Quotes about look
page 78

“I wanted something that was direct – right to you eye.... something you didn't have to look around – you got the whole thing right away.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quotes, 1960 - 1970

“It's tough when you started out as young as I did to look back and see how far I've come. I try to be easy on myself and go 'Look man, you were younger, you were learning; you learn, you grow.' But I'm not my best judge. I always feel like my best work is still ahead of me.”

Matt Dillon (1964) American actor

Duane Dudek (October 12, 1995) "The Development of an Actor", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, p. 1.

Feeling, Learning

“The easiest way in which one can put unintentional strains on the enemy is to have a force which looks "trigger-happy." The one circumstance under which almost all Soviet experts agree the Russians might strike is the one in which they feel they are anticipating a strike by us. It will be difficult for them to read our intentions. They will doubtless err on the side of caution. But it is not clear which side will look cautious, particularly if there is a crisis which creates apprehension. It will add a real element of stability if our posture is such that we do not look as if we have to be "trigger-happy" in order to survive. This is an important reason for not relying solely on quick reaction as a protection and for not having forces so vulnerable that we could lose most of them from a Russian first strike. Under some circumstances our vulnerability to a Russian first strike would both tempt the Russians to initiate a war and at the same time compel them, because they might feel that we would be tempted to pre empt for our own protection. If we are sufficiently vulnerable they might find it impossible to believe that we were willing, in this crisis to rely on their good will, morality; caution, or sense of responsibility as a protection.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

War, Way, Feeling, Sense

“WEINER: Look, the point is very simple, there are inequities in the present way we distribute insurance. There are winners and there are losers. The winners are the insurance industry. […] There is not bipartisanship on this particular issue. The people who sit on this side, at the risk of offending anyone, generally support the idea of standing up for the American people in their battle against big insurance. And the people generally speaking who sit on this side of the chamber and specifically speaking as well in a lot of cases, simply won’t permit that to happen and haven’t for a generation. Well, that is going to end now. […] Enough of the phonyness. We are gonna solve this problem because for years our Republican friends have been unable to and unwilling to. Deal with it!”

Anthony Weiner (1964) American politician

applause Exchange http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOQ2GEGm3v0 on the floor of the House of Representatives on health care reform (February 24, 2010)

People, Way, Idea, Support

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Fear, Way, Idea, Business

“The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had m astered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Plato's Pharmacy
Dissemination (1972)

Game, Thinking, Decision, Chance

“The most important victory, in fact, was in Indonesia. In 1965 there was a military coup, which instantly carried out a Rwanda-style slaughter, and it's not an exaggeration. Rwanda-style slaughter, which wiped out the only mass-based political organization, killed mostly landless peasants, and instituted a brutal and murderous regime. There was total euphoria in the United States. So happy, they couldn't contain it. When you read the press, it was just ecstatic. It's kind of suppressed now because it doesn't look pretty in retrospect, but it was understood. Years later, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security advisor, recognized that, he said, and I think he's right, the U. S. should have stopped the war in Vietnam in 1965, because we basically won. By 1965 South Vietnam was largely destroyed, most of the rest was going to quickly be destroyed, and we had saved the major prize, Indonesia. The rot wasn't going to spread to Indonesia after this delightful Rwanda-style slaughter.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Teach-in on the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, in New York, April 2000 https://www.democracynow.org/2000/5/12/noam_chomsky_on_vietnam Quotes 2000s, 2000

War, Thinking, Reading, Victory

“[N]ot only must we seek the measure of motions and actions by themselves, but much more in comparison; for this is of excellent use and very general application. Now we find that the flash of a gun is seen sooner than its report is heard… and this is owing it seems to the motion of light being more rapid than that of sound. We find to that visible images are received by the sight faster than they are dismissed; thus the strings of the violin, when struck by the finger, are to appearance doubled and tripled, because the new image is received before the old one is gone; which is also why the reason why rings being spun round look like globes, and a lighted torch, carried hastily at night, seems to have a tail. And it was upon this inequality of motions in point of velocity that Galileo built his theory of flux and reflux of the sea; supposing that the earth revolved faster than the water could follow; and that the water was therefore first gathered in a heap and then fell down, as we see in a basin of water moved quickly. But this he devised upon an assumption which cannot be allowed, viz. that the earth moves; and also without being well informed as to the sexhorary motion of the tide.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 46
Novum Organum (1620), Book II

