Quotes about main
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“It is no exaggeration to say that the main aim of upper-class existence is to enjoy the filthiest of amusements.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Garden of Tortures

“Ensuring efficiency in public administration, introducing the open government institutions, developing e-services, and fighting against corruption are the main directions of the state policy. Azerbaijan has strong political will for successful fight against corruption. The legislative framework was fully modernized and institutional reforms were implemented after the country joined the international initiatives in the fight against corruption.”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

President Ilham Aliyev's opening letter to the participants of the international "Fighting corruption: international standards and national experience" conference in Baku (30 June 2014) https://en.trend.az/azerbaijan/politics/2289807.html Anti-corruption policy

Strong, Success, Fight, Country

“My central belief is that there are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully in all the main activities of the Union and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from inside. The other is to recognise that Britain's history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member. If so, it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly and, if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

'Britain and Europe: The problem with being half pregnant', in Keith Sutherland (ed.), The Rape of the Constitution? (Imprint Academic, 2000), p. 277
2000s

Exercises, History

“I am of the opinion that the main and final cause why the prince pretends to the power of altering the coinage is the profit or gain which he can get from it.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Source: De Moneta (c. 1360), Ch. 15: That the Profit accruing to the Prince from Alteration of the Coinage is unjust

“[I]f we’re going to jeer at North Korea for being a de facto monarchy, we must also acknowledge the main advantage of such a system: no divisive squabbling over who has the right to rule. On my book tour for “The Cleanest Race” I used the example of my British mother: a firm supporter of the monarchy with different estimations of the various royals. She doesn’t like the idea of Charles becoming king, but accepts that it will and must happen.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Books, Idea, Support

“Property rights develop to internalize externalities when the gains of internalization become larger than the cost of internalization. Increased internalization, in the main, results from changes in economic values, changes which stem from the development of new technology and the opening of new markets, changes to which old property rights are poorly attuned [G]iven a community's tastes… [for private versus state ownership], the emergence of new private or state-owned property rights will be in response to changes in technology and relative prices.”

Harold Demsetz (1930–2019) American economist

Harold Demsetz, (1967). "Toward a Theory of Property Rights." American Economic Review 57 (May, No. 2): 347-359. p. 350, as cited in Eggertsson (1990; 250)

Communication, Change

“Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source.”

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) French composer and music theorist of the Baroque era

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1726). Nouveau système de musique théorique, p. 59. Paris.

Nature, Perfection

“If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder, Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" Watergate: A Skeptical View http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19730920.htm," New York Review of Books, September 20, 1973. Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1970s

Sense, Past, Cheating

“Perhaps it is true that every human being is a potential monster, but if we disregard potentialities, then humankind can be divided into two main categories: human beings and human beasts.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“Here’s the bottom line. I promise you it’s entirely legal, and he can’t touch you for it. This is how the laws are written. They’re designed to protect the fortunes of people as rich as you, while throwing the main tax burden on people in much lower brackets.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 200
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Investment Counselor

People, Law

“We have ranged over all the main phases of human information processing - from information encoding, storage, retrieval, and transformation to output. We have considered the role of consciousness in the analysis and selection of stimuli, in learning and memory, and in the production of voluntary responses, including those requiring planning and creativity.
In one sense, each of these tasks may be "conscious" (if it is at the focus of attention). We may be conscious of the stimuli that we analyze and select for more detailed attention, conscious of what we learn and commit to memory, and conscious of the responses we make to such stimuli. When the required responses are complex or novel we may be aware of devoting effort to planning and monitoring their execution. In reflective thought or problem solving we may have some awareness of internal processing in the form of thoughts, emotions, images, and so forth. Whether consciousness is necessary for such processing, however, is a different matter.”

Max Velmans (1942) British psychologist

Partly cited in: W.S. Robinson (2006). "Epiphenomenalism." Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
Is human information processing conscious?, 1991

Problem, Sense, Effort, Learning

“There is a science of Dynamics in man's fortunes and nature, as well as of Mechanics. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate “motives,” as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment.
Now it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared generally as Moralists, Poets or Priests, did, without neglecting the Mechanical province, deal chiefly with the Dynamical; applying themselves chiefly to regulate, increase and purify the inward primary powers of man; and fancying that herein lay the main difficulty, and the best service they could undertake. But a wide difference is manifest in our age. For the wise men, who now appear as Political Philosophers, deal exclusively with the Mechanical province; and occupying themselves in counting-up and estimating men's motives, strive by curious checking and balancing, and other adjustments of Profit and Loss, to guide them to their true advantage”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Love, Men, Age, Fear

“Sex and politics - sex and politicians. I never understand how any politician gets a shag, really. Can you? A classic example: the David Mellor sex scandal. I bet you're the same as me. We're not shocked by these scandals involving politicians. I bet when that happened, your response was not 'Good God, that's outrageous! A man in his job, he should be running the country, not messing about like this; no wonder we're in a state; terrible!' No, that wasn't the response. You open the paper, you read about that, and you go 'Ha ha ha ha - I don't think so, Dave! I don't think so. In your dreams, perhaps.' The interesting person in that relationship is not him; it's her - Antonia. A woman of mystery; a mystery woman. Antonia de Sancha, always described as an 'unemployed actress'. Unemployed actress? How's she an unemployed actress? God! if you can feign sexual interest in David Mellor, I should think Chekhov's a piece of piss. So, she thinks 'I'm an actress. It's a role. I'll prepare'. She gets to the bedroom situation. He's in a kit-off situation, and there's Antonia giving it 'Red lorry, yellow lorry - Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper'. But the hair - that's the main unattractive thing. What barber told him that suited him? Someone winding him up there. 'Yes, David, that'll suit you, mate: a greasy, oily flap of dirty-looking patent leather, wafting about down one side of your moosh; that'll drive those unemployed actresses mental!' (Linda Live, 1993)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

