Quotes about look
page 95

“His cheek was pale as marble, and as cold;
But his lip trembled not, and his dark eyes
Glanced proudly round. But when they bared his breast
For the death-shot, and took a portrait thence,
He clenched his hands, and gasped, and one deep sob
Of agony burst from him; and he hid
His face awhile—his mother's look was there.
He could not steel his soul when he recalled
The bitterness of her despair. It passed—
That moment of wild anguish; he knelt down;
That sunbeam shed its glory over one,
Young, proud, and brave, nerved in deep energy;
The next fell over cold and bloody clay....”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Deserter from The London Literary Gazette (8th June 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Sixth
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Death, Soul, Despair

“I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth… How far from here was 34th street?… All those buildings, all smashed — and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

On his emotional reaction after the first uses of the atomic bomb.
Part 3: "Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military", "Los Alamos from Below", p. 136
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

People, Understanding, Thinking, Sense

“I'm really convinced that our descendants a century or two from now will look back at us with the same pity that we have toward the people in the field of science two centuries ago.”

John Marks Templeton (1912–2008) stock investor, businessman and philanthropist

The Quotable Sir John

People, Science

“I am not interested in making a picture. Then what the hell I am interested in? I must be interested in that process that I am talking about.. I don't keep the studio very tidy. You have on the floor like cow dung in the field.... and I look down at this stuff on the floor and it's just a lot of inert matter, inert paint. Then what is it? I look back on the canvas, and it's not inert, it's active, moving and living.... Why I need this kind of miracle, I don't know it, but I need it. my conviction is that this is the act of creation to me. That's how I have it.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 73-75

Hell, Painting

“So there was Mr. Jarvis, in the second week, in this hotel with no house party at all, and no one could speak English, except himself. He was very disappointed, too, with the skiing. […] There were no ordinary length skis. There were only mini-skis about 3 ft. long. So he did not get his skiing as he wanted to. […] He did not have the nice Swiss cakes which he was hoping for. The only cakes for tea were potato crisps and little dry nut cakes. The yodler evening consisted of one man from the locality who came in his working clothes for a little while, and sang four or five songs very quickly. […] Mr. Jarvis has only a fortnight's holiday in the year. He books it far ahead, and looks forward to it all that time. He ought to be compensated for the loss of it.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Jarvis v. Swans Tours Ltd. [1973] Q.B. 233 (C.A).
Judgments

Books, Hope, Disappointment, Loss

“One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature — inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 279
1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Death, Lie, Beauty, Feeling

“Why is McDonald's still counting? How insecure is this company? 40 million, 80 billion million jillion killion tillion…who cares? Is anyone really impressed by that any more? "Ooh, 89 billion sold? All right, I'll have one! I'm satisfied!" I'd like to tell the CEO of McDonald's, "Look. We all get it, okay? You've sold a lot of hamburgers. Whatever the number is, just put up a sign, 'McDonald's: We're Doing Very Well.'”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

We are tired of hearing about every goddamn one of them."
I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

“If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh (August 12, 1720)

“We must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship; that is amnesty. I oppose amnesty. There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic pass to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation. And I look forward to working with Congress to find that middle ground.”

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

2000s, 2004, Signing of Secure Fence Act of 2006

Reality

“When you look and see what the left is trying to do in America today, progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith, strip their charitable deductions away from them, trying to weaken them, churches — trying to say that anybody who believes in the value of Judeo-Christian principles, as we saw in the Ninth Circuit just this week, that if you believe that — this is what the court said — that if believe that, if believe what's taught in Genesis, if you believe what's practiced Biblically and in generations since, then you are irrational. The only possible reason you could believe this, according to the Ninth Circuit, is that you are a bigot, and that you are a hater. Because you can't possibly think differently, you can't possibly think differently unless you are a bigot or a hater, cause there's no rational reason not to see marriage as the way the Ninth Circuit does. They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what's left is the. What's left is a government that gives you rights. What's left are no unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left, in France, became the guillotine.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're a long way from that, but if we do, and follow the path of President Obama, and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

referring to Ninth Circuit ruling unconstitutional , which banned same-sex marriage

