveyed a belief which Alexander certainly held in his lifetime it was justified in the eyes of a biographer and in the eyes of those who were more concerned with biographical background than with historical facts. If Plutarch had been challenged, he would no doubt have claimed that his belief was based on his own wide reading of authors who had studied the origins of Macedonia and provided 'completely trusted' data.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"Sources for Alexander the Great: An Analysis of Plutarch's 'Life' and Arrian's 'Anabasis Alexandrou'", p.5, Cambridge Classical Studies

Life, History, Study, Appearance

“Even though I came from a Jewish home myself, it never entered my head that such horrors might be repeated in my own lifetime.”

Ernst Gombrich book A Little History of the World

Source: A Little History of the World (2005), p. 276.

Home

“The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 2.

Life, Death, Way, Revenge

“It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#105
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Happiness, Beauty, Wine

“"My field," said Goethe, "is time." That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man

Courage, Nostalgia, Freedom, Time

“Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1953)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Way, Thinking, Waiting, Personality

“In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Scottish Tories in 1999 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Did+they+REALLY+say+that%3F+AS+A+SHORTLIST+IS+COMPILED+OF+THE+YEAR%27S...-a0109790331 <br class="br">Post-Prime Ministerial

World, Problem

“Perhaps there was a natural process at work here; a means by which the mind dealt with experiences that contradicted a lifetime’s prejudices about the nature of reality. People simple forgot.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Seven “The Demagogue”, Chapter vi “Hello, Stranger”, Section 2 (p. 307)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

People, Nature, Reality

“I don’t know if there are any other examples in history of an actress that got to play a teenager, the mid-20s version of the character and then the mid-30s version of the character. Now when I look back on it, it’s the role of a lifetime. Nancy and I, especially in New Nightmare, often get conflated into being the same type of person and Wes must have seen something in me that was the good type of girl Nancy was. Very self sufficient, strong and loyal to her friends. She’s a genius in some ways and has a spunky “won’t give up” spirit. As a teen auditioning for him, he must have seen something that he liked which was very flattering.”

Heather Langenkamp (1964) actress

Heather Langenkamp On Playing Nancy Through The Years http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3274986/interview-heather-langenkamp-on-playing-nancy-through-the-years/ (January 27, 2014)

Way, History, Girl, Strong

“1 out of 4 Americans believes Jesus will return in their lifetime. See, that's religion: ego masquerading as humility. "Jesus is coming back! Of course he's gonna wanna meet me!… Hi, Jesus, Bob Flemstein, big fan! I know you're crazy busy with the rapture and everything, but… could you sign? I don't wanna be that guy, but…"”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

But I'm Not Wrong (2010)

Religion, Guy, Business

“I would love to have a society that is based only on volunteer associations. That would be amazing. I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, so the closest I can get to that — that's what I want.”

Larry Sharpe (1968) American politician

Interview with Dave Rubin ( July 13, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTj8ZoCiM4E)

Love, Thinking

“I am 36 years old and I have been a criminal all of my life. I have 11 felony convictions against me. I have served 20 years of my life in Jails, Reform Schools and prisons. I know why I am a criminal. Others may have different theories as to my life but I have no theory about it. I know the facts. If any man ever was a habitual criminal. I am one. In my lifetime I have broken every law that was ever made by both Man and God. If either had made more, I should cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few peopel ever consider it worth while to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think it is necessary to do is to catch me, try me convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and then turn me loose again. That is the system that is in practice today in this country. The consequences are that such that any one and every one can see. crime and lots of it. Those who are sincere in thier desire to put down crime, are to be pitied for all of thier efforts which accomplish so little in the desired direction. They are the ones who are decieved by thier own ignorance and by the trickery and greed of others who profit the most by crime.”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, p. 187, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

