Quotes about living (10000 quotes, page 64)

“The hills and rivers of the lowland country
You have made your battle ground.
How do you suppose the people who live there
Will procure firewood and hay?
Do not let me hear you talking together
About titles and promotions;
For a single general’s reputation
Is made out of ten thousand corpses.”

Ts'ao Sung (830–901)

As translated by Arthur Waley in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1918)
Variant translations:
Rich hills and fields that war despoiled.
Their people how could they live?
Sing me no more of epics—some Man gained
Eternal fame on skeletons.
Shi ci yi xuan: Poems from China (1950), p. 35
A Protest in the Sixth Year of Qianfu (A.D. 879)

People , Country

“The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same — whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation. This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious morality. … the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which, by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct, and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudoreligion and pseudoscience and the immoral conclusions deduced from them, commonly called "civilization."”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), I

Life , People , Law

“As an aside, my father commanded a battalion during the Vietnam war and I can happily report that whatever our fellow Australians think about any of the operations upon which we have deployed, they do not vent their objections against our soldiers as they did in my dad’s day. This is a welcome development. Indeed, at no time in my thirty four years of service have we been so highly regarded by our fellow citizens. But this is a call to live to our true ideals not to rest on our laurels.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

War , Thinking , Time

“Oh, I believe very much in cause and effect,” she said, “but not in the linear sense. Every action has a proliferation of consequences. We can’t remain alive without being responsible for thousands of actions and their consequences. We simply have to live with that fact and decide, morally if you like, how to formulate a civilized, secure environment for ourselves. So far we haven’t succeeded.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2, Chapter 8 “Revolutions” (p. 410)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

Sense

“In the fire of love we live, or pass by many ways,
By unnumbered ways of dream to death.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love , Death , Dreams , Way

“I know that my Redeemer lives. Thank God I love humanity, complexion doesn't interest me one single a bit.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

George Washington Carver: In His Own Words http://books.google.es/books?id=JcncXGNSJQQC&hl=es&source=gbs_navlinks_s (1991), edited by Gary R. Kremer, University of Missouri Press, p. 131

Love , God

“I wouldn't say that I'm an orthodox Christian at all and the longer we live in the twentieth century the more fantastic discoveries are made, the more we hear what the universe is like I find it very difficult to be a kind of orthodox believer in Jesus as my saviour and that sort of thing. I'm more interested in the extraordinary nature of God. If there is God, if there is deity, then He, even as the old hymn says, He moves in a mysterious way and I'm fascinated by that mystery and I've tried to write out of that experience of God, the fantastic side of God, the quarrel between the conception of God as a person, as having a human side, and the conception of God as being so extraordinary. … So these are still things that occupy me, and every now and again, if you're lucky, you're able to make a poem out of this conception of God … so I suppose I'm trying to appeal to people to open their eyes and their minds to the extraordinary nature of God.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)

God , People , Way , Nature

“The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheaton) 264, 387 (1821)

People

“I was convinced before the war started that it was a great disaster, a great wrong. Even after the campaign in Poland my conviction didn't change because on 3rd September, the third day of our going to war, the Western Powers had declared war on Germany. After the campaign in France in 1940 my conviction became uncertain, but when I heard one or two months after the armistice with France that now Hitler was to go with Russia, the old conviction came up again and it was at this moment that I changed the place of living for my family, moved them from Berlin to the place where they are today.”

Walter Warlimont (1894–1976) German general

Quoted in "The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series" - Page 181 - by Richard Holmes - 2007

War , Family , Change

“I'd like to be remembered for being a good, kind, loving, gentle man who attempted to live wisely, and who cared a lot.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love

“All life produces waste. The act of living produces costs, hazards and disposal questions, and so the (Environment) Ministry has found itself in the center of all life, mitigating, guiding and policing the detritus of the average person along with investigating the infractions of the greedy and short-sighted, the ones who wish to make quick profits and trade on others’ lives for it.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 121

