Quotes about literate (679 quotes, page 7)

“The reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixote a gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew lambs instead of feeding them.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

A Touchstone For Dogma
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: People will have their miracles, their stories, their heroes and heroines and saints and martyrs and divinities to exercise their gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and worship, and their Judases and devils to enable them to be angry and yet feel that they do well to be angry. Every one of these legends is the common heritage of the human race; and there is only one inexorable condition attached to their healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall believe them literally. The reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixote a gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew lambs instead of feeding them.

Reading

“In Kent's translation of the New Testament, these words read: "I did not come to bring peace, but a struggle. For I came to make a man disagree with his father, a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. It is to be doubted if a single reputable Biblical scholar can be found who will interpret these words to mean that Jesus had reference to a literal sword as a means of accomplishing a desired end. With reference to the passage in Luke,”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 63-64
Context: We find the verses, "I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34), and "Let him sell his cloak and buy a sword" (Luke 22:36), which are used as proof that Jesus wanted his disciples to be prepared for war.... in Matthew, we find that the very next verse reads: "For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.... If one means that Jesus came to bring a literal sword then the next means that he came as a great home-wrecker, setting the members thereof one against the other. Such a literal interpretation prevents any clear understanding of the words of Jesus. Surely his words, "I came not to send peace but a sword," mean that he came to bring about a sharp division between those who do right and those who do wrong. In Kent's translation of the New Testament, these words read: "I did not come to bring peace, but a struggle. For I came to make a man disagree with his father, a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. It is to be doubted if a single reputable Biblical scholar can be found who will interpret these words to mean that Jesus had reference to a literal sword as a means of accomplishing a desired end. With reference to the passage in Luke, one has only to read the verses that follow to see that Jesus could not have meant these words as a sanction of war. It was the last evening of Jesus life... He himself was about to be reckoned with transgressors and surely his disciples would have to encounter bitter opposition. They must therefore be prepared must be armed must have swords.... the disciples, promptly misunderstanding Jesus' reference to a sword, reminded him that they had two, and he replied, "It is enough" or according to Moffatt's translation, "Enough! Enough!"). But obviously, two swords were not enough to defend his life from his strong and determined foes; two swords were not enough for war. They were, however, enough and even one was enough, to convey his thought of being prepared for the time of stress that was approaching. Professor Hastings Rashdall, the eminent theologian and philosopher, says in this connection: "More probably the words were 'a piece of ironical foreboding,' which the disciples took literally. The 'it is enough' will then mean, 'Drop that idea: my words were not meant seriously."

Peace , Law , Reading , Daughters

“I emphatically disagree with statements of so-called military experts that victory was ours for the taking at any time during my period of command with the limited forces at our disposal and without widening the scope of the conflict. Korea's mountainous terrain literally soaks up infantry. We never had enough men, whereas the enemy not only had sufficient manpower to block our offensives, but could make and hold small gains of his own.”

Mark W. Clark (1896–1984) American general

Source: From the Danube to the Yalu (1954), p. 2

Men , Mountain , Time , Victory

“In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Our Mobsters, Ourselves", The Nation (2 April 2001) https://www.thenation.com/article/our-mobsters-ourselves/
Context: In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary." That conflation has been reinforced by social theorists and advocates of identity politics who argue that there is no universal morality, only the value systems of particular cultures and power structures. From this perspective, the psychoanalytic – and by extension the psychotherapeutic – worldview is not relativist at all. Its values are honesty, self-knowledge, assumption of responsibility for the whole of what one does, freedom from inherited codes of family, church, tribe in favor of a universal humanism: in other words, the values of the Enlightenment, as revised and expanded by Freud's critique of scientific rationalism for ignoring the power of unconscious desire.

Children , Sense

“The word ‘yoga’ literally means ‘union’. When you experience everything as one in your consciousness, then you are in yoga. -Sadhguru”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
Sourced from newspapers and magazines

“One should not interpret the word “Revolution” in its literal sense. Various meanings and significances are attributed to this word, according to the interests of those who use or misuse it.”

Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary

Letter published in The Tribune (25 December 1929) http://naxalrevolution.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/bhagat-singh-on-the-slogan-of-‘long-live-revolution’/
Context: One should not interpret the word “Revolution” in its literal sense. Various meanings and significances are attributed to this word, according to the interests of those who use or misuse it. For the established agencies of exploitation it conjures up a feeling of blood stained horror. To the revolutionaries it is a sacred phrase.

Sense

“The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Writing for the Court, Bain Peanut Co. v. Pinson, 282 U.S. 499, 501 (1931).
1930s

“Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society.”

