Quotes about living
page 67

“I don't involve myself in politics, my daily life is devoted to charity and social work. Apart from that I help my loved ones to live better, that's true. I never wanted to harm anyone. I deplore the fact that people have forgotten that for 23 years their lives improved greatly … and Tunisia became a modern country. I hope that my compatriots will render me justice by remembering the journey we undertook together. I hope that in the twilight of my life I will retain my honour.”

Leila Ben Ali (1956) Wife of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

1 July, 2012. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=53148

Love, Life, People, Justice

“We truly to think that the world doth even now be old; and this to have seemed a true thing unto every age that ever did live.”

William Hope Hodgson book The Night Land

Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 13

Age, World, Thinking

“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Life, Art, Time

“Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, First Inaugural Address (1933)

Faith, Confidence

“The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal in the earth. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales. Who laid the foundations of the mountains? Was it the landlord? And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll—for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks—eight millions a year.”

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

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 153-154.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men, Way, Mountain

“Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; DLXXV
Lacon (1820)

Men, Justice, Sense

“To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that?
That's how most men live, and don't even know it.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Men, Dead

“Everything lives and perishes through magnetism; one thing affects another one, even at great distances, and its "congenitals" may be influenced to health and disease by the power of this sympathy, at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening space.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Health, Disease, Time

“The Athenians made mistakes. Which governmental system has not? The familiar game of condemning Athens for not having lived to some ideal of perfection is a stultifying approach.”

Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 33

Game, Perfection

“I live in Fresno which is a death sentence already.”

John Dolan (1955) American journalist

Gary Brecher at exile.ru/authors, 2002

Death

“Resentments are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my saber. (The TMZ Show)”

Charlie Sheen (1965) American film and television actor

Quote summary in The Los Angeles Times (2011)

“I shall sacrifice myself that Lebanon may live.”

Youssef Bey Karam (1823–1889) Lebanese rebel

As quoted in "The Maronites and Lebanon, A Brief History" at Phoenicia.org http://phoenicia.org/maronites.html

“[Thanatopsis] was written in 1817, when Bryant was 23. Had he died then, the world would have thought it had lost a great poet. But he lived on.”

Bergen Evans (1904–1978) American lexicographer

Bergen Evans, in his Dictionary of Quotations

World

“The ways we miss our lives are life.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"A Girl in a Library," line 92
The Seven-League Crutches (1951)

Life, Way

“The salient mystery of Dark Ages sets the stage for mass amnesia. People living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. How and why can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture that it becomes vitally lost?”

Jane Jacobs book Dark Age Ahead

Source: Dark Age Ahead (2004), Chapter One, The Hazard, p. 4

People, Age

“I do so many convention appearances and have a lot of face-to-face interaction with the fans. They tell me that they prefer seeing a live human being in a costume. Humans like to watch other humans, period, whether it’s in makeup or not. They can appreciate the artwork that goes into computer graphics—it’s an art form unto itself, getting better all the time—but there’s something connectable when you actually have a live person. The true fanboys actually want to connect with another person, that’s what I’m told. Me personally, as an audience member, I can appreciate the artistry of both types. When it’s completely rendered by an artist with no live performers involved, sometimes it can look like you’re watching a video game. That takes you out of the film for just a second. What I love about the medium is when they can be combined.”

Doug Jones (actor)

Doug Jones, Unmasked https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/doug-jones-falling-skies (July 30, 2013)

Love, Art, Game, Appearance

“It is admirable to consider how many Millions of People come into, and go out of the World, Ignorant of themselves, and of the World they have lived in.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

1
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

People, World

“I've never really lived a conventional life, so I think it's quite foolish for me or anyone else to start thinking that I am going to start making conventional choices.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Misses "Certain Things" About Being Married, OK!, 2012-01-12 http://www.okmagazine.com/news/madonna-misses-certain-things-about-being-married,

Life, Thinking

“People have asked me to speak on being sick, and even specifically on chronic pain diseases. … And I don't know what to tell you, except this — this is something I have discovered. Your body is fighting to live. This is in your very blood, in your heart, in your bones — your body is trying to live, it's fighting to live — and don't give up without a fight, you know? Do what you can do. Figure something out. If you have to, fight with people to get help — whatever it is, but don't give up without a fight. You remember — mark my words — you are here — you should be here — stay.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Youtube Live? Album?" (3 November 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWapPazv0j4