God, Dreams, Sex, Understanding

“They are not like the – patron’s hands or the – blessing hands of the curate – They resemble their tools, mountains, tree trunks… The time is approaching when machines will – work FOR them – Then he will have hands like his boss – WHY NOT? – He's on the way – HIS LIFE begins TODAY [written text in his painting 'Les mains – hommage a Majakovski', 1951 - [ Vladimir Mayakovsky was a Russian Futurist poet].”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's
Source: Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 68

Life, Way, Mountain, Tree

“I think that this is Schumpeter’s main legacy to economics: the role of technological and organizational innovation in driving and shaping the growth trajectory of capitalist economies.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

"Heavy Thinker" (2007)

Thinking

“In fact, one of the main lesson to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. […] The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to follow swiftly on their peaks.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "One-liner objections" (Penguin Books, 2011, page 509, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Learning, Past, Wealth

“You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. 77: Session 617: September 25, 1972

“The Roman public's thirst for blood and pleasure in witnessing pain seems to have been unquenchable and without limit." "The caged animals were kept in dungeons below the main arena. The terrified animals in their cages were hoisted up from this pit. And not only animals, human beings too, criminals, slaves and prisoners of war. And here in this arena they were set one upon the other to provide the crowd with spectacles of the most appalling carnage. It still continues to this day in Spain.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

The First Eden (1987)

Pain, War, Pleasure, Animals

“I suppose that the main drive is to find the edge of something and then throw myself over it.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

On the issue of creativity, from the interview with Channel 4, "V for Vendetta: the man behind the mask" (11 January 2012) http://www.channel4.com/news/v-for-vendetta-the-man-behind-the-mask

“It is not uncommon for intelligent adults to turn into passive observers of their own incompetence in anything but the most elementary mathematics. Individuals may see the direct consequences of this intellectual paralysis in terms of limiting job possibilities. But the indirect, secondary consequences are even more serious. One of the main lessons learned by most people in math class is a sense of having rigid limitations. They learn a balkanized image of human knowledge which they come to see as a patchwork of territories separated by impassable iron curtains.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

People, Intelligence, Mathematics, Knowledge

“Ultimately, each transnational firm strives for its own advantage, and is supported in that effort by the state power wherein it resides, or at least where its main shareholders are domiciled.”

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Two, Visions Of Global Electronic Mastery, p. 78

Support, Effort

“In vain did Nature's wife command
Divide the waters from the land,
If daring ships and men profane,
Invade th' inviolable main.”
Nequiquam deus abscidit Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, si tamen impiae Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada.

Horace book Odes

Book I, ode iii, line 21 (trans. by John Dryden)
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)

Men, Nature, Water

“So here’s the puzzle: Realist advice has performed better than its main rivals over the past two-and-a-half decades, yet realists are largely absent from prominent mainstream publications.”

Stephen M. Walt (1955) American political scientist

"What Would a Realist World Have Looked Like?", Foreign Policy (January 8, 2016)

Past

“Kurt got to the point where he eventually had to sacrifice every bit of who he was to his art, because the world demanded it of him," Frances says bluntly at one point. "I think that was one of the main triggers as to why he felt he didn't want to be here and everyone would be happier without him."But "in reality, if he had lived," she goes on, "I would have had a dad. And that would have been an incredible experience.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

David Fricke quoting Frances Bean Cobain " Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

World, Art, Thinking, Reality

“The Prosecution holds me responsible for the concentration camps, for the destruction of Jewish life, for Einsatzgruppen and other things. All of this is neither in accord with the evidence nor with the truth. The accusers as well as the accused are exposed to the dangers of a summary proceeding. It is correct that I had to take over the Reich Security Main Office. There was no guilt in that in itself. Such offices exist in governments of other nations too. However, the task and activity assigned to me in 1943 consisted almost exclusively in the reorganization of the German political and military intelligence service, though not as Heydrich's successor. Almost a year after his death I had to accept this post under orders and as an officer at a time when suspicion fell on Admiral Canaris of having collaborated with the enemy for years. In a short time I ascertained the treason of Canaris and his accomplices to the most frightful extent.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

8/31/46. Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947

Life, Death, Truth, Intelligence

“Communists have always viewed the national question through the prism of the class struggle, believing that its solution has to be subordinated to the interests of the Revolution, to the interests of socialism. That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common struggle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Nations and Internationalism http://leninist.biz/en/1979/NI302/0-Introduction.005

People, Question

“And in the end it is because of mysticism that it is possible to say that “no man is an island” and that on the contrary every man is “a part of the main.””

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 27.

Parting

“[O]f the future form of religion little can be predicted. Its main concern may possibly be to purify, elevate, and brighten the life that now is, instead of treating it as the more or less dismal vestibule of a life that is to come.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

Life, Religion, Future

“Just as liberalism is the main force that drives conservatism and maintains its popularity in some quarters, conservatism is the reason liberalism continues to enjoy the traction that it does in our poor civilization.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Revenge of the Cookie Monster".

“Martin, rather than step into the spotlight, would prefer to die in an unarmed attack on the power station supplying its electric current. His genuine modesty is the main reason for the fateful discrepancy between him and the journalistic literary sexton beetles who make copy out of him: they would like to receive the degree of attention that he would like to avoid, and the clearer it becomes that he would like to avoid it, the more they resent him for failing to appreciate their generosity.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On Martin Amis, p. 205
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

Fate

“The essential difference between est and Scientology is two-fold. The first has to do with Scientology’s emphasis on survival and its idea that the purpose of life is survival. est sees the purpose of life as wholeness or completion – truth – not survival…The other main difference between est and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself. I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 157, 0-517-53502-5]

Life, People, Truth, Lie

“We define successful aging as including three main components: low probability of disease and disease-related disability, high cognitive and physical functional capacity, and active engagement with life.”