God, Hostility, Marriage, People

“At Bishop they learn'd that Dixon had been buried in back of the Quaker Meeting-House in Staindrop. Doctor Isaac stay'd with his Father, step for step. At the grave, which by Quaker custom was unmark'd, Mason beseech'd what dismally little he knew of God, to help Dixon through. The grass was long and beaded with earlier rain. A Cat emerg'd from it and star'd for a long time, appearing to know them.
"Dad?" Doc had taken his arm. For an instant, unexpectedly, Mason saw the little Boy who, having worried about Storms at Sea, as Beasts in the Forest, came running each time to make sure his father had return'd safely, — whose gift of ministering to others Mason was never able to see, let alone accept, in his blind grieving, his queasiness of Soul before a life and a death, his refusal to touch the Baby, tho' 'twas not possible to blame him…. The Boy he had gone to the other side of the Globe to avoid was looking at him now with nothing in his face but concern for his Father.
"Oh, Son."”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

He shook his Head. He didn't continue.
"It's your Mate," Doctor Isaac assur'd him, "It's what happens when your Mate dies."
Mason & Dixon (1997)

Life, Death, God, Soul

“I could multiply instances of men, women, and children who have been just snatched from the jaws of the grave by this Act of Parliament, and yet whilst it is walking the streets, hurrying about on its errand of mercy, visiting the sick, healing those who are afflicted with disease, feeding hungry children whose parents have been prostrated by sickness and cannot look after them—whilst it is doing the work of the Man of Nazareth in the stricken homes of Britain, it is being stoned by Tory speakers, reviled, insulted, and spat upon. Their reckoning is piling up. It will soon be demanded at their hands to the last penny by a people who have been misled by them into disdaining one of the greatest gifts the Imperial Parliament has ever delivered to the people of this land.”

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

Speech to the Nottinghamshire Miners' Association (10 August 1913) on the National Insurance Act 1911, quoted in The Times (11 August 1913), p. 10.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Women, Men, Children, People

“I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it, it makes me cringe.”

John Sweeney (journalist)

John Sweeney losting his temper with Scientologist Tommy Davis. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7348434.stm

Time

“Rita: Will they sack you.
Frank: [lying flat on the floor] The sack? God no; that would involve making a decision. Pissed is all right. To get the sack, it'd have to be rape on a grand scale; and not just with students either. [Rita gets up and moves across to look at him] That would only amount to a slight misdemeanour. For dismissal it'd have to be nothing less than buggering the bursar.”

Willy Russell book Educating Rita

Pages 42-43.
Educating Rita (1980)

God, Lying, Decision

“Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 1

Boy

“Charity is an unending self-discipline which always looks and leads towards the eternal affection. Therefore, its triumph shall be lasting and everlasting.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

23 July 1875.
The Walk With God (1919)

“Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.”

William Wordsworth The Recluse

The Recluse, l. 788 (1805).

Fear, Dreams, Help

“I knew a painter, a disciple of Gustave Moreau; he was truly a very fine artist, he knew his work quite well, and then … he was starving, he did not know how to make both ends meet and he used to lament. Then one day, a well-wishing friend sent a picture-dealer to his studio. The latter inspected all his works, without discovering anything of interest: the works of the painter were simply not fashionable and therefore without commercial value. But at last the dealer found a canvas with some palette-scrapings in a dusty corner and was suddenly full of enthusiasm: "Here you are! my friend, you are a genius, this is a miracle, it is this you should show! Look at this richness of tones, this variety of forms, and what an imagination.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

As quoted in Paris (1897-1904) http://www.searchforlight.org/TheMother_lifeSketchpart2.htm and also in Mother India: Monthly Review of Culture, Volume 60 by Sri Aurobindo Ashram ( 2007) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=01tMAQAAIAAJ, p. 131.