Pain, People, Disease, Help

“For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War… A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

Britain - a caste society?, JohannHari.com, January 29, 2006, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=789,

Life, War, People, World

“While our common country has been afflicted, and still suffers, from the greatest calamity a people can experience, our own State has been visited by scourges which, though relieved from the horrors of civil war, has resulted in the loss of immense quantities of property, the depriving of many of our citizens of their homes, or the means of support, and seriously crippling, for the present, the Agricultural interests of the State. Indeed, the high waters of December last did more than destroy property, and desolate homes; and many human lives were lost, while attempting to escape the floods, or generously assisting to relieve others from their perils.”

John Whiteaker (1820–1902) American politician

John Whiteaker (September 8, 1862). Governor John Whiteaker - Governor's Message, 1862 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/RecordView/6777832. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: House and Senate Journal, Salem, Oregon, Henry L. Pittock, State Printer, 1862: Proceedings of the House, Appendix to the House Journal, Page 3.

War, People, Home, Support

“Comics day came and went. Another shoes day came and went. And another comics day followed that — the typical production and consumption cycles that help us survice our dismal, meaningless little lives.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Shoe, Help

“Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

Life

“Through the gamut of life we struggled for control, for a means to fashion the world around us, an eternal, hopeless hunt for the privilege of being able to predict the shape of our lives.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 16 (p. 457)

Life, World, Fashion

“It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Guy, Star, Thinking, Universe

“What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded and, finally, they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it…. The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.”

Neal Stephenson book The Big U

Sarah
The Big U (1984)

People, Fear, School, Way

“In addition to not looking too dangerous to ourselves, we must not look too dangerous to our allies. This problem has many similarities with the problem of not looking too dangerous to ourselves, with one important addition—our allies must believe that being allied to us actually increases their security. Very few of our allies feel that they could survive a general war—even one fought without the use of Doomsday Machines. Therefore, to the extent that we try to use the threat of a general war to deter the minor provocations that are almost bound to occur anyway, then no matter how credible we try to make this threat, our allies will eventually find the protection unreliable or disadvantageous to them. If credible, the threat is too dangerous to be lived with. If incredible, the lack of credibility itself will make the defense seem unreliable. Therefore, in the long run the West will need "safe-looking" limited war forces to handle minor and moderate provocations. It will most likely be necessary for the U. S. to make a major contribution to such forces and to take the lead in their creation, even though there are cases where the introduction of credible and competent-looking limited war forces will make some of our allies apprehensive—at least in the short run. They will worry because such forces make the possibility of small wars seem more real, but this seems to be another case where one cannot eat his cake and have it.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

War, Feeling, Problem

“The past is the past," Harry goes on, "you got to live in the present. … It's the only way to think. When you're my age, you'll see it. At my age if you carried all the misery you've seen on your back you'd never get up in the morning.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

Age, Way, Thinking, Past

“He could not live again in Paris. It had seemed better then only because he had been younger, and had not yet known contentment.”

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XIX (p. 341)

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore (2002)

World, Change, Time

“Given the way these mutants treat women in their societies, the women are probably better off in U. S. custody. They treat women like furniture in those countries. If I was a woman, I think I’d rather be in an American jail cell than I would be living with one of those-whatever they are over there.”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

On the subject of terrorist demands for the release of two female scientists from an Iraqi prison, September 23, 2004.
[American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Jack Cafferty In His Own Words, 18 November 2004, http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2386]
2004

Women, Way, Thinking, Country

“In my earlier days I had read the biography of Sri Ramakrishna written by Romain Rolland. I had read the talk which Vivekananda had delivered long ago about "My Master". I had visited Sri Ramakrishna's room at Dakshineshwar. I had also seen a Bengali film on his life. But what brought me into an intimate and living contact with this great mystic and bhakta and shakta and advaitin, was his Kathamrita. He had not used a single abstraction nor discussed any of the problems which pass as philosophy. His talks embodied expressions of a concrete consciousness which had dropped every trace of the dirt and dross and inertia which characterise what is known as normal human consciousness. The metaphors which sprang spontaneously from this purified consciousness were matchless in their aptness and illumined in a few words the knotted problems which many voluminous works had failed to solve. I was now having my first intimations of immortality towards which Kabir and Nanak and Sri Garibdas had inclined me earlier.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Life, Problem, Reading

“The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today … We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

"Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.