Life, God, School, Law

“People try to define life. You know, all the 900 different things that people have wedged in there. But in reality, life is simply the time between birth and death. That's life. To us, it is a lifetime. But somewhere out in space, it may just be a blink of an eye, that's all. Because of the earth's gravitational pull, time is being slowed down and TA-DA, you have a lifetime. But somewhere out there, it's just this blink of an eye. And in this blink of an eye, you have created complexities that rival the complexities of the universe itself. In a sense, you have outdone the stars, you have outdone the motions of planets. You have outdone the whole principle of how light travels. In your little world, you have created absolutely amazing complexities. You have taken God and you have made God mysterious. But if you could just see the beauty around you and realize the goodness that it means to be able to breathe, to be able to exist, and for somebody to be able to facilitate that for you, then God is not mysterious, God is kind and beautiful.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Anaheim, California, USA, January 30, 1993
1990s

Life, Death, God, People

“Ever since [ Copernicus], writers eager to drive the lesson home have urged us […] to abandon all sentimental egoism, and to see ourselves objectively in the true perspective of time and space. What precisely does this mean? In a full 'main feature' film, recapitulating faithfully the complete history of the universe, the rise of human beings from the first beginnings of man to the achievements of the twentieth century would flash by in a single second. Alternatively, if we decided to examine the universe objectively in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar dust, relieved only at brief intervals by a survey of incandescent masses of hydrogen — not in a thousand million lifetimes would the turn come to give man even a second's notice. It goes without saying that no one — scientists included — looks at the universe in this way, whatever lip-service is given to 'objectivity.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 3

Way, Home, History, Sense

“As eternity
is reckoned
there's a lifetime
in a second.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

A Moment's Thought
Grooks

“Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 3: "The Sense of Human Dignity", §5 (p. 61)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

“I have served the Liberal cause for twenty-two years. That ought to be long enough for anyones lifetime.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 1, In the beginning, p. 3

“I came out here with an agenda tonight, to make a statement. And the reason is that WrestleMania 21 is less than five weeks away. We've already announced some of the biggest matches in Mania history. From Batista vs. Triple H for the World Championship, from Cena to JBL for the WWE Championship, Michaels has challenged Angle, Hogan's in the Hall of Fame, Stone Cold Steve Austin on Piper's Pit. Everybody wants to make an impact, so do I; everybody wants to be a part of history, so do I. I have an idea for a match to do that. It's a match that involves Y2J, five other elite WWE Superstars, a chance of a lifetime, and most importantly, one very big solid steel ladder.”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

February 28, 2005 - WWE Raw

World, History, Idea, Chance

“Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not all European countries.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

It's the Demography, Stupid (2006)

World, Country

“Lent: “What would you consider your major contribution to the field of scholarship? Your assessment of what you’ve done in a lifetime.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

<BR> Herman: The introduction of a structural model of the media, the use of pairing analysis, and the use of these methodological devices or frameworks in dozens of applications. The techniques are not new, but I and my co-authors have possibly given them more salience. Also, not new but hopefully in a useful framework is the focus on the mass media as elite-based and elite-serving institutions, with biases that follow accordingly. In a way, my writings have virtually all been an exposure of these biases and a demonstration that the idea of a “party line” applies to the mainstream US media as well as to media in authoritarian countries. Lent and Amazeen (2015), Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship, Interview with Edward S. Herman on September 2, 2013, pp. 51-52.
2010s

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Death, Hunger, Children, People

“Our founding fathers knew that if we went this direction, there was no more moral compass and you won’t be able to explain to your children — you’ll have to face the fact that we lost holding the line on one of the most principle issues in the Bible, and that is sex is not about fun. If you want to have fun, read a book, go see a movie. Sex is about the procreation of children. It’s a sacred responsibility that is meant by God to have men and women commit their lifetime to children.”

