Quotes about making
page 79

“As professor in the Polytechnic School [autumn of 1858] in Zurich I found myself for the first time obliged to lecture upon the elements of the differential calculus and felt, more keenly than ever before, the lack of a really scientific foundation for arithmetic. In discussing the notion of the approach of a variable magnitude to a fixed limiting value, and especially in proving the theorem that every magnitude which grows continually, but not beyond all limits, must certainly approach a limiting value, I had recourse to geometric evidences. Even now such resort to geometric intuition in a first presentation of the differential calculus, I regard as exceedingly useful, from the didactic standpoint, and indeed indispensable, if one does not wish to lose too much time. But that this form of introduction into the differential calculus can make no claim to being scientific, no one will deny. For myself this feeling of dissatisfaction was so overpowering that I made the fixed resolve to keep meditating on the question till I should find a purely arithmetic and perfectly rigorous foundation for the principles of infinitesimal analysis.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

School, Feeling, Question, Autumn

“Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

John Cumming trans., p. 7.
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

“Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 29)

Intelligence

“A waste is a nine-year-old boy playing catch with the roof of his garage who already understands that his existence makes for the perfect insult- gay. "You're so gay" a. k. a. stupid a. k. a. dumb a. k. a. wrong. Do you have any idea how gross it feels to hide inside the pile of lies it takes to make you, Sweet Angel, comfortable?”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

A Waste
Poetry

Stupidity, Angels, Feeling, Boy

“I joined the Corps not because I couldn't make it elsewhere or because I needed money to go to school. No signing bonus was going to turn me into a soldier. I became a Marine because I wanted to be among the best, just as I applied to Columbia because I wanted to be among the brightest. I knew both required a high price.”

Matt Sanchez (1970) writer, journalist

[Patterson, Robert, War Crimes, Three Rivers Press, February 26, 2008, 39, 0307338274]

Money, School

“O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.”

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

Pt. I, Bk. V, ch. 5.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

“Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Paris Review interview (1958)

Failure, Understanding, Fight

“Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience…In the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 286-287)

People, Law, Way, Idea

“The Alaska Constitution is my bible in governing. I try to keep it so simple by reading the thing and believing in it and living it. It's providential. Some of the crafters of the Constitution are still alive. They're my mentors, my advisers. I get to meet with these folks and ask, "What did you mean by this?" And it makes so much sense.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/vassilaros/s_585718.html by Dimitri Vassilaros for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, conducted 2008

Sense, Reading

“Light fills the air, wind is aglow, drink of it, breathe of it, make leafing.
Rainfall sows itself, it grows down through soil to the secret places where stones abide; it brings the strength of them up rootward.
Lie still, molder away, then be again grass.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Harvest of Stars (1993), Ch. 55

Lie, Secret, Drink, Light

“What I think needs to be done in 2018 is more dialogue around the ethics, the principles that we can use for the engineers and companies that are building AI [artificial intelligence], so that the choices we make do not cause us to create systems with bias.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

Scroll.in: "Artificial intelligence will not kill human jobs, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" https://scroll.in/latest/880684/artificial-intelligence-will-not-kill-human-jobs-says-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella (29 May 2018)

Intelligence, Thinking

“I was forced and pushed into the kind of painting that I did [during the late 1940's / early 1950's]. That is to say, the demands in this dialogue with myself – I give to it, I make some marks, it speaks to me, I speak to it, we have terrible arguments going on all night, weeks and weeks – do I really believe that? I make a mark, a few strokes, I argue with myself, not do I like or not, but is it true or not? Is that what I mean, is that what I want?”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, p. 67

Painting, Night

“Yes, I think I am a realist. Because I make what I see. It's only the problem of seeing it. If you can imagine a thing, conjure it up in space - then you can make it, and tout de suite you're a realist. The universe is real but you can't see it. You have to imagine it. Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Question, Léger once called you a realist. How do you feel about this?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

Imagination, Problem, Thinking, Universe

“Burn shavings and splinters of pitch pine, and when they turn to charcoal, put them out, and pound them into mortar with size. This will make a pretty black for fresco painting.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter X, Sec. 3

Painting

“There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

World, Way, Democracy, Freedom

“We’ve never had a president whose business created as many potential conflicts of interest as Donald Trump, and at the same time we’ve never had a president who cared less about conflicts of interest as Donald Trump. Indeed, he and his children are making it quite clear that they will use the presidency as a tool to make as much money as they can. And Republicans, particularly Congress, have apparently decided that if Trump does it, it’s okay.”

