Quotes about likeness
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“The Mass is the greatest blasphemy of God, and the highest idolatry upon earth, an abomination the like of which has never been in Christendom since the time of the Apostles.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

171
Table Talk (1569)

God, Time

“It makes rock concerts look like tea parties.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Commenting on American Football, in interview with Howard Cosell on ABC Television (December 1974)

Tea

“There is no question but that Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man. As somebody commented about him at the last Nürnberg party congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been seen in this world. His body does not suggest strength. The outstanding characteristic of his physiognomy is its dreamy look. I was especially struck by that when I saw pictures taken of him in the Czechoslovakian crisis; there was in his eyes the look of a seer. This markedly mystic characteristic of Hitler's is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical, inexplicable, and unreasonable. … So you see, Hitler is a medicine man, a spiritual vessel, a demi-deity or, even better, a myth.”

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

During an interview with H. R. Knickerbocker, first published in Hearst's International Cosmopolitan (January 1939), in which Jung was asked to diagnose Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin, later published in Is Tomorrow Hitler's? (1941), by H. R. Knickerbocker, also published in The Seduction of Unreason : The Intellectual Romance with Fascism (2004) by Richard Wolin, Ch. 2 : Prometheus Unhinged : C. G. Jung and the Temptations of Aryan Religion, p. 75

World, Question, Time

“History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.”

Karl Marx book The Holy Family

The Holy Family, Ch. VI (1845).

Men, History, Personality

“The willfully idle man, like the willfully barren woman, has no place in a sane, healthy, and vigorous community. Moreover, the gross and hideous selfishness for which each stands defeats even its own miserable aims. Exactly as infinitely the happiest woman is she who has borne and brought up many healthy children, so infinitely the happiest man is he who has toiled hard and successfully in his life-work. The work may be done in a thousand different ways —with the brain or the hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop—if it is honest work, honestly done and well worth doing, that is all we have a right to ask. Every father and mother here, if they are wise, will bring up their children not to shirk difficulties, but to meet them and overcome them; not to strive after a life of ignoble ease, but to strive to do their duty, first to themselves and their families, and then to the whole state; and this duty must inevitably take the shape of work in some form or other.”

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

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Life, Children, Family, Way

“It delights me even more, though, to hear that my nameless cosmic monsters have an air of originality about them! Shapeless, unheard-of creatures are not original with me; for although Poe did not use them, they figure quite widely in minor horror-writing since his time. Usually they tend to be exaggerations of certain known life-forms such as insects, poisonous plants, protozoa, & the like, although a few writers break away wholly from terrestrial analogy & depict things as abstractly cosmic as luminous protoplasmic globes. If I have gone beyond these, it is only subtly & atmospherically—in details, & in occasional imputations of geometrical, biological, & physico-chemical properties definitely outside the realm of matter as understood by us. Most of my monsters fail altogether to satisfy my sense of the cosmic—the abnormally chromatic entity in The Colour Out of Space being the only one of the lot which I take any pride in.”

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

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 316
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Sense, Time

“The whole point of what I do-the Monster Ball, the music, the performance art aspect of it-I want to create a space for my fans where they can feel free and where they can celebrate because I didn't fit in in high school and I felt like a freak. So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang with and they don't feel alone.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lady Gaga in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g891E2aczys

School, Art, Music, Feeling

“Sharing the code just seems like The Right Thing to Do, it costs us rather little, but it benefits a lot of people in sometimes very significant ways. There are many university research projects, proof of concept publisher demos, and new platform test beds that have leveraged the code. Free software that people value adds wealth to the world.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Brad Cook, "John Carmack: Making the Magic Happen" http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2009/02/johncarmack/ Apple.com

People, World, Way, Universe

“As you are aware, I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge. With Nietzsche, I have been forced to confess that mankind as a whole has no goal or purpose whatsoever, but is a mere superfluous speck in the unfathomable vortices of infinity and eternity. Accordingly, I have hardly been able to experience anything which one could call real happiness; or to take as vital an interest in human affairs as can one who still retains the hallucination of a "great purpose" in the general plan of terrestrial life. … However, I have never permitted these circumstances to react upon my daily life; for it is obvious that although I have "nothing to live for", I certainly have just as much as any other of the insignificant bacteria called human beings. I have thus been content to observe the phenomena about me with something like objective interest, and to feel a certain tranquillity which comes from perfect acceptance of my place as an inconsequential atom. In ceasing to care about most things, I have likewise ceased to suffer in many ways. There is a real restfulness in the scientific conviction that nothing matters very much; that the only legitimate aim of humanity is to minimise acute suffering for the majority, and to derive whatever satisfaction is derivable from the exercise of the mind in the pursuit of truth.”