Time

“While this day was legally established many years ago as an occasion to be devoted to the memory of our country's dead, it can not but each year refresh the sentiment of respect and honor in which our country holds their living comrades. Of those great armies that maintained the long struggle from 1861 to 1865, which ranked in size with any the world had ever before seen, but a few shattered ranks now remain. The old valor yet lives. The old devotion to country, the old loyalty to the flag remain: But the youth and physical vigor which caused them to be characterized as the boys in blue are gone from these heroes of a former generation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Youth, World, Boy, Memory

“I'm living up to my extortion image, I be stalking Lenox, catching more bodies than abortion clinics”

Big L (rapper) (1974–1999) American rapper

“Honesty is the best policy; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis — in the city …”

Samuel R. Delany book The Mad Man

Source: The Mad Man (1994), p. 67; ellipses in the original

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 About

Life, People, School, Family

“I set off in yoga seventy years ago when ridicule, rejection, and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India. Indeed If I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect. At one time I was asked to become a sannyasin and renounce the world, but I declined. I wanted to live as an ordinary householder with all the trials and tribulations of life and to take my yoga practice r to average people who share my life with me the common life of work, marriage and children. I was blessed with all three…”

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.xiii

Life, Marriage, Children, People

“A great British prime minister once remarked that the people were divided into two nations, the rich and the poor, and in effect that these had no knowledge of each other. One might say the same, perhaps, of those who live in parts of the world where segregation by races is practised. But these barriers, or the reasons for them, belong to a part of our history which is fortunately passing away. There is one barrier, however, which no amount of progress or tolerance or legislation can ever diminish. I'm talking about the barrier between the attractive and the unattractive.”

Kingsley Amis book Take a Girl Like You

Source: Take a Girl Like You (1960), Ch. 17

People, World, History, Knowledge

“My husband watched it live online and I was awakened with coffee and the good news. He's my biggest fan and he was really rooting for this to happen.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

On her Primetime Emmy Award nomination, as quoted in " Vera Farmiga talks about her Emmy nomination, the next season of 'Bates Motel,' and 'The Conjuring 2' http://www.ew.com/article/2013/07/18/vera-farmiga-emmy-bates-motel-conjuring" by Clark Collis at Entertainment Weekly (July 18, 2013)

Coffee

“Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished.

Men, Nature, Memory, Time

“Play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, and let the bells ring, let the bells ring! Play music now: play us a tune on an unbroken spinet. Do not make echoes of forgotten time, do not strike music from old broken keys, do not make ghosts with faded tinklings on the yellowed board; but play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, play lively music when the instrument was new, let us see Mozart playing in the parlor, and let us hear the sound of the ladies' voices. But more than that; waken the turmoil of forgotten streets, let us hear their sounds again unmuted, and unchanged by time, throw the light of Wednesday morning on the Third Crusade, and let us see Athens on an average day.”

Thomas Wolfe book Of Time and the River

Of Time and the River (1935)

Music, Light, Time

“Live. Breathe. It is not fear that we need to live by, but joy, hope. Inside you, in your ocean, maybe it seems barren; maybe it feels as if there is no hope, no kindness, no reason for happiness. But deep within you, undeniably, something rumbles, cries out, wants to be born. Allow the joy to come forward. Allow the hope to exist.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Madrid, Spain September 1990
1990s

Happiness, Fear, Hope, Feeling

“Without doubt the most dangerous devices for active defense among the Dinosauria emerged in Triceratops. The scene has been portrayed in paintings, drawings, and illustrations hundreds of times, but it remains thrilling. Tyrannosaurus, the greatest dinosaur toreador, confronts Triceratops, the greatest set of dinosaur horns. No matchup between predator and prey has ever been more dramatic. It's somehow fitting that those two massive antagonists lived out their co-evolutionary belligerence through the very last days of the very last epoch in the Age of Dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus stood over twenty feet tall when fully erect, and a large adult was as heavy as a small elephant - five tons. No predatory dinosaur, no predatory land animal of any sort, had more powerful jaws. Withstanding a Tyrannosauruss attack required either tanklike armor – the approach taken by Ankylosaurus”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

or most powerful defensive weapons - the approach taken by Triceratops.
The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 240-241
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Age, Time, Animals, Drawing

“So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.”