Light, Water, Appearance, Sea

“I don't think I shall ever forget my first sight of Hercule Poirot. Of course, I got used to him later on, but to begin with it was a shock, and I think everyone else must have felt the same! I don't know what I'd imagined — something like Sherlock Holmes — […] Of course, I knew he was a foreigner, but I hadn't expected him to be quite as foreign as he was, if you know what I mean. When you saw him you just wanted to laugh! He was like something on the stage or at the pictures. […] He looked like a hairdresser in a comic play!”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Amy Leatheran
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)

Imagination, Thinking, Forgetting

“Sometimes the air is awfully clear here. You can look off to sea and see the soft, warm, raggedy roof of clouds stretching on and on and on. It almost seems as if you can look right on into eternity.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (22 March 1942); p. 17
To Reach Eternity (1989)

Sea

“We do not “look” at something or someone; we “eat” it: we are like “cannibals” consuming the world for our own benefit. “The only people who have any hope of salvation are those who occasionally stop and look for a time, instead of eating.” Here we have Weil’s version of changing from a position of egocentrism to egolessness. … Weil is claiming that it all starts with paying attention to the other—any other—as the way to form our appropriate stance toward the world and all its creatures. Her essay titled “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” joins what appear to be opposites—a child’s concentration on working on a math problem and training for loving God. From her own earliest days, she saw the value of studying math and science, disciplines that demanded an openness and patience to a subject outside of oneself and whose truth did not rest with one’s own interpretation.”

Sallie McFague (1933–2019) American feminist and theologian

describing Simone Weil’s view, Blessed Are the Consumers

Love, God, People, Truth

“I will cherish this as a reminder of the extraordinary, incredible outpouring of people who demanded their voice be heard in this last election so we can look forward to amazing change in this country.”

Laura Dern (1967) American actress, director, producer

As quoted on the broadcast of the 66th Golden Globe Awards, NBC (11 January 2009)

People, Change, Country

“You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport.”

Jerry Saltz (1951) American art historian

Source: " Has Money Ruined Art? http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/," nymag.com, 2007

Sport

“The first deaths will barely swell the daily count, and no one in the statistics bureau will notice that extra zero. But after a while everyone will begin to look at each other and ask: what's happening? Because for months doors and windows are going to rattle, furniture and trees will creak.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Clerk's Vision (1949)

Death, Tree

“These were al-Qaeda fighters, the first I'd ever seen up close, and they looked like badasses. As I passed on the outskirts of the grid, many of the prisoners stared directly at me. None of them cowered. I've been in a lot of prisons, but these guys showed a ferocity and a hatred unlike any I'd ever seen.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 321
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Guy

“The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; — a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 5

Lie, Girl, Chance

“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully upon the destiny of the Republic; when our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendency and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice, and our name was a reproach and a byword to a mocking; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and the portents are nearly all in our favor.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom, Men, People, Hope

“I look forward and see myself look back.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected (1991)

“If you believe in God, if you believe in miracles, then you believe in magic. You believe in magic. People argue against that all of the time, but that’s actually true. If you look up a collection of dictionaries, online it is easy to do. Open up a bunch of them, and see where they all agree, find the points in the context where all of the dictionaries agree. You will discover that if you compare the definitions between a miracle and magic, you will see that they are both the ‘evocation of supernatural forces or entities to control or forecast natural events in ways which are inexplicable by science because they defy the laws of physics, meaning they are physically impossible.’ That’s what both miracle and magic mean. So miracle is the same things as magic in the same way a boat is a yacht is if it is big enough.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

God, People, Law, Way

“I looked at my wife and said, "You know what? If these people put their own dollar-an-hour raise above the integrity of our nation, I don't wanna be their boss anymore."”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

On his reaction to Minnesota state workers going on strike.
Harvard interview (February 2004)

People

“It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 74

Art, Search

“It was all completely incomprehensible to me. I was fearful of the language. You had to look up every third word.”