Life , Question , Personality

“It is impossible to understand the American public without taking into account the tremendous psychological effect of bringing up a generation of people in a daily environment of advertising. It is impossible to escape the advertising man; his sales talk assaults us in the morning newspaper, in the street car, with billboards along the highways, and in his shameless use of the radio. This means that from morning till night, in the midst of our work as in our recreation, we live constantly in an atmosphere of intellectual shoddiness. Every popular prejudice and vulgar conceit is played upon and pandered to in the interests of salesmanship. Everywhere material interests and herd opinion are strengthened to the loss of personal independence. The tendency is to think and speak for effect rather than out of one's inner life. There is a marked decline the ability to play with ideas, or to live the spiritual life for its own sake. Hence a decline in civilization of interest, humor and urbanity. Advertising tends to make mechanized barbarians of us all.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), pp. 29-30

Life , People , Cars , Idea

“You kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. In the end, it does nothing. Nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

This quote was taken from the Synergy's Echoes page ( December, 1991 Houston, Texas, KLOL FM Echoes of Exposure with David Sadoff ).

World , Revenge , Change

“Worship with fulness of heart the weak memory of heaven!
It cannot trace
Either your name or your face
Nobody knows you're still living.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Great hymn of thanksgiving" [Grosser Dankchoral] (1920) from The Devotions (1922-1927); trans. Karl Neumann in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 74
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Memory , Heart

“We simply must speak to each other honestly about all these hard truths. In the words of Dr. King, 'We must learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Truth , Fools , Learning

“Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter IV
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life , Death , Faith , Tear

“One of the remarkable things about Russ Meyer's films is that they continue to live and play, long after the other work of the soft-core era has been forgotten. That is partly because of their craftsmanship, partly because of Meyer's leading ladies, and partly because of a spirit of paramilitary commitment that can be sensed as the cast and crew struggle through rugged terrain to enact their rural melodramas. But the central reason, I believe, is that Meyer is an auteur whose every frame reflects his own obsessions. Like all serious artists, he doesn't allow any space between his work and his dream.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Russ Meyer busts sleazy stereotype" Chicago Sun-Times (15 November 1985) http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/russ-meyer-busts-sleazy-stereotype

Dreams , Sense

“Living with someone always means a denial of self in SOME way and I suppose I have always known it was something I couldn't accomplish. So I've always stayed on the sidelines. Getting the pleasure vicariously. It's not wholly satisfactory, but then of course no lives are, and you know what I think about indiscriminate sex and promiscuous trade. I think it's the beginning of a long, long road to despair.”

Kenneth Williams (1926–1988) English actor and comedian

Letter, quoted in The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010.
Source: Kenneth Williams: secret loves behind the life of a tormented man, The Observer, 10 October 2010 http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/kenneth-williams-biography-christopher-stevens,

Pleasure , Sex , Way , Thinking

“The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Speech at Queens College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, Our Blood (1976).

Women , Men , Training

“The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often virtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman or lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human being may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those who live with them — like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts form and makes colour an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty standards, their low suspicions, their loveless ennui, may be making somebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876)

Love , Life , Hate , World

“Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement; and if a story is told of more than common interest, ennui is sure to have its joy in adding embellishments. If hours did not hang heavy, what would become of scandal?”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

"Ennui", p. 64
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

Truth , Joy , Dependency

“If the Jews are denied the right to live in freedom and peace, soon we will all be denied this right. If the light of Israel is extinguished, we will all face darkness. If Israel falls, the West falls.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Speech delivered in Tel Aviv in December of 2010, quoted in The Blaze: "‘Marked for Death’: Beck Interviews Anti-Islamist Dutch MP Geert Wilders" (2 May 2012) http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/05/02/beck-hosts-anti-islamist-dutch-mp-geert-wilders/
2010s

Peace , Freedom , Light

“As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether? It can only happen, I think, if each one of us recognises the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to live or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.
We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

God , War , World , Fear

“What defines a people is not race, not tradition, not geography, but the free choice of a group of human beings to live together as fellow citizens.”

Thomas G. West (1945) American academic

Source: 2000s, Vindicating the Founders (2001), p. 28

People

“In all living beings exists the self-benediction, ‘would that I were never to cease. May I live on’. And this self-benediction cannot exist in him who has not experienced the nature of death. And by this experience of a former life is inferred. This is the affliction of Love of Life, which flows by its own potency.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In pp. 104-105.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Love , Life , Death , Nature

“Surely, Shakespeare is wicked and the map a bad example
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum"
Ruins and Visions (1942)

Love , Children , Time , Sun

“My own view is that a vegetarian diet may in fact hasten the coming of Moshiach (the Messiah). The more we live as if this were the messianic age the closer we are to it.”