Sarah Orne Jewett book The Country of the Pointed Firs

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 19

Nature

“We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily…We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, pp. 14-15.

Life, People, Mountain, Understanding

“The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not — will not be forgotten nor neglected…. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief…. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Oliver Downing (15 March 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“Happy the poet who with ease can steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix légère
Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au sévère.
Canto I, l. 75
As translated by John Dryden
The Art of Poetry (1674)
Variant: Happy who in his verse can gently steer
From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

Happiness

“Political society wants things simple. Political scientists know them to be complex… One could argue that, in part, the leftist impulse is so conspicuous among the educated and well-to-do precisely because they are exposed to more information, and are accordingly forced to choose between living with the strains of complexity, or lapsing into simplism.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

"The Schism in Black America" Public Interest (27), 1972.
Attributed

Education, Parting

“Art is not merely a decorative enhancement of our lives but a sign of our desire to live in the world fully and honestly.”

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

Governor Generals Award for Poetry, Nov. 1999.
Other

World, Art

“Abstaining from bourbon and bacon doesn't make you live longer. It just feels that way.”

Morgan Murphy (food critic) (1972) Southern writer

Source: Bourbon & Bacon (2014), p. 130

Way, Feeling

“By this time Mozart had been dead for almost fourteen years and Haydn was too weak to compose. Beethoven was unchallenged throughout Europe as the greatest living composer of instrumental music. Even more, he was generally recognized as having surpassed his famous predecessors. This, of course, did not prevent critics from greeting each new work as a disappointment after his by then acceptable achievements of the previous years.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

Music, Disappointment, Time, Dead

“Let your love flow out on all living things. These words at some level have the quality of a strapping homily. Nonetheless, they are remarkably beautiful, strung together in their honest lump-like English syllables… Let your love flow out on all living things.
But there are a couple of problems with this precept of mine. The first is, of course, that it is not mine. It springs from the universe and is the property of God, and the words have been intercepted — on the wing, so to speak — by such mediators as Lao-tzu, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and thousands upon thousands of lesser prophets, including your narrator, who heard the terrible truth of their drumming somewhere between Baltimore and Wilmington and set them down with the fury of a madman sculpting in stone.”

William Styron book Sophie's Choice

Source: Sophie's Choice (1979), Ch. 16; the italicized words being quotes of the song "Let Your Love Flow" by Larry E. Williams, as sung by The Bellamy Brothers

Love, God, Truth, Beauty

“He(Yasser Arafat) was telling me about the situation he is living in. He said that all the buildings around his residence have been destroyed and they are -- they are on fire. And he told me that there is five people have been killed and they cannot move them. And about 40 persons were injured, and they cannot transfer them to the hospital.”

Rafic Hariri (1944–2005) Lebanese businessman and politician

Speaking to CNN, about the attack on Arafat's compound, Ramallah, 29 March 2002. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0203/29/lt.12.html

People, Personality

“The sponge, whether considered as a single or compound animal, has the power to reproduce itself, and here the mystery of life is as much hidden as it is in God's highest creation. It has been stated that every sponge contains a large number of separate cells which carry on the operation of circulation and respiration, and may be likened to the heart and lungs of an animal of a higher creation. Zoologists claim that each one of these cells represents a separate animal, living in a common structure.”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar Talks on Science, Volume 1, 1899, p. 172
Nature's Miracles (1900)

Life, God, Heart, Animals

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 9–10
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Men, Children, Truth, Age

“[T]o talk about socialism as a function of practical politics means gliding past its underlying appeal. After all, there are countless other ideologies that can be similarly reduced to the desire for power expressed by certain elites or certain segments of the aggrieved masses themselves. The most obvious example is, of course, nationalism, which has more in common with socialism than is ordinarily believed. From the French Jacobins to the Italian Fascists, nationalists tend to be in favor of state-directed economics, the redistribution of wealth, and a collectivist or communal organization of society. What unites all of these movements is a sense that liberal democratic capitalism doesn’t provide a sense of social solidarity. It is too atomizing, too cut-throat, and mostly unconcerned with how we should all live together.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Communication, Sense, Past, Wealth