Kevin Kline (1947) American actor

On his initial reaction, as a student, to the works of Shakespeare, The Washington University Record http://record.wustl.edu/archive/1996/01-25-96/1834.html (25 January 1996)

Fear

“Looking out from death you will always see
Those whom all your life you ought not to see”

Duo Duo (1951) Poet

"Looking Out from Death" (1983), p. 51
The Boy who Catches Wasps (2002)

Life, Death

“This book is not for the engineer content with hardware, nor for the biologist uneasy outside his specialty; for it depicts that miscegenation of Art and Science which begets inanimate objects that behave like living systems. They regulate themselves and survive: They adapt and they compute: They invent. They co-operate and they compete. Naturally they evolve rapidly.
Pure mathematics, being mere tautology, and pure physics, being mere fact, could not have engendered them; for creatures to live, must sense the useful and the good; and engines to run must have energy available as work : and both, to endure, must regulate themselves. So it is to Thermodynamics and to its brother Σp log p, called Information Theory, that we look for the distinctions between work and energy and between signal and noise.
For like cause we look to reflexology and its brother feedback, christened Multiple Closed Loop Servo Theory, for mechanical explanation of Entelechy in Homeostasis and in appetition. This is that governance, whether in living creatures and their societies or in our living artefacts, that is now called Cybernetics.”

Warren S. McCulloch (1898–1969) American neuroscientist

McCulloch (1961) in: Pask An approach to Cybernetics http://www.pangaro.com/pask/pask%20approach%20to%20cybernetics.pdf. Preface. p. 7

Books, Art, Mathematics, Nature

“I was walking down by the river. I lay down under a tree. I was broke. I felt pretty low. Then I looked up at the sky—all blue except for one little, white, fleecy cloud. The words came to me for the song—quicker than it's taking me to tell it to you. I got up—and I had new hope. That was the turning point in my life.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

On writing "The Little White Cloud That Cried", The Chicago Tribune (16 March 1952)

Life, Hope, Tree

“It had been the consistent belief of the Christian world, down to the period now under consideration, that the origin of this planet was not more remote than a few thousand years; and that since the creation the deluge was the only great catastrophe by which considerable change had been wrought on the earth's surface. On the other hand, the opinion was scarcely less general, that the final dissolution of our system was an event to be looked for at no distant period.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

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

World, Distant, Change

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Smile, History, Idea, Tree

“Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Le monde offre énormément d’énigmes dont le mot paraît difficile à trouver. Il y a des intrigues multipliées.
Part I, ch. IV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Perfection

“I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into war.”

George V of the United Kingdom (1865–1936) King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India

Alleged statement about his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1918)
Attributed

War, World

“It looks like it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every single branch on the way down.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 10, “An Abode of Ravens: Recovery” (p. 396)

Way, Tree

“It (synthesizers and drum machines) has contributed greatly (to an 'antiseptic' sound). And the fact is, when I look back on the last few years I really can't remember that much of the music, such is its lasting effect. I think it's instantly forgettable and it horrifies me in many respects. It's so sterile and non-human. I don't understand why people play non-human music. It really mystifies me when we're human beings. It's strange. I hate it.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From a radio interview with David Jensen in 1983
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Hate, People, Music, Understanding

“Stock markets are never better performing than during a hyperinflation. Interest rates are rock bottom, but only through artificial means. Gross Private Domestic Investment is still falling off a cliff, having already completely erased ten years of investment from the record of history. Here is a fundamental factor that suggests that terrible things are still to come our way. And I guess I'll have to put this in italics because the point seems to be lost in the shuffle: unemployment is still rising, even soaring straight to double digits!
The sociology of this intrigues me to no end. Unemployment is one of the human elements that journalists are supposed to glom onto. Oh, look at poor Bob and Jane and how they lost their jobs and have nowhere to go, etc., etc. Talk about human interest! Where are the weepy stories about the plight of people wandering around with no work? Instead, we get happy clappy stories about how things are not nearly as bad as they might be had the great and powerful Obama of Oz not appeared to save the day. There is also the remarkable spin that things are getting worse, yes, but at a slower pace than before – an observation that might be most commonly heard in Hell.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 August 2009 "Obama and the Economy" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/obama-economy125.html 2000s