Rami M. Shapiro (1951) American rabbi

Reported in Judaism and Vegetarianism by Richard H. Schwartz (New York: Lantern Books, 2001), in the “ Statements of support https://archive.org/stream/JudaismAndVegetarianism#page/n3/mode/2up” section.

Age

“There is no progress toward ultimate freedom without transformation, and this is the key issue in all lives.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 5

Freedom

“I get that I’m a little bit of an anomaly in terms of a lawyer in that a lot of lawyers don’t do the things I do, aren’t interested in the things I’m interested in. What drew me to it initially was this idea of dissent online and moving protests forward to a new generation, a new way of thinking, a new philosophy, a way to redress our grievances to the government that was unique and novel, and to have them actually listen to us about the things that are important to us. Chief among them of course was the preservation of our privacies as we move forward into the digital age, into the complete ubiquity of digital technology pervading our lives.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated in The Sabu Effect: An Interview with Jay Leiderman BY RAINCOASTER on AUGUST 22, 2014 http://thecryptosphere.com/2014/08/22/the-sabu-effect-an-interview-with-jay-leiderman/

Age , Way , Idea , Thinking

“They were now as a party engaged in carrying laboriously uphill the last few columns out of the Gladstonian quarry. … Foremost among the tasks of Liberalism in the near future was the regeneration of rural life and the emancipation of the land of this country from the paralysing grip of an effete and unprofitable system. … [The reports into rural life] were startling. When they were published they would prove conclusively that there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of men, women, and children dependent upon the land in this country and engaged in cultivating it, hardworking men and women, who were living under conditions with regard to wages, to housing, as well as hours of labour—conditions which ought to make this great Empire hang its head in shame that such things could be permitted to happen in any corner of its vast dominions, let alone in this country, the centre and source of all its glory.”

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

Speech to the National Liberal Club (31 January 1913), quoted in The Times (1 February 1913), p. 8.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life , Women , Men , Children

“Enlightenment is the inner light of wisdom that is permanently free from all mistaken appearance, and whose function is to bestow mental peace upon each and every living being every day.”

Kelsang Gyatso (1931) Tibetan writer and lama

Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom (2011)

Wisdom , Peace , Light , Appearance

“(The) pattern of consumption is markedly more equal than in Britain. ‘Prestige-goods’ are widely distributed, and there is less conspicuous contrast between the standard of living of different income-groups. To take the most obvious example, almost every family owns a car; and this is significant not only because a car is the most conspicuous of all consumption goods, but also because universal car-ownership leads to the universal consumption of other conspicuous or semi-luxury goods – holidays, hotels, middle-class habits of shopping, etc. But the lack of external class-distinctions can be observed in many other spheres: e. g. clothes, eating-habits, drug-stores, the ownership of consumer durables, and so on.”

Anthony Crosland book The Future of Socialism

The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland.
The Future of Socialism (1956)

Family , Cars , Universe , Holiday

“GG Allin: If you think I'm into this for the money you're dead wrong because I'm not doing this for the money. I'm doing it because it lives inside of me.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Money , Thinking , Dead

“It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition … This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Will-Making"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

People , Stupidity , Disappointment , Exercises

“The fundamental values of a true community are elsewhere: in love, poetry, disinterested thought, the free use of the imagination, the pursuit of non-utilitarian activities, the production of non-profitmaking goods, the employment of non-consumable wealth - here are the sustaining values of a living culture.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Faith for Living (1940)

Love , Imagination , Communication , Wealth

“I kinda live where I find myself.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

The Rolling Stone Interview: Bob Dylan http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-bob-dylan-19840621 (21 June 1984)