Paul Waldman (1968) American op-ed columnist and writer

Republicans are already making it clear: Trump can do whatever he wants (December 5, 2016)

Money, Children, Business, Time

“Don't blame me," he said, surprised at her reaction. "Blame human nature. I didn't make the world.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 145

World, Nature

“The phonetic animal par excellence is man. All men are born with an infinite capacity for making noises and using them.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

1964, p. 141; Chapter 1; Chapter 1: The Origin of Speech
Speech, 1930

Men, Animals

“Do you see all those beautiful trees there? I sketched them all thirty years ago; I have had all their portraits. Look at that beech there, the sun lights it up and makes of it a marble column, a column that has muscles, limbs, hands and a fair skin, white and pallid... See the modest green of the heath and its plants, rosy, amaranthine, which distil honey for the bees and fragrance for the butterflies. The sun lights them up and gives them a diapason of extraordinary color. Ah, the sun..”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote of Th. Rousseau, Sept. 1867; recorded by fr:Alfred Sensier; as cited by Charles Sprague Smith, in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye; publisher, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, p. 164
In September 1867 (two months before Rousseau’s death, when already half paralyzed), Th. Rouseau took a ride with Sensier to look once more at the heather. He was pointing to the Sully, a giant of the wood
1851 - 1867

Beauty, Color, Tree, Light

“Instead of the primitive raw material economy, we will create a smart economy generating unique knowledge, new useful things and technologies. Instead of the archaic society, in which the leaders think and make decisions for everyone, we will become a country of intelligent, free and responsible people.”

Dmitry Medvedev (1965) Russian Prime Minister and former president

Dmitry Medvedev in a speech (November 2009)

People, Intelligence, Knowledge, Thinking

“I see Legros less often sometimes at Andler's as little as possible it means I get to bed late and I am short of funds, it is very pleasant nonetheless Courbet is so charming, Legros often goes there they get on very well he has some superb articles in the figaro. in the gazette des Beaux Arts.... then he will have one in the courrier du Commerce those are the ones I know about. success, women, good food, wine, beer, new acquaintances as a result of these articles, in short an accolade!!!!!!!!.... success can be harmful, it makes you relax, you sit on it and are distracted.... you alone should correct the faults, you know what I think of advice, correction. the gifted man should walk alone, straight to his goal, what happens is nothing, rejection, success, selling pleasing, all that is nonsense.”

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) painter from France

quote from a letter of Fantin-Latour, Paris, 26 June 1859, to James Whistler in London; from The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler - Repository: Glasgow University Library http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?cid=1073&nameid=Fantin_Latour_IH&sr=0&rs=1&surname=Fantin-latour&firstname= - System Number: 01073; Call Number: MS Whistler F 4.

Women, Food, Art, Beer

“Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.”

Lillian Hellman The Autumn Garden

The Autumn Garden (1951)

People, Loneliness

“Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective (1986), p. 30

Fear

“(In response to the question; "What are you going to tell a ten year old who wants to play guitar?") For me that's easy; when you expect anything from music, you expect too much. So you play for yourself, you play to enjoy it and you make the most of it for you, period. You don't - I never thought I would be doing this now. I feel so lucky to be doing this now - I can't believe this is what I do all the time. I know I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world, but I just love it. And I hope that's the only reason I'm here, you know? Because I think - I honestly think that that's enough.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

" Josh Homme - Guitar Moves - Episode 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDUHq2mJx0" Noisey (May 29, 2013)

Love, World, Hope, Music

“The right path to health-care reform is the market path (no subsidies, no monopolies such as drug patents, no licensure, no anything) that tends toward universal distribution at very low prices and relentless improvement in service. The wrong path is to make health care run the same way as the post office. Obama seems to favor the latter path, even though he admits that it is the least well-performing one. This is surely the definition of fanaticism. If the mobs aren't angry, they should be.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

13 August 2009, "Obama and the Post Office" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/obama-postoffice126.html 2000s

Health, Way, Universe

“One of the beauties of art is that it reflects an artist's entire life. What I've learned over the past 30 years is really beginning to inform what I make. I hope that process continues until I die.”

Andy Goldsworthy (1956) British sculptor and photographer

He's got the whole world in his hands, The Telegraph (24 March 2007)

Life, Beauty, Hope, Art

“You can have news that (Cristiano) Ronaldo went to the toilet three times a day, and that's the news. I make semi-finals and nothing.”