Imagination, Fashion

“To change the subject, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot.”
“What about?”
“Free will.”
“Free will?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying not to fidget, a weird feeling in his head. “I reckon free will is bullshit.”
“You need to get some sleep, Spider.”
“No, no, I feel okay, more or less.”
“Free will,” she said, shaking her head.
“It’s an illusion. That’s all it is. Everything is already sorted out, every decision, every possibility, it’s all determined, scripted, whatever.”
Iris was looking at him as if she was worried. “Where’d all this come from?”
“I’ve been to the End of bloody Time, Iris. From that perspective, everything is done and settled. Basically, everything that could happen has happened. It’s all mapped out, documented, diagrammed, written up in great big books, and ignored.”
“You’re a crazy bastard, you know that, Spider?”
“Maybe not crazy enough,” he said.
Iris was still struggling for traction on the conversation. “You think everything is predetermined? Is that it? But what about—”
“No. You just think you have free will.”
“So, according to you,” Iris said, looking bewildered, “a guy who kills his wife was always going to kill her. She was always going to die.”
“From his point of view, he doesn’t know that, and neither does she, but yeah. She was always a goner, so to speak.”
“There is no way I can accept this,” she said. “It’s intolerable. It robs individual people of moral agency. According to you nobody chooses to do anything; they’re just following a script. That means nobody’s responsible for anything.”
“I said free will is an illusion. We think we’ve got moral agency, we think we make choices. It’s a perfect illusion. It just depends on your point of view.”
“It’s a bloody pathway to madness, I reckon,” Iris said.
“I dunno,” he said. “Right now, sitting here, thinking about everything, I think it makes a lot of sense. Kinda, anyway.””

K. A. Bedford book Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait

“Think you’ll find that’s just an illusion,” she said, and flashed a tiny smile.
Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 22 (pp. 271-272)

People, Books, Smile, Way

“As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, p. 318

Sense, Universe

“Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

"Hun Speech": Kaiser Wilhelm II's Address to the German Expeditionary Force Prior to its Departure for China (27 July 1900) http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=755&language=english 1900s

Way, History

“[Malipiero's advice to Casanova. ] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1 (Venetian Years), chap. 14 http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/chapter14.html Referenced

Tear, Cry

“What's wrong with changing things? Now, I wonder if this self-canceling, centerpoised personality of yours leads you to look at things defensively. I want you to try to detach yourself from yourself and try to see your own viewpoint from the outside, objectively. You are afraid of losing your balance. But change need not unbalance you; life's not a static object, after all. It's a process. There's no holding still. Intellectually you know that, but emotionally you refuse it. Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life-evolution-the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy—existence itself—is essentially change.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 9 (Haber)

Life, Universe, Change, Time

“Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, indeed, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Shoe, Housing, Cry

“To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.
He has only to look into a human face in order to read there the soul within — not a feature deceives him; hypocrisy is as transparent as sincerity — the line of a forehead, the least lifting of a brow, the flash of an eye, reveal to him all the secrets of a heart.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. II. To the artist, all in nature is beautiful, p. 47-48

Truth, Secret, Books, Beauty

“Myra subsided into outraged and sulky silence. Her romantic dream of motherhood had been riven into sharp-edged fragments by late-night feedings, constant diaper washing, and a baby who persisted in looking and acting like a baby, not like a young hero.”

Sheri S. Tepper book The Gate to Women's Country

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 10 (p. 88)

Dreams, Silence, Baby, Night

“Kingsley fell over. And this was no brisk trip or tumble. It was an act of colossal administration. First came a kind of slow-leak effect, giving me the immediate worry that Kingsley, when fully deflated, would spread out into the street on both sides of the island, where there were cars, trucks, sneezing buses. Next, as I grabbed and tugged, he felt like a great ship settling on its side: would it right itself, or go under? Then came an impression of overall dissolution and the loss of basic physical coherence. I groped around him, looking for places to shore him up, but every bit of him was falling, dropping, seeking the lowest level, like a mudslide.”