People, Way, History, Hell

“I've been thinking on your theories of defensive war, and look, Pete, if you don't mind the opinion of an aging military genius, just this once? Technically, by God, you're probably right. Hell, you're undoubtable right. This may be a time for defensive war. But, Pete, this aint the army for it. We aren't bred for the defense.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Lewis Armistead, Part I, CH 4: Longstreet, p. 59
The Killer Angels (1974)

God, War, Age, Hell

“About staying in the south, even if it's more expensive — Look, we love Japanese painting, we've experienced its influence — all the Impressionists have that in common — and we wouldn't go to Japan, in other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan, the south? So I believe that the future of the new art still lies in the south after all. But it's bad policy to live there alone when two or three could help each other to live on little.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum Vincent was busy, trying to convince a. o. Paul Gauguin to come to Arles, and to settle there 1880s, 1888

Love, Art, Future, Help

“[Ralf Schumacher's] been in every gravel trap there is, more or less, this morning. It looked like he wanted to go to the beach all day.”

Martin Brundle (1959) British racecar driver

“I think it's time, not for the Washington Redskins to change their name but for the Democratic Party to change its name. Because all you have to do is go online and look up the history of the Democratic Party. It's one of oppressing African-Americans. It's one of supporting slavery and the horrors that occurred in the United States.”

Louie Gohmert (1953) American politician

Speech to the United States House of Representatives (July 2015)

History, Support, Thinking, Change

“Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Observer (May, 1998)
God and religion

God, People, Way, Boy

“And, (relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley) walked (pinch-hitter Mike Davis) … and look who's comin' up!
(36 seconds of crowd cheering)
All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight—with two bad legs: the bad left hamstring, and the swollen right knee. And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice … this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now!
Fouled away.
He was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off. Well, now, he can't push off and he can't land. … 4-3 A's, two out, ninth inning, not a bad opening act!
Mike Davis, by the way, has stolen 7 out of 10, if you're wondering about Lasorda throwing the dice again. 0-and-1.
Fouled away again. … 0-and-2 to Gibson, the infield is back, with two out and Davis at first. Now Gibson, during the year, not necessarily in this spot, but he was a threat to bunt. No way tonight, no wheels.
No balls, two strikes, two out.
Little nubber … foul—and, it had to be an effort to run that far. Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced; he did not come out onto the field before the game. … It's one thing to favor one leg, but you can't favor two. 0-and-2 to Gibson.
Ball one. And, a throw down to first, Davis just did get back. Good play by Ron Hassey using Gibson as a screen; he took a shot at the runner, and Mike Davis didn't see it for that split-second and that made it close.
There goes Davis, and it's fouled away! So, Mike Davis, who had stolen 7 out of 10, and carrying the tying run, was on the move.
Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. 2-and-2! … Tony LaRussa is one out away from win number one. … two balls and two strikes, with two out.
There he goes! Wa-a-ay outside, he's stolen it! … So, Mike Davis, the tying run, is at second base with two out. Now, the Dodgers don't need the muscle of Gibson, as much as a base hit, and on deck is the lead-off man, Steve Sax. 3-and-2. Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.
High fly ball into right field, she i-i-i-is gone!!
(67 seconds of cheering and organ music)
In a year that has been so improbable … the impossible has happened!
And, now, the only question was, could he make it around the base paths unassisted?!
You know, I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player; that the Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But, tonight, I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson. And, look at Eckersley—shocked to his toes!
They are going wild at Dodger Stadium—no one wants to leave!”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Kirk Gibson's World Series-game-winning home run, October 15, 1988, transcribed from mlb.com archives <nowiki>[</nowiki>excising comments by color commentator Joe Garagiola]