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

Letter to Reinhardt Kleiner (14 September 1919), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 86-87
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Happiness, Truth, Religion

“If you ever wonder whether America is big enough to hold multitudes, strong enough to withstand the forces of change, brave enough to live up to our ideals even in times of trial, then look to the generations of ordinary citizens who have proven again and again that we are worthy of that. That’s our great inheritance -- what ordinary people have done to build this country and make these words live. And it’s our generation’s task to follow their example in this journey -- to keep building an America where no matter who we are or what we look like, or who we love or what we believe, we can make of our lives what we will. You will not and should not forget your history and your past. That adds to the richness of American life. But you are now American. You’ve got obligations as citizens. And I’m absolutely confident you will meet them.”

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

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

Love, Life, People, Confidence

“The United Front Government’s neighbourhood policy now stands on five basic principles: First, with the neighbours like Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka, India does not ask for reciprocity but gives all that it can in good faith and trust. Secondly, no South Asian country will allow its territory to be used against the interest of another country of the region. Thirdly, none will interfere in the internal affairs of another. Fourthly, all South Asian countries must respect each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. And finally, they will settle all their disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiations. These five principles, scrupulously observed, will, I am sure, recast South Asia’s regional relationship, including the tormented relationship between India and Pakistan, in a friendly, cooperative mould.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

At his London speech on the commitment of political will of India. Source: Adam Roberts Sir Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror: Lakshman Kadirgamar on the Foundations of International Order http://books.google.co.in/books?id=gq73AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA188, I.B.Tauris, 20 August 2012

Peace, Faith, Country

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”

Saint Peter (-1–67 BC) apostle and first pope

1 Peter 2:2 NIV
First Epistle of Peter

Baby

“Husbands are like fires - they go out when unattended.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor (1917–2016) Hungarian-American socialite and actress

Newsweek, March 28, 1960

“I don't… like… girls… whining… and complaining… about… wanting a man! I never liked Sex and the City, the kind of thing where women only feel empowered once they find the Man. It is just not up my alley. I don't believe in it. There is nothing you can control about love. Somebody once said, Everything you want in the world is just right outside your comfort zone. Everythingyoucouldpossiblywant!”

Jennifer Aniston (1969) television and film actress from the United States

Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)

Love, Women, World, Sex

“Until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together? There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.”

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

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)
Source: Ronald Reagan (6 December 1983), cited by Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor

People, World, Time, Past

“He was always there when I needed him and someone I could talk too and argue with. In a Freudian way he was the father I never had. For me, partners were like father figures most of the time.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

On her relationship with Quincy Jones, as quoted in Cameron Docherty, Interview: Nastassja Kinski - Still a daddy's girl, The Independent, September 26, 1997

Way, Time

“God can do anything. He has all power in the palm of His Hand. My Body, like all other bodies, is a temporary habitation; but, My Power is eternal, all-pervasive, ever-dominant.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

Christmas Day Discourse, Bombay 1970. page 136, US ed. of Kasturi's Sathyam Sivam Sundaram Vol 3.

God

“Harry Dresden: There was a sound of impact, a raspy, dry scream, and the vampire went down hard. It lay on the ground like a butterfly pinned to a card, arms and legs thrashing uselessly. Its chest and collarbone had been crushed. By an entire frozen turkey. A twenty-pounder. The plucked bird must have fallen from an airplane overhead, doubtlessly manipulated by the curse. By the time it got to the ground, the turkey had already reached its terminal velocity, and was still hard as a brick. The drumsticks poked up above the vampire's crushed chest, their ends wrapped in red tinfoil. The vampire gasped and writhed a little more. The timer popped out of the turkey. Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

Bird, Silence, Time, Night

“Women believed in death. Without exception. It was part of their makeup. Whereas men refused to face up to it. Not only death, in fact, but life, too: a man, learning that his wife or girlfriend is pregnant, reacts like some beast of the field - "I can't believe it's true!" - while women look at the same situation as either happy news or a momentary inconvenience.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

Life, Death, Women, Men

“I'm like a junky without an addiction.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I Don't Wanna Stop, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Zakk Wylde and Kevin Churko.
Song lyrics, Black Rain (2007)

“I would guess that most MIT Ph. D.’s since 1980 might deem themselves not to be “Keynesians.” But they, and modern economists everywhere, do use models like those of Samuelson, Modigliani, Solow, and Tobin. Professor Martin Feldstein, my Harvard neighbor, complained at the 350th Anniversary of Harvard that Keynesians had tried to poison his sophomore mind against saving. Tobin and I on the same panel took this amiss, since both of us since 1955 had been favoring a “neoclassical synthesis,” in which full employment with an austere fiscal budget would add to capital formation in preparation for a coming demographic turnaround.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

New millennium, An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson, 2003

“Messieurs, I should like to be granted the favour of performing at one of your admirable concerts, and this I beg to ask of you. Trusting, since I lack other qualifications to obtain this, in your goodwill towards artists, I dare to hope that you will greet my request favourably, I have the honour to be, Messieurs, your very humble servant.
Frédéric Chopin
Cité Bergère, No. 4”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Letter of application to the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire.
Source: (13 March 1832); published in At the Piano with Fauré (1963) by Marguerite Long, p. 31

Hope

“You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early.”