Jerome Corsi (1946) American conservative author

"Tea party speaker: ‘Well, they want to call me a racist? Go ahead’" http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/28/tea-party-speaker-well-they-want-to-call-me-a-racist-go-ahead/ www.rawstory.com (2013-8-23)

Women, Men, God, Children

“Suffering is not an otherworldly affair; it will never be that a person won’t be able to unearth the mystery of his suffering in his lifetime.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

Suffering, Personality

“The problem of thermonuclear reactions is not a usual physics problem. This is a problem that must transform society and the world. Our generation, which gave to mankind atomic energy and thermonuclear energy in the form of explosions, is responsible to humanity for solving the main problem of energy – obtaining energy from water. People are waiting for the solution of this problem. Our duty is to solve it within the lifetime of our generation, and therefore we must set out on this path.”

Gersh Budker (1918–1977) Soviet physicist

as quoted by D. D. Ryutov in [G.I. Budker: reflections & remembrances, by Boris N. Breizman, Springer, 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=e0bxFrmNtykC&printsec=frontcover#PRA1-PA278,M1, 1-56396-070-2, 278]

People, World, Problem, Water

“I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the Gods have been against me.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

God

“Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?”

Anton Chekhov book The Bet

The Bet (1889)

Life

“Politicians are out of control. Their yearly salaries are more than an average person will see in a lifetime. They have been entrusted with the power to regulate their own salaries, and have grossly violated that trust to live in their own luxury.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

Personality

“Gay sex meant two hours of sexual pleasure in exchange for two hours of sexual pleasure. Heterosexual sex meant two hours of sexual pleasure in exchange for a lifetime of responsibility. Heterosexuality was a bad deal! The fear behind homophobia was that no one would be providing for the next generation. Everybody would be having fun. Thus fun became a sign of immaturity; hedonism in many forms became illegal.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 208.

Pleasure, Fear, Sex

“What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the greatest revolution of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Four Ways to Forgiveness

"A Woman's Liberation", p. 208
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)

Love, World, Hope, History

“It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at).

There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty… Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever - unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

letter to Professor E.S. Morse http://books.google.com/books?id=fYQCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=There's+a+singular+and+a+perpetual+charm+in+a+letter+of+yours&source=bl&ots=DDWCA6FHyJ&sig=MyOOelB_Q2Fmd4jNObeyuptofsc&hl=en&ei=CYKiSvfaNof8MbOq3N0P&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=%22There's%20a%20singular%20and%20a%20perpetual%20charm%20in%20a%20letter%20of%20yours%22&f=false, circa 1889.

Thinking, Reading

“People should be travelling to Mars and doing it in our lifetime.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Page 9 <br class="br">Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007), Foreword to Marc Kaufman's Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission https://books.google.com/books/about/Mars_Up_Close.html?ido6XaCwAAQBAJ&hlen. National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

People, Travel

“The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

“I don't understand at best,
I cannot speak for all the rest.
But you may find a lifetime's passed you by.
Every dog has its day, every day has its way
Of being forgotten.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

What Would You Say
Under the Table and Dreaming (1994)

Dogs, Way, Understanding

“The design of my philosophical life is based on an examination of the following question: is it possible to secure improvement in the human condition by means of the human intellect? The verb 'to secure' is (for me) terribly important, because problem solving often appears to produce improvement, but the so-called 'solution' often makes matters worse in the larger system (e. g., the many food programs of the last quarter century may well have made world-wide starvation even worse than no food programs would have done.) The verb ‘to secure' means that in the larger system over time the improvement persists.
I have to admit that the philosophical question is much more difficult than my very limited intellect can handle. I don't know what 'human condition' and 'human intellect' mean, though I've done my best to tap the wisdom of such diverse fields as depth psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, public health, management science, education, literature, and history. But to me the essence of philosophy is to pose serious and meaningful questions that are too difficult for any of us to answer in our lifetimes. Wisdom, or the love of wisdom, is just that: thought likes solutions, wisdom abhors them.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1980s and later, Thought and Wisdom (1982), p. 19; cited in Werner Ulrich (1998) '" C. West Churchman-75 years". in: Systems practice. December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 4, pp 341-350

Love, Life, Wisdom, Health

“But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse... The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Big Darkness" (22 July 2003)
2000s

Family, Fools, Failure, Future