João Sousa (1989) Portuguese tennis player

On tennis' lack of public visibility in Portugal when compared with football, during 2015 ATP Dubai tournament. Source: From Novak Djokovic to Joao Sousa: ATP Dubai quotes of the week, Sport 360, 2 November 2015 http://sport360.com/article/dubai-tennis-championship/33436/novak-djokovic-joao-sousa-atp-dubai-quotes-week,

Time

“I am making a very personal commitment myself. This is a war I am not accustomed to but it is a global war and we are in a global army, fighting against a global enemy - HIV/AIDS.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Address to the Pan Pacific HIV/AIDS Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, October 2005

War, Fight, Personality

“The Irishman, finding himself in another environment, outside Ireland, very often knows how to make his worth felt. The economic and intellectual conditions of his homeland do not permit the individual to develop. The spirit of the country has been weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties. Individual initiative has been paralyzed by the influence and admonitions of the church, while the body has been shackled by peelers, duty officers and soldiers. No self-respecting person wants to stay in Ireland. Instead he will run from it, as if from a country that has been subjected to a visitation by an angry Jove.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

"Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," lecture, (27 April 1907), Università Popolare, Trieste, printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-192-83353-7], p. 123

Personality, Country

“"You don't know my father. He'll laugh in your face and offer you some money to mail my body back to Idris."
"Don't be absurd-"
"You're right. Coming to think of it, he'll probably make you pay for the shipping charges yourself."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace and Imogen, pg. 306
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Money, Thinking

“Western culture in our education system will make our youth forget our cultural heritage, and will be completely Westernised. A country which forgets its own culture also loses its vibrancy.”

Dinanath Batra (1930) Indian school teacher

On the effect of western culture on Indian educations, as quoted in " Dinanath Batra targets foreign universities in new book http://www.deccanchronicle.com/141028/nation-current-affairs/article/dinanath-batra-targets-foreign-universities-new-book" Deccan Chronicle (28 October 2014)

Youth, Education, Country, Forgetting

“Why can't we brothers
Protect one another?
No one's serious,
And it makes me furious.
Don't be misled,
Just think of Fred.”

Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) American singer, songwriter, and record producer

Freddie's Dead.
Song lyrics, Super Fly (1972)

Thinking

“But I felt it was important to put those kinds of decisions in the book. And I've got to tell you I really - I mean, I don't want to be cavalier about it but I've done what I've done and I, frankly, if people like what I did, great. And if they don't like what I did at least read the book. That's all I ask. And at least be open minded enough to figure out the decision making process. Why did I do what I did?”

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

2010s, 2011, Q&A with Former President George W. Bush (January 2011)

People, Books, Decision, Reading

“He learned this much selling cars: offer the customer something he doesn't want, to make what he half-wants look better.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Cars, Learning

“It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.”

William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995) American nuclear physicist

William A. Fowler's speech at the Nobel Banquet http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/fowler-speech.html, December 10, 1983.

Pleasure, Knowledge, Learning

“John Lofton: Do you think abortion is murder?
Ron Paul: Yes, but we have in our state laws, which enforce the law against murder, there are degrees. You have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree murder. I think somebody who takes a pill the day after probably isn't committing quite the horrible murder when you see somebody lying on the floor and somebody takes a gun and puts it to their head. I don't equate those…
John Lofton: What do you think ought to be the penalty for the abortionist and for the person who gets the abortion?
Ron Paul: I really don't have the wisdom to know exactly what it should be… The girl who goes and gets an abortion, she's a participant in it, I don't think she deserves the death penalty… But there are some abortionists that it wouldn't be very hard to give them a pretty harsh punishment, because, you know, nothing annoys me more than the fact that an abortionist can make money killing a live viable fetus, in the 3rd trimester, and they think nothing about it, and they make a living doing this. Any yet, one minute after birth, that same mother, who might throw the child away, rightfully is called to task, and actually charged with murder. So that inconsistency has to be resolved.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The American View, August 25, 2007 http://theamericanview.com/index.php?id=898 2000s, 2006-2009