Marshall McLuhan book The Gutenberg Galaxy

Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 271

Error

“The literate man is a sucker for propaganda... You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets, but you cannot sell him ideas.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977

“I do not know what degree of skepticism or disbelief in a religious representation amounts to actionable fraud. James points out that "Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible." Belief in what one may demonstrate to the senses is not faith. All schools of religious thought make enormous assumptions, generally on the basis of revelations authenticated by some sign or miracle. The appeal in such matters is to a very different plane of credibility than is invoked by representations of secular fact in commerce. Some who profess belief in the Bible read literally what others read as allegory or metaphor, as they read Aesop's fables. Religious symbolism is even used by some with the same mental reservations one has in teaching of Santa Claus or Uncle Sam or Easter bunnies or dispassionate judges. It is hard in matters so mystical to say how literally one is bound to believe the doctrine he teaches, and even more difficult to say how far it is reliance upon a teacher's literal belief which induces followers to give him money.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

78 U.S. 93-94
Judicial opinions, United States v. Ballard (1944)

Money , School , Faith , Fraud

“None of the Marxist concepts (literally – not a single one!) matches the logical rules of scientific concepts.”

Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922–2006) Russian writer

On the Social State of Marxism (1978)

“The story of the hero who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the phenomena, it was the science of early times.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Priestly Lie"
The Profits of Religion (1918)
Context: When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons, dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies, play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were originally meant with entire seriousness—that not merely did ancient man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the phenomena, it was the science of early times.

Science , Winter , Time , Summer

“There is a world of difference between the one who would imitate the conduct of the successful merchant, who sits in the front pew of his church, and him who would follow literally the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 53
Context: There is a world of difference between the one who would imitate the conduct of the successful merchant, who sits in the front pew of his church, and him who would follow literally the teachings of Jesus Christ. To attain perfectly the one ideal—if it be an ideal—is a comparatively simple task. To attain the other, is perhaps an impossibility.

World , Success , Christ

“My past had disappeared. Not that I believed for a moment that this was an accident; in fact, I had suspected for some time now that the Cosmic Command, obviously no longer able to supervise every assignment on an individual basis when there were literally trillions of matters in its charge, had switched over to a random system.”

Stanisław Lem book Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie (1961), translated as Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1973)
Context: My past had disappeared. Not that I believed for a moment that this was an accident; in fact, I had suspected for some time now that the Cosmic Command, obviously no longer able to supervise every assignment on an individual basis when there were literally trillions of matters in its charge, had switched over to a random system. The assumption would be that every document, circulating endlessly from desk to desk, must eventually hit upon the right one. A time-consuming procedure, perhaps, but one that would never fail. The Universe itself operated on the same principle. And for an institution as everlasting as the Universe — certainly our Building was such an institution — the speed at which these meanderings and perturbations took place was of no consequence.

Time , Past

“I hope it will take less than five years to have a fundamental change if our movement is successful and I believe it has every potential to be successful. But as I said and I hate to be repetitive, the time is really now. Because as much as the Iranian people can be empowered, and therefore heartened and therefore optimistic toward their future -- and I'm specifically speaking about today's generation -- these are tomorrow's leaders in Iran. These are the kids, the daughters, the sons of a previous generation who are left there to fight and fend for themselves with no possible help so far available to them and yes, they are resilient in their struggle. This could turn quickly to cynicism and deception if they think the world has abandoned them. Remember what the slogans were on the streets of Tehran one year ago. There were signs in different languages -- in English, in French -- and this was not for some Iranians practicing their language skills among themselves. They were clearly aimed at the West. And among those slogans were “Obama, Obama, are you with us or with them?” That warrants a response. We have yet to hear that response. That means Iranians could turn more radical as a result of their deception; as a result of their cynicism; and that doesn't bode well, not only for Iran but for the world. And it will be a testimony to the fact that no real help is ever given to nations that want to struggle for liberty because perhaps there are some other interests that no one really wants to talk about. If that is not true, then we need to see a genuine attempt to help the society. We are not asking the world to determine our fate—that is the business of the Iranian people alone. All we are asking is that today it is time to engage with the people of Iran; with the freedom movements; with those who are struggling for their rights for self-determination and liberty. We are fighting against those who have denied us these rights and it's about time that we are heard and have our “day in court,” as the saying goes. This is an opportunity that we are facing right now as I speak to you. It's right in front of us. It's right under our noses literally, and I have yet to see a concrete policy -- whether it's the U. S. government or some of its other allies in the region or in Europe -- that will indicate that beyond attempting a few diplomatic negotiating tactics and besides posturing for the possibility of conflict, there is any real effort made to go beyond the regime and its representatives and try to connect and try to see how they can be of help to the Iranian people without having to attack our country and bomb our homeland.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

Hate , Fate , People , World

“I think fear neutralizes alcohol, weakens its anesthetic power. It's good for small fears; your boss, your wife, your bills, your dentist; all right then to take a drink. But for big ones it doesn't do any good. Like water on blazing gasoline, it will only quicken and compound it. It takes sand, in the literal and the slang sense, to smother the bonfire that is fear. And if you're out of sand, then you must burn up.”

Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968) American author and screenwriter

Drink , Alcohol , Water , Thinking

“My favorite aspect about horror music is you can literally write anything you want. You are limited only by your imagination! In fact, many times the more unique and completely original your music is, the better it works in the game and the more the developer loves it.”

Jason Graves (1973) American composer

Exclusive Interview: Composer Jason Graves Discusses Dead Space, F.E.A.R. 3 and Resistance: Burning Skies http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/33744/exclusive-interview-composer-jason-graves-discusses-dead-space-f-e-a-r-3-and-resistance-burning-skies (May 14, 2012)

Imagination , Time , Game , Music

“Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic ideas", p. 26
The Denial of Death (1973)

Time , Housing , Food , Star

“I think that when you’re a teen, you can be overwhelmed with change. You’re expected to be ready for adulthood, to know what you want to do with the rest of your life, to have mature relationships. But it’s only been like 2.5 years since you had braces, or got your period, or stopped playing with Barbies! So I think it’s easy to retreat into apathy and fear and to not try. Because trying means you can fail and be embarrassed—and those are two things that are literally the worst when you’re in high school…”

Maurene Goo

On being a teenager in “Maurene Goo Dishes on Food Trucks, Frenemies, and The Way You Make Me Feel” https://www.bookish.com/articles/maurene-goo-the-way-you-make-me-feel-interview/ in Bookish (2018 May 23)

School , Life , Adulthood , Thinking

“My thoughts on veganism are that it’s a wonderful thing to do. I just can’t do it. I tried. Casey Affleck and I made a movie in the desert in Argentina like 12 years ago and he’s a vegan and I tried to eat vegan and I lasted like two days. I just, I literally can’t do it. And I know…that might be bad.”

Matt Damon (1970) American actor, screenwriter, and producer

"Matt Damon on Veganism: ‘Do as I Say, Not as I Do’", Ecorazzi.com (22 October 2013) https://web.archive.org/web/20150920134555/http://www.ecorazzi.com/2013/10/22/watch-matt-damon-on-veganism-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do/

Bad luck

“Time was when men of Horse Watson’s profession typically never slept sober, and died with their livers eroded. It must have been fun to watch the literate swashbucklers make fools of themselves in the frontier saloons, indulging in horsewhippings and shoot-outs with rival journalists and their partisans. But who stopped to think what it was to have the power of words and publication, to discover that an entire town and territory would judge, condemn, act, reprieve and glorify because of something you had slugged together the night before? Because of something you had handset into type, smudging your fingertips with metal poisons that inexorably began their journey through your bloodstream? For the sake of the power, you turned your liver and kidneys into spongy, irascible masses; you tainted the tissue of your brain with heavy metal ions until it became a house haunted by stumbling visions. Alcohol would temporarily overcome the effect. So you became an alcoholic, and purchased sanity one day at a time, and made a spectacle of yourself. It was neither funny nor tragic in the end—it was simply a fact of life that operated more slowly on the mediocre, because the mediocre could turn themselves off and go to sleep whether they had done the night’s job to their own satisfaction or not.”

Algis Budrys book Michaelmas

Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 3 (pp. 36-37)

Sleep , Time , Night , Housing

“Wayne Coyne: Well, I really think that there’s an authenticity and a truth in Chris in the way that he sings to the audience. And even though you’d have to think there has to be some difference between playing to a couple of hundred people when they started and playing to literally tens of thousands of people now, I still see that in him. That’s why I like them so much, because he is the real deal. He’s not faking it when he gets up there and that enthusiasm still effects him. So in that way, I think they’re virtually unchanged. They haven’t become these unapproachable mega rock stars.”

Chris Martin (1977) musician, co-founder of Coldplay

http://www.coldplay.com/flaming-lips-interview/ source

Singing , Star , People , Truth

“Out of the sewer, literal vampire pot bellied goblins are hobbling around coming after us!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Literal vampire pot bellied goblins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hs8PpTFBSw, The Alex Jones Show, July 18 2017.
2017

“Vampires can’t exist. There’d be detailed records in the archives; they couldn’t possibly evade detection by the state for any significant period. Besides which…there’d be corpses everywhere. Human blood is a poor nutrient source; it’s about 60 percent plasma by volume and only provides about 900 calories per liter, so your hypothetical blood-sucking fiend is going to have to drink about two and a half liters per day. Those calories don’t come in the form of useful stuff like glucose and fat: it’s mostly protein from circulating red blood cells. Dracula would have to exsanguinate a victim every day just to stay alive, and would suffer from chronic ketoacidosis. The total number of intentional homicides for the whole country is around 700 a year; a single vampire would cause a 50 percent spike in the murder rate. Or they’d have to take transfusion-sized donations about two thousand times a year.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 1, “Prologue: One Month Ago” (p. 2; ellipsis represents elision of one sentence of description)