Tibor Fischer book The Thought Gang

Page 205.
The Thought Gang (1994)

Effort

“I used to dress up like Michael Jackson. I didn’t have the glove, but I had a red jacket like in Thriller.”

James Bay (1990) British singer-songwriter

[Tim Lewis, 2015-02-28, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/28/the-ballad-of-james-bay-chaos-and-calm, The ballad of James Bay, The Guardian, theguardian.com, 2018-08-25]

“A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 2e

“No, the reward comes in knowing that our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law; that the maintenance of that law is a hard and daily labor; that in this country, we don’t have soldiers in the streets or militias setting the rules. Instead, we have public servants -- police officers -- like the men who were taken away from us.”

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

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Life, Men, Law, Way

“If you do something and people think you’re stupid, just go for crazy. You get more respect that way because nobody likes stupid people.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0894112/ (1996)

People, Stupidity, Way, Thinking

“I also bought a copy of The New York Times, the previous day's issue of which I had seen the previous day in Puerto Rico. I was interested in newspapers and knew this paper to be one of the foremost in the world. But to read a newspaper for the first time is like coming into a film that has been on for an hour. Newspapers are like serials. To understand them you have to take knowledge to them; the knowledge that serves best is the knowledge provided by the newspaper itself. It made me feel a stranger, that paper.”

V.S. Naipaul book The Enigma of Arrival

"The Journey", p. 115
The Enigma of Arrival (1987)

World, Feeling, Understanding, Knowledge

“I don't want to start singing about things like sex, drugs and swearing. I'm into love, and maybe I'll get more into making love when I'm older. But I want to be someone who is respected by everybody.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Source: Interview with V Magazine, as quoted in UsMagazine: Justin Bieber Talks Sex, Drugs and Turning 18 http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/justin-bieber-talks-sex-drugs-and-turning-18-2012101, January 2012

Love, Making love, Sex, Singing

“None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. And we don’t need more talk. None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merits of various policies, as our democracy requires -- this is a big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual -- that’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change -- that’s how we lose our way again. It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.”

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

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)

People, Truth, Family, Way

“I can get caught in many things but there is one thing I will never get caught in, and that is acting - because I don't act. On screen I am like I am in real life.”

Salman Khan (1965) Indian film actor

Quotes By Salman

Life

“[A man every day should do] probably self-assess. Do I do it religiously? Not consciously, but I like to think that in one form or another I do question, yes. I would be being pretentious and untruthful if I said that I devote a bit of time just for introspection and consciously do that, but in one form or another I suspect I do. And if I don't, I think it would be a good thing to do anyway.”

Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank (1935) British architect

gq-magazine.co.uk http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2011-02/01/gq-film-norman-foster-how-much-does-your-building-weigh-interview.

Question, Thinking, Time

“Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Game

“Even if you try not to do your duty you will be perforce obliged to do it. Let the body complete the task for which it came into being. Sri Krishna also says in the Gita, whether Arjuna liked it or not he would be forced to fight. When there is work to be done by you, you cannot keep away; nor can you continue to do a thing when you are not required to do it, that is to say, when the work allotted to you has been done. In short, the work will go on and you must take your share in it -- the share which is allotted to you. [Question: How can it be done? Reply:] Like an actor playing his part in a drama: free from duality.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Question, Fight, Parting

“We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Nous cherchons tous le bonheur, mais sans savoir où, comme les ivrognes qui cherchent leur maison, sachant confusément qu'ils en ont une.
Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
A variation on this remark can be found in the same notebook: Men who look for happiness are like drunkards who cannot find their house but know that they have one [Les hommes qui cherchent le bonheur sont comme des ivrognes qui ne peuvent trouver leur maison, mais qui savent qu'ils en ont une].
Citas

Happiness, Housing

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity — she doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little bit less like that, and that's pretty powerful stuff.”

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

Interview on radio staion 610 WIP (20 March 2008), as quoted in Chris Wallace criticizes Fox & Friends for "two hours of Obama bashing" in which hosts "distort … what Obama had to say" (21 March 2008) http://mediamatters.org/print/research/200803210008 2008

Way, Feeling, Nature, Personality

“It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Life, Flowers, Sun, Wealth

“When a simple man who has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he no longer has any faith left, and great disputers, as you know, come to think, at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments, or, indeed, of all things, which like the currents in the Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Faith, Imagination, Thinking, Falseness

“I am still going through an experimental stage. I'm not happy, and I keep scrubbing out and scrubbing out again. I hope this mania will pass... I'm like the children at school; the clean page has to be filled with good writing, and splash – a mess! I'm still making messes and I'm forty years old.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 169 : quote from Renoir's letter to his art-seller Durand-Ruel, 21st November 1881