Martin Amis book Experience

Part II: One Little More Hug
Experience (2000)

Cars, Loss

“Corporations! It's like there are these gigantic monsters living among us, and we don't mind that they're monsters because when we look at them they smile and hand us cheeseburgers. That's nuts.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

Great Writing interview

Smile

“The rhetoric of to-day, the rhetoric we have to consider, is the rhetoric of the "Bulging corn bins." I suppose that this gift has been responsible for more bloodshed on this earth than all the guns and explosives that have ever been invented. If we look back only over the last century, was there anything more responsible for the French Revolution than the literary rhetoric of Rousseau, fanned by the verbal rhetoric of Robespierre and others, just as the Russian Revolution was due to the rhetoric of Kerensky— flatulent rhetoric which filled the bellies of his people with the east wind? That appalling twopenny-ha'penny gift of fluency, with the addition of a certain amount of training and of imagination in word-spinning, is the kind of rhetoric which stirs the emotions of the ignorant mob and sets it moving. It is because such forces can be set in motion by rhetoric that I have no regard for it, but a positive horror.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Cambridge Union (March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 95-96.
1924

People, Imagination, Training

“What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who's more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Television interview http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/24/eveningnews/main4476173.shtml with Katie Couric, CBS Evening News () Posed question: But polls have shown that Sen. Obama has actually gotten a boost as a result of this latest crisis, with more people feeling that he can handle the situation better than John McCain. 2008, 2008 interviews with Katie Couric

Hope, Thinking, Change

“Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Thinking, Time, Forgetting

“Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind. Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just — I don't know what happened — but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.
So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta' been about four — like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back — is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians… maybe one or two of 'em… were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they're still there.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Death, Fear, Cars, Soul

“The world's become so horrifying now. It's too easy to become cynical about things and that's not fair and it doesn't work. And in fact, there is hope for the world. And it is in the form of Wikipedia. Now, Wikipedia will save us all. I found this out when recently a friend of mine emailed me and he said that someone had created a Wikipedia entry about me. I didn't realize this was true, so I looked it up. And like most Wikipedia entries, it came with some flamboyant surprises, not least amongst them my name. Because in it it said my name was John Cornelius Oliver. Now my middle name is not Cornelius because I did not die in 1752. But obviously, I want it to be. Cornelius is an incredible name. And that's when it hit me — the way the world is now, fiction has become more attractive than fact. That is why Wikipedia is such a vital resource. It's a way of us completely rewriting our history to give our children and our children's children a much better history to grow up with. We seem to have no intention of providing them with a future. Let's at least give them a past. It is in a very real sense the least we can do.”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

John Oliver: Terrifying Times (2008)

Children, World, Hope, Way

“I had a very selfish reason for building Mathematica. I wanted to use it myself, a bit like Galileo got to use his telescope four hundred years ago. But I wanted to look, not at the astronomical universe, but at the computational universe.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

"Computing a Theory of Everything" (2010)

Universe, Selfishness

“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. … [T]rust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.”

Mary Schmich (1953) American columnist

"Wear Sunscreen" (1997)

Youth, Beauty, Way, Imagination

“Anyone who sits down for a moment to think about what the alternative would have looked like—a successful breakaway Confederacy—and how that would have flowed downstream has to be with impressed with what Lincoln was able to save us from. There is in the end no intrinsic reason why the Southern Confederacy should not have achieved its independence. And if they had, that would have had serious implications for the later role the North American continent plays in world affairs. Imagine a North American continent as divided politically and economically as South America. This would take the United States off the table as a major world player, and then what would you do with the history of the 20th century?”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)

World, Imagination, History, Thinking

“Yes, the world is watching what we do. Yes, America's destiny is ours to choose. So let's be stronger together, my fellow Americans. Let’s look to the future with courage and confidence. Let’s build a better tomorrow for our beloved children and our beloved country. And when we do, America will be greater than ever.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Children, World, Confidence, Courage

“The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.”

Michael Korda (1933) British writer

As quoted in Powered by Instinct : 5 Rules for Trusting Your Guts (2003) by Kathy Kolbe, p. 136

Way

“Do not only look
For gentlefolk in castles: everywhere,
In humble dwellings and in haylofts, too,
The hearts of men are often kind and true.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Che non pur per cittadi e per castella,
Ma per tuguri ancora e per fenili
Spesso si trovan gli uomini gentili.
Canto XIV, stanza 62 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Men, Heart

“I have been to [gallery] Hagen, saw two Matisses, which enchanted me. A large collection of Japanese masks. Sublime! 'Neue [Künstler] Vereinigung' were hung in a bad light.... Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Bechteleff and Erbslöh have immense artistic sensibility. But the means of expression are to big for what they have to say. The sound of their voice is so good, so fine, that what is being said get lost. Consequently a human element is missing. They concentrate, too much, I think, on form. There is much to be learnt from their efforts. But early things by Kandinsky, and a few by Jawlensky too, seem a little empty to me. And Jawlensky's heads looked at me a little bit too much with colors. With blue and green. I hope you understand what I mean.”