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Federal Court statement (1918)

Soul

“Our new little house [Kirchner moved to the Wildboden house] is a real joy to us. We shall live here comfortably and in great new order. This will really come to be a turning point of my life. Everything must be put in clear order and the little house furnished as simply and modestly as possible, while still being beautiful and intimate.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from his Diary, 1923; as quoted by Kornfield, E. W.; Stauffer, Christine E. Stauffer (1992). Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kirchner Museum Davos. Retrieved March 21, 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
1920's

Life, Beauty, Joy, Housing

“Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

Religion, Art, Literature, Problem

“The typical reaction of liberal intellectuals is to seize on the contradiction here: How can something be both wrong and right, or at least both wrong and OK, at the same time? What liberal intellectuals fail to see is that this so-called contradiction expresses the quintessence of the Machiavellian and therefore the modern, a quintessence that has been thoroughly absorbed by the man in the street. The world is ruled by necessity, says the man in the street, not by some abstract moral code. We have to do what we have to do.
If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 17

Life, People, World, Way

“Neurosis was caused by our attempt to separate physical and metaphysical levels, to set them up in opposition to each other, thus engaging in an internecine war. If it is true that we do live on several levels simultaneously- drama and action, past and present, personal and collective- we are given ways to unify them: one by religion, the other by art. Separating such levels is only necessary when they conflict, and separation is a result of conflict. Seeing how these levels can work together in harmony is the task of our contemporary writers.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

War, Religion, Art, Way

“Psychology is the science of psychic states both as to content and form, regarded from an objective standpoint, and brought in relation to the living corporeal individual.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology (1914), p. 39

Science

“We passed the Gardens and turned down Avenue de New York. There, under the embankment trees, I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming. I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of Saturday evening. Why try to renew ties which had been broken and look for paths that had been blocked off long ago? And the plump, moustachioed little man, walking beside me, hardly seemed real.”

Patrick Modiano book Missing Person

Missing Person (1978 )

Life, Dreams, Tree

“Regarding the controversial article “Society consists of people”, it is a fact that negroes or negroid, Sub-Saharan persons live in something resembling a western society only in places where order is kept by a white system of violent dominance (police, army and the justice system). It is likewise a fact that the so-called western structures start to crumble and sinking towards the typical African state of being starts immediately as blacks reach a majority or dominant position. Examples of this include post-independence Haiti and post-apartheid South Africa.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2007), published in the blog Scripta Lisäyksiä edelliseen http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/lisayksia_edelliseen.html, May 9, 2007 2005-09

People, Justice, Personality

“And that is the story of Alma,
Who knew how to receive and to give.
The body that reached her embalma'
Was one that had known how to live.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Alma"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

“It is restful to leave one's home; not because traveling does not entail varied and difficult daily actions, but because it removes our responsibilities. Except in the case of official persons, the traveler now lives for himself alone, and is no longer accountable to a community or a family clan. A foreign country is merely a spectacle; in it we no longer have the continual awareness of responsibility. All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast. Periods of rest, however, must be brief, but it is amazing to discover how a few days of travel can restore our mental freshness.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Family, Travel, Home, Communication

“We are not talking here about a federal law prohibiting the States from regulating bubble-gum advertising, or even the construction of nuclear plants. We are talking about a federal law going to the core of state sovereignty: the power to exclude. […] The Court opinion’s looming specter of inutterable horror—‘[i]f [Section] 3 of the Arizona statute were valid, every State could give itself independent authority to prosecute federal registration violations’—seems to me not so horrible and even less looming. But there has come to pass, and is with us today, the specter that Arizona and the States that support it predicted: A Federal Government that does not want to enforce the immigration laws as written, and leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws would exclude. So the issue is a stark one. Are the sovereign States at the mercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws? […] Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so. […] Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty—not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Arizona v. United States (2012) : 567 U.S. ___ (2012); decided June 25, 2012.
2010s

Law, Feeling, Fashion, Support

“I hadn’t gone into the subject of dorm living too deeply with him, not because I hesitated to probe his tender spots but because I would have been probing my own. This is called tact, and is reputed to be a virtue.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 7 (p. 97).

