Quotes about living
page 98

“(…) the bottom line is that if you believe in an external reality independent of humans, then you must also believe that our physical reality is a mathematical structure. Nothing else has a baggage-free description. In other words, we all live in a gigantic mathematical object—one that’s more elaborate than a dodecahedron, and probably also more complex than objects with intimidating names such as Calabi-Yau manifolds, tensor bundles and Hilbert spaces, which appear in today’s most advanced physics theories. Everything in our world is purely mathematical—including you.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

World, Mathematics, Reality, Appearance

“Autonomy means acting on reasons I have chosen; but the lesson of cognitive science is that there is no self to do the choosing. We are far more like machines and wild animals than we imagine. But we cannot attain the amoral selflessness of wild animals, or the choiceless automatism of machines. Perhaps we can learn to live more lightly, less burdened by morality. We cannot return to a purely spontaneous existence. If humans differ from other animals, it is partly in the conflicts of their instincts. They crave security, but they are easily bored; they are peace-loving animals, but they have an itch for violence; they are drawn to thinking, but at the same time they hate and fear the unsettlement thinking brings. There is no way of life in which all these needs can be satisfied. Luckily, as the history of philosophy testifies, humans have a gift for self-deception, and thrive in ignorance of their natures.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: Animal virtues (p. 115-6)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Love, Life, Hate, Fear

“All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past.”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone (1954)
The October Country (1955)

Past, Sea

“It isn't easy living with an author. I know this because my wife has informed me of this fact.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Prologue, p. 1
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

“Simultaneousness' is a technique. Simultaneous contrast is the most up-to-date honey of this technique in this field. Simultaneous contrast is visible depth – Reality, Form, construction, representation. Depth is the new inspiration. We live in depth, we travel in depth. I’m in it. The senses are in it. And the mind is too.”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote in Delaunay's text 'Simultanism', October 1913; as cited in Futurism, ed. by Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 57
1910 - 1915

Travel, Reality, Sense

“The right hon. Gentleman [Neil Kinnock] leads a party which claims to support democracy but repudiates those miners who have voted democratically to remain at work and have done so in accordance with their union procedures. He leads a party which condemns violence in general but supports the mass picketing which inevitably ends in violence. He leads a party which has allied itself to the wreckers against the workers. The forces to which the right hon. Gentleman has lent his voice and support have no more love for parliamentary democracy than for the jobs and homes of those who oppose them. Sooner or later, when he has ceased to be of value to their purpose, they will turn on him, just as surely as they have turned on the police, on the steel workers, and on working miners and their families. There is only one word to describe the policy of the right hon. Gentleman when faced with threats, whether from home or abroad, and that word is appeasement. He will live to regret it. It is no policy for Britain.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (31 July 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105732 on the Labour Party and the Miners' Strike Second term as Prime Minister

Love, Family, Democracy, Home

“My Lord Tomnoddy is thirty-four;
The Earl can last but a few years more.
My Lord in the Peers will take his place:
Her Majesty’s councils his words will grace.
Office he’ll hold and patronage sway;
Fortunes and lives he will vote away;
And what are his qualifications?—ONE!
He’s the Earl of Fitzdotterel’s eldest son.”

Robert Barnabas Brough (1828–1860) English writer of poetry, novels, plays and journalism

My Lord Tomnoddy.

“If people really want to go, and really try all their lives, I think they will get in; for I don’t believe there are any locks on that door, or any guards at the gate. I always imagine it is as it is in the picture, where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor Christian as he comes up from the river.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Beth's views on the Celestial City, in Ch. 13 : Castles In The Air
Little Women (1868)

People, Imagination, Thinking

“You don't believe magic is possible in lives lived within traditional boundaries.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

Shampoo Planet (1992)

“The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, … Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. … The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 159

Life, Beauty, Passion, Heart

“We've become a nation of con men, living by selling double glazing to each other.”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

Men

“Some students of philosophy have unreasonably high expectations of the subject. They expect it to provide them with a complete and detailed picture of the human predicament. They think that philosophy will reveal to them the meaning of life, and explain to them every facet of our complex existences. Now, although studying philosophy can illuminate fundamental questions about our lives, it does not provide anything like a complete picture, if indeed there could be such a thing. Studying philosophy isn’t an alternative to studying art, literature, history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, politics, and science.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