August Macke (1887–1914) German painter of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter

in a letter to Franz Marc, 26 December 1910; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 137

Hope, Color, Understanding, Thinking

“When you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we’re not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have — we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth. Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

As quoted in Fortune (February 17, 2016), "Bernie Sanders Was Right: Denmark Is the Best Nation for Working People" http://fortune.com/2016/02/17/denmark-workplace-benefits/ 2010s, 2016

People, Health, World, Family

“I don’t know what’s meant by Know thyself, which seems to ask a window to look at a window.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#165
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Since we don’t have a time machine, we can only make educated guesses about the looks, skills, and personality of each individual.… We took great care not to contradict biblical details.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

As quoted in My Encounter with Ken Ham's Giant Ark http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/july-web-only/ken-ham-ark-encounter-visit.html?start=1, Christian Post (July 22, 2016)

Education, Time, Personality

“I was embarrassed when a businessman friend asked, 'What's the yearly budget of your talk show? What's the per-episode budget?' And I looked at him with these blank, typical-model eyes and said, 'I don't know.' I call myself a businesswoman and I don't know that? So that is my goal next year--to really dissect the budget.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Kiri Blakeley (July 3, 2006) "Celebrity 100: Tyra Banks On It" http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0703/120.html, Forbes, Forbes.com LLC.

“Most of us are aware and despairing on some level that our lives have become de-eroticized, that love and romance are not all around us but have to be hunted for with the kind of desperation that people used to bring when they went west looking for gold. But the answers that society gives us for this sexual desert are Viagra and Cialis and Levitra, products that allow us to stay hard for hours as we hump the indifferent mannequins we run into in bars. The country is lonely, self-obsessed and the individual members of the population are offered a thousand ways to improve their individual appearance and vigor. But there seems to be no solution on the horizon that anyone is offering to bring us more together, to give us the things we really need — love and acceptance and community.
We blame corporate America for this state of affairs because this ideology of individual acquisitiveness is the religion it naturally preaches. But it's our failure to come up with a competing ideology of getting along that's the real problem.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"Finding Love in Electoral Politics", AlterNet (13 November 2004) http://web.archive.org/web/20041117195414/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20486/

Love, People, Religion, Way

“God’s signs are not always the ones we look for, yet the private prayers of people, whether in our homes or in this place, are known, heard, and understood. There are prayers that help us last through the day, or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey. And there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Opening address to the National Day of Prayer in Suva, 15 May 2005 (excerpts) http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_4607.shtml

God, People, Home, Help

“Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 442

Life, Men, Law, Strong

“Basic Instinct 2 is not good in any rational or defensible way, but not bad in irrational and indefensible ways. I savored the icy abstraction of the modern architecture, which made the people look like they came with the building. I grinned at that absurd phallic skyscraper that really does exist in London. I liked the recklessness of the sex-and-speed sequence that opens the movie (and, curiously, looks to have been shot in Chicago). I could appreciate the plot once I accepted that it was simply jerking my chain. You can wallow in it … Footnote No. 2: My 1-1/2-star rating is like a cold shower, designed to take my mind away from giving it four stars.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/basic-instinct-2-2006 of Basic Instinct 2 (31 March 2006) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

People, Sex, Jerk, Way

“The first half of your life is spent getting over yourself. You think you’re amazing, unique. Young people walk around going, "You know the funny thing is I was just in the kitchen but now I’m here in the bedroom, get a load of me! I just go on and on!" And that’s around the age when you meet somebody else – when you’re totally unbearable. Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There’s nothing worse to look at in the world! Going around going, "I can’t believe I met you cause you’re amazing and I’m amazing and we’re surrounded by shitheads, it’s just amazing! Hey, I know this really good bar, let’s go and make it better."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

In the second half of your life you realise how like every other hump who drew breath you really are. Except you’re MORE boring.
On young people.
What It Is (2009)

Love, Life, People, Age

“Let's face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That's why they've got 75,000 applications — they're all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

Ballmer: "The Internet Was Designed For The PC. The Internet Is Not Designed For The iPhone" http://businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-ballmer-the-internet-was-designed-for-the-pc-the-internet-is-not-designed-for-the-iphone-2009-10 in Business Insider (21 October 2009) 2000s

“Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

“Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of our nation.”