“From the moment when the workers of our country and of Russia began to struggle bravely against the Czarist Government and the capitalist exploiters, we notice more and more often that the priests, in their sermons, come out against the workers who are struggling. It is with extraordinary vigour that the clergy fight against the socialists and try by all means to belittle them in the eyes of the workers. The believers who go to church on Sundays and festivals are compelled, more and more often, to listen to a violent political speech, a real indictment of Socialism, instead of hearing a sermon and obtaining religious consolation there. Instead of comforting the people, who are full of cares and wearied by their hard lives, who go to church with faith in Christianity, the priests fulminate against the workers who are on strike, and against the opponents of the government; further, they exhort them to bear poverty and oppression with humility and patience. They turn the church and the pulpit into a place of political propaganda.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Socialism and the Churches (1905)

People , Faith , Fight , Patience

“When the economy is in a depression, scarcity ceases to rule. Productive resources sit idle, so that it is possible to have more of some things without having less of others; free lunches are all around. As a result, all the usual rules of economics are stood on their head; we enter a looking-glass world in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly. Thrift hurts our future prospects; sound money makes us poorer. Moreover, that's the kind of world we have been living in for the past several years, which means that it is a kind of world that students should understand. […] Depression economics is marked by paradoxes, in which seemingly virtuous actions have perverse, harmful effects. Two paradoxes in particular stand out: the paradox of thrift, in which the attempt to save more actually leads to the nation as a whole saving less, and the less-well-known paradox of flexibility, in which the willingness of workers to protect their jobs by accepting lower wages actually reduces total employment. […] In times of depression, the rules are different. Conventionally sound policy – balanced budgets, a firm commitment to price stability – helps to keep the economy depressed. Once again, this is not normal. Most of the time we are not in a depression. But sometimes we are – and 2013, when this chapter was written, was one of those times.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

“Depressions are Different”, in Robert M. Solow, ed. Economics for the Curious: Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates. 2014.

Money , World , Understanding , Time

“Man cannot pretend to be higher in ethics, spirituality, advancement, or civilization than other creatures and at the same time live by lower standards than the vulture or hyena … The Pillars of Ahimsa indisputably represent the clearest, surest path out of the jungle, and toward the attainment of that highly desirable goal.”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics

Out of the Jungle (1967); as quoted in Victoria Moran, Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism (Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1985), p. 32.

Time

“Canadian federalism is more than a form of government. It's also a system of values that allows different people in diverse communities to live and work together in harmony for the good of all.”

Jean Chrétien (1934) 20th Prime Minister of Canada

Source: My Years As Prime Minister (2007), Chapter Five, The Phony War, p. 115

People , Communication

“All moral doctrine, all practical suggestions about how we ought to live, depend on some belief about what human nature is like.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).

Nature , Dependency

“Any enjoyment or profit we get from life, we get Now; to kill Now is to abridge our own lives.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Life

“Your virtuous living is your enemy's best and cheapest weapon”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Sketchbook 1946-1949

“On what must an elite be founded? a) Purity of soul. b) Capacity of work and creativity. c) Bravery. d) Tough living and permanent warring against difficulties facing the nation. e) Poverty, namely voluntary renunciation of amassing a fortune. f) Faith in God. g) Love.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

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

Love , God , War , Faith

“Miliband has acted strategically in leading the changes required in the three areas over which he has control: party organisation, the policy review, and his own leadership. In party terms, there is a far stronger emphasis on leadership development, and a greater role for organisers in strengthening and brokering the relationships necessary to re-establish Labour as a vital political force in people's daily lives. This is a neglected tradition, but the old bones are beginning to walk again. And it is not just an effective ground game: organising aligns campaigning with a better political position.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The Guardian, What Labour Must Do Next https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/ed-miliband-right-to-ignore-blair-centre-transform

People , Game , Change

“When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 18, 1893)
Letters

World , Understanding

“Until the age of twelve, then, I only lived on bread, milk-food, vegetables, and fruit. My health was not less robust on this account, nor my growth less rapid, and it was to this diet, perhaps, that I was indebted for that purity of feature, that exquisite sensibility of feeling, and that serene gentleness of humor and character which I had preserved up to that period.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book IV, Note VIII, p. 61
Les confidences (1849)

Health , Age , Food , Feeling

“The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?””

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light

Life , People , Pleasure , Way

“Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Rise & Fall of Society (1959), p. 56

Men

“The very first right of every animal is the right to live. As you cannot give life to a dead creature, you do not have the right to take life away from a living one.”