Death, Wisdom, Money, Law

“In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to America. It has turned the U. S. military into a force at ease with abuse of captives and civilians, occupying a Muslim nation. Some of this is surely due to the sheer hell of fighting an enemy you cannot see, surrounded by people you do not understand or trust, and being killed randomly in urban or desert insurgency conditions where friend and foe are close to indistinguishable, and where your buddies are killed on a regular basis by faceless cowards. You can certainly understand how soldiers grow completely numb in the face of abuse in those circumstances. Every "hajji" can seem like the enemy after a while. It requires men and women of almost saintly capabilities to keep their moral bearings among terrorists who massacre scores of innocents as a religious duty, among people whose differences are impossible for young troops to figure out in split-seconds. In such conditions, and as a consequences of grotesque under-manning, the breakdown in ethical discipline is no big surprise. But that doesn't make it any the less of a big deal.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Re-Thinking The War II" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/rethinking_the__5.html, The Daily Dish (8 May 2007)

Women, Men, War, People

“So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!' … The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment— it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability— I have not feared to give: it is— to use words I used two years and a half ago— that 'the people of England will not endure it'.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 202-203.
1970s

People, Truth, Fear, Feeling

“People get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don’t know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don’t know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview at Collider.com (6 February 2011) http://collider.com/jennifer-beals-interview-the-chicago-code/74802/.

People, Behavior, Thinking, Sense

“If free market prices don't give people what they morally deserve, should we try to regulate factor prices so that they do track producers' moral deserts? Hayek offered two compelling arguments against this proposal. First, if you fix prices on a backward-looking standard, they will no longer be able to perform their informational function. Producers will produce for what was demanded last quarter, even if it isn't demanded today. This creates enormous waste and generates huge opportunity costs. We'd be much poorer in an economy that worked like this. […] Hayek was right. It might sound like a compelling idea, to make sure that people receive the income they morally deserve. But orienting the economy around this goal, assuming it is achievable at all (and there are principled doubts about that), would doom us to poverty and serfdom. It would abolish capitalism, along with its chief virtues. It isn't worth the draconian costs.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People, Idea

“I never really have any major resolutions. I do try to be a good person, to be a good mom, to be a good wife, I don't really start the year off on January 1, 'Oh, I am now going to make a big change.' I try every day when I wake up to be good to the people around me.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Discussing New Year's resolutions. From The Morning Call http://www.mcall.com/entertainment/zap-celeb-new-years-resolutions-2011-pics,0,7643845.photogallery, 5 January 2011

People, Moms, Change, Personality

“To master this instrument the religious thinker must make a preliminary study of logic, just as the lawyer must study legal reasoning. This is no more heretical in the one case than in the other. And logic must be learned from the ancient masters, regardless of the fact that they were not Muslims.”

Averroes (1126–1198) Medieval Arab scholar and philosopher

The Decisive Treatise
Source: Jon McGinnis, David C. Reisman (2007) Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources. p. 310

Study, Learning

“Black and white are the colors of photography. To me, they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. Most of my photographs are of people; they are seen simply, as through the eyes of the man in the street. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be vision and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins.”

Robert Frank (1924–2019) American photographer and filmmaker

Robert Frank, in: Nathan Lyons, Photographers on photography: a critical anthology, (1966), p. 66

People, Hope, Color, Despair

“Ted Cruz lies. He's a liar. And that's why nobody likes him, that's why his Senate people won't endorse him. That's why he stands on the middle of the Senate floor and can't make a deal with anybody. He looks like a jerk. He's standing all by himself. And you know, there's something to say about having a little bit of ability to get other people to do things. You can't be a lone wolf and stand there. That's sort of what we have right now as a president.”

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

Morning Joe http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/trump-ted-cruz-lies-he-s-a-liar-608990275597 (26 January 2016) 2010s, 2016, January

People, Jerk, Wolf

“Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 4 (p. 56)

People, Way

“By them saying I should fall in line is an insult. I'm not asking for an invitation. I think they should get behind me, not fall in line like sheep. They're so paranoid, it makes me think they have weak candidates and they're afraid. The more they attack, the more they show their hand, and I mean that across party lines. It's not politics as usual. We're running a different campaign, and they're scared to death.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Jourdan, Kristi, Tea Party activists say candidate uninvited, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 18, 2010]

Death, Thinking

“The future is of our own making — and (for me) the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development, that maturing of our consciousness which should open our eyes to that truth.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to H. G. Wells (February 1902), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 2, p. 509

Truth, Future

“What makes people enter into cults? I think that kind of certainty about something is not necessarily just religious. It was seen in secular organizations, secular ideologues, ideological organizations of one kind or another. I've experienced it among people I used to know in the 1960s and 1970s. It's a terrifying thing when you see it at work.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

People, Thinking

“Everything that has been said, and every conclusion that has been tentatively put forward, is quite frankly speculative and uncertain. We have tried to discuss whether present-day science has anything to say on certain difficult questions, which are perhaps set for ever beyond the reach of human understanding. We cannot claim to have discerned more than a very faint glimmer of light at the best; perhaps it was wholly illusory, for certainly we had to strain our eyes very hard to see anything at all. So that our main contention can hardly be that the science of to-day has a pronouncement to make, perhaps it ought rather to be that science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.”