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

As quoted in Sid Meier's Civilization V (2010).

“(…) In every Age people reached salvation through different types of action and sadhana (spiritual practice), but in this Age one can reach liberation only through hard work. (…) We need not consider religion or caste, but only look to hard work.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 21 March 1983

People, Age, Religion

“"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

“As years went by the boy grew high
And the village looked on in awe
They’d never seen anything like
The boy with the moon and star before
And people would ride from far and wide
just to seek the word he spread
"I'll tell you everything I've learned,"
And "Love", is all he said.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Boy With A Moon And Star On His Head
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

Love, People, Star, Boy

“Without quality in life, there is only Death waiting at the end for all of us, like the bird. Being one of those fortunate men whose existence burns more brightly because of gunning grouse, I have learned that the place to look for quality is within yourself.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Life, Death, Men, Bird

“Certainly this man, such as I have described him, this loner who is gifted with an active imagination, traversing forever the vast desert of men, has a loftier aim than that of a simple idler, an aim more general than the passing pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for what one might be allowed to call modernity; for no better word presents itself to express the idea in question. What concerns him is to release the poetry of fashion from its historical trappings, to draw the eternal out of the transient.”

Charles Baudelaire Le Peintre de la vie moderne

A coup sûr, cet homme, tel que je l'ai dépeint, ce solitaire doué d'une imagination active, toujours voyageant à travers le grand désert d'hommes, a un but plus élevé que celui d'un pur flâneur, un but plus général, autre que le plaisir fugitif de la circonstance. Il cherche ce quelque chose qu'on nous permettra d'appeler la modernité; car il ne se présente pas de meilleur mot pour exprimer l'idée en question. Il s'agit, pour lui, de dégager de la mode ce qu'elle peut contenir de poétique dans l'historique, de tirer l'éternel du transitoire. IV: "La modernité" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Modernit%C3%A9 Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

Men, Pleasure, Imagination, Idea

“I felt eyes upon me, and they pulled me away. I looked at the gathering of eager cops; some were merely curious, while others, I knew, sought their own secret satisfaction. They all wanted to see it, my face, a defense attorney's face, here in this musty place where murder was more than a case file, where the victim was flesh and blood, the smell that of family gone to dust.I felt their eyes. I knew what they wanted, and so I turned to look again upon the almost empty clothes, the flash of bone so pale and curving. But I would give them nothing, and my body did not betray me, for which I was grateful. For what I felt was the return of a long-quiescent rage, and the certain conviction that this was the most human my father had ever appeared to me.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 1.

Secret, Family, Appearance, Rage

“[Belafonte] was a good teacher and looked after me. He said, 'You have such great talent, you must try not to be a tornado - be like a submarine. It was good advice when I found myself speaking at the UN Committee Against Apartheid and then the UN General Assembly.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

Interview with Robin Denselow (May 2008)
Source: Denselow, Robin, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2280144,00.html, Robin Denselow talks to African superstar and activist Miriam Makeba, The Guardian, 15, London, 16 May 2008, 18 November 2010

Teachers

“I find that trials help very much in detaching us from this earth. They make us look higher than this world. Here below, nothing can satisfy us. We cannot enjoy a little rest except in being ready to do God's will. [-] Truly, life isn't cheerful. It is very difficult to be attached to it. Au revoir, dear Pauline, my Confidante.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

March 18(?), 1888
General Correspondence

Life, God, World, Help

“Here we are folks
The dream we all dream of
Boy versus girl in the World Series of love
Tell me, have U got the look?”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

U Got the Look
Song lyrics, Sign O' the Times (1987)

Love, World, Dreams, Girl

“Speak the truth, by all means! Speak it so that no man can mistake the utterance. Be bold and fearless in your rebuke of error, and in your keener rebuke of wrong-doing; all Christ's witnesses are bound to be thus "valiant for the truth;" but be human and loving and gentle and brotherly the while. If you must deliver the Redeemer's testimony, deliver it with the Redeemer's tears. Look, straight-eyed and kindly, upon the vilest, as a man ought to look upon a man, both royal, although the one is wearing, and the other has pawned his crown.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 579.