Dada Vaswani (1918–2018) Spiritual leader

Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/hinduism/2005/06/the-world-needs-love.aspx

Life , Animals , Dead

“I am descended from Irish immigrants. A century ago, the Irish knew well how American society—and law enforcement—viewed them: as drunks, ruffians, and criminals. Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicles we use to transport groups of prisoners. It is, after all, the “paddy wagon.””

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Law

“Biologically, life is not maintenance or restoration of equilibrium but is essentially maintenance of disequilibria, as the doctrine of the organism as open system reveals. Reaching equilibrium means death and consequent decay. Psychologically, behaviour not only tends to release tensions but also builds up tensions; if this stops, the patient is a decaying mental corpse in the same way a living organism becomes a body in decay when tensions and forces keeping it from equilibrium have stopped.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 8. The System Concept in the Sciences of man, p. 191

Life , Death , Way

“Donald Trump's political rivals look at the price exacted by a Muslim like Syed Farouk and his bride in the aggregate. To a politician, 14 lives in 322 million is a small price to pay for 'our freedoms.' Fourteen dead in San Bernardino is not a steep price to pay for unfettered immigration from Islamic countries, peddled politically as 'our values,' 'our tolerance,' 'our greatness.' This callous calculus is second nature to neoconservative politicians like Lindsey Graham or Darth Vader Cheney. Not to Trump.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"No Wonder the Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity," http://www.unz.com/imercer/no-wonder-the-pols-think-businessman-trumps-crazy-he-understands-scarcity/ The Unz Review, December 11, 2015.
2010s, 2015

Nature , Freedom , Dead , Country

“What guides us is children's response, their joy in learning to dance, to sing, to live together. It should be a guide to the whole world.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Tessa Souter Anything I Can Do... You Can Do Better: How to unlock your creative dreams and change your life http://books.google.co.in/books?id=GJzWPzwI79kC&pg=PA156, Random House, 31 July 2011, p. 156

Children , World , Learning , Singing

“The clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: first, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could be explained by the Noachian deluge.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 27
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Question , Learning

“I have been outflanked by the culture. I am now seen as a drawling Oxonian, and a genetic elitist, who took over the family firm. People subconsciously think that I was born in 1922, wrote Lucky Jim when I was 7, and will live for at least a century. This feels odd to me, because my father was a "angry young man" and helped democratize the British novel. I'm not a toff. I'm a yob.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Off the Page: Martin Amis" (2003)

People , Family , Feeling , Thinking

“Another example — maybe a better one, in a way — was when it was confirmed that Michael Jackson was going to marry Elvis Presley's daughter. [loud, game-show buzzer noise] A good friend of mine in the States faxed me, and he simply … he said, "This makes your job more difficult." And I knew exactly, I knew exactly what he meant. 'Cos something … a scenario that seemed to belong to the universe of the late Terry Southern, was suddenly, suddenly real. It's that truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

No Maps for These Territories (2000)

Truth , Way , Game , Thinking

“On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library. It'd take a week to go into the whole thing, all the details. So I'll just give the main point. On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Home , Birthday

“While I expected serious, rigorous evaluation of my work, I was totally unprepared for the hostility and contempt shown me by women whom I did not and do not see as enemies. Despite their responses I share with them an ongoing commitment to feminist struggle. To me this does not mean that we must approach feminism from the same perspective. It does mean we have a basis for communication, that our political commitments should lead us to talk and struggle together. Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive confrontation. Were it not for the overwhelmingly positive responses to the book from black women who felt it compelled them to either re-think or think for the first time about the impact of sexism on our lives and the importance of feminist movement, I might have become terribly disheartened and disillusioned. Thanks to them and many other women and men this book was not written in isolation. … Such encouragement renews my commitment to feminist politics and strengthens my conviction that the value of feminist writing must be determined not only by the way a work is received among feminist activists but by the extent to which it draws women and men who are outside feminist struggle inside.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

Women , Men , Hostility , Books

“Generous development of old age insurance through nationalisation of the life-annuity system. To every needy German national comrade an adequate pension will be guaranteed from a certain age or in the case of a premature occurrence of permanent inability to earn a living.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 55

