Quotes about main
page 2

Source: Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Letter to Lucy Martin Donnelly, February 10, 1916
1910s

About Beauty
(1857/58)

Source: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944), Chapter III: Etatism

Source: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1934), p. 48

CBC Ideas Interview (podcast) (September 25, 2006)

"The Order of the National Commissar for the Defense of the Soviet Union" (28 July 1942) Moscow http://www.stalingrad-info.com/order227.htm
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Italian saying, quoted by Bonaparte during the first Italian campaign to highlight the financial dependence of the Directoire on the plunder from the Army of Italy, according to Lucian S. Regenbogen, Napoléon a dit : aphorismes, citations et opinions, p. 82.
Attributed

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

"Food Talks: Willem Dafoe, His Italian Family, Broccoli, Carciofi & Panzanella" http://www.foodiamo.com/italian-food-news/food-talks-willem-dafoe/, interview with Foodiamo (January 2018).

Quote from his writings Thoughts on Art, Caspar David Friedrich; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 33-34
undated

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005) http://www.knox.edu/x9803.xml
2005

Arthur Symons Figures of Several Centuries (London: Constable, 1916) p. 40.
Criticism
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Letter to Robert E. Howard (7 November 1932), in Selected Letters 1932-1934 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 102
Non-Fiction, Letters

Source: 1970s, Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes (1973), p. 28

Logical Atomism (1924)
1920s

ABC News interview (16 August 2006)

“The main force in man — is the power of the spirit.”
Ведь главная сила в человеке — это сила духа.
Variant translation: The main human strength is willpower.
As quoted in Essays on Marxist-Leninist Ethics [марксистско-ленинской этике] (1962) by Simon S. Utkin [Семен Семенович Уткин], p. 180
““All my teachings are only introductions, [the main part is up to you to discover]” (SH 199)”
Attributed

“The main priority of the Socialist Party is education.”
January, 13th 2003
As Opposition Leader

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

25 February 1933, in a letter to L. Hogben. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics, J.H.Bennett, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 218.
1930s

[Rigopoulos, Antonio, The Life And Teachings Of Sai Baba Of Shirdi: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College, http://books.google.com/books?id=TNohSoS0CzUC&pg=PA43, 1993, SUNY Press, 978-0-7914-1267-1, 43–]
Sources

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
Context: This foundation of the class struggle, which Marx – and this is his immortal service – has given to the modern labor movement, is the main point of attack in the battle which the bourgeois political economy is waging with socialism. The political economists deny the class struggle and would make of the labor movement only a part of the bourgeois party movements, and the Social Democracy only a division of the bourgeois democracy. The bourgeois political economy and politics direct all their exertions against the class character of the modern labor movement. If it were possible to create a breach in this bulwark, in this citadel of the Social Democracy, then the Social Democracy is conquered, and the proletariat thrown back under the dominion of capitalistic society. However small such a breach may be in the beginning, the enemy has the power to widen it and the certainty of final victory. And the enemy is most dangerous when he comes as a friend to the fortress, when he slinks in under the cover of friendship, and is recognized as a friend and comrade. The enemy who comes to us with open visor we face with a smile; to set our foot upon his neck is mere play for us. The stupidly brutal acts of violence of police politicians, the outrages of anti-socialist laws, the anti-revolution laws, penitentiary bills – these only arouse feelings of pitying contempt; the enemy, however, that reaches out the hand to us for a political alliance; and intrudes himself upon us as a friend and brother, – him and him alone have we to fear. Our fortress can withstand every assault – it can not be stormed nor taken from us by siege – it can only fall when we ourselves open the doors to the enemy and take him into our ranks as a fellow comrade. Growing out of the class struggle, our party rests upon the class struggle as a condition of its existence. Through and with that struggle the party is unconquerable; without it the party is lost, for it will have lost the source of its strength. Whoever fails to understand this or thinks that the class struggle is a dead issue, or that class antagonisms are gradually being effaced, stands upon the basis of bourgeois philosophy.

Vol. II, Ch. 1 : Introduction, concerning the time when the Apocalypse was written
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.
The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify mens curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence. For, as the few and obscure Prophecies concerning Christ’s first coming were for setting up the Christian religion, which all nations have since corrupted; so the many and clear Prophecies concerning the things to be done at Christ’s second coming, are not only for predicting but also for effecting a recovery and re-establishment of the long-lost truth, and setting up a kingdom wherein dwells righteousness. The event will prove the Apocalypse; and this Prophecy, thus proved and understood, will open the old Prophets, and all together will make known the true religion, and establish it. For he that will understand the old Prophets, must begin with this; but the time is not yet come for understanding them perfectly, because the main revolution predicted in them is not yet come to pass. In the days of the voice of the seventh Angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the Prophets: and then the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign for ever, Apoc. x. 7. xi. 15. There is already so much of the Prophecy fulfilled, that as many as will take pains in this study, may see sufficient instances of God’s providence: but then the signal revolutions predicted by all the holy Prophets, will at once both turn men’s eyes upon considering the predictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content ourselves with interpreting what hath been already fulfilled.
Amongst the Interpreters of the last age there to scarce one of note who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries. The success of others put me upon considering it; and if I have done any thing which may be useful to following writers, I have my design.

Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861)
Context: It is provable both that the historical sequence was, in its main outlines, a necessary one; and that the causes which determined it apply to the child as to the race.... as the mind of humanity placed in the midst of phenomena and striving to comprehend them has, after endless comparisons, speculations, experiments, and theories, reached its present knowledge of each subject by a specific route; it may rationally be inferred that the relationship between mind and phenomena is such as to prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and that as each child's mind stands in this same relationship to phenomena, they can be accessible to it only through the same route. Hence in deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method of civilization will help to guide us.<!--pp.76-77

“Markowitz's main interest is prescription of rules of rational behaviour for investors;”
Tobin, James. " Liquidity preference as behavior towards risk http://web.uconn.edu/ahking/Tobin58.pdf." The review of economic studies (1958): 65-86.
1950s-60s
Context: A forthcoming book by Harry Markowitz, Techniques of Portfolio Selection, will treat the general problem of finding dominant sets and computing the corresponding opportunity locus, for sets of securities all of which involve risk. Markowitz's main interest is prescription of rules of rational behaviour for investors; the main concern of this paper is the implications for economic theory, mainly comparative statics, that can be derived from assuming that investors do in fact follow such rules.

Query 28 : Are not all Hypotheses erroneous in which Light is supposed to consist of Pression or Motion propagated through a fluid medium?
Opticks (1704)
Context: To make way for the regular and lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets, it's necessary to empty the Heavens of all Matter, except perhaps some very thin Vapours, Steams or Effluvia, arising from the Atmospheres of the Earth, Planets and Comets, and from such an exceedingly rare Æthereal Medium … A dense Fluid can be of no use for explaining the Phænomena of Nature, the Motions of the Planets and Comets being better explain'd without it. It serves only to disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies, and make the frame of Nature languish: And in the Pores of Bodies, it serves only to stop the vibrating Motions of their Parts, wherein their Heat and Activity consists. And as it is of no use, and hinders the Operations of Nature, and makes her languish, so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected. And if it be rejected, the Hypotheses that Light consists in Pression or Motion propagated through such a Medium, are rejected with it.
And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the authority of those the oldest and most celebrated philosophers of ancient Greece and Phoenicia, who made a vacuum and atoms and the gravity of atoms the first principles of their philosophy, tacitly attributing Gravity to some other Cause than dense Matter. Later Philosophers banish the Consideration of such a Cause out of natural Philosophy, feigning Hypotheses for explaining all things mechanically, and referring other Causes to Metaphysicks: Whereas the main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical.

Parnassus on Wheels (1917)
Context: "Lord!" he said, "when you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue — you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night — there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean. Jiminy! If I were the baker or the butcher or the broom huckster, people would run to the gate when I came by — just waiting for my stuff. And here I go loaded with everlasting salvation — yes, ma'am, salvation for their little, stunted minds — and it's hard to make 'em see it. That's what makes it worth while — I'm doing something that nobody else from Nazareth, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, has ever thought of. It's a new field, but by the bones of Whitman, it's worth while. That's what this country needs — more books!"

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 33, as translated by Pierre Antoine Motteux in The History of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1701)
Variant translations:
I'm kind-hearted by nature, and full of compassion for the poor; there's no stealing the loaf from him who kneads and bakes; and by my faith it won't do to throw false dice with me; I am an old dog, and I know all about 'tus, tus;' I can be wide-awake if need be, and I don't let clouds come before my eyes, for I know where the shoe pinches me; I say so, because with me the good will have support and protection, and the bad neither footing nor access. And it seems to me that, in governments, to make a beginning is everything; and maybe, after having been governor a fortnight, I'll take kindly to the work and know more about it than the field labour I have been brought up to.
Honesty's the best policy.
Context: I was ever charitable and good to the poor, and scorn to take the bread out of another man's mouth. On the other side, by our Lady, they shall play me no foul play. I am an old cur at a crust, and can sleep dog-sleep when I list. I can look sharp as well as another, and let me alone to keep the cobwebs out of my eyes. I know where the shoe wrings me. I will know who and who is together. Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning.

“The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual.”
Diary entry (3 June 1902), # 411, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1895 - 1902
Context: The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

Source: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962), Chapter 5: On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, § 10 : The Concept of a Perfect System of Government
Context: It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence. The enticement implied is too tempting for a human being. The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

"Zendaya Reveals Why She Became a Vegetarian: It's 'Definitely Not Because I Love Vegetables'" https://people.com/food/zendaya-vegetarian-diet/, People (9 December 2016).

Precis des Guerres Cesar Das Napoleon I

http://www.hotpress.com/music/day-2000-coldplays-debut-album-parachutes-hits-no-1-22782005 source

“The main wish of the introvert is to avoid friends as well as enemies.”

Source: As quoted in 1990, "Rudolf Nureyev, Charismatic Dancer Who Gave Fire to Ballet's Image, Dies at 54" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/07/arts/rudolf-nureyev-charismatic-dancer-who-gave-fire-to-ballet-s-image-dies-at-54.html (7 January 1993)

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”
Variant: The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Variant: Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture... Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
Source: Fear of Flying
“It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.”
Source: The Road Home

“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself.”

2010s
Context: The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

“The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.”

Source: No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

“I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always loved too well but never wisely.”

“I live, which is the main point.”

Source: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985
Source: Dragon Blood

Quoted in Roberto Suro, "Hearts and Minds", New York Times Magazine (29 December 1991).

“The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.”
Source: Come Hell or High Water

“The main ingredient of stardom, is the rest of the team.”
They Call Me Coach (1972)

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"
“The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.”
Source: From Here to Eternity

1940s, Science and Religion (1941)
“All people live in a fantasy in which they are the main character.”
Source: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World