“Doing nothing is not the absence of a policy; it is, in fact, the adoption of one. "Neutrality" favors the side with the biggest arsenal. "Nonintervention" is a form of interference. If you will the end—and President Barack Obama has finally said that Qaddafi should indeed go—then to that extent you will the means…The immediate task is therefore to limit the amount of damage Qaddafi can do and sharply minimize the number of people he can murder. Whatever the character of the successor system turns out to be, it can hardly be worsened if we show it positive signs of friendship and solidarity…I am sure I am not alone in feeling rather queasy about being forced to watch the fires in Tripoli and Benghazi as if I were an impotent spectator. Indifference of this kind to the lives of others can have a coarsening effect. It can lower one's threshold of sympathy. If protracted unduly, it might even become brutalizing.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2011-03-07
American Inaction Favors Qaddafi
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/03/american_inaction_favors_qaddafi.html: On the 2011 Libyan civil war
2010s, 2011

Friendship, People, Feeling, Indifference

“p>Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.”

Christopher Marlowe The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2. Compare: "To shallow rivers, to whose falls / Melodious birds sings madrigals; / There will we make our peds of roses, / And a thousand fragrant posies", William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. scene i. (Sung by Evans.)

Love, Pleasure, Mountain, Bird

“What can we do? We can do much! We can inject the voice of reason into world affairs. We can mobilise all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Asia and Africa on the side of peace. Yes, we! We, the peoples of Asia and Africa, 1,400,000,000 strong, far more than half the human population of the world, we can mobilise what I have called the Moral Violence of Nations in favour of peace. We can demonstrate to the minority of the world which lives on the other continents that we, the majority are for peace, not for war, and that whatever strength we have will always be thrown on to the side of peace.”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference

War, People, World, Peace

“Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards … in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on … How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Way, Personality

“Standing outside a factory farm, the first question that comes to mind is not a moral but a practical one: Where is everybody? Where are the owners, the farmers, the livestock managers, the extra hands, anybody? I have been driving around the North Carolina countryside on a Thursday afternoon in January 2001, pulling in at random to six hog farms, and have yet to find a single farmer or any other living soul. … There are so many factory farms around here that they are easy to miss. I doubt that the average visitor just passing through even knows what they are …”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

Soul, Question

“I've come to believe that children live for the satisfaction of surprising their parents…”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Wilson Lewis, Chapter 2, p. 34
2000s, The Wedding (2003)

Children, Parent

“I am the only living witness but I must say the truth. Contrary to the opinion of the National Socialists that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever. The mass of the Jewish people were taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone so unsuspectingly to its disaster. After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing.”

Erich von dem Bach (1899–1972) German politician and SS functionary

Quoted in Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators : Essays on the Nazi Holocaust (1980) by Joel E. Dimsdale, p. 35

People, Truth

“For what purposes are we organizing this congress? Although this congress aims at electing the party leaders, adopting the party’s statute, validating the Party’s Central Committee membership so on and so forth, it only marks the stepping stones towards our goal. So what is our goal? We have to visualize the common dream which is our goal. It is a common dream that all Cambodian citizens have visualized, ―A nation in which we live in equity as its owners.”

Khem Veasna (1971) Cambodian politician

The first speech at LDP congress

Dreams

“Comrades of the 'Boys in Blue' and fellow-citizens of New York. I cannot look upon this great assemblage and these old veterans that have marched past us, and listen to the words of welcome from our comrade who has just spoken, without remembering how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it. [Applause. ] This is New York; and yonder, toward the Battery, more than a hundred years ago, a young student of Columbia College was arguing the ideas of the American Revolution and American union against the un-American loyalty to monarchy, of his college president and professors. By and by, he went into the patriot army, was placed on the staff of Washington, [cheers] to fight the battles of his country, [cheers] and while in camp, before he was twenty-one years old, upon a drum-head he wrote a letter which contained every germ of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause. ] That student, soldier, statesman, and great leader of thought, Alexander Hamilton, of New York, made this Republic glorious by his thinking, and left his lasting impress upon this the foremost State of the Union. [Applause. ] And here on this island, the scene of his early triumphs, we gather tonight, soldiers of the new war, representing the same ideas of union, having added strength and glory to the monument reared by the heroes of the Revolution.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

War, Boy, Idea, Thinking

“Badlands, you gotta live it everyday.
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay.
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Badlands"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Heart