Life , Age

“We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. What we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people's lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Source: The Graduate Review (1980)

Love , Life , People , World

“Ron Paul: What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. Today, this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people… As long as we live beyond our means we are destined to live beneath our means. And we have lived beyond our means because we are financing a foreign policy that is so extravagant and beyond what we can control, as well as the spending here at home. And we're depending on the creation of money out of thin air, which is nothing more than debasement of the currency. It's counterfeit… So, if you want a healthy economy, you have to study monetary theory and figure out why it is that we're suffering. And everybody doesn't suffer equally, or this wouldn't be so bad. It's always the poor people -- those who are on retired incomes -- that suffer the most. But the politicians and those who get to use the money first, like the military industrial complex, they make a lot of money and they benefit from it.
John McCain: Everybody is paying taxes and wealth creates wealth. And the fact is that I would commend to your reading, Ron, "Wealth of Nations," because that's what this is all about. A vibrant economy creates wealth. People pay taxes. Revenues are at an all time high.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

GOP debate, Dearborn, Michigan, October 9, 2007 http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/NEWS02/71009073
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , People , Home , Study

“Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The River Duddon, sonnet 34 - Afterthought, l. 10 (1820).

Future

“I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provide blessed relief from our continual needy attempts to change our world in magic deed or endless thought. Meaningless sound, which welove against the anxiety of action, of pattern-making, of seeking to comprehend and change. As soon as we picked up someting and used it for a purpose, we were both made and damned. Tool-making gave us the world, and we lost our minds.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Epilogue - Cannon Beach
The Lonely Dead (2004)

World , Understanding , Tree , Change

“The poor idiot is a living testimonial to the fact that everything takes longer and costs more. Even magic can’t get you around that.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 91 (p. 250)

“In what time does man live? The thinkers have always known that he does not live in any time at all. The immortality of thoughts and deeds banishes him to a timeless realm at whose heart an inscrutable death lies in wait. … Devoured by the countless demands of the moment, time slipped away from him; the medium in which the pure melody of his youth would swell was destroyed. The fulfilled tranquility in which his late maturity would ripen was stolen from him. It was purloined by everyday reality, which, with its events, chance occurrences, and obligations, disrupted the myriad opportunities of youthful time, immortal time. … From day to day, second to second, the self preserves itself, clinging to that instrument: time, the instrument that it was supposed to play.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

"The Metaphysics of Youth," in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (1996), pp. 10-11

Death , Youth , Reality , Chance

“In the movement of the proteron te phusei may be found the heart of thought, that which remains veiled in what thought says and which speaking obeys as some secret command. But already, when it speaks, thought no longer speaks what moves it. It no longer retains that emotion even as a fault of speech, as a dark night out of which it would expect to burst forth. Thought excludes the heart that moves it. That which makes thought live is spoiled, set outside of it. But it does not know this.”

Luce Irigaray (1930) feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist

Sexes et Parentés (1987), as translated by G. Gill, Sexes and Genealogies (1993), p. 49

Secret , Heart , Night

“This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying "Boo!" Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian, it's Halloween.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

The on-air statement he gave at the end of "The War of the Worlds" broadcast, October 30, 1938.

War , World , Hope , Business

“If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can't do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey his father?”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Betrayal

“Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson http://www.4literature.net/William_Cullen_Bryant/Scene_on_the_Banks_of_the_Hudson/, st. 3 (1828)

Love , Flowers

“And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister [Sophie], my grandfather, my father [who died in 1889, when Munch was in France]... Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their laughter disturbs me, tortures me.... my daily walk round the old castle becomes shorter and shorter, it tires me more and more to take walks. The fire in the fireplace is my only friend – the time I spend sitting in front of the fireplace gets longer and longer.... at its worst I lean my head against the fireplace overwhelmed by the sudden urge – Kill yourself and then it’s all over. Why live? I light the candle – my huge shadow springs across half the wall, clear up to the ceiling and in the mirror over the fireplace I see the face of my own ghost.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

a note from Saint Cloud, 1898; as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 115
1896 - 1930

Spring , Sister , Laughter , Light

“Below the highest sphere four Regents sit
Who rule our world, and under them are zones
Nearer, but high, where saintliest spirits dead
Wait thrice ten thousand years, then live again;
And on Lord Buddha, waiting in that sky,
Came for our sakes the five sure signs of birth
So that the Devas knew the signs, and said
"Buddha will go again to help the World."
"Yea!" spake He, "now I go to help the World.
This last of many times; for birth and death
End hence for me and those who learn my Law.
I will go down among the Sakyas,
Under the southward snows of Himalay,
Where pious people live and a just King."”