Drink , Time , Suffering , Country

“I’d call them dangerously loopy heretics who are well down the slippery slope to hell, Bob. A hell of their own creation, even if you don’t believe in the literal sulfur-and-brimstone variety presided over by a big red guy with horns and cloven hooves. Which these people very likely do, but they think they’re on the side of the angels, which makes them doubly bad.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 12, “With a Bible and a Gun” (p. 240)

Hell , Bad luck , People , Thinking

“Ray is clearly anguished, Persephone realizes; he believes this stuff with all his soul and all his guts. He believes in the viral metaphor of a bronze-age rabble-rouser from the Levant, as interpreted by his syncretist followers scattered throughout the Roman Empire. He believes in heaven and hell as real, literally existing destinations you can book an airline ticket to. He believes salvation is a deterministic, card-punching exercise in holding faith in the right god; believes that there’s a coming End of Time in which his godhead will return to Earth, reading minds and separating the sheep from the goats. No need to ask why his God might prescribe eternal torture for the unbelievers, no need to engage with the problem of free will—Schiller’s eschatology is either brutally truncated or sublimely simple, depending on viewpoint. One thing it isn’t is nuanced.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 9, “Speaking in Tongues” (p. 159)

God , Faith , Time , Soul

“Imagine a world where speaking or writing words can literally and directly make things happen, where getting one of those words wrong can wreak unbelievable havoc, but where with the right spell you can summon immensely powerful agencies to work your will. Imagine further that this world is administered: there is an extensive division of labour, among the magicians themselves and between the magicians and those who coordinate their activity. It’s bureaucratic, and also (therefore) chaotic, and it’s full of people at desks muttering curses and writing invocations, all beavering away at a small part of the big picture. The coordinators, because they don’t understand what’s going on, are easy prey for smooth-talking preachers of bizarre cults that demand arbitrary sacrifices and vanish with large amounts of money. Welcome to the IT department.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Ken MacLeod in Introduction: Charlie’s Demons (p. xvi)
The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004)

Money , Imagination , Understanding , People

“The bourgeoisie sees practically one one aspect of Bolshevism - insurrection, violence, and terror; it therefore strives to prepare itself for resistance and opposition primarily in this field. It is possible that, in certain instances, in certain countries, and for certain brief periods, it will succeed in this. We must reckon with such an eventuality, and we have absolutely nothing to fear if it does succeed. Communism is emerging in positively every sphere of public life; its beginnings are to be seen literally on all sides.”

Vladimir Lenin book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

CH 10, The Lenin Anthology
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Fear , Life , Country , Communication

“At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest Americans own more wealth than 160 million Americans, it is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent…”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Bernie Sanders Has a Plan to Tax the Rich That’s About As Radical as What Teddy Roosevelt Proposed, by John Nichols, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-progressive-estate-tax-teddy-roosevelt/ (12 February 2019)
2010s, 2019, February 2019

Wealth , Time

“The human beings who possess the dominion of land and machinery and compel others, in order to obtain the essentials of existence, to serve them, are as truly masters of slaves as they who exact blood from the dorsals of their fellows with literal slave whips.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, p. 37

“All inquiries carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions. But I do not see how we can deal with the universe—both the outside and the inside universe—without studying it. The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern—if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table—we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 1, “Broca’s Brain” (pp. 13-14)

School , Study , Understanding , Freedom

“The idea that Ilhan Omar could — even as a matter of mass-dunderhead rhetoric — be treated as a non-citizen because the president and his admirers do not like her politics (which are quite unlikeable) does violence to the idea of citizenship per se. In that much, it is fundamentally and literally un-American.”

Kevin D. Williamson (1972) American writer

Trump's Omar Comments and Our Eroding Sense of Citizenship (2019)

Idea

“Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic ideas", p. 26
The Denial of Death (1973)

Nature

“By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. [Hiney, Tom, Frank MacShane, 2000, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, p. 77, ISBN 0871137860]

Way , Perfection , God , Reading

“There will be· no FEPC when the soldier gets back home, and I make that statement as one who has visited many of our armies and talked to literally hundreds of American soldiers.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

1940s

Home , Making love

“Shut the hell up you bitch ass nigga. You will continue to run this country further into the ground and risk lives every time you breathe. You’re not the president. Just a dumpster full of hate. FOH. Sick to my stomach that literal shit currently represents America to the world.”