Robert L. Kahn (1918–2019) American psychologist

Rowe, John W., and Robert L. Kahn. " Successful aging http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/content/37/4/433.full.pdf." The gerontologist 37.4 (1997): 433-440.

Life, Age, Disease, Success

“I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There's some pretty good homegrown dope. I'm sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

[Thomases, Martha, Roberts, John, 1981, Interview: Stephen King, High Times, http://hightimes.com/entertainment/ht_admin/347]

Thinking, Marijuana

“Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full in the chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

War, Soul, Autumn, Memory

“With the thermometer at 30 below zero and the wind behind him, a man walking on Main Street in Winnipeg knows which side of him is which.”

Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) writer and economist

My Discovery of the West (1937)j

“Intellectual capital is the main determining factor and the base for economic and social development to any country.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

Meeting the Challenges of Electronic Business” in Muscat, Oman, October 9, 2000.

Country

“Back in 2014, when no one else was planning how to win the referendum, @DouglasCarswell talked tactics at the @Tate. He said: "We can win in one of two circumstances: a visible failure of the renegotiation, or one of the two main party leaders being neutral."”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

In the event, we got both. Thanks @jeremycorbyn. Series of tweets following Jeremy Corbyn's sacking of shadow ministers who defied a Labour whip not to support an amendment calling for the UK to stay in the single market after Brexit https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/880721871720808448 (30 June 2017) 2010s

Failure

“The main reason there are no raw devices [in Linux] is that I personally think that raw devices are a stupid idea.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message, linux-kernel mailing list, 1996-10-17, IU, Torvalds, Linus, 2017-04-25 http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9610.2/0030.html, 1990s, 1995-99

Stupidity, Idea, Thinking, Personality

“In my opinion the Government can do more to remedy the economic ills of the people by a system of rigid economy in public expenditure than can be accomplished through any other action. The costs of our national and local governments combined now stand at a sum close to $100 for each inhabitant of the land. A little less than one-third of this is represented by national expenditure, and a little more than two-thirds by local expenditure. It is an ominous fact that only the National Government is reducing its debt. Others are increasing theirs at about $1,000,000,000 each year. The depression that overtook business, the disaster experienced in agriculture, the lack of employment and the terrific shrinkage in all values which our country experienced in a most acute form in 1920, resulted in no small measure from the prohibitive taxes which were then levied on all productive effort. The establishment of a system of drastic economy in public expenditure, which has enabled us to pay off about one-fifth of the national debt since 1919, and almost cut in two the national tax burden since 1921, has been one of the main causes in reestablishing a prosperity which has come to include within its benefits almost every one of our inhabitants. Economy reaches everywhere. It carries a blessing to everybody.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

People, Business, Effort, Country

“A great deal of study has been directed to denning 'best decisions,' particularly since the pioneering work of mathematical statisticians (such as Wald), of mathematicians (such as von Neumann), of economists (such as Arrow)… The main effect of this development on the practice of OR has been the growing realization that there are decision objectives other than maximizing expected return and minimizing maximum loss. That is, in many practical situations there are criteria of optimality that are more appropriate than these two mentioned.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1950s, The development of operations research as a science, 1956, p. 270.

Mathematics, Optimism, Decision, Study

“The Nuremberg Trial stands for me still today as an attempt to break through to a better world. Still today I acknowledge as generally correct the reasons of my sentence by the International Military Tribunal. Moreover, I still today consider as just that I assume the responsibility and thus the guilt for everything that was perpetrated by way of, generally speaking, crime, after my joining the Hitler Government on the 8th February 1942. Not the individual mistakes, grave as they may be, are burdening my conscience, but my having acted in the leadership. Therefore, I for my person, have in the Nuremberg Trial, confessed to the collective responsibility and I am also maintaining this today still. I still see my main guilt in my having approved of the persecution of the Jews and of the murder of millions of them.”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Testimony of Albert Speer, Munich, 15 June 1977 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/speer.html

World, Way, Personality

“It was said by Fisher Ames that “falsehood proceeds from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling on his boots.””

Fisher Ames (1758–1808) American politician

Niles' Weekly Register (7 May 1831) 40:163 http://books.google.com/books?id=jhEbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA163&dq=%22falsehood+proceeds+from+Maine+to+Georgia%22 Attributed

Truth

“I discovered soon that teaching has the handicap of retrospection. And that I don't believe in. So I started [at the w:Bauhaus in Dessau] instead a method of handling material with the material itself. So that was my main change. Whereas Itten before [Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923 and Albers followed him as art-teacher] had only spoken about the appearance, 'matiere' - (the French word) and I said I would turn from 'matiere' - the outside - to the inside, to the capacity of the material, before the appearance. And that changed the attitude basically I think.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Art, Thinking, Teachers, Appearance

“In 1935 I was appointed leading artist of the All-Soviet Agricultural Exhibition. I opposed the errors of the first leader, and resigned. Afterwards, while I was still in the sanatorium, I took over the design of the main building. The design of the main hall has been done according to my idea until now. From 1931 on, I was leading artist-architect of the 'Permanent Building Exhibition'. But as the years went by, my health deteriorating, I had less and less energy left for this type of commission, such as the realization of large-scale exhibitions. I still succeeded in designing the project for the museum-exhibition of the Ministry of 'Social Security'.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1926 - 1941, Autobiography of the artist' (1941)