Happiness, Children, School, Hope

“I went to sleep in Chaos, and then I awoke like the first man.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), XVII - Morning

Sleep

“So, I come home, I was so tired, and I look at my phone to check my messages, and I had a voicemail message from a guy by the name of Channing Tatum. [Female audience members cheer and woop] Now, for those of you not "woo"-ing, let me explain who that is. Channing Tatum is the new Hollywood hot guy, he's doing all these movies, coming out really good-looking, ripped, you know. He's making a lot of films, and there's a voicemail on there from him. "Gabriel Iglesias, this is Channing Tatum, call me at your earliest convenience…" blah-blah-blah. So, I was like, "Well, okay." So, I call him. [Mimics dialing on phone and ringing] "Hello?" "Hi, this is Gabriel Iglesias calling for Mr. Channing Tatum?" He yells, "FLUFFY!" [Mimes pulling his phone away in surprise] "…Hello?" "Oh, dude, man, I'm a huge fan. Hey, listen, real quick, I only have, like, a minute. Look, bro, I'm doing a new movie, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in reading and auditioning for one of the parts." I said, "Sure, bro, I'd be happy to audition for…for your movie. What's it called?" He goes, "The movie's called Magic Mike." [Female audience members woop loudly] I was like, "Oh, cool, Magic Mike. So, you need a magician, you need an assistant, you gonna saw me in half, what's gonna happen?" "Actually, bro. The movie has nothing to do with magic. It's actually a movie about male strippers." I said, "Male strippers?" He goes, "Yeah, male strippers."”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

I said, "You do know that this is Gabriel Iglesias, right?"
Aloha, Fluffy (2013)

Happiness, Guy, Home, Reading

“I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end.”

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

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Lie, Feeling

“The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, nearsightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

The Sixties, 1963 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Men, Understanding, Help

“That’s what we must pray for, each of us: a new heart. Not a heart of stone, but a heart open to the fears and hopes and challenges of our fellow citizens. […] Because with an open heart, we can learn to stand in each other’s shoes and look at the world through each other’s eyes, so that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie who's kind of goofing off but not dangerous and the teenager -- maybe the teenager will see in the police officer the same words and values and authority of his parents. With an open heart, we can abandon the overheated rhetoric and the oversimplification that reduces whole categories of our fellow Americans not just to opponents, but to enemies. With an open heart, those protesting for change will guard against reckless language going forward, look at the model set by the five officers we mourn today, acknowledge the progress brought about by the sincere efforts of police departments like this one in Dallas, and embark on the hard but necessary work of negotiation, the pursuit of reconciliation. With an open heart, police departments will acknowledge that, just like the rest of us, they are not perfect; that insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideals. […] With an open heart, we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right. […] We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share.”

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

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

World, Fear, Dreams, Hope

“So, first of all, you’ve got to try to get people involved. And a lot of people are busy in their own lives or they don’t think it’s going to make a difference or they’re scared if they’re speaking out against authority. And many of the problems that we’re facing, like trying to create jobs or better opportunity or dealing with poverty or dealing with the environment, these are problems that have been going on for decades. And so, to think that somehow you’re going to change it in a day or a week, and then if it doesn’t happen you just give up, well, then you definitely won’t succeed. So the most important thing that I learned as a young person trying to bring about change is you have to be persistent, and you have to get more people involved, and you have to form relationships with different groups and different organizations. And you have to listen to people about what they’re feeling and what they’re concerned about, and build trust. And then, you have to try to find a small part of the problem and get success on that first, so that maybe from there you can start something else and make it bigger and make it bigger, until over time you are really making a difference in your community and in that problem. But you can’t be impatient. And the great thing about young people is they’re impatient. The biggest problem with young people is they’re impatient. It’s a strength, because it’s what makes you want to change things. But sometimes, you can be disappointed if change doesn’t happen right away and then you just give up. And you just have to stay with it and learn from your failures, as well as your successes.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

People, Disappointment, Feeling, Communication

“I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of war has smelted out all base metals from him.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On his meeting with Winston Churchill, quoted in Harold Nicolson's diary (21 July 1943), Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1939-1945 (London: Collins, 1967), p. 286.
1940s

War, Happiness, Feeling, Time

“Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Sometimes ascribed to Robert Browning, this is in fact a misquotation from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): "They [i.e. ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top".
Misattributed

Men, Dogs, Bird

“For the spiritual power of a sacrament is like light in this way: it is both received pure by those to be enlightened, and if it passes through the impure it is not defiled.”
Spiritalis enim virtus Sacramenti ita est ut lux: et ab illuminandis pura excipitur, et si per immundos transeat, non inquinatur.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate V on John 1:33, §15; translation by R. Willems Compare: The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted. Diogenes Laërtius, Lib. vi. section 63 A very weighty argument is this — namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering. Julian, in Upon the Sovereign Sun http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_1_sun.htm, (c. December 362), as translated by C. W. King in Julian the Emperor (1888) - Full text online http://www.archive.org/details/julianemperorco00juligoog The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book II (1605)

Way, Light

““I’ll tell you,” she said softly. “But you won’t like it.”
He looked away from her. “I asked for the truth. Whether I like it or not, I have to know.””