Jussie Smollett (1982) American actor, singer, director and photographer

11 January 2018 https://twitter.com/JussieSmollett/status/951681671027404800, also regarding Donald Trump

Hell , Hate , Time , Country

“Not the least among the arguments whose consideration should dispose us to welcome among us the peoples of all countries, nationalities and colors, is the fact that all races and varieties of men are improvable. This is the grand distinguishing attribute of humanity, and separates man from all other animals. If it could be shown that any particular race of men are literally incapable of improvement, we might hesitate to welcome them here. But no such men are anywhere to be found, and if they were, it is not likely that they would ever trouble us with their presence.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The fact that the Chinese and other nations desire to come and do come is a proof of their capacity for improvement and of their fitness to come.
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Country , People , Animals , Color

“President Poroshenko and his regime enjoy impunity and plan provocations like the one that occurred at the entrance to the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea. Literally a day after this blatant provocation, the text of the order…was found on one of the boats… It said that the boats should covertly, without requesting authorisation of the Russian authorities…Why?…There may only be one answer: they wanted to provoke a scandal.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

News conference following the 25th OSCE Ministerial Council, Milan, Italy (7 December 2018)

Sea

“His life was a unique case of a public figure who rose from the chairmanship of a village panchayat to the Rashtrapathi Bhavan. He rose literally from the soil of Jamkhandi in Bagalkot District where he started his public life as chairman of a village panchayat, and his was another name for simplicity and humility.”

Basappa Danappa Jatti (1912–2002) Indian politician

His simplicity survived rewards of public life

Life

“Under Swati Tirunal’s rule, the forms of music and dance peculiar to Travancore, including - the sapna sangitam (literally: step music) sung on the steps of temples and the dance form of Mohiniattam – were significantly altered, brought closer to the forms of music and dance practiced at Tanjavur. Swapna Sangitam known for its slow renditions and limited improvisation, was altered not only by the influx of new style of composing and singing represented by Vadivelu and other Tanjavur Musicians but also by the very structure of music that Swati Tirunal’s court suggested.”

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) Maharajah of Travencore

K.M Panikkar quoted in pp.63-64
About Swathi Thirunal, Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of ...

Music , Singing , Dance

“I became a philosophy major literally to understand why I should put up with this shit.”

Art Spiegelman (1948) cartoonist from the United States

After taking all the difficult art classes, Spiegelman was required to take the easy ones to obtain an arts major. He discusses here switching instead to a philosophy major; as quoted in "Breakfast with the FT: Art Spiegelman 'Drawn from Memory'" in Financial Times (29 November 2008).

Understanding

“Capitalism subordinates men to machines instead of using machines to liberate men from the burden of mechanical and repetitive work. it subordinates all social activities to the imperatives of an incessant drive for individual enrichment in terms of money, instead of gearing social life to the development of rich individualities and their social relations. The contradiction between use-value and exchange-value, inherent in every commodity, fully unfolds itself in this contradictory nature of capitalist machinery. When capitalism is not overthrown once it has created the material and social preconditions for a classless society of associated producers, this contradiction implies the possibility of a steadily increasing transformation of the forces of production into forces of destruction, in the most literal sense of the word: not only forces of destruction of wealth (crises and wars), of human wealth and human happiness, but also forces of destruction of life tout court.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

Money , War , Wealth , Nature

“Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.”

Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress

Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo," Mythologies (1957), trans. Annette Lavers [Farrar, Straus, 1986, ISBN 0-374-52150-6], p. 56

“You are twenty-two years old, trained down to the last pound like a boxer. You do not over-eat, smoke or drink and you work six to eight hours a day at a piano with a special keyboard in which the keys are so hard to press down that when you come to your concert grand at night you seem, literally, to be riding a fleecy cloud, so easy is its keyboard action. Before each concert, of course, you eat nothing at all.”

George Antheil (1900–1959) American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor

Training , Drink , Night

“There is a reason why I focus more in my carreer on practical things like relationships and what to do with emotions - it's because all of this interdimensional information that I could have a conversation about with you, DOES NOTHING FOR YOUR DAILY LIFE. Nothing. Really, it doesn't matter how many extraterrestrials there are in the universe and what they are doing in your day to day life… What matter's is whether you can have a relationship because life literally is relationships. Even if you want to have a conversation about the universe - it's about your relationship to the universe.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Universe , Life

“The universe is literally made of love. And as such, love is your BIRTHRIGHT.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Universe , Love , Making love

“Money speaks, but it speaks in a male voice. In the hands of women, money stays literal; count it out it buys what it is worth or less. In the hands of men, money buys women, sex, status, dignity, esteem, recognition, loyalty, all manner of possibility.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Source: Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979), p. 20.