Health, Error, Idea

“On the side adverse to the Government are found…in profuse abundance, station, title, wealth, social influence, the professions, or the large majority of them—in a word, the spirit and power of class. These are the main body of the opposing host. Nor is that all. As knights of old had squires, so in the great army of class each enrolled soldier has, as a rule, dependents. The adverse host, then, consists of class and the dependents of class. But this formidable army is in the bulk of its constituent parts the same…that has fought in every one of the great political battles of the last 60 years, and has been defeated. We have had great controversies before this great controversy—on free trade, free navigation, public education, religious equality in civil matters, extension of the suffrage to its present basis. On these and many other great issues the classes have fought uniformly on the wrong side, and have uniformly been beaten by a power more difficult to marshal, but resistless when marshalled—by the upright sense of the nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the electors of Midlothian, Daily Review (3 May 1886), quoted in The Times (4 May 1886), p. 5.
1880s

Education, Sense, Parting, Dependency

“It is thus the justice (one would have to say) which must be the main responsibility of a sovereign. Since it is the prime interest of the many people whom they control, they must give it priority over any other interest of their own. What then becomes of Machiavel's recommendations of naked self-interest, self-aggrandizement, unleashed ambition and despotism? The sovereign, far from being the absolute Master of the people which are under his domination, is only the first servant.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Ch. 1 : What A Strong Prince Really Is, And How One Can Reach That Point

People, Justice

“It's all about discipline - and having an inner calm. That's one of the main driving forces for me when I step into the ring - you can’t have a fight and lose your temper. You need to remain calm and focused when everything around you is in chaos. It's a similar thing for the buddhists - they remain calm and disciplined in the hurly burly of everyday life.”

Johnny Nelson (1967) British boxer

Johnny 'Two worlds collide - the boxer meets the Buddhists'http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/09_september/09/boxer_yorkslincsinsideout.shtml

Life, Fight

“Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible a plea as baseball in Italian.”

George Jean Nathan (1882–1958) American drama critic and magazine editor

Clinical Notes, George Jean, Nathan, January 1926, American Mercury magazine https://books.google.com/books?id=k330MmVjym8C&q=&quot;Opera+in+English+is+in+the+main+just+about+as+sensible+a+plea+as+baseball+in+Italian&quot;&pg=PA107#v=onepage,

“Roger: Let's see.. Chris and Vinnie knew each other in high school and were in bands and then moved to Gainesville, Florida for college. I moved to Gainesville, Florida for college. And then Chris had a party and I told him I played guitar. Which I played guitar at that time. And he said you should come and play guitar then I went to practice with a guitar and then they're like, "Oh, by the way, we're going to be kicking out our bass player - would you mind playing bass?" I said OK. So I went out and bought a bass and that was in '92. And that's how it started. Then we started getting into the horn player thing. Shuffled a few horn players over the years but it's been the same main four guys the whole time.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

School, Way, Guy, Time

“Dr. Kallen says, "Free public education and private instruction purchasable at a price are both but the community's device to meet present needs by transmitting the past unchanged. They provide a grammar of assent, not a logic of inquiry. The mental posture they habituate the youth in is not the posture of reflection. The mental posture they habituate the youth in is the posture of conformity. They require belief, not investigation. They impose reverence for the past and idealization of the present. They envision the future as a perpetuation of the past, not as a new creation of it. They are Main Street's most powerful instrument of self-reproduction without variation…. They enable government both visible and invisible to continue by consent, for they forestall and inhibit in the citizens of the land the technique of doubt and dissent which is the necessary condition of good government and the true inward-ness of that eternal vigilance so notoriously the price of liberty."”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 75

Youth, Education, Communication, Past

“The main source of psychopathic diseases is the fundamental instinct of fear with its manifestations, the feeling of anxiety, anguish, and worry.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases (1916), p. 33

Fear, Disease, Feeling

“Just so is the case of many; God gives them precious time in which they are to provide for a kingdom, and they waste this time of life and cut it all into chips. Let this excite violence in the things of God. It is the main errand of our living here…”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

Heaven Taken By Storm

Life, God, Time

“No more of courts, of triumphs, or of arms,
No more of Valour’s force, or Beauty's charms!
The themes of vulgar lays with just disdain
I leave unsung, the flocks, the amorous swain,
The pleasures of the land, and terrors of the main.
How abject, how inglorious 'tis to lie
Grovelling in dust and darkness, when on high
Empires immense, and rolling worlds of light,
To range their heavenly scenes the muse invite!”

Richard Blackmore (1654–1729) English poet and physician

Book I, opening lines
Creation (1712)

Pleasure, Lie, World, Beauty

“I believe the main task of the spirit is to free man from his ego.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 109

“…yet we are told that this great nation, with such a record of splendid achievements in the past and in the present, is unfit to make its own laws, is unfit to control its own finance, and that it is to be placed as if it were a nation of children or lunatics, under the tutelage and guardianship of some other body—and what body? Who are the guardians of this mighty people? Who are they? With all respect, I shall have to make exceptions; but I am speaking of them as a whole. … They are men who have neither the training, the qualifications, nor the experience which would fit them for such a gigantic task. They are men whose sole qualification—speaking in the main, and for the majority of them—they are simply men whose sole qualification is that they are the first born of persons who had just as little qualification as themselves.”

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

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 178-179.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men, Children, People, Law

“Present-day computers are designed primarily to solve preformulated problems or to process data according to predetermined procedures. The course of the computation may be conditional upon results obtained during the computation, but all the alternatives must be foreseen in advance. … The requirement for preformulation or predetermination is sometimes no great disadvantage. It is often said that programming for a computing machine forces one to think clearly, that it disciplines the thought process. If the user can think his problem through in advance, symbiotic association with a computing machine is not necessary.
However, many problems that can be thought through in advance are very difficult to think through in advance. They would be easier to solve, and they could be solved faster, through an intuitively guided trial-and-error procedure in which the computer cooperated, turning up flaws in the reasoning or revealing unexpected turns in the solution. Other problems simply cannot be formulated without computing-machine aid. … One of the main aims of man-computer symbiosis is to bring the computing machine effectively into the formulative parts of technical problems.
The other main aim is closely related. It is to bring computing machines effectively into processes of thinking that must go on in "real time," time that moves too fast to permit using computers in conventional ways. Imagine trying, for example, to direct a battle with the aid of a computer on such a schedule as this. You formulate your problem today. Tomorrow you spend with a programmer. Next week the computer devotes 5 minutes to assembling your program and 47 seconds to calculating the answer to your problem. You get a sheet of paper 20 feet long, full of numbers that, instead of providing a final solution, only suggest a tactic that should be explored by simulation. Obviously, the battle would be over before the second step in its planning was begun. To think in interaction with a computer in the same way that you think with a colleague whose competence supplements your own will require much tighter coupling between man and machine than is suggested by the example and than is possible today.”