“Tonight a pair of cooing doves under red bridal curtains,
Tomorrow a heap of bleached bones like those of yesteryear.
[…]
One moment we grieve over a short-lived friend,
The next we are ourselves overtaken by death.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 14

Death

“These same interior, enlightened persons Have the love of God before them in their inward vision Whenever they want, as drawing or calling in towards unity. For they see and feel that the Father with the Son by means of the Holy Spirit stand embraced with all the elect and are brought back with eternal love into the unity of their nature. This unity is constantly drawing or calling in all that has been born out of it naturally or by grace. And therefore these enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images (The imageless place of spirit vision). There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. Thus the created image is united threefold wise above reason to its eternal image, Which is the source of its being and of its life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love, Life, God, People

“Religion should be something you keep within the confines of your own head, and we should all recognize how pointless it is to try and make other people see the fairies that live in your brain.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/7473-Extra-Punctuation-Videogames-as-Art.2
Other Articles

People, Religion

“Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.”

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

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Death, Feeling

“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

The Art Eternal, New York Evening Mail (1918)
1910s

Secret, Dreams, Heart

“[Vegan lifestyle] just shows a different side of me that I love to express and the fact that I love my life so much and I look into it so much that I try to make everything as efficient as possible and do everything that I was put on earth to do. … Every five blocks there’s a McDonald’s, but there may be one Whole Foods every 30 blocks or every 30 miles. You’ve just got to have the dedication to where you’re like, ‘OK, I’m passing all these obstacles just to go to the goal.’ It’s just like living in the hood and somebody trying to get over the addiction of drugs. On every corner you’ve got somebody asking you, ‘Yo, you good?’ You’re just trying to make it to the bus stop and go to work and live a clean life, but somebody at every corner just keeps stopping you and saying, ‘We got this weed. We got this coke. I got that new s--t.’ It’s the same thing. You’ve just got to be strong, and you’ll fight through it and know what’s best for you.”

Bryant Jennings (1984) boxer

"Meet Bryant Jennings: The Vegan Gunning to Be Heavyweight Champion" https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2599932-meet-bryant-jennings-the-vegan-gunning-to-be-heavyweight-champion, interview with Bleacher Report (December 17, 2015).

Love, Life, Food, Strong

“Many Americans make the mistake of assuming that space research has no values here on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the wartime development of radar gave us the transistor, and all that it made possible, so research in space medicine holds the promise of substantial benefit for those of us who are earthbound. For our effort in space is not as some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to develop the earth. It is a working partner and a coproducer of these resources. And nothing makes this clearer than the fact that medicine in space is going to make our lives healthier and happier here on earth.”

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

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

Truth, Nature, Effort

“The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America (1983) by W.C, Seitz, p. 88
1970s and later

World, Way, Idea

“To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XXIII.

Imagination, Past, Sea

“They pass peaceful lives who ignore mine and thine.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 790
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Peace

“Now that I have been convicted, I want to explain my actions so that you … should understand why I chose to join the struggle for the freedom of my people…. It was during my primary school years that the bare facts concerning the realities of South African society and its discrepancies began to unfold before me. I remember a period in the early 1960s, when there was a great deal of political tension, and we often used to encounter armed police in Soweto…. I remember the humiliation to which my parents were subjected by whites in shops and in other places where we encountered them, and the poverty. All these things had their influence on my young mind … and by the time I went to Orlando West High School, I was already beginning to question the injustice of the society … and to ask why nothing was being done to change it. It is true that I was trained in the use of weapons and explosives. The basis of my training was in sabotage, which was to be aimed at institutions and not people. I did not wish to add unnecessarily to the grievous loss of human life that had already been incurred. It has been suggested that our aim was to annihilate the white people of this country; nothing could be further from the truth. The ANC is a national liberation movement committed to the liberation of all the people of South Africa, black and white, from racial fear, hatred and oppression. I am married and have one child, and would like nothing more than to have more children, and to live with my wife and children with all the people in this country. One day that might be possible - if not for me, then at least for my brothers.”