Love, Truth, Error, Tear

“Sitting and writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from. It is like having a mirror held up in front of you, looking into yourself and asking these questions.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Women's Weekly interview (2006)

Life, Music, Question, Thinking

“The worst thing about Nigeria is that here is a nation that has so much potential but the only problem is that everybody seems unprepared to face the problems or the realities of the Nigerian situation. There is absolutely no way you can look at the Nigerian federation, the way it was conceived, and say it is a good federation. One of the federating units is bigger than the other units. The other thing is that everything that has worked in Nigeria, or appears to have worked, seems very much to have been an imposition. The idea that sovereignty belongs to the Nigerian people is all fiction as far as Nigeria is concerned.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

People, Way, Idea, Problem

“I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

Josh Getlin, Los Angeles Times (July 19, 1994) "What Does Moon Flight Mean Now", The Seattle Times, p. A10.

People, Fight

“Paradise Lost, A further observation could be made upon the story of the Fall and how it is possible to look upon it as a myth of the breakdown of the bicameral mind.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 6, p. 299 (See also: John Milton)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The elite of the universal religions have always substituted belief in the Infinite for the experience of it. We all need God — but only in small and measured doses. Who can look upon the burning bush and not be destroyed in its flames? Who can bear the heaven and hell of each moment blazing in time? Who can shine like a star? And so, for all but a few of the manswarm, the rare ones who are truly human, it is better to glimpse such a miracle through a dark glass or to grasp it through words only.”

David Zindell (1952) American writer

Source: War in Heaven (1998), p. 476

God, Religion, Star, Hell

“Oof! McCullum kerplunks a fuller Sidebottom delivery for what looks a certain four until it smashes into Gillespie's, erm, mummy-daddy button at the non-striker's end and he is denied a run. That had to hurt. Gillespie turns down the opportunity to have it treated by the Kiwi physio - perhaps he's not his type.”

Ben Dirs journalist

England vs New Zealand, 2nd Test as it happened, 2008-16-03, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/7299873.stm,

Hurt

“I am not religious, but I am a pious man… A religious man has a definite religion. He says "God is there" or "God is there," "God is there." "Your god is not my god, and that's all." But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, "where is God?" And "well, I don't understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means." That is a pious man, who is really touched by the greatness of nature and of the creation.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986) Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937

In a television interview, ca. 1980. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi discusses religion http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/WGBBMF, National Library of Medicine.

God, Religion, Understanding, Nature

“Alone I walked on the ocean strand,
A pearly shell was in my hand;
I stooped, and wrote upon the sand
My name, the year, the day.
As onward from the sport I passed,
One lingering look behind I cast,
A wave came rolling high and fast,
And washed my lines away.”

Hannah Flagg Gould (1788–1865) American writer

"A Name In the Sand"

Sport

“Not all monotheisms are exactly the same, at the moment. They're all based on the same illusion, they're all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally it's a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, with an enormous fortune it's pumping the ideologies of wahhabism and salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That's what it does globally, it's quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn't it? It says it's the Final Revelation. It says that God spoke to one illiterate businessman – in the Arabian Peninsula – three times through an archangel, and that the resulted material, which as you can see as you read it is largely plagiarized ineptly from the Old…and The New Testament, is to be accepted as the Final Revelation and as the final and unalterable one, and that those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims. Well I tell you what, I don't think Muhammad ever heard those voices. I don't believe it. And the likelihood that I am right – as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn't read, had bits of the Old and The New Testament re-dictated to him by an archangel, I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct. But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says I'd better listen because if I don't I'm in danger, or me who says "no, I think this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it"? And up go the placards and the yells and the howls and the screams – this is in London, this is in Toronto, this is in New York, it's right in our midst now – "Behead those who cartoon Islam". Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You're giving away what is most precious in your own society, and you're giving it away without a fight, and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you why you do this. Make the best use of the time you've got left. This is really serious. … Look anywhere you like for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for antisemitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that's on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque. And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force that is the main source of hatred, is also the main caller for censorship.”