J. C. R. Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis

Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960

Way, Error, Imagination, Problem

“In 1982, the main problems were getting something out in front of the public and then figuring out how to sell it. Today, it is much easier to solve the mechanical problems of self-publishing and to reach an audience, but the fact that it’s easier creates another problem: how can you be heard above all the noise? The mass of information that is available today, through film, television, books, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet is really intimidating.”

John R. Erickson (1942) American author

John R. Erickson on the discipline of writing, the world of publishing, and (of course) dogs http://www.lonestarliterary.com/john-r.-erickson-061415.html (June 14, 2015)

Books, Problem

“I see a sequence of seven main phases: creation, revolution or exodus (Israel in Egypt), law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Five, p. 106

Wisdom, Law

“If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation. Most do so directly, by breeding. In the few examples that don't do so by design, they do it indirectly, by helping a relative with whom they share a great number of their genes. And in as much as the legacy that human beings pass on to the next generation is not only genetic but to a unique degree cultural, we do the same. So animals and ourselves, to continue the line, will endure all kinds of hardship, overcome all kinds of difficulties, and eventually the next generation appears. This albatross is over 30 years old, she's already a grandmother, and this year once again she has produced a chick. She will devote the next 10 months of her life looking after it. She has faced the trials of life and triumphed, for her little 2 day old chick the trials are just beginning.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
The Trials of Life (1990)

Life, Appearance, Time, Help

“Roger: Buddy’s my main influence.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“She slides in and you rode down Main Street, you turn right when that red light turns green.
Sun sets now, you're half way to heaven.
She picks a song, you turn it up to 11, you say "Do you wanna?" and she says "Hell yeah." So you hit the party, all your buddies are jealous.
Someday, you'll be looking back on your life at the memories, this is gonna be one of those nights.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

One of Those Nights
Song lyrics, Two Lanes of Freedom (2013)

Life, Way, Hell, Light

“Sometimes I try to think and nothing comes out of it; but it happens that I doze off and suddenly feel as though someone is rousing me. I am startled, open my eyes, and what my mind was looking for stands before me like an apparition - at once I seize my pencil to draw; the main thing has been done.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich, recorded by Vasily Zhukovsky, c. 1821; cited by Sigrid Hinz, Caspar David Friedrich in Briefen und Bekenntnissen; Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellchaft, Berlin ,1968 p. 239; as cited in 'The Phantasmatic in romantic subjective experience and aesthetics' - Master's Thesis http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1667795&fileOId=2224083 by Adrian Gerardo de Jong; Helsingborg Sweden, Sept. 2010, pp. 46-47 1794 - 1840

Feeling, Thinking, Drawing

“The Harlot Babylon is preparing the nations to receive the Antichrist. The Harlot Babylon will be a religion of affirmation, toleration, no absolutes, a counterfeit justice movement. They will feed the poor, have humanitarian projects, inspire acts of compassion for all the wrong reasons. They won’t know it, beloved they will be sincere, many of them, but their sincerity will not in any way lessen the impact of their deception. The fact that they are sincere does not make their deception less damaging.
I believe that one of the main pastors, as a forerunner to the Harlot movement, it’s not the Harlot movement yet, is Oprah. She is winsome, she is kind, she is reasonable, she is utterly deceived, utterly deceived. A classy woman, a cool woman, a charming woman, but has a spirit of deception and she is one of the clear pastors, forerunners to the Harlot movement.”

Mike Bickle (1955) American writer and priest

The Harlot Babylon
End Times with Mike Bickle
God TV
http://www.god.tv/node/2875
2011-08-06, quoted in * Brian
Tashman
Rick Perry Partners With Pastor Who Thinks Oprah Is The Precursor To The Antichrist
Right Wing Watch
2011-07-08
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-perry-partners-pastor-who-thinks-oprah-precursor-antichrist
2011-08-06

Religion, Justice, Way, Sincerity

“Relativity and… quantum… remain incomplete…. the main reason each is incomplete is the existence of the other. The mind calls for a third theory to unify all of physics, and for a simple reason. Nature is… "unified." …interconnected, in that everything interacts with everything else.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (2007)

Nature

“The text should sustain, suggest, and give tone to the sermon. The main thought of the text should usually be the main thought of the sermon. A text must not be a pretext.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 482.

“Create turf, save water. Those are the two main principles. And, you know, keep everything alive. Maintain a game habitat. That's important so that you have an entire system at work. Cattle are going to do better, oddly enough, if the birds are doing good and the deer are doing good. You try to manage the whole thing.”

Tommy Lee Jones (1946) American actor and film director

On his conservation principles.
Interview interview (1995)

Game, Bird, Water

“While I always wait for the final details of any piece of legislation before deciding whether to support it or not, the framework released last week emphasized two main goals that I wholeheartedly support: economic growth and simplicity.”