Money , Sex , Loyalty , Women

“Conspire, in its literal sense, means "to breathe together.". It is an intimate joining. To make clear the benevolent nature of this joining, I chose the word Aquarian.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Introduction

Sense , Making love , Nature

“I want them [criminals] to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences.”

Priti Patel (1972) British politician

I want criminals to be terrified, says Priti Patel: New Home Secretary vows to return to zero-tolerance policing as she demands full explanation over bungled 'Nick' sex abuse inquiry https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316055/I-want-criminals-terrified-says-Priti-Patel-Home-Secretary-restore-confidence-Britain.html (2 August 2019)
2019

Feeling

“The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was graphic evidence, not only of how obsolete our technology was, but also of the failure of the old system. At the same time, and such is the irony of history, it severely affected our reforms by literally knocking the country off its tracks.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, Memoirs (1995)

Time , Failure , History , Country

“Living in LA, there's so many vegan options for everything. And literally, your taste buds start to adjust. These days, it's like, "I'm craving cashew cheese!"”

Jhené Aiko (1988) American singer-songwriter and recording artist

… Potatoes are definitely comfort food. We always go to Crossroads, which is a vegan place in LA, they have chicken and waffles and things like that but it's all vegan. When I'm looking to fill up, and just feel full, that and some type of berry smoothie hits the spot.
Source: " See Jhene Aiko Pose Nude for PETA https://www.bet.com/style/2016/12/09/jhene-aiko-peta.html", interview with BET.com (9 December 2016).

“I don't think either one of them literally want to incite violence. But they have to realize that when they tell people to get up in your face, that there are some crazy unstable people out there. There are truly people who have anger issues. The guy that shot over two hundred rounds from a semi-automatic weapon at us at the ballfield, was an angry guy. He was a guy that would go down to the city council and yell and scream and get angry and red in the face. He once hit a neighbor with the butt of his gun. He had all of these anger issues. But then when people stoke that and say "get up in their face", "go to Washington."”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

He showed up at the ballfield that day, and as he started shooting at us he yelled "This is for healthcare!", and then when they were finally able to kill him in his pocket was a list of five or six conservative republicans that he came there intending to kill. So instead of saying "get up in their face", we should say let's have constructive dialog. Let's forcefully present our position in a verbal way and in an intellectual way.
2018-10-10
Rand Paul: There Will Be an 'Assassination' If Left Doesn't Ratchet Down the Rhetoric
Discussion on Fox and Friends
http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/10/10/rand-paul-there-will-be-assassination-if-left-doesnt-ratchet-down-rhetoric https://video.foxnews.com/v/5847225479001/?#sp=show-clips

Guy , Thinking , Anger , People

“The harsh reality is that my sequestered twins are advancing in the opposite direction of my earhair. Mother Nature has me by the balls, literally. They have actually started a race with my ex-wife's tits. And she will prevail, because she will get hers "done" as I continue to disappear into the abyss of recycled toilet brine. In the end, gravity always wins, people. Remember: when you have a heart attack, you fall down, not up.Middle age is upon me, and I don't remember this shit being in the brochure. I have six different doctors on speed dial, and the font size on my smartphone is at ten with a maximum setting of twelve. That doesn't give me much wiggle room for the golden years.”

Brad Garrett (1960) actor, comedian, voice actor

When the Balls Drop https://books.google.com/books?id=lLydBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 (2015), Foreword, "Being Forward."

People , Speed , Nature , Heart

“Where one Jacob Fugger, Cosimo de Medici, de la Pole or Gresham strove for success we have now literally thousands of keen, clever men as fearless, as progressive and as determined as they. Money not only for the few but for the many is the prize which is sought, and for this prize is the race now perhaps swifter, the battle keener, the game bigger than has been any race, battle, or game since the world began; and commerce in its broader sense is the medium through which this prize is won.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Money , Success , Game , World

“When someone tells you, “I love you,” and then you feel, “Oh, I must be worthy after all,” that’s an illusion. That’s not true. Or someone says, “I hate you,” and you think, “Oh, God, I knew it; I’m not very worthy,” that’s not true either. Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, “I love you,” he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, “I hate you,” she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views—literally.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

“As a writer, I think I’m more an eye than an ear — the world comes mainly in for me at the eye. So I’m glad the visuals came through for you. As I’m writing my books, I really do see them almost literally — I experience scenes almost as an onlooker, watching from the outside.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

Source: On how she uses visualization in her writings in “Interview with Donna Tartt” https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-donna-tartt-8d86a2438b41 in Medium (2015 Jul 13)

World , Thinking , Books

“Women’s studies has long constructed black feminism as a form of discipline inflicted on the field and has imagined black feminists as a set of disciplinarians who quite literally whip the field into shape with their demands for a feminism that accounts for race generally, and for black women specifically.”