Edwin Arnold book The Light of Asia

Book The First.
The Light of Asia (1879)

Death , People , World , Law

“Some young men could not afford to marry or were statutorily forbidden to do so, and then their visits to Japanese brothels engendered guilt as well as VD. The official attitude to taking brown mistresses was always ambivalent. It let the side down, but a sleeping dictionary was the only way to learn the language. Mr Butcher is good on all this, and he gives such tables as one headed ‘Ethnicity of Women from whom European Men Treated at the Sultan Street Clinic Contracted Venereal Disease, 1927-1931.’ The girls of Siam were the great infectresses, but the Malays came a close second. The Japanese, who had regular medical inspections and lived in brothels cleaner than hotels, were down with the Eurasians to 0.4% in 1931. This damnable sex, by no means to be tamed by quinine or cricket. Guilt guilt guilt….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Women , Men , Disease , Sex

“To those who doubt and deny the preponderance of good over evil in human nature; who think the few are made to rule, and the many to serve; who put rank above brotherhood, and race above humanity; who attach more importance to ancient forms than to the living realities of the present; who worship power in whatever hands it may be lodged and by whatever means it may have been obtained; our government is a mountain of sin, and, what is worse, it seems confirmed in its transgressions. One of the latest and most potent European prophets, one who felt himself called upon for a special deliverance concerning us and our destiny as a nation, was the late Thomas Carlyle. He described us as rushing to ruin, and when we may expect to reach the terrible end, our gloomy prophet, enveloped in the fogs of London, has not been pleased to tell us. Warning and advice from any quarter are not to be despised, and especially not from one so eminent as Mr. Carlyle; and yet Americans will find it hard to heed even men like him, while the animus is so apparent, bitter and perverse.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , Mountain , Nature , Thinking

“The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.”

Willa Cather One of Ours

One of Ours (1922), Bk. II, Ch. 6

Dead

“For all in whose hearts he still lives- a watchman of honor who never sleeps.”

William Manchester book The Death of a President

Dedication
The Death of a President (1967)

Sleep , Heart

“The days of the future stand in front of us
Like a line of candles all alight —
Golden and warm and lively little candles.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

"Candles" [Κεριά], as translated by Manolis, in Constantine P. Cavafy: Poems (2008) edited by George Amabile

Future

“The sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacreous, it was an opal. No, it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned colouring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter I: The Earth; 2. Earth Among the Stars (p. 14)

Love , Beauty , Feeling

“And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God who sits on the throne and said: “Amen! Praise Jah!” Also, a voice came from the throne and said: “Be praising our God, all you his slaves, who fear him, the small ones and the great.””

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Revelation 19: 4-5 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/revelation/19/, NWT
Revelation

God , Fear

“Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter V

People , Effort

“It's rare that the sequel to a good movie lives up to expectations. Such is the case with Die Hard 2, the somewhat-muddled but still entertaining return of Bruce Willis' John McClane. Fortunately, the original Die Hard was good enough that there's room for the second installment to be enjoyable while still not matching the pace or possessing the flair of its predecessor.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/d/die_hard2.html of Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990).
Three-and-a-half star reviews

“The Alaska Constitution is my bible in governing. I try to keep it so simple by reading the thing and believing in it and living it. It's providential. Some of the crafters of the Constitution are still alive. They're my mentors, my advisers. I get to meet with these folks and ask, "What did you mean by this?" And it makes so much sense.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/vassilaros/s_585718.html by Dimitri Vassilaros for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, conducted
2008

Sense , Reading

“One who doesn’t know law thinks one lives in a jungle. One who knows law knows one lives in a jungle.”

Tarik Gunersel (1953) Turkish actor

Oluşmak (To Become) Aphorisms (Pan Publishing House, Istanbul, 2011)

Law , Thinking

“Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.”