Ted Budd (1971) American politician

Why we need tax reform http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/columns/u-s-rep-ted-budd-why-we-need-tax-reform/article_7ce96e8e-96d8-5a6d-9f5c-5e9bb26c3a36.html (October 23, 2017)

Support, Waiting

“Our strength is now reduced from nine thousand to between four and five thousand. All our heavy cannon on garrison carriages, and heavy and superfluous stores of every kind, are removed to the main, and to the north end of the Island, where we intend to intrench and attempt to hold it, and wait the chance of events. General Hancock is gone to Boston to forward the repairs of the fleet, and to prepare the mind of the Count for a speedy return. How far he will succeed, I cannot pretend to say. I think it a matter of some doubt yet, whether the enemy will reenforce, or take off this garrison. If they expect a superior fleet from Europe, they will reenforce; but, if not, they will remove the garrison.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Thinking, Chance, Waiting

“The old joke about the two main Soviet papers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“News”), was “There’s no news in the Truth and no truth in the News!””

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

Truth

“The main thing I tried to stress was how badly I was treated in the American camp at Freising, but the American prosecutor and the judges ruled that my comments on my poor treatment there had to be expunged from the record because it was irrelevant. I don't think it is irrelevant when we National Socialists are accused of war crimes and of murdering 5 million Jews and millions of other innocent people such as partisans, hostages, war prisoners. Therefore, I should have been allowed to insert into the record of this trial how badly I was treated personally as a prisoner of war, after the war was over, mind you, in Freising.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

To Leon Goldensohn, June 15, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

War, People, Thinking, Personality

“As for the clergy — No — If I say a word against them, I'll be shot. — I have no desire, — and besides, if I had, — I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, — with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account, — and therefore, 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, — and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book III, Ch. 20.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life, Men, Soul, Drawing

“Last year, when the need to form a fact-finding team to undertake a thorough investigation concerning the hidden elements involved in September 11 incident was brought up; an idea also endorsed by all independent governments and nations as well as by the majority in the United States, my country and myself came under pressure and threat by the government of the United States. Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea. Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly bring to trial the main perpetrator of the incident in order to identify the elements behind the safe space provided for the invading aircraft to attack the twin world trade towers? Why should it not have been allowed to bring him to trial to help recognize those who launched terrorist groups and brought wars and other miseries into the region? Is there any classified information that must be kept secret?”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (22 September 2011). http://gadebate.un.org/node/186 2011

War, Secret, World, Justice

“It was when General Grant was fighting his way through the Wilderness to Richmond, on the 'line' he meant to pursue 'if it took all summer', and every reverse to his arms was made the occasion for a fresh demand for peace without emancipation, that President Lincoln did me the honor to invite me to the Executive Mansion for a conference on the situation. I need not say I went most gladly. The main subject on which he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel States to come within the Federal lines. The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines.”

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

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), p. 434.

War, Peace, Way, Fight

“What the Divine wants is for man to embody Him here, in the individual and in the collectivity… to realise God in life. The old system of yoga could not harmonise or unify Spirit and life; it dismissed the world as Maya or a transient play of God. The result has been a diminution of life-power and the decline of India. The Gita says, utsideyur ime loka na kuryam karma cedaham ["These peoples would crumble to pieces if I did not do actions," 3.24]. Truly 'these peoples' of India have gone to ruin. What kind of spiritual perfection is it if a few Sannyasins, Bairagis and Saddhus attain realisation and liberation, if a few Bhaktas dance in a frenzy of love, god-intoxication and Ananda, and an entire race, devoid of life, devoid of intelligence, sinks to the depths of extreme tamas?… But now the time has come to take hold of the substance instead of extending the shadow. We have to awaken the true soul of India and in its image fashion all works…. I believe that the main cause of India's weakness is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think… incapacity of thought or 'thought-phobia'…. The mediaeval period was a night, a time of victory for the man of ignorance; the modern world is a time of victory for the man of knowledge. It is the one who can fathom and learn the truth of the world by thinking more, searching more, labouring more, who will gain more Shakti. Look at Europe, and you will see two things: a wide limitless sea of thought and the play of a huge and rapid, yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe lies there. It is by virtue of this Shakti that she has been able to swallow the world, like our Tapaswins of old, whose might held even the gods of the universe in awe, suspense and subjection. People say that Europe is rushing into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions, all these upsettings are the initial stages of a new creation….. We, however, are not worshippers of Shakti; we are worshippers of the easy way…. Our civilisation has become ossified, our Dharma a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of intoxication. So long as this state of things lasts, any permanent resurgence of India is impossible…. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and so the Shakti has abandoned us…. You say what is needed is emotional excitement, to fill the country with enthusiasm. We did all that in the political field during the Swadeshi period; but all we did now lies in the dust…. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement, feeling and mental enthusiasm the base. I want to make a vast and heroic equality the foundation of my yoga; in all the activities of the being, of the adhar [vessel] based on that equality, I want a complete, firm and unshakable Shakti; over that ocean of Shakti I want the vast radiation of the sun of Knowledge and in that luminous vastness an established ecstasy of infinite love and bliss and oneness. I do not want tens of thousands of disciples; it will be enough if I can get as instruments of God a hundred complete men free from petty egoism. I have no faith in the customary trade of guru. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is that a few, awakened at my touch or at that of another, will manifest from within their sleeping divinity and realise the divine life. It is such men who will raise this country.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

April, 1920, Letter to Barin Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's brother, Translated from Bengali
India's Rebirth

Love, Life, Men, God

“Many people are frustrated in the Arab world. Many give in to the anger because they are accused of violence. But instead we should get up, explain who we are and what we believe in. … Over the last three years, most victims of terrorism have been Muslim. So there’s not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between extremists and moderates of all the religions. … What is important is not to live in fear. The most dangerous [thing to do] is to give up and lose hope. The main enemy is not terrorism or extremism, but ignorance.”