Jennifer Christine Nash Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Source: Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (2018), p. 12

Study , Imagination , Women

“Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement," if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

Tucker Carlson Tonight, Every time they import a new voter they dilute citizens power" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VfWGwAxxFI, April 9, 2021
2020s, 2021

World , People

“You can find it on almost any tree. As we made our way through the forest, it was literally raining rubber juice. Our clothes were full of it. The Congo has so many tributaries that a well-organized company can easily extract a few tons of rubber per year here. You only have to sail up such a river and the branches with rubber hang almost up to your ship.”

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) Welsh journalist and explorer

Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020 https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-8-0 ISBN 9789463962094 Stanley Points out to King Leopold II Of Belgium that the Congo free State which was a loss-making endeavor at that time that rubber extraction has a possibility to make the colony profitable.

Way , Clothes , Tree , Relation ships

“I follow in this tradition because I believe literature matters, and in this book I insist that Asian American literature literally embodies the contradictions, conﬂicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

Source: As quoted in “Race & Resistance Literature & Politics In Asian America" (2002) p.3

Future , Literature , Books

“There is a process known as parthenogenesis, literally virgin birth, by which a uniparental embryo can be created out of a normal egg. It’s been done with animals. The only reason no one ever did it with humans is because it seemed ethically dodgy, as well as completely unnecessary given the willingness of men to impregnate women every chance they got.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (pp. 552-553)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Birth , Chance , Animals , Women

“The French soldier follows his officers eagerly and willingly into battle, but only so long as these officers are in front of him, and literally lead him on.”

Friedrich von Waldersee (1795–1864) Prussian general (1795-1864)

Quoted by Friedrich Engels in Waldersee über die französische Armee, 1861

“My English name is Bowinn Ma, but in Chinese, it’s Ma Bo Wen. Ma literally translates as “horse,” which is the family name, and Bo Wen literally translates to “plentiful script.” But what it means can be roughly translated as “ocean of knowledge” or “broad scholar.””

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

It means someone who has a broad understanding of many things and someone who has the wisdom to use this knowledge in a good way. It represents what my parents and grandparents had hoped I would become as an adult. In English, my name is just a name, a series of sounds used to identify me. But in my traditional language, those two simple syllables are a culmination of all of the hopes and dreams that my family have had of me since my birth — aspirations that could never truly be translated properly across cultures in as succinct a way.
British Columbia Legislative Hansard, March 12, 2018: INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES
Meaning of Name

Family , Horse , Knowledge

“Time and effective communication are the best medicine in love. Consider all the imbalances and get back to normal. Literally fixing your love life with your partner.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Communication , Time , Love , Life

“A novel, or indeed any work of art, is not intended to be a literal transcription from Nature. ... Life is a series of false values. There it is always the little things that are greatest. Art attempts to remedy this. It may be defined as an expurgated edition of Nature.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Writing on Charles Dickens, in "In Defence of an Obsolete Author" in William and Mary College Monthly (November 1897), VII, p. 3-4

Art , Nature , Falseness , Life

“The Extraordinary Form speaks, literally (because it is in Latin), and figuratively, a different language; and I think some people who need to can come back to faith through it.”

Fernando Arêas Rifan (1950) Roman Catholic bishop

Tridentine Mass draws international pilgrims to Rome https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/28324/tridentine-mass-draws-international-pilgrims-to-rome (27 October 2013)

Faith , People , Thinking

“There's literally no difference between a physician recognizing a disease from a "facial expression", and a little child pointing to something and saying "doggie."”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Source: Talks at Google - Nov 10, 2011

Disease

“A lot of Hollywood is very dark. Girls my age, I find a lot of them that I have literally grown up and auditioned with take these different paths that break their hearts, but they felt like they had to do it in order to get where they want to go. It’s just so hard on their spirit.”

Madeline Carroll (1996) American actress

Source: Madeline Carroll: I Almost Quit Acting ForGood Before Being Cast In ‘I Can OnlyImagine’ https://hollywoodlife.com/2018/03/16/i-can-only-imagine-movie-madeline-carroll-interview/ (March 16, 2018)

Girl , Age , Heart

“Often, in writing, granting the basic skill of writing a literate English sentence—which can no longer be taken for granted even in college graduates—all it takes is determination.”

Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930–1999) Novelist, editor

Source: Introduction to Waterwise in Marion Zimmer Bradley (ed.), Sword and Sorceress 7 (1990), p. 199

“I've heard both the founding stories of Google and Yahoo, and for both those companies, the founders didn't even have to get into a car. They could literally go to the law office, the venture capitalists, the bank... on a bike. It's all that close together.”

Marissa Mayer (1975) American business executive and engineer, former ceo of Yahoo!