Music, Way, Imagination, Game

“I look upon verse as an exercise in composition.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Authors of 1951 Speaking for Themselves NY Herald Tribue 7 Oct 1951
Prose

Exercises

“He genuinely looked terrified. The poor man, he's actually seen the books. In England we have this one-eyed Scottish idiot.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

BBC News February 9, 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7873624.stm

Books

“A bullfighter can never see the work of art that he is making. He has no chance to correct it as a painter or writer has. He cannot hear it as a musician can. He can only feel it and hear the crowd's reaction to it. When he feels it and knows that it is great it takes hold of him so that nothing else in the world matters. All the time that he is making his work of art he knows that he must keep within the limits of his skill and his knowledge of the animal. Those matadors are called cold who visibly show that they are thinking of this. Antonio was not cold and the public belonged to him now. He looked up at them and let them know, modestly but not humbly, that he knew it and as he circled the ring with the ear in his hand he looked at the different segments of Bilbao, a city that he loved, as they stood up as he passed and was happy that he owned them.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 13

Love, World, Art, Feeling

“I was supposed to devote myself only to the Talmud. But the Talmud utterly repelled me, thought I was still a pious Jew-boy [Judenkind]. I wanted to satisfy my craving to be active, to do something: this craving looked for a sphere for itself because none was offered it. I did not want to be a good-for-nothing - and therefore I became a writer.”

Moses Hess (1812–1875) German philosopher

Hess' Diary

Boy

“[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

Way, Sense, Nostalgia, Silence

“Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, pp. 57-58
Paper Towns (2008)

Life, People, Beauty, Drink

“And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"The Death of the Hired Man" (1914)
1910s
Variant: And nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.

Hope

“The Bible says, God made a perfect world. Man wrecked it. By one man sin came into the world, and death by sin. It was Adam's fault. You can't blame a wrecked car on the manufacturer. Send a picture to the manufacturer of a wreck and say, "Why did you build a car like this?" It didn't look like this when it left the factory. Today, folks, we are living in a junkyard. Now I like living on planet earth, and Knoxville is a beautiful place; but, I'm telling you, folks, this is nothing compared to what Adam and Eve saw. This is a junkyard, but God's going to fix it back.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Death, God, World, Beauty

“Present party designations have become empty of all contents…Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits' end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate? How are we to measure the use and abuse of industrial organization? Powerful orators find "Liberty" the true keyword, but the I remember hearing from a learned student that of "liberty" he knew well over two hundred definitions. Can we be sure that the "haves" and the "have-nots" will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Letter to Sir Francis Webster, president of the Montrose Burghs Liberal Association, quoted in 'Lord Morley On Modern Politics', The Times (11 May 1923), p. 12.

Money, Problem, Learning

“This year we take our vacation somewhere else. Where is there where Americans aren’t likely to be stoned by a howling mob? Spain, Greece? No, got to be out of range of the stench from the Med.
Looks like we might as well stay home.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

May “BLANKET”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Home

“To Namier it had seemed obvious that political theories act as the merest ex post facto rationalisations of political behaviour. If we are looking for explanations of political action, he maintained, we must seek them at the level of ‘the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality’. For critics of Namier such as Sir Herbert Butterfield, the only possible retort seemed to be to go back to a famous dictum of Lord Acton’s to the effect that ideas are often the causes rather than the effects of public events. But this response duly incurred the scorn of Namier and his followers for the alleged naiveté of supposing that political actions are ever genuinely motivated by the principles used to rationalise them.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), p. 104

Music, Motivation, Idea

“There aren't many laughs in that and I remember doing a look and everybody laughed and I just thought, wow, that's incredible how you can do that. So I did another look and they laughed again and then I remember thinking, hold on, this isn't right for this piece, you've got to stop it.”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About getting her first laughs, during a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
From an interview with the Telegraph, "Seriously funny."