Octavia E. Butler book Patternmaster

Source: Patternmaster (1976), Chapter 6 (p. 717)

Truth

“There is no education like adversity.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 61.

Education

“Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present. A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"On Light And Other High Frequency Phenomena" A lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (24 February 1893), and before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis (1 March 1893), published in The Electrical review (9 June 1893), p. Page 683; also in The Inventions, Researches And Writings of Nikola Tesla (1894)

Life, Men, Age, World

“Yet still to choose a brat like you,
To haunt a man of forty-two,
Was no great compliment!”

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

Canto 1
Phantasmagoria (1869)

“When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy. I see men of my own race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.”

Chief Joseph (1840–1904) Nez Percé Chieftain

Lincoln Hall Speech (1879)

Men, Thinking, Heart, Animals

“To accomplish the majestically practical work, to shape the whole architecture like a statue, base nothing on impossible modifications of human nature; await nothing from pity.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light

Nature

“Like its progenitor, capitalism, fascism is totally opposed to socialism. Fascist Germany and Italy attacked both the other capitalist states and the Soviet Union, which was still the only socialist state in the world by 1939. The defeat of fascism was therefore a victory for socialism, and at the same time it preserved the other capitalist nations from having to take the historically retrograde step of fascism.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 310.

World, Time, Victory

“The ideal of strictly scientific method in mathematics which I have tried to realise here, and which perhaps might be named after Euclid I should like to describe in the following way… The novelty of this book does not lie in the content of the theorems but in the development of the proofs and the foundations on which they are based… With this book I accomplish an object which I had in view in my Begriffsschrift of 1879 and which I announced in my Grundlagen der Arithmetik. I am here trying to prove the opinion on the concept of number that I expressed in the book last mentioned.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Vol. 1. pp. 137-140, as cited in: Ralph H. Johnson (2012), Manifest Rationality: A Pragmatic Theory of Argument, p. 87
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903

Lie, Books, Way, Mathematics

“Some men like me talkin' happy
Some calls it snappy
Some call me honey
Others think I got money
Some tell me baby you're built for speed
Now if you put that all together
Makes me everything a good man needs.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

Billie's Blues

Men, Money, Happiness, Thinking

“I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.”

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

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 53

People, World, Faith, Way

“Without the support of your father (practically and metaphysically), without that behind you, without the knowledge of you as both a biological and cultural creature, with that depth of knowledge, you don't have the courage to do it, because you don't know what you are or what you could be. And so without that – because you're a historical creature, so you need all this collected wisdom, and all this dream-like information, and all this mythology and all this narrative, to inform you about what you are beyond what you see of yourself. And you're pummeled down, and people picked on you, and there's fifty things about you that are horrible, and you have a self-esteem problem, and you're sort of hunched over – you've got all these problems, and so it's not easy to see the divinity that lurks behind that. Unless you're aware of the heroic stories of the past – the metaphysics of consciousness – I don't think you can have the courage that regards yourself as the sort of creature that can stand up underneath that intense existential burden and move forward in courage and grace.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrLQ7DpiWs "Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order"

Wisdom, People, Dreams, Courage

“The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most likely to use only the mischievous half of the force—the half which invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one of these—very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing-power that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. I think it is not so, at all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that it may fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer when he handles the throttle and turns on the steam; the actual power is lodged exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it would never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or Tom, it is all one—his services are necessary, and he is entitled to such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or King's-Evil Expert, or Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely the Engineer; he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does the whole work.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 8 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2HCH0008 Christian Science (1907)

People, Imagination, Thinking, Evil

“Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is — from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Harold Ryan"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Hell

“I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People, Way, Time

“There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”

Mark Twain book The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)

World

“It's like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

On having his world records beaten
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)

Dogs, Time

“I don't suppose that applies so much to other physicists; I think it’s a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don’t have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do.”