Life, Art, History, Literature

“.. the longer I am here Laren, the more beautiful it becomes for me and now that I feel myself more comfortable, I can judge it better... It is touching beautiful here [ Laren ], with a delicacy of lines and lovely poetry radiates from everywhere, interior houses, roads, fields, beautiful heath and bushes, and people are of the sweetest kind to imagine... Usually after dinner we make a little walk, what I enjoy a lot. I don't know how to say it, but I would like to live here for ever.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) ..hoe langer ik hier nl:Laren (Noord-Holland) ben, hoe mooijer het voor mij wordt en nu ik een beetje meer op mijn gemak kom, kan ik er beter over oordelen.. .'t Is aandoenlijk mooi hier, van een fijnheid van lijnen en lieflijke poëzie straalt alles uit, binnenhuizen, wegen, akkers, prachtige heide en boschjes en de menschen is van het liefste soort dat te bedenken is.. .Wij maken doorgaans na den eten een loopje en wat ik geniet. Ik kan het niet zeggen maar ik zou hier altijd willen wonen.
Quote of Mauve in a letter, Juin 1882 to his wife Jet Carbentus; Mauve Archive of RKD, Den Haag
1880's

Love, People, Beauty, Feeling

“(…) I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. (…) I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simply, just try it!”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Courage
Source: "I am That." P.105.

Love, Life, World, Courage

“Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for us. It's for them. It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Foundation-l mailing list http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/017898.html (23 October 2005)

People, Girl, Knowledge

“In October 2002, I flew to California. It was the first time I had ever been in the United States, and I realized almost immediately that my preconceptions of America were completely ludicrous. I was expecting rednecks and fat people, with lots of guns, very aggressive police, and overt racism – a caricature of a caricature. In reality, of course, I saw people living perfectly well-ordered lives, jogging and drinking coffee.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 15

People, Coffee, Drink, Reality

“I always want to tell stories. But they must be stories that evolve, like our own lives. Perhaps what I seek is a new kind of story.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

“There is a great Man living in this country — a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

Note of 1944; as quoted in the Charles Ives profile at Decca Classics http://www.deccaclassics.com/music/composers/ives.html 1940s

Problem, Learning, Country

“Ultimately, I conclude that however we understand existence, what gives meaning to our lives are those things that serve our neurochemically based emotional self-interest in a sustainable way.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), pp.85-86

Way, Understanding

“My aim? Simply to inspire people and give them the most complete freedom to live their own life. No glamour, no fame, no institution - nothing. To live simply and die luminously.”

Anirvan (1896–1978) Indian Hindu philosopher

Inner yoga (antaryoga): Anirvan. (1988). New Delhi: Voice of India. From the Introduction by Ram Swarup.

Life, People, Freedom

“Countries at war lived in a state of perpetual fear.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 26 (p. 197).

War, Fear, Country

“Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape—the world or the end of it?”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Alaska Young, p. 19
Looking for Alaska (2005)

World

“If the chance ever comes to you to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will come to you once more.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Love, Chance, Time

“I bought a fur coat with my first pay cheque and it lived better than I did for years.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

Financial Times Interview (July 14, 2017)

“I've always been fascinated with the one question: Did the Germans know? … The scariest book I ever bought was Mein Kampf. I bought it because I wanted to answer that question. The answer was "Yes, they knew." I think the Germans, however, were an awful lot like we are now. We're kind of living in a denial, "no that can't really be happening, no that really—" You don't want to believe some things, but you have to. You have to actually think about them.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2000s, 2009

Books, Question, Thinking

“Great men whilst living must expect disgraces,
Dead they're ador'd—when none desire their places.”

Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) British writer

"The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated", lines 19-20, in Poems (1752), p. 87

Men, Dead

“I can't shake off the idea that after death you keep being alive. That to be dead is to live an endless nightmare.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

pg 8
Identity (1998)

Death, Idea, Dead

“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

As quoted in Business Education World, Vol. 15 (1935) p. 172.

“Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural Yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Nisarga Yoga
Source: I am That, P.173.

Love, Life, Happiness, Truth

“Until socialism is confronted with its lived, communist reality, the gravest atrocities of all recorded human life, we live in its age.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Life, Age, Reality

“The new way of thinking, spawned by the cognitive revolution, shows strong promise … Reversing previous doctrine in science, the new paradigm affirms that the world we live in is driven not solely by mindless physical forces but, more crucially, by subjective human values. Human values become the underlying key to world change.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

No page reference found; as quoted in "Search for Beliefs to Live by Consistent with Science" in Zygon, Journal of Religion & Science 26 p. 237–258
Science and the Problem of Values (1972)

World, Way, Thinking, Strong

“I will continue to work for the advancement of freedoms in Egypt and the Arab world until I drop dead. … Education itself — which can and should play an important role in the apprenticeship of tolerance and respect for other people — sometimes encourages identitarian closure, or even extremist behaviour … It is therefore vital to ensure that education does not encourage rejection of other people or identitarian closure, but that on the contrary it encourages knowledge and respect for other cultures, other religions and other ways of being and living.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Quoted in "Boutros Boutros-Ghali: The world is his oyster" by Gamal Nkrumah in Al-Ahram weekly No. 777 (10 - 18 January 2006)
2000s

People, World, Education, Religion

“poetry in some form is necessary to all—save, perhaps, to those who are content to live upon bread alone.”

Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927) American writer and poet

On poetry

“Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10−12gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 250

World

“Don't live by generalities, unless it be to act virtuously, and don't ask desire to follow precise laws, for you will have to drink tomorrow from the water you scorn today.”

Baltasar Gracián book The Art of Worldly Wisdom

No vaya por generalidades en el vivir, si ya no fuere en favor de la virtud, ni intime leyes precisas al querer, que avrá de bever mañana del agua que desprecia hoi.
Maxim 288 (p. 162)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Law, Drink, Water

“What is moral about demanding even more needless sacrifice of American lives merely to save face with the mistake of invading and occupying Iraq? Doesn't it seem awfully strange that the Iraqi government we support is an ally of the Iranians who are our declared enemies? Are we not now supporting the Iranians by propping up their allies in Iraq? If Maliki is our ally, and he has diplomatic relations with Ahmadinejad, why can't we? … Why should we not expect many of the 80,000 Sunnis we have recently armed to someday turn their weapons against us, since they, as well as the Mahdi Army, detest any and all foreign occupation? … Since no one can define winning the war, just who do we expect to surrender?”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker House Committee on Foreign Relations Hearing, April 9, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWr5Wl-mev0 2000s, 2006-2009

War, Support

“Presumably those who profess and call themselves Christians believe their religion to be in some sense true; but in what sense? … The truth of the Christian faith is the truth of a faith, or a way of life which shows itself true … for those who live it.”

Donald M. MacKinnon (1913–1994) British philosopher

"Our Contemporary Christ," in Borderland Theology and Other Essays (1968), p. 82

Life, Truth, Faith, Religion

“Mulla had lost his ring in the living room. He searched for it for a while, but since he could not find it, he went out into the yard and began to look there. His wife, who saw what he was doing, asked: “Mulla, you lost your ring in the room, why are you looking for it in the yard?” Mulla stroked his beard and said: “The room is too dark and I can’t see very well. I came out to the courtyard to look for my ring because there is much more light out here.””