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

Source: 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis speech

World , Peace , Communication , Change

“Some journalists are just motivated by their own sense of what they want to say or what they feel comfortable saying or writing about. In '77, I was on the cover of Time. The same week I had a big story in Newsweek. In one of the magazines it says I live alone, and the other magazine said I live with Jane Wagner. Unless you were so really adamantly out, and had made some declaration at some press conference, people back then didn't write about your relationship.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Metro Weekly interview (2006)

People , Feeling , Motivation , Sense

“I respect the view of every Scot and every person living in Scotland. And I do so with a clear sense of my own responsibility to lead change and to argue for what I believe is in the Scottish national interest.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

St Andrew's Day (November 30, 2007)

Sense , Change , Personality

“When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbi and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Girl , Question , Waiting

“One guy said, "I'm from Saudi Arabia and I'm proud of my country." Well, good for you, but forgive me for asking why. If you live in Saudi Arabia, what on Earth have you got to be proud of? If you couldn't dig money straight out of the ground, you'd all be starving. The only thing your country has to offer the world is oil. Well, it's not the only thing, but we don't need any sand, and we're all up to here with Jihad, thanks very much.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Hello Saudi Arabia" (2 May 2012) https://youtube.com/watch?v=RnLTHHpKl60
2012

Money , World , Guy , Forgiveness

“Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

"Putting First Things First", Foreign Affairs (January 1960)

Dreams , Cars , Freedom

“I know the reason of being born on this world and the happiness of being born and living on this world.”

Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer

"For Fruits Basket", Siki
Lyrics

World , Happiness

“The existence of the Zionist regime is tantamount to imposition of an unending and unrestrained threat so that none of the nations and Islamic countries of the region and beyond can feel secure from its threat. The closer these nations are to the epicenter of this threat, the more threatened they feel. The people of Palestine are at the very core of such a threat. They have not been able to spend a day with peace of mind for the past sixty years. Three generations of sons and daughters of Palestinians have lived and are presently living under these circumstances. The peoples of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the entire Middle East are essentially under similar situation.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2006, 2006 International Qods Conference address

People , Peace , Feeling , Past

“[T]he ideal of the rugged individual opening up the American West is still applied as an essential truth to ten million citizens living in the small area of New York City, as if ten million bulls should and could be squeezed into a china shop.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Truth

“It [thought] is a mechanical thing and can solve only mechanical problems. But you want to use it to understand something living; that is the problem. It is not intended for that. Human problems are something living. You cannot use thinking to solve those problems.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Stopped in Our Tracks, Book Two: Excerpts from U.G.'s Dialogues (2005) by K. Chandrasekhar

Understanding , Problem , Thinking

“Shōnen Jump: Several readers have asked if Namekians are plants. Of course, based on their names, they seem to be slugs… but they are green, they have a strange method of reproduction, and they live on water.”

Akira Toriyama (1955) manga artist and video game character designer

Interview with Shōnen Jump

Water

“You know sometimes I sit and wonder
Just how this world would be
If we had all the people laughing
And everybody living in harmony.
We'd have to say se la se la.
Talking to the people se la, se la.”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Se La, co-written with Greg Phillinganes.
Song lyrics, Dancing on the Ceiling (1986)

People , World

“The artist lives only day by day, and is the recipient of the things that surround him; he transposes sensations from outside, according to what the fate reserves him, but transforms them relentlessly and tenaciously, in a manner determined by him alone.”

Odilon Redon (1840–1916) French painter

in Confidences of an artist (1894) published posthumously in Paris in 1922 as part of the book of memoirs To himself; as quoted by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925: p. 82

Fate

“We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution, and the powers of the atom are about to be harnessed for ever greater production. We live at a time when even the ancient spectre of hunger is vanishing. This is the age of abundance! Never in history has there been such an opportunity to show what we can do to improve the quality of living now that the old, terrible, grinding anxieties of daily bread, of shelter and raiment are disappearing.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Statement at the Democratic National Convention, as quoted in Best Quotes of '54, '55, '56 (1957) edited by James Beasley Simpson, p. 58; later published in The New America (1957), p. 7

Hunger , Age , History , Time