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=youtu.be&t=16m36s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Death, Women, God, Hate

“The more books and articles on Ayodhya and on "communalism" I look into, the more I feel confirmed in my assessment that the Hindu presentation of their own case regarding Ayodhya is the single worst public relations job in world history. (…) Future books on the affair will certainly include a chapter on "the Ayodhya scandal": the unscrupled use of academic and media power positions by the secularists to suppress relevant evidence, and the gullibility of foreign scholars relying on hearsay from Indian colleagues whose bona fides is open to question. (…) Future scholars of political and communications science will study the reporting on the Ayodhya affair as an absolute classic of brilliantly successful disinformation. … The buffoon of the affair is the Western class of India-watchers …. they have swallowed the anti-Hindu propaganda hook, line and sinker.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

K. Elst : The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation, in India., & Dasgupta, S. (1995). The Ayodhya reference: The Supreme Court judgement and commentaries.
1990s

Books, World, Feeling, History

“Honestly, I spend very little time thinking about past events, and I certainly don't have them ranked in any way. I look back and think that I have done a lot of good work over the years, but I am much more excited about what the future holds.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

When asked about the highlight of his career, Quoted in "John Carmack Interview, January 2006" http://archive.videogamesdaily.com/features/id_johncarmack_interview_jan05.asp Video Games Daily (2006-01-03)

Way, Thinking, Time, Past

“The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. 1980s

People, Question, Past, Dependency

“Montag, you're looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the "guilty," but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Way, Time

“Genius is the ability to look at things simply.”

E. Lee Spence (1947) German anthropologist, photographer, archaeologist, historian, photojournalist and academic

Full quote: Because of all of the shipwrecks I have discovered, people have called me a genius, but the truth is, finding wrecks isn't all that complicated. Get rid of your perceived notions, narrow everything down to the basic facts, and then just follow basic logic. Don't over complicate matters as, genius is the ability to look at things simply. Remember that and you will find the shipwrecks and their treasure.
from interview of Dr. E. Lee Spence by R. Lunsford, published in Shipwrecks magazine, Volume 1, Issue #4, December, 1989, p. 94

“During the last few decades the business world has brought about a complete revolution in the methods of manufacturing, distributing and selling goods. That the revolution is beneficial and important no businessman will deny. But however important'these things? are, the business man realizes that his most pressing problem is methods of influencing and handling men rather than things:
The young man looking forward to a career sees that the man who has unusual ability in handling men is sure to attain the position of superintendent or manager; but that the man who has great cunning in handling material things is not thereby assured of a position above that of a skilled mechanic.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: Influencing men in business, 1911, p. 9; Chapter 1 Introduction, lead paragraph

Men, World, Business, Problem

“People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened..”

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

Interview with German television channel ARD and ZDF, May 2005. Kremlin, RU, http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2005/05/05/2355_type82912type82916_87597.shtml (May 2005) 2000 - 2005

People, Understanding, Past, Heart

“I’ve never heard of any skeptic being exorcised with the intent of debunking the practice. But it sounds like a good idea, and I think I would be an ideal candidate to do that –since believers often think I look scary anyway.”

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

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Idea, Thinking

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

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

Sun Stone (1957)

Fate, Happiness, World, Color

“The position of the United Kingdom is as usual so nuanced that it's difficult to see where they are on the spectrum, but look, that's what Britain's like and we all love being British.”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V39hgN_LyrI&feature=youtu.be&t=9m27s
Fabian Picardo (Chief Minister of Gibraltar) discusses politics in Spain and Gibraltar
YouTube
Describing the UK government's position on the UN Decolonisation Committee.
2012

Love