Thinking

“I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet…[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face…I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called…Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

It's a busy couch.
Behavioral Problems

Birthday, Drink, Business, Perfection

“Aaron began to learn the Dakota language. Isaac, like a newly ordained Doctor of Philosophy, after years of being nagged into learning, rejoiced to be invited to stand up and look important and teach. He was astonished by his own erudition and by the fact that his class of one did not walk out.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 31

Learning

“You're looking for a lump in a bag of lumps, that can take some time”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On testicular cancer.
Monster (2004)

Time

“Correct me if I'm wrong here, but truth is something that arises out of the relationship between language and the world. If I look at a picture alone, it tells me nothing. In the previous incarnation of this lecture, I was going to put a picture of the Titanic and the Lusitania up on the screen. They look very, very similar - four smokestacks. They look almost identical. You look at either picture, true or false? Neither. Put a caption at the bottom of one of them, that changes everything. If you put in the caption, "This is the Lusitania," and the picture is a picture of the Lusitania, then the caption is true. However, the picture itself is neither true nor false. It's just a picture.”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source: The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist http://errolmorris.com/content/lecture/theantipost.html

Truth, World, Change, Falseness

“We call Jasmine's room 'The Harem,' a sexy place, about which Dan never complained, even though his own possessions, his laptop PC and briefcase, for example, looked crazy in the environment, invasive and overcomplex, like Stealth bombers in SmurfWorld.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

Shampoo Planet (1992)

“My primary concern is visual form. The visual meaning may be discovered afterwards – by those who look for it. Two meanings have been ascribed to these American Flag paintings of mine. One position is: 'He's painted a flag so you don't have to think of it as a flag but only as a painting'. The other is: 'You are enabled by the way he has painted it to see it as a flag and not as a painting.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Actually both positions are implicit in the paintings, so you don't have to choose.
The Insiders, Rejection en Rediscovery of Man in the Arts of our Time, Selden Rodman, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1960, Chapter 6.
1960s

Way, Thinking, Painting

“Rand always says, “Never pass up an opportunity to pass moral judgment.” Well I say: “Look for an opportunity to do something more useful instead.” Nobody was led to virtue by being told he was a scoundrel.”

Nathaniel Branden (1930–2014) Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer

Interview by Alec Mouhibian in The Free Radical (November 2004)

“If you're looking for an open book - Look no further, I am yours.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)

Books

“Compilations, to me, are embarrassing. To bring out a compilation, to me, is to say, "Look. I've got no new material so please buy this. I need money to pay the rent." I think it's very embarrassing. And that is very annoying because the record company owns all those titles and they don't ask me for my advice. They just decide to release "the best of" compilations and they put out a lot of very bad quality music. There are a couple of good titles but the rest are just tracks to fill out the album. And they know very well that they can't rely on me promoting them because I won't promote such records.”

Amanda Lear (1939) singer, lyricist, composer, painter, television presenter, actress, model

http://amandalear_jukebox.tripod.com/indexnight_inteview.htm, NIGHT interview, Robert Henry Rubin, 2002, NIGHT, amandalear_jukebox.tripod.com, 1 June 2007

Money, Music, Thinking

“Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral looking an object?”

Max Perutz (1914–2002) Austrian-born British molecular biologist

The Hemoglobin Molecule, Scientific American, 211, 65-76, November 1964. This comment refers to the appeareace of the low resolution structure of hemoglobin, which Perutz was instrumental in elucidating in a heroic effort that spanned 1937 to 1959. In the course of this work, Perutz and his co-workers developed many of the techniques that are used to this day to determine the three-dimensional structures of macromolecules.

Truth, Search

“We can trust only ourselves. The president of the United States has to look out for U. S. interests -- that is what he was elected to do. He does not have to look out for Israel's interests, nor do I expect him to. The bottom line is that Obama is president of the United States -- not the world -- so when it comes to Israel's interests I trust the prime minister's discretion.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

From an article on Israel Hayom http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=23811

World

“I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn't so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has too look up to them from the cellar stairs.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"An Interest in Life" (1959)

Men, Money, Pleasure, Lie

“He is considered to have a strong bond with the Juventus fans, once stating; "I'm proud to be a Juventino, to be a "bandiera", like you define me to be often, in reality I'm just a small part of a big black & white "bandiera" (flag) that grows with the years and if you look closely your name is part of it… To continue making this "bandiera" grow we need everybody: let's stay united."”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Juventus.com http://www.juventus.com/uk/news/detail.aspx?lml_language_id=0&trs_id=1370000&ID=7885 Attributed