Tokyo Sexwale (1953) South African politician

Addressing the Pretoria Supreme Court judge in 1978 shortly after his conviction on a charge of high treason, as quoted in Down with Afrikaans - Oakes, D. (ed.), 1988. Illustrated history of South Africa – The real story, Reader’s Digest: Cape Town http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/down-afrikaans-oakes-d-ed1988-illustrated-history-south-africa-%26ndash%3B-real-story-reader%E2%80%99s-digest-, sahistory.org.za

Life, Children, People, Truth

“We pledge to the families of Australia that we will never make your lives harder by imposing unnecessary new taxes.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "Fact file: What Tony Abbott promised on tax" http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-01/fact-file-what-tony-abbott-promised-on-tax/5420226 ABC News, July 23, 2014 2013

Family

“The term "spirit projection " sprang to mind. Are you familiar with it? Japanese folk tales are full of this sort of thing, where the soul temporarily leaves the body and goes off a great distance to take care of some vital task and then returns to reunite with the body. The sort of vengeful spirits that populate The Tale of Genji may be something similar. The notion of the soul not just leaving the body at death but-assuming the will is strong enough -also being able to separate from the body of the living is probably an idea that took root in Japan in ancient times. Of course there's no scientific proof of this, and I hesitate to even raise the idea.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

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

Death, Soul, Idea, Strong

“Pensioners in this country receive almost the lowest pension paid in any country in Europe. They live in the coldest homes with the highest rate of death through hypothermia, and have the worst possible conditions of all pensioners. Is that because the country is so poor that it cannot afford the pension, as Conservative Members seem to be saying, or is it because the Government prefer to spend money on other things, such as Trident submarines and the nuclear missile programme? It is question of choice. If we wish to end the monstrous death rate of pensioners every winter, something else has to go. I suggest that it is the arms programme, and I suggest the nuclear arms programme at that.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/mar/06/plight-of-the-elderly in the House of Commons (6 March 1986). 1980s

Death, Money, Home, Question

“Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.”

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

Source: Earthsea Books, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Chapter 11, "The Western Mountains"

World, Dreams

“I don't eat or wear animals and I have a pretty simple reason; because they are animals. They have lives, they feel pain, and I don't think they should give those lives nor feel pain for humans. As humans, we have the ability to understand that not only do we not need to eat meat; in fact we can live healthier lives without it.”

John Norris (reporter) (1959) American reporter

“John Norris: Vegetarian Testimonial,” video ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (26 August 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LnCbT3ayvM.

Pain, Feeling, Understanding, Thinking

“You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only of principaly [sic] from human relation[ships]. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

In a letter to Russell Fritz (as known as Ron Franz), April 1992

God, Courage, Thinking, Relation ships

“Now turning to Writers in general. The urge to write is analysed as 50% Ambition, 45% Vanity and 5% something to say. This is rather drastic and later revised by a famous Author as 80% earning a living, 10% Vanity and 10% something to say. Though both may not be acceptable to all, yet using them as norms, one can classify to some extent the written effusions one reads. William Faulkner says he writes what people will believe and for that they will pay, as even a Writer has to make money.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Writers

Money, People, Reading

“We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense

“It’s really a home. It’s not like the White House because there aren’t tours of the vice president’s residence. You don’t really go there unless someone invites you to go there. It’s really a warm kind of home. It’s like a Victorian home. It has a wrap-around porch. You can sit out on the porch and feel like you have some privacy. We’re pretty private and we’ve been living on Meridian Street where it’s right there. So I think we’re kind of looking forward to having a little bit of privacy there, or as much as you can get with cameras all around.”

Karen Pence (1958) First Lady of Indiana, schoolteacher

Karen Pence focuses on moving family forward amid hoopla http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/20/karen-pence-focuses-moving-family-forward-amid-hoopla/96828962/ (January 20, 2017)

Feeling, Home, Thinking, Housing

“Bare Attention consists in a bare and exact registering of the object. This is not as easy a task as it may appear, since it is not what we normally do, except when engaged in disinterested investigation. Normally man is not concerned with a disinterested knowledge of “things as they truly are,” but with “handling” and judging them from the viewpoint of his self-interest, which may be wide or narrow, noble or low. He tacks labels to the things which form his physical and mental universe, and these labels mostly show clearly the impress of his self-interest and his limited vision. It is such an assemblage of labels in which he generally lives and which determines his actions and reactions.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 32

Knowledge, Universe, Appearance

Quotes about living page 67

Quotes about living
page 67