Paul Dirac (1902–1984) theoretical physicist

Interview with Dr. P. A. M. Dirac by Thomas S. Kuhn at Dirac's home, Cambridge, England, May 7, 1963 http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4575_3.html

Beauty, Mathematics, Thinking

“I love my fans, but no one ever puts a grasp on the fact I've sacrificed everything I have. I never dreamt I'd get to the level that I'm at. This is whack, this is more than I ever coulda asked. Everywhere I go, a hat, a sweater hood or mask, what about math, how come I wasn't ever good at that? It's like the boy in the bubble who never could adapt. I'm trapped, if I could go back, I never would've rapped.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Say Goodbye Hollywood"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Love, Boy

“I'm not anything like Brad Pitt or Antonio Banderas, but maybe it's the taboo element of my image, which is almost deathlike, that attracts them. I should be the last person that [people] should be attracted to.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

As quoted in CMJ (January 1997).
1990s

People, Personality

“It is a great deal easier to set a story afloat than to stop it. If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on." Nevertheless, it does not injure us; for if light as feather it travels as fast, its effect is just about as tremendous as the effect of down, when it is blown against the walls of a castle; it produces no damage whatever, on account of its lightness and littleness. Fear not, Christian. Let slander fly, let envy send forth its forked tongue, let it hiss at you, your bow shall abide in strength. Oh! shielded warrior, remain quiet, fear no ill; but, like the eagle in its lofty eyrie, look thou down upon the fowlers in the plain, turn thy bold eye upon them and say, "Shoot ye may, but your shots will not reach half-way to the pinnacle where I stand. Waste your powder upon me if ye will; I am beyond your reach."”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Then clap your wings, mount to heaven, and there laugh them to scorn, for ye have made your refuge God, and shall find a most secure abode.
"No. 17: Joseph Attacked by the Archers (Genesis 49:23–24, delivered on Sunday 1855-04-01)" pp.130
Sermons delivered in Exeter Hall, Strand, during the enlargement of New Park Street Chapel, Southmark (1855)

God, Truth, Lie, World

“I believe there is some ultimate ordering force for good in the universe - not a personal thing, not Buddha or Jesus, maybe something like order out of disorder. I like to hope that even if there's no personal afterlife, some energy impression is left in the universe… most people can pass on genes - I can pass on thoughts or what I write.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Page 282 of An Anthropologist On Mars By Oliver Sacks

People, Hope, Universe, Personality

“You been hearing about how bad I am since you were a little kid with mess in your pants! Tonight, I'm gonna whip you till you cry like a baby.”

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

To George Foreman before the start of the "Rumble in the Jungle" as the referee is giving them instructions (30 October 1974).

Baby, Cry

“Never mind, I'll find someone like you,
I wish nothing but the best for you, too.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead."”

Adele (singer) (1988) British singer-songwriter

Someone Like You, written by Adele and Dan Wilson
Song lyrics, 21 (2011)

Love, Hurt, Forgetting

“Justice will win -- because might does not make right, and the only path to lasting peace is when people know that their dignity will be respected and that their rights will be upheld. And citizens, like nations, will never settle for a world where the big are allowed to bully the small. Sooner or later, they fight back.”

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

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, World, Peace, Justice

“I’ve seen my characters morphed into PC cyphers. But the thing is once I’m done working on them, it’s like watching your kids go off with another guy. The new daddy is here, I just don’t pay attention to it otherwise I’d be crying myself to sleep every night, so I just walk away from it and go on to new work, move forward.”

Chuck Dixon (1954) American comic book writer

Chuck Dixon On The Milo Show: ‘My Characters Have Been Morphed Into PC Cyphers’ http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/08/04/chuck-dixon-milo-yiannopoulos-show/ (August 24, 2016)

Guy, Sleep, Cry, Night

“… bums and inferior people will likely support his egalitarian policies, whereas geniuses and superior people will not. For [this] reason… a democratic ruler undertakes little to actively expel those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash which drives individual property values down).”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe book Democracy: The God That Failed

Source: Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), P.145

People, Support, Country

“Europe is a molehill. It has never had any great empires, like those of the Orient, numbering six hundred million souls.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Soul

“I don't like feeling lonely… but in solitude one can get to revalue many things.”

Alejandro Fernández (1971) Mexican singer

Interview with Myrka de Llanos

Feeling, Solitude

“Everything is discussed in this world, except for one thing: democracy. Democracy is not discussed. Democracy is there, as a kind of saint, from whom no miracles are expected, but that is there as a reference: "the democracy"; and we don’t notice that the democracy in which we live in is a kidnapped, conditioned and amputated one, because the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to removing a government that we don’t like and replacing it by another one that we might come to like. Nothing else. But the important decisions are made in another sphere, and we all know which one it is. The great international financial organizations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organizations, the World Banks, the OECD, all of these… None of these institutions is democratic, so how can we continue to talk about democracy, if those who actually govern the world are not democratically elected by the people? Who chooses the countries' representatives in those institutions? Their respective peoples? No. So where is the democracy?”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aWFQRcdChk at Fórum Social Mundial, December 2007.

People, World, Democracy, Decision

“The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this and former lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Love, World

“Is it true what Contreras testified before the courts, that the president of the junta and later the president of the Republic was the direct head of DINA?
I don't remember, but it is not true. It is not true and if it was, I don't remember. Contreras liked to cajole, wrap around his boss. Contreras gave the orders. It was he who managed the institution.”

Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006) Former dictator of the republic of Chile

Exchange between Judge Victor Montiglio and Pinochet (November 16, 2005), quoted in Heraldo Muñoz (2008) The Dictator's Shadow
2000s

“Democrats and Republicans are far apart on a lot of issues. And I recognize there are folks on the other side who think that my policies are misguided. That's putting it mildly. That's OK. That's democracy. That's how it works. We can debate those differences vigorously, passionately, in good faith, through the normal democratic process. And sometimes we'll be just too far apart to forge an agreement. But that should not hold back our efforts in areas where we do agree. We shouldn't fail to act on areas that we do agree or could agree just because we don't think it's good politics, just because the extremes in our party don't like the word "compromise." I will look for willing partners wherever I can to get important work done. And there's no good reason why we can't govern responsibly, despite our differences, without lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis.”

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

2013

Faith, Democracy, Thinking, Effort

“Those who receive this privilege therefore, have a duty to repay the sacrifice which others have made. They are like the man who has been given all the food available in a starving village in order that he might have strength to bring supplies back from a distant place. If he takes this food and does not bring help to his brothers, he is a traitor. Similarly, if any of the young men and women who are given an education by the people of this republic adopt attitudes of superiority, or fail to use their knowledge to help the development of this country, then they are betraying our union.”

Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) Tanzanian politician and writer, first Prime Minister and President of Tanzania

On higher education, 1960s. UDSM Alumni Newletter, volume 7. No. 2, November 2007, ISSN 0856 - 8805

Women, Men, People, Education

“I'd like to live off the band, but if not, I'll just retire to Mexico or Yugoslavia with a few hundred dollars, grow potatoes, and learn the history of rock through back issues of Creem magazine.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in The Daily Of The University Of Washington (1989-05-05).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

History, Learning

“I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided-because I've been on the verge of marriage many times-I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do.”

Virginia Satir (1916–1988) American psychologist

Brief biography http://www.avanta.net/writings/biography/biography.html at Avanta.net (1999)

Marriage, People, World, Feeling

“Which do you believe most likely to enter an insane convention, a body of English gentlemen honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five years, I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself?”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to a banquet given to him in Knightsbridge, attacking William Gladstone for calling the Cyprus Convention an "insane covenant" (27 July 1878), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), pp. 1228-9.

Hope, Confidence, Imagination, Time

“What does opening your eyes and realizing your vulnerability have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? Here's the key: You know you're vulnerable. No other animal knows that. You know what hurts you, because you're vulnerable. And now that you know what hurts you, you can figure out what hurts someone else. And as soon as you know what can hurt someone as, and you can use that, then you have the knowledge of good and evil. Well it's a pretty good trick that the snake pulled because it doesn't seem like the thing that we would have exactly wanted if we knew what the consequence was going to be. As soon as a human being is self conscious and aware of his nakedness, then he has the capacity for evil. That's introduced into the world right at that point.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

World, Knowledge, Evil, Animals

“Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Case of the Excise Officers http://www.thomaspaine.org/essays/other/case-of-the-excise-officers.html, (1772) 1770s

Music, Heart

“Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America … We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves — and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives — which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I … proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Source: Slapstick (1976), Ch. 6

Happiness, People, World, Family

“We have peered into a new world and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined. Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

Bright Galaxies, Dark Matters (1997), preface

World, Way, Imagination, Universe

“One of the main reasons for my interest early on in the art and technology relationship was that during my studies of movement and light in art I was struck by the technical components in this art. Contrary to most, if not all, specialists in the field who put the stress on purely plastic issues and in the first place on the constructivist tradition, I was convinced that the technical and technological elements played a decisive part in this art. One almost paradoxical experience was my encounter with the kinetic artist and author of the book Constructivism, George Rickey, and my discovery of the most subtle technical movements in his mobile sculptures. But what seemed to me still more decisive for my option towards the art and technology problematic was the encounter in the early 1950s with artists like Nicholas Schöffer and Frank Malina whose works were based on some first hand or second hand scientific knowledge and who effectively or symbolically employed contemporary technological elements that gave their works a prospective cultural meaning. The same sentiment prevailed in me when I encountered similar artistic endeavors from the 1950s onwards in the works of Piotr Kowalski, Roy Ascott and many others which confirmed me in the aesthetic option I had taken, particularly when I discovered that this option was not antinomic (contradictory) to another aspect of the creative works of the time, i. e. spectator participation.”

Frank Popper (1918) French art historian

Source: Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Books, Art, Knowledge, Decision

“We cannot always judge man for only one part of his attitude. If we did so, we would be like the Pharisees in whose eyes Jesus was seen as bad, because He did not respect their rules about the Sabbath. They closed their eyes entirely to what would have lovable in Jesus, even in their sight.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 82.