Reality, Strong, Parting

“Look upon men and pity them. Look at yourself amid all men and pity yourself. In the obscure dusk of life we touch and fumble at each other, we ask questions, we listen, we shout for help.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Life, Men, Question, Help

“Islam has never been misunderstood. Islam is the problem. But no one is stating the truth. No one is taking a hard look at the root of terrorism which is the brain washing machine called Islam. Islam is not up to me, is not up to any Muslim – man or woman. Islam is exactly what the prophet Muhammad did and said. In order to understand Islam you have to read the biography of Muhammad. It is very traumatising. It is very shocking. He married his second wife when she was six years old. He was over fifty. […] His third wife was Sophia. She was a Jewish woman. It was well documented, well written in our school books that he attacked her tribe. He killed her father, her brother, and her husband. At the same day, he slept with her. That's what I call Islam.”

Wafa Sultan (1958) American psychistrist

Speech at Restoration Weekend, Palm Beach, Florida 2007 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up3yuQDAWKQ

Truth, Books, School, Understanding

“All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Elizabeth Day, "The Moore Legacy," http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/jul/27/1 The Observer (2008-07-27), Henry Moore is quoted here by Mary Moore, the artist's niece 1970 and later

Art, Thinking, Effort, Parting

“It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Cars

“The uniform of polish uhlan makes even the youngest, inexperienced boy looks like he's made from steel.”

Maynard Owen Williams (1888–1963) American journalist

National Geographic, august 1926

Boy

“The whiskey is amazing to me. I wonder why I never realized that I would like it. I wonder why I never tried it before. Liking it so much is dangerous now, and so I hold it and look through it, and drink it very slowly.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Geek Love (1989)

Drink

“It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Ian O'Shea to Wanderer, p. 390
The Host (2008)

Beauty, Beauty

“Arakawa: The manga artist that I look up to the most is Suiho Tagawa, the author of Norakuro. He is the root of my style as an artist. I also love Rumiko Takahashi and Kinnikuman or Ultimate Muscle by Yudetamago. As far as composition and how to draw, I learned that when I was apprenticed to Hiroyuki Eto, the author of Mahoujin Guru Guru for Shonen GanGan.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Love, Learning, Drawing

“If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.”

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

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 237]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

World, Beauty, Heart, Parting

“Once he’d been in his twenties, looking forward. Now he was a shade past fifty, and what he looked back on was subtly less satisfactory than what he had looked forward to.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

The Executioner, p. 122 (originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, January 1956)
The Unexpected Dimension (1960)

Past

“It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled 'His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America'. The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost 'His Excellency' less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://ia802604.us.archive.org/9/items/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), p. 274. 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885)

Drink, Thinking, Water, Box

“It's like I can never watch myself on TV unless I have to do some editing before a show comes out. It's like hearing your voice back on a tape recorder and I'm sure you know how horrible that is. I always look for the worst things in myself - criticising my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "Nigella Lawson" by James Ellis in Metro (4 September 2002)

“I think you have to rise above, to remain true to who you are. No matter what is said about you in the media, you have to look at the big picture — and you have to have a plan for where you want your life to go. And you also can't think that everyone is going to be there to help you; it's a lonely road to success.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

Life, Thinking, Success, Help

“Apparently some fire-eaters to-day have been saying "Never again must we allow ourselves to get into the same condition of military unprepardness, so we are going to build up a vast war machine in this country in order to surround defeated Germany with a sea of peaceful tranquillity…" It looks as though the consequences of defeat will be more desirable than those of victory.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 402, col. 1559.
Speech in the House of Commons on 2 August 1944.
1940s

War, Peace, Victory, Sea

“Marcia: You look great, you're beautiful and this song suits you. You were being yourself and you did great.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 4