Source: as quoted in: Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom), 9781455559015, Fisher, Adam, 10 July 2018 https://books.google.com/books?id=pwo5DwAAQBAJ&q=marissa#v=snippet&q=marissa&f=false,

Law , Cars

“I respect the institution of marriage as my parents were married until death literally parted them and they had a beautiful relationship. The problem is at some point, it begins to annoy you because of how much importance people have placed on it.”

Rita Dominic (1975) Nigerian actress

Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/04/i-wont-rush-into-marriage-to-please-the-public-rita-dominic/amp/ Rita Dominic on marriage.

Marriage , People , Beauty , Problem

“New Year's Eve is literally filled with good cheer and happy thoughts, as we all try to put our best foot forward. This openness and generosity are the spirit of this wonderful holiday, when it is so important to warm parents’ hearts with kindness and loving care, to hug them if they are near you, and to tell everyone around you how dear they are to you and that happiness is all about love, children, family, and friends.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2021

Parent , Love , Happiness , Children

“It is no exaggeration to say that if even five minutes a day were spent in mental and physical breath control, a person’s whole life would be made anew. For, besides the physical atoms of the air, such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, there are literally thousands of different radiations playing through the atmosphere, some of them infinitely subtle and powerful, which come from planets far outside our solar system! These can, and should, be drawn upon by us in correct breathing, specialized through our endocrine glands, and used in our most vital thinking and creative activities.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

Personality , Thinking , Life

“It's all political; if my music is literal and I'm a criminal, how the fuck can I raise a little girl?
I couldn't, I wouldn't be fit to”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Sing For The Moment"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Girl , Music

“Have you ever loved someone so much you'd give an arm for?
Not the expression, no, literally give an arm for?
When they know they're your heart and you know you are their armor
And you will destroy anyone who would try to harm her”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"When I'm Gone" (2005)
2000s

Heart , Love

“The oracle-glass was maddeningly literal, capable of answering only the question one asked, rather than that which one wanted answered.”

Michael Swanwick (1950) American science fiction author

Source: Short fiction, King Dragon (2003), p. 6

Question

“I think that might not have been enough, were it not for me being my family ’s only hope. Because they were also dying, in a different way: financially, mentally. And I thought, I can’t die. Literally I can’t die.”

Ocean Vuong (1988) Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist

On being surrounded by friends taken by the opioid epidemic and his quest to be the breadwinner for his family in “Ocean Vuong: ‘As a child I would ask: What’s napalm?’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/09/ocean-vuong-on-earth-we-are-briefly-gorgeous-interview in The Guardian (2019 Jun 9)

Family , Hope , Thinking , Way

“In China, literally in elementary school, we have to sit a certain way. You can't raise your hand anytime, you can’t speak in class. So, it takes a lot of courage and experimenting to kind of try to break that.”

Fala Chen (1982) Hong Kong actress

"Fala Chen Came to America to Find Herself—And Wound Up Being Cast in a Groundbreaking Marvel Movie" in Harpers Bazaar https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a37711969/fala-chen-shang-chi-and-the-legend-of-the-ten-rings/ (24 September 2021)

School , Courage , Way

“More to the point, one cannot understand The Holocaust without understanding the intentions, ideology, and mechanisms that were put in place in 1933. The eugenics movement may have come to a catastrophic crescendo with the Hitler regime, but the political movement, the world-view, the ideology, and the science that aspired to breed humans like prized horses began almost 100 years earlier. More poignantly, the ideology and those legal and governmental mechanisms of a eugenic world-view inevitably lead back to the British and American counterparts that Hitler’s scientists collaborated with. Posterity must gain understanding of the players that made eugenics a respectable scientific and political movement, as Hitler’s regime was able to evade wholesale condemnation in those critical years between 1933 and 1943 precisely because eugenics had gained international acceptance. As this book will evidence, Hitler’s infamous 1933 laws mimicked those already in place in the United States, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Canada.
So what is this scientific and political movement that for 100 years aspired to breed humans like dogs or horses? Eugenics is quite literally, as defined by its principal proponents, an attempt at “directing evolution” by controlling any aspect of human existence that affects human heredity. From its onset, Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and the man credited with the creation of the science of eugenics, knew that the cause of eugenics had to be observed with religious fervor and dedication. As the quote on the opening pages of this book illustrates, a eugenicist must “intrude, intrude, intrude.” A vigilant control over anything and everything that affects the gene pool is essential to eugenics. The policies could not allow for the individual to enjoy self-government or self-determination any more than a horse breeder can allow the animals to determine whom to breed with. One simply cannot breed humans like horses without imbuing the state with the level of control a farmer has over its livestock, not only controlling procreation, but also the diet, access to medical services, and living conditions.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: H.H. LAUGHLIN: American Scientist. American Progressive. Nazi Collaborator.

Books , World , Law , Dogs

Quotes about literate page 7

Quotes about literate
page 7