Queen Rania of Jordan (1970) Queen consort of Jordan

Interview with Corriere della Sera, as quoted in "Muslim women don't have to wear veils: Rania" in Khaleej Times (9 February 2007)

War, People, World, Fear

“[On the question: 'What was your main stylistic influence up to this time']: The Renaissance chiefly - Piero, Mantegna, Uccello - but I was attracted also by the modern idioms - Léger, Picasso - and was close to the abstract painters on the project such as Stuart Davis, Burgoyne Diller, Arshile Gorky, Balcomb Greene, etc. At the time I did the Queens project, there was already a marked change in my work - it was becoming more concerned with cubist concepts of treating space.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Question, Change, Time

“Grafenwalder shoots a sidelong glance at Ursula Goodglass, wondering what their marriage must be like. Clearly sex isn’t in the cards, but he doubts that it was ever the main interest in their lives. Games, especially those of prestige and subterfuge, are amongst the chief entertainments of the Rust Belt moneyed.”

Alastair Reynolds (1966) British novelist and astronomer

Grafenwalder’s Bestiary (p. 212)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

Money, Marriage, Sex, Game

“In fact, the only person to rival Friedman for policy influence in the twentieth century is John Maynard Keynes, who had a strikingly different view of the role of government. Keynes was influential because he advocated more government intervention into what he perceived as poorly functioning private economies caught up in the Great Depression. In contrast to Keynes, Friedman put the main blame for the Depression on government failures, especially of monetary policy. Hence, the Depression did not make Friedman a fan of big government. He also found in the Federal Reserve’s failure to prevent deflation an argument in favor of monetary rules. As the world evolved— with low inflation becoming the major mission of central banks and free markets and secure property rights becoming the main policies to promote economic growth—Friedman surely won the intellectual battle.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 2

World, Failure, Personality

“The authors analyze the nation-state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics:
(1) properties of nation-states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration;
(2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states;
(3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world-level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional authority;
(4) dynamic features of world culture and society that generate expansion, conflict, and change, especially the statelessness of world society, legitimation of multiple levels of rationalized actors, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions”

John W. Meyer (1935) Sociologist and professor at Stanford University

John W. Meyer, et al. "World society and the nation‐state." American Journal of sociology 103.1 (1997): 144-181.

World, Change

“Sunni and Shia are the main schools in Islam, like Protestant and Catholic. … When you debate with the other school you don’t use vile language or other terms against their respective leaders.”

Ammar Nakshawani (1981) Islamic lecturer

On Islamic unity, in the Daily Mail (5 July 2013) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2357021/The-hate-sheikh-Home-Counties-Firebrand-cleric-fuelling-global-conflict-Muslims-sets-HQ-idyllic-village.html

School

“In Vienna, Modernism had three main characteristics. The first was the new view of the human mind as being largely irrational by nature. …they questioned what constitutes reality, what lies below the surface appearances of people, objects, and events. …They discovered that …people harbor not only unconscious erotic feelings, but also unconscious aggressive impulses that are directed against themselves as well as against others. Freud later called these dark impulses the death instinct.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

Death, People, Feeling, Question

“The present industrial era brought with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers. I conjecture that this class attained its acme of popularity and power, at least in America, toward the close of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Almost at the opening of the present century a progressively rigorous opposition found for its mouthpiece the President of the Union himself. If Mr. Roosevelt became, what his adversaries are pleased to call, an agitator, his agitation had a cause which is as deserving of study as is the path of a cyclone.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

Source: The Theory of Social Revolutions,, pp. 2-3, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 9-10

Study, Change

“The success of any freedom of information regime depends on two main factors: A tightly drawn law with a clear statement of intent that makes clear statement of intent that makes clear a presumption of openness, and a bold regulator who is tough and not afraid to exert his authority and challenge government interests.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Pages 4-5.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Law, Freedom, Success, Dependency

“We have defined the main task of economic analysis as the explanation of the magnitudes of economic quantities. The student will find also that the main part of this, as of most other works on the subject, is concerned with the theory of the determination of prices, wages, interest rates, incomes, and the like. He may well inquire, therefore, in the midst of so much mathematics, whether the first task of economics is not the investigation of wealth, or welfare. Some economists have endeavored to restrict the boundaries of the science to the investigation of those quantities which are numerically measurable. Well-being, under such a restriction, would not be part of economics at all.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 7-8

Mathematics, Science, Parting, Wealth

“[T]he main threat to the South's security is the general lack of public identification with the ROK and its values, as opposed to any widespread vulnerability to the personality cult.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Personality

“I would say the main thing in any young kid's life is education. Even if a guy is prejudiced, he can be educated to understand why he is prejudiced. Education plays a great role in all life, whether you're black or white. You've got to go to high school, you've got to go to college. When you come out of college or high school, you can play sports. If you ever get hurt, they can't take that brain away from you, you've got that.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

Life, Education, School, Guy

“What I liked was Thatcherism's Bolshevik aspect, which was to shake up the whole of Britain quite fundamentally, and if you read what I wrote in those years I think you might agree that in taking the view that I did then — that this was necessary and desirable — I never subscribed to the main delusion of the Thatcherites, which was that you could change everything and everything would remain the same. If what you wanted was a very anarchic, globalised, polyglot, mixed-up society in which most of the structures which had somehow been renewed from the Edwardian period to the Sixties were destroyed, then Thatcherism was what would do the job.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Quoted in Will Self, "John Gray: Forget everything you know," The Independent (2002-09-03)

Thinking, Change, Reading

“One thing is clear, … A proximity to the people who are willing to take on responsibility, who are everywhere in our country and not just in politics, will be my main mission. I want to be active in inviting these people to take on responsibility and not just stand around as spectators and critical observers of public life.”