Parting

“A lady is a woman who makes a man behave like a gentleman.”

Russell Lynes (1910–1991) American art historian

"The Part-Time Lady," http://books.google.com/books?id=0qhKAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+lady+is+a+woman+who+makes+a+man+behave+like+a+gentleman%22&pg=PA104#v=onepage A Surfeit of Honey (1957)

“No prominent European socialist before World War I resembled Lenin more closely than Benito Mussolini. Like Lenin, he headed the antirevisionist wing of the country’s Socialist Party; like him, he believed that the worker was not by nature a revolutionary and had to be prodded to radical action by an intellectual elite.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 245

War, World, Nature, Country

“The human race is trying to work out: 'well, what's the ultimate sacrifice?' It's something like that. The ultimate sacrifice of value. Well, the Passion story - and I told you was foreshadowing - is that there is a supreme sacrifice demanded on the part of the Mother, and there's a supreme sacrifice demanded on the part of the Father, all at the same time. That makes the supreme sacrifice possible. And hypothetically, that's the one that renews. That's the sacrifice that renews and redeems. It's a hell of an idea, man. And the things about it is: I don't know if it's true. But I know that its opposite is false. And generally the opposite of something that's false is true. If the mother doesn't make the sacrifice, then you get the horrible Oedipal situation in the household, which is its own catastrophic hell. If the maternal sacrifice isn't there, then that doesn't work. If the paternal sacrifice isn't there - if the father isn't willing to put his son out into the world, then that's a non-starter because the kid doesn't grow up. And if the son isn't willing to do that, then who the hell is going to shoulder the responsibility. So if those three things don't happen, it's chaos, it's cataclysmic, it's hell. If they do happen, is it the opposite of that? Well, maybe you could say it depends on the degree to which they happen. And it's a continuum. How thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don't know, because you might say, 'How good of a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth?”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Well, that's part of the answer to this question. And the answer likely is: well, you don't do as good a job of it as you could. So it works out quite well, but you don't know how well it could work if you did it really well, or spectacularly well, or ultimately well or something like that. You don't know."
Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Concepts

Children, Truth, World, Idea

“We’ll continue to help India deal with the impacts of climate change -- because you shouldn’t have to bear that burden alone. As we keep working for a strong global agreement on climate change, it's young people like you who have to speak up, so we can protect this planet for your generation. I'll be gone when the worst effects happen. It's your generation and your children that are going to be impacted.”

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

2015, Address to the People of India (January 2015)

Children, People, Strong, Change

“[I've changed a bit here - see youtube video "Jordan Peterson - Are YOU Antisocial?!"] We have these shared frames of reference, like when we're playing monopoly. Children at three learn to play games, which means that they learn to organize their own internal motivational states into a hierarchy that includes the emotional states of other people. And that means they can play. And that's what everyone does when they're out in the world. That's why we can go about our daily business - we all know the rules. That's why we can sit in the same room without fighting each other. Because you're smart and socially conscious, you can walk into a room full of people and know what to do. If you're civilized and social you can just do it, and you can predict what all the other primates are up to, and they won't kill you. That's what it means to be part of the same tribe. People are very peculiar creatures and God only knows what they're up to. As long as they're playing the same game that you are, you don't have to know what they're up to, and you can predict what they're going to do because you understand their motivational states. And so, part of the building and constructing of higher order moral goals is the establishment of joint frames of reference that allow multiple people to pursue the goals that they're interested in simultaneously. Not all shared frames of reference can manage that. There's a small subset of them that are optimized so that not only can multiple people play them, but multiple people can play them, AND enjoy them, AND do it repeatedly across a long period of time. So it's iterability that partly defines the utility of a higher order moral structure, and that is not arbitrary. It's an emergent property of biological interactions. It's not arbitrary at all, because a lot of what's constraining your games is your motivational substructure and those ancient circuits that are status oriented, which operate within virtually every animal. Virtually every animal has a status counter. Creatures organize themselves into dominance hierarchies. The reason they do that is because that works. It's a solution to the Darwinian problem of existence. It's not just an epiphenomena. It's the real thing. So your environment is fundamentally dominance hierarchy, plus God only knows where you are. And that's order and chaos. And part of the reason people fight to preserve their dominance hierarchies is because it's better to be a slave who knows what the hell is going on than someone who is thrown screaming and naked into the jungle at night. And that's the difference between order and chaos. And we like order better than chaos and it's no wonder. And invite a little chaos in for entertainment now and then, but it has to be done voluntarily, and generally you don't want the kind of chaos that upsets your entire conceptual structure. You're willing to fool around on the fringes a little bit, but you know, when the going gets serious you're pretty much likely to bail out.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

God, Children, People, World

“America, I believe we can build on the progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try. I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America. And together with your help and God's grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.”

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

2012, Re-election Speech (November 2012)