James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe

The closing sentences of the book, on p. 188 of Pelican Books 1938 reprint of 1931 2nd ed.
The Mysterious Universe (1930)

Understanding, Question, Knowledge, Light

“I always think about all the different elements of what makes something fun.”

Hirokazu Yasuhara (1965) Japanese video game designer

Gamasutra interview (2008)

Thinking

“I would make a fool of myself…They are so much better than I was.”

Nigel Lythgoe (1949) Executive producer and television director

On why he never dances on So You Think You Can Dance
Looseleaf, Victoria (August 2007), "A MAN, A PLAN, A WILDLY SUCCESSFUL TV SHOW". Dance Magazine. 81 (8):46

Fools

“In conceptual art the idea or the concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive; it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman.”

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) American artist

Source: Quotes of Sol Lewitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," 1967, p. 80. Cited in: Diane Waldman. Carl Andre https://archive.org/stream/carlandre00wald#page/7/mode/1up. Published 1970 by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. p. 7

Art, Idea, Decision, Dependency

“Whenever there is a job to be taken on of a kind calculated to make Humanity shudder, the cry goes up, ‘Let Wooster do it.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves in the Offing

Jeeves in the Offing (1960)

Cry

“Interaction and decision making relies heavily on group processes.”

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Source: The Human Organization, 1967, p. 50

Decision

“Why do I need this protection? I am not a president or a king; I am a mere member of the Dutch Parliament, one of 150 elected parliamentarians in the Tweede Kamer, the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, a small country of 16.5 million in Western Europe. However, I have joined Westergaard in a rapidly growing group of individuals throughout the world who have been marked for death for criticizing Islam. For asserting our rights to say what we really think about this political ideology that disguises itself as a religion, we have been hounded by Muslims seeking to make an example of us. Offend us, they are saying to the world, and you will end up in hiding like Wilders, attacked like Westergaard, or dead like van Gogh.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 1, p. 5

Death, World, Religion, Thinking

“And so literacy is crucial for the ability for this country to compete and the ability for people to realize dreams. It just is. And so we're going to - we're going to - here at SMU we're going to continue to focus on accountability in schools aiming to make sure people can read early before it's too late and we're going to do a joint venture with the Simmons Education School, which by the way, is a reform-minded school. I don't know if you know that. But the Simmons School of Education here at SMU is an excellent school run by people willing to challenge the status quo when the status quo is unacceptable.”

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

2010s, 2011, Q&A with Former President George W. Bush (January 2011)

People, Education, School, Dreams

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 105
2000s, (2008)

Children, People, Truth, Religion

“Counting makes even hideous events bearable as simply more of the same -- the counting of wedding-rings, spectacles, teeth and bodies disassociates them from their context -- to make the ultimate obscene blasphemy of bureaucratic insensitivity. Engage the mind with numbing recitation to make it empty of reaction.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Wedding

“He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun,
He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God,
He who leads the good to wickedness,
He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate,
He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent,
An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!”

Zoroaster Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism

Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 32, 10.
The Gathas

God, Faith, Light, Sun

“Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981. All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats… big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc… the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste… I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Letter to chairman of the RNC http://www.textfiles.com/politics/ron_paul.txt Frank Fahrenkopf (March 1987). 1980s

People, Way, Personality, Country

“I find our modern emphasis on 'rights' somewhat overdone and misleading … It makes people forget that the other and more important side of rights is duty. And indeed the great historic codes of our human advance emphasised duties and not rights … The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and … the Sermon on the Mount … all are silent on rights, all lay stress on duties.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

On the rights embodied in the United Nations Charter of which he drafted the Preamble, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 144. ISBN 978-1-86842-390-3

People, Forgetting

“After this first approximation, the various aspects of the situation undergo a more and more detailed analysis. In contrast to this the second method [for analysis of life space] begins with the