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Diane L. Wilcox, Classic Tales of Mulla Nasreddin, Retold by Houman Farzad (1989), , p. 26

Search, Light

“The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skits, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list — yes, even the short skirts and the dancing — are worth dying for? The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002

Love, Life, Women, War

“But sometimes I'd feel more fulfilled making Christmas cards with the mentally ill.
I want to live and I want to love.
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the song "Frankly Mr. Shankly"
From songs

Love, Feeling, Christmas

“true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVI

Lovers, Heart

“A growing belief that behind every event lay intention—be it an evil thought in the mind of another, or the benevolent whim of a god in the sky—was perhaps inevitable in creatures with an innate understanding of causality. If you were smart enough to make multicomponent tools, you eventually came to believe in gods, the end of all causal chains. There would be costs, of course. In the future, to serve their new gods and shamans, the people would have to sacrifice much: time, wealth, even the right to have children. Sometimes they would even have to lay down their lives. But the payback was that they no longer had to be afraid of dying.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section IV (pp. 370-371)

God, Children, People, Understanding

“The great desire of this age is for a Doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that Conduct may really be the consequence of Belief.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

Vol. 1, p. 2
The Foundations of a Creed (1874-5)

Age, Knowledge

“All ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenever, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.”

Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur

Book XVIII, ch. 25
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

Lovers

“Most Nobel Laureates have carried out our work in safety, but there are others who have acted with great personal courage. None has provided more vivid reminders of the dangers of peacemaking than two of my friends, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, who gave their lives for the cause of peace in the Middle East.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)

Peace, Courage, Personality

“People tell me, "Oh, you must not advocate doing anything illegal." My answer to them is that I have been a law-abiding man all my life. I believe in law and order. I believe that we must have a society governed strictly by laws, not by mobs or by any tyrant's whims of the moment -- or by any clever tribe of alien manipulators who have gained control of our mass media. But does anyone really believe that we have a society governed by laws today? Let us remember that we are living now in the era of O. J. Simpson and Bill Clinton. We have laws on the books, and we have police and courts which have the theoretical responsibility for enforcing those laws. And when it is Politically Correct to do so, they will.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Our Revolutionary Right, 1999.
1990s, 1990

Life, People, Books, Law

“Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

See also: "Live or die, sink or swim" (George Peele, Edward I, c. 1584)
Source: Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826), p. 133

Heart

“Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Wilders: get rid of half of Koran!, Expatica, 2007-02-13, 2008-03-24, Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070514083622/http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=36456, 2000s

Feeling, Country

“Social democrats will not lead European societies into socialism. Even if workers would prefer to live under socialism, the process of transition must lead to a crisis before socialism could be organized.”

Adam Przeworski (1940) Polish-American academic

Capitalism and social democracy (1985), Ch 1. Social Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon

“Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

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

Remarks on the death of Osama bin Laden, May 5, 2011, The Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2011 http://web.archive.org/web/20110505081437/http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-death-obama-george-w-bush.html, 2010s, 2011

Love, Women, Men, People

“I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.”

Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American artist

As quoted in her obituary in The New York Times (14 December 1961) http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0907.html

People, Painting, Forgetting

“It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don't, our lives get made up for us by other people.”

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

The Operating Instructions in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)

People, Imagination, Learning

“As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 540.

Men, Truth, Faith, Religion

“But I believe that God is overhead
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.”

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905) Children's writer, novelist, poet, editor

The Two Mysteries (1904).

Life, Death, God, Dead

“All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing. Scientific intellect thinks here in terms of natural laws of necessary causality; mythico-poetic imagination perceives an organic, living connection; philosophic reason contemplates an absolute One. But on a more essential level, a system of circuminsession has to be seen here, according to which, on the field of Śūnyatā, all things are in a process of becoming master and servant to one another. In this system, each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself. Its being is illusion in its truth and truth in its illusion. This may sound strange the first time one hears it, but in fact it enables us for the first time to conceive of a force by virtue of which all things are gathered together and brought into relationship with one another, a force which, since ancient times, has gone by the name of "nature"”

Keiji Nishitani book Religion and Nothingness

physis
Source: Religion and Nothingness (1983), p. 149

Truth, World, Law, Way

“when a fool fails he says I was unlucky, when a wise man fails he says what a fool I had been. Song "If I was a Cat" live version.”

Avner Strauss (1954) Israeli musician

2003 Blues Festival

Fools, Cats

“We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter III, "Liberty", p. 316.

World, Animals

“The Catholic Church’s job is to call people to sanctity and to equip them for living saintly lives. Its mission is not to produce nice people, or people with hearts of gold, or people with good intentions; its mission is to produce saints, people of heroic virtue…To dial down the demands because they are hard, and most people have a hard time realizing them, is to compromise the very meaning and purpose of the Church. However, here’s the flip side. The Catholic Church couples its extraordinary moral demand with an extraordinarily lenient penitential system. The Church mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Barron, Bishop Robert. To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age (p. 78). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

God, People, Forgiveness, Understanding

“I was smart enough to know it would probably make me a salable item for the paparazzi. I knew I’d have to move to a home that had a gate. But that pearl of possibility that lives in your heart when you meet somebody you want to know more about has such a different molecular density than everything else that you have to pursue it.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

On deciding to date Jennifer Aniston (February 10, 2010), "John Mayer: Playboy Interview" http://www.playboy.com/articles/john-mayer-playboy-interview/index.html?page=1 Playboy. Retrieved February 10, 2010.

Home, Heart

“Anything that lives forever gets bored.”

Tina Connolly American writer

Source: Ironskin (2012), Chapter 5, “Fey Beauty” (p. 81)

“Today, in the era of the complete triumph of the spectacle, what can be reaped from the heritage of Debord? It is clear that the spectacle is language, the very communicativity or linguistic being of humans. This means that a fuller Marxian analysis should deal with the fact that capitalism (or any other name one wants to give the process that today dominated world history) was directed not only toward the expropriation of productive activity, but also and principally toward the alienation of language itself, of the very linguistic and communicative nature of humans, of that logos which one of Heraclitus' fragments identified as the Common. The extreme form of this expropriation of the Common is the spectacle, that is, the politics we live in. But this also means that in the spectacle of our own linguistic nature comes back to us inverted. This is why (precisely because what is being expropriated is the very possibility of common good) the violence of the spectacle is so destructive; but for the same reason the spectacle remains something like a positive possibility that can be used against it.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Source: The Coming Community (1993), Ch. 18 : Shekinah

World, History, Communication, Nature

“[Culture] Jammers are now mobilizing to repeat the tobacco story in many other areas of life. We’re going to take on the global automakers, the chemical companies, the food industries, the fashion corporations and the pop-culture marketers in a free-information environment …We want auto executives to feel just as squeezed and beleaguered as tobacco executives. We want them to have a hard time looking their kids in the eye and explaining exactly what they do for a living.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Cultural Jam (2000)

Life, Food, Feeling, Fashion

“Coth admitted that, say what you might as to the Manuel who had really lived, the squinting rascal did as a rule know what he was talking about.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Book Five : "Mundus Vult Decepi", Ch. XXIX : The Grumbler's Progress
The Silver Stallion (1926)

“An overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or cut; and expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man who has to face the rough and tumble of such a life. From this cause, too, the sick are neglected at sea, and, whatever sailors may be ashore, a sick man finds little sympathy or attention, forward or aft. A man, too, can have nothing peculiar or sacred on board ship; for all the nicer feelings they take pride in disregarding, both in themselves and others. A "thin-skinned" man could hardly live on shipboard. One would be torn raw unless he had the hide of an ox.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 236-237

Life, Men, Feeling, Sense

“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights — the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation — the right to breathe air as nature provided it — the right of future generations to a healthy existence?”

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

1963, American University speech

Fear, Peace, Nature, Future

“My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience " from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

God, Way, Soul, Suffering

“In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character — on integrity and tolerance toward others and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.
That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before — ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today and forever.”

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

2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Life, People, Truth, Family

“At this period of his existence, meat and blood, entrails, and all that had ever lived and breathed disgusted him as food, for an animal dies in pain just as man does, and it repelled him to be digesting death's agony.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

Source: The Abyss (1968), p. 190

Death, Pain, Food, Animals

“The focus of all life is its economy, the mode through which every living creature produces its material existence. I know no other criterion for the evaluation of social life except that of social economy. In society, just like anywhere else, the mode of production is the focus around which revolve all the modes of life: in the historical life of conscious beings, it is also the focus of all modes of consciousness.”

Moses Hess (1812–1875) German philosopher

Hess to Herzen, March 1850, Briefwechsel p. 253
Hess' Diary

Life

“I was the worst barman who ever lived. My pints of Guinness were unholy.”

Colm Tóibín (1955) Irish novelist and writer

The best holiday reads http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/17/best-holiday-reads, The Guardian (17 June 2011)

“He [Tolstoy] turned upon those who are produced by its [the modern world's] wrongs and condemned socialists, revolutionists, trade unionists, feminists, coöperators, and all reformers and menders of the present order, including charity organizationists and almoners. The most hopeless one of all in the present day world is "the good man," who lives in comfort, helps the needy, attends service, and is utterly impervious to any real religion.”

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

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 77

World, Religion, Help

“Most of the money that President Clinton and I raised has not been spent yet, and it will go into reconstruction. … This is bigger than politics; this is about saving lives, and I must confess I’m getting a huge kick out of it.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Statements to press (20 February 2005), on serving with former political rival Bill Clinton in their efforts to raise money for tsunami recovery.

Money

“Then people ask me if I'm worried about the effects of global warming on my kids. Well, obviously I love my kids and I want them to live to be a 100. So that's another 1.8 degrees. My kids’ kids? Three point six. I'll just tell them we moved to Phoenix.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

When Did Nature Get So Whiney? (12 September 2003)

Love, People

“Even eternally free people are enslaved by the process of living.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (2003)

People

“The Kantians’ conception of duty relates to the commandment of honor, the voice of God and one’s calling in us, as the dried plant to the fresh flower on the living stem.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Die Pflicht der Kantianer verhält sich zu dem Gebot der Ehre, der Stimme des Berufs und der Gottheit in uns, wie die getrocknete Pflanze zur frischen Blume am lebenden Stamme.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 39

God, Flowers

“I think cooking completes you as a woman. … I woke up one morning and said, I can't do this [eating meat] to myself anymore. I didn't feel good. I was constipated all the time. … I used to live to eat. Now I eat to live.”

Brandy Norwood (1979) American singer and actress

About her vegan lifestyle. “ Brandy: Baby Baby Baby Baby Talks About Growing Up, Becoming A Vegan And Keeping Her Marriage A Big Secret https://books.google.se/books?id=1SUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA0,” in Vibe (April 2002), p. 104.

Feeling, Thinking, Time, Cooking

“My interaction with the Himalayan tribespeople overturned my pre-conceptions. There was no superior or inferior being. I was just a human being like them […] I lived with people who had no electricity or cars and yet they lived very fulfilling lives. They had no schools but they were very intelligent people. I became even more thirsty to understand and learn more about the tribes people of the world.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

An insight into the life of Stephen Corry http://www.mmegi.bw/2004/March/Thursday18/90140841657.html, Mmegi Online. March 18, 2004

People, World, School, Cars

“Germany will regard the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space… Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the continent.”

Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) German architect and politician

Quoted in "World Politics in Our Time" - Page 375 - by David C. Jordan - 1970.

Question

“The Former Han dynasty prospered because the rulers favoured virtuous ministers and alienated petty and corrupt officials; the Later Han dynasty declined because the rulers favoured petty and corrupt officials and alienated virtuous ministers. When the Late Emperor was still living, he would often discuss these topics with me, and he expressed grief and regret when we spoke of Huan and Ling.”

Zhuge Liang book Chu Shi Biao

Chu Shi Biao

“If you do not care about networks, the networks will care about you, anyway. For as long as you want to live in society, at this time and in this place, you will have to deal with the network society.
Because we live in the Internet Galaxy.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Conclusion, The Challenges of the Network Society, p. 282

Time

“I've seen how violently animals raised for food are treated, and I don't want to support that. … The fact that the meat on my plate was once a living, breathing creature became something I could no longer ignore or justify as food. … As someone who felt they were a confirmed meat-eater, I guess ultimately if I can do it, then anyone can, you know―it’s a really easy choice to make. And it’s a humane choice to make.”

Owain Yeoman (1978) British actor

“Owain Yeoman’s ‘Veggie Testimonials’,” in PETA.org (12 May 2009) https://www.peta.org/features/owain-yeomans-veggie-testimonials/.

Food, Support, Animals

“We are not primitive. We live differently to you, but we do not live exactly like our grandparents did, nor do you. Were your ancestors 'primitive'? I don't think so. We respect our ancestors. We love our children. This is the same for all people.”

Roy Sesana (1950) Botswana activist

Source: Acceptance Speech for The Right Livelihood Award http://www.rightlivelihood.org/fpk_sesana_speech.html

Love, Children, People, Thinking

“We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it's not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father's dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father.Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s—a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), Ch. 10: The Last Anti-Colonial

Books, World, Dreams, Cars

“Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. For every American this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world I am sure they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what a feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Telephone message from the Oval office to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. (20 July 1969)
1960s

People, World, Peace, History

“The Sun has come to represent enlightenment and salvation across many cultures. I think that if we remove such comforting concepts we are required to do more soul searching but eventually our eyes become accustomed to the dark and our lives become richer.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Soul, Search, Thinking, Sun

“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)

Friendship, World, Solitude, Silence

“When people would come in with non-specific problems and we never quite got to the root of a medical diagnosis, it always seemed to me they were expressing problems in living, and that one needed to look at their problems in living, and how they manifested themselves in physical problems.”

Michael Marmot (1945) Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health

Interview, 18 March 2002

People, Problem

“I seem to have gathered a reputation for being a jerk in real life, because frankly fans make me uncomfortable. Complete strangers come up and talk to me like they've known me their whole lives, and for that reason I can seem a bit stand-offish… No, the whole "fan" thing confuses me.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/interviews/6457-An-Exclusive-Interview-With-Yahtzee.3
Other Articles

Life, Jerk

“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
We like living right and being free.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

"Okie from Muskogee" (September 1969), co-written with Roy Edward Burris; the title track of Okie from Muskogee (October 1969) · 1969 performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYY2FQHFwE · 2009 performance with Willie Nelson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4AgZST_TG8

Marijuana

“The Left’s identity politics poses a threat to free speech and to the kind of rational discourse needed to sustain a democracy… The focus on lived experience by identity groups prioritizes the emotional world of the inner self over the rational examination of issues in the outside world and privileges sincerely held opinions over a process of reasoned deliberation that may force one to abandon prior opinions.”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

"Against Identity Politics" https://web.archive.org/web/20180823073547/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2018-08-14/against-identity-politics (14 August 2018), Foreign Affairs 2010s

World, Democracy, Sincerity

“That is to say that every single book will be magnetized, will be ordered under complicated mathematical clusters, by related subjects, and semantic markers. You will state your questions, or the subject you are interested in, and the computer will find the books for you. Instataneous retrieval brings with it enormous changes in our relation to the history of a subject, because there is a cut-off point in all these systems beond which the previous books are no longer relevant. They have been adequately subsumed in the later ones. You have a completely different way of organsing knowledge—an immensely efficient and in many ways powerfully logical way, but which blocks the essential motion of the hand reaching along a shelf and stumbling on what it did not know was there. When these great knowledge and data-banks, as they are called, are operative there will come a whole change in the way the human mind and eye live with books.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 28.
Do Books Matter?

Books, Way, History, Mathematics

“The incentives that people need to work and to find meaning in their lives should be found beyond material wealth and power.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 10, 2050: The End Of The Growth Era?, p. 390.

People, Wealth

“The hoary centuries are full of Him; the echoes of His sweet voice are heard to-day; His love has perfumed the past eighteen hundred years, and He lives to-day, as the Head of His church; He lives to-day, the object of the warmest adoration, the most passionate love, for whom millions would die this very hour. Empires have fallen, thrones have crumbled; but Jesus lives, His empire extending every day, His throne gaining new trophies of His grace.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

P 79.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Love, Passion, Past

“It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 109.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Men, Knowledge, Sense, Time

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

from lecture "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy (1964)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

People, World, Search, Question

“My ultimate ambition is to introduce a captive pack of wolves into the wild and live with them.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

Interview with A Man Among Wolves: Shaun Ellis http://incubator.nationalgeographic.com/inside_ngc/2007/04/interview-with-a-man-among-wolves-shaun-ellis.html, Inside NGS, (2007)