Joachim Gauck (1940) German politician

nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/europe/joachim-gaucks-background-seen-as-an-asset-in-germany.html

Life, People, Country

“We all come into the world with baggage which, in the end, we have no hope of reclaiming, The main item in mine was my father.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

World, Hope

“Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis
The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)

Country

“Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

endorsing Barack Obama, Telegraph Column, October 21, 2008
2000s, 2008

Housing

“Commentators — even, and especially, Christian ones — frequently lapse into a kind of moral parochialism when it comes to discussions about animals, as if God only cared for one of the millions of species in the created world. This, in turn, has led to a practical form of idolatry. By "idolatry" I mean here the deification of the human species by regarding human beings as the sole, main, or even exclusive concern of God the Creator.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Gospel: Christian Faith as if Animals Mattered (1998), p. 115

God, World, Animals

“If my history lesson has done nothing else, it should have reminded you that, during any given period in the evolving history of physics, the prevailing, main line, climate of opinion was likely as not to be wrong, as seen in the light of later developments. And yet, in those earlier times, with relatively few individuals involved, change did occur, but slowly… What is fundamentally different in the present day situation in high energy physics is that large numbers of workers are involved, with corresponding pressures to conformity and resistance to any deflection in direction of the main stream, and that the time scale of one scientific generation is much too long for the rapid pace of experimental discovery. I also have a secret fear that new generations may not necessarily have the opportunity to become familiar with dissident ideas.”

Julian Schwinger (1918–1994) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by Sameer Shah in "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em": Julian Schwinger's Conflicts in Physics. Directions in Cultural History, The UCLA Historical Journal, Volume 21, 2005-2006, p. 50

Secret, Fear, History, Idea

“[After struggle with heart disease] I've stopped eating meat, cheese, milk, even fish. No dairy at all. I've lost more than 20 pounds so far, aiming for about 30 before Chelsea's wedding. And I have so much more energy now! I feel great. … I just decided that I was the high-risk person, and I didn't want to fool with this anymore. And I wanted to live to be a grandfather. So I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival. … The main thing that was hard for me actually … was giving up yogurt and hard cheese. I love that stuff, but it really made a big difference when I did it. … [To truly change the conditions that lead to bad habits and poor health] we have to demand it by changing the way we live. You have to make a conscious decision to change for your own well-being, and that of your family and your country.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

" Bill Clinton Explains Why He Became a Vegan http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-08-2013/bill-clinton-vegan.html" by Joe Conason, AARP The Magazine, August/September 2013. 2010s

Love, Health, Disease, Family

“Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, What shall be done with the free negro? We have settled the slavery question as far as we are concerned; we have prohibited it in Illinois forever; and in doing so, I think we have done wisely, and there is no man in the State who would be more strenuous in his opposition to the introduction of slavery than I would; but when we settled it for ourselves, we exhausted all our power over that subject. We have done our whole duty, and can do no more. We must leave each and every other State to decide for itself the same question. In relation to the policy to be pursued toward the free negroes, we have said that they shall not vote; whilst Maine, on the other hand, has said that they shall vote. Maine is a sovereign State, and has the power to regulate the qualifications of voters within her limits. I would never consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship upon a negro; but still I am not going to quarrel with Maine for differing from me in opinion. Let Maine take care of her own negroes and fix the qualifications of her own voters to suit herself, without interfering with Illinois, and Illinois will not interfere with Maine.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

Speech in Ottawa, Illinois http://www.bartleby.com/251/11.html (21 August 1858) 1850s

Question, Thinking

“This Idea of Spinoza's we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded; absolute substance is the truth, but it is not the whole truth; in order to be this, it must also be thought of as in itself active and living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the abstract determination of mind; it may undoubtedly be said that this thought is the foundation of all true views — not, however, as their absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy. For as we saw above … when man begins to philosophize, the soul must commence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which all that man has held as true has disappeared; this negation of all that is particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, comparing Spinoza's philosophy to that of the Eleatics, in Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1896), Vol. 3, Ch. I : The Metaphysics of the Understanding, § 2 : Spinoza, p. 257

Truth, Soul, Idea, Universe

“…Copernicus was condemned for suggesting that the sun… was the center of our universe… Giordano Bruno was persecuted, and… burned at the stake for arguing that space extended beyond our solar system…. William Harvey was condemned… for suggesting that the heart was the center of the body's circulatory system… Each ultimately was proven to be correct…. Today U. S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) are engaging in persecution of their own, attempting to silence dissenting voices”

David A. Ridenour

on climate change
David A. Ridenour, "Senators Try to Stifle the Global Warming Debate," Chicago Sun Times, November 16, 2006

Silence, Universe, Change, Sun

“The scholars of European Enlightenment who were influenced by Hindu, Chinese, Greek and Roman traditions of spirituality and culture, have judged Jehovah quite correctly and identified him as the main source of darkness which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages. But they have so far neglected Allah of the Quran and not weighed him in the same balance of rationalism, humanism and universalism on which Jehovah was weighed and found wanting.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Age, Universe

“The methods of mathematics are the main topic of the course, not a long list of finished mathematical results with such highly polished proofs that the poor student can only marvel at the results, with no hope of understanding how mathematics is actually created by practicing mathematicians.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Hope, Mathematics, Understanding

“The main reason I became vegan was the book "." It basically changed my life. After the 2007 season I had read so much I decided to become a vegan and get rid of all the animal products -- meat and dairy. At first, it was basically just for the health benefits -- I was intrigued by the 2005 season when I cut a lot of that stuff out and got a lot better. It really changed my career, and I thought, "This might be something that helps me take my career to the next level." And it wasn't the main reason, but I like knowing everything I eat was served in a humane way.”

Pat Neshek (1980) American baseball player

"Pat Neshek: Willing to take the heat for his vegan diet" https://web.archive.org/web/20090521074430/http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/44920792.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ, interview with StarTribune.com (May 17, 2009).

Life, Health, Books, Way

Quotes about main page 5

Quotes about main
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