Beauty

“He (the photographer) has practically created a new thing out of materials gathered from nature; upon a foundation of fact he has allowed his imagination to build up an entirely fictitious scene, and the truth of the effect will depend upon how far his perceptions have been trained by studying nature at various times, so as to know how things might look under certain circumstances.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 78

Truth, Imagination, Nature, Study

“A man knocking on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The source is actually a 1945 book by Bruce Marshall, The World, The Flesh, and Father Smith, in which he says, "...the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God."
Misattributed

God

“Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have actually been effected?”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book VII, sec. 6.
Naturalis Historia

Knowledge, Appearance, Time

“I am not a businessman. I never have been. I have problems dealing with money. My entire career has been managed by family members or managers who have looked after my affairs. I am totally ignorant as far as money matters are concerned. For me to suddenly be thrown into this huge corporate ocean without adequate managerial capacity was perhaps the unmaking of the corporation”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

On the reason behind the failure of ABCL
Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Money, Family, Failure, Problem

“Whereas economic man maximizes - selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices - looks for a course of action that is satisfactory or "good enough."”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. xxix.

“It's all about the sun. Just take a look at the picture above and notice just how small earth is compared to the sun, or even a large solar flare. Anybody whom thinks the human race has more effect on our global energy balance than an active sun does is just deluding themselves.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Scientists Predict Large Solar Cycle Coming http://wattsupwiththat.com/2006/12/23/scientists-predict-large-solar-cycle-coming/, wattsupwiththat.com, December 23, 2006. 2006

Thinking, Sun

“The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

Texas v. White, 7 Wallace, 725 (1869)

“Oswald Wiener had just dropped by. We were watching a football world championship game. Suddenly, in the middle of a game with Germany, the reporter said,“Bertie Vogts slid in like an Irrwisch [Jack-o’-Lantern]”. Eureka! That was the title I was looking for, and Oswald wiener commented,“That fits perfectly-an irrer Wisch””

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 196 (2002)

World, Game, Football

“How different everyone looked. How louldly they talked about who was starting work tomorrow, who would start in a week, while Sister Raymond sat at her desk looking serene. Bird felt a lurch in her chest. Of all of them, she though, she might be the one who'd miss school the most.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 159

School, Bird, Sister

“We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. … Our goal is stability, not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country. It's time.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, December Source: Speaking at U.S. Bank Arena, as reported by Washington Examiner, December 1, 2016 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-new-foreign-policy-we-will-stop-looking-to-topple-regimes/article/2608687

Learning, Time, Past, Country

“He [ Krishnamurti ] has received divine honors in India and in the West. I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of rather lovable disposition, of mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him swear in good, round English! I came away feeling that if he is all we, as a race, have to look to in order to get out of the muddle we are in, then God pity us.”

E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973) Methodist missionary and theologian

The Christ of the Indian Road (1925); Quoted by A. McD Redwood in Heresies Exposed (3rd edition, 1921) under the chapter Theosophy

God, Feeling, Intelligence

“[Mathematics were] scarce looked upon as Academical studies but rather Mechanical… And among more than two hundred students (at that time) in our college, I do not know of any two (perhaps not any) who had more of Mathematicks than I, (if so much) which was then but little; and but very few, in that whole university. For the study of Mathematicks was at that time more cultivated in London than in the universities.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

(1635) as quoted by W. W. Rouse Ball, A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge https://books.google.com/books?id=Pl32YkKFIhsC (1889) pp. 41-42.

Mathematics, Study, Universe, Time

“Dicko: Yeah, I agree. Exactly what this competition is about. Um, growing, moving out of your comfort zone. That was absolutely terrific. Mark, in the last audition said that you dressed too old, a little cruise ship. I think you've listen to what he's said and come back and you look fantastic tonight. Every inch the rock star. And, um, I think I've heard that really good fireworks come out of Canberra so you're going to go off like a rocket.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 12

Star, Thinking

“Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote of Duchamp's remark to Brancusi, visiting the Paris Aviation Show of 1919; as quoted in Looking at Dada, eds. Sarah Ganz Blythe & Edward D. Powers - The Museum of Modern Art New York, ISBN: 087070-705-1; p. 49
1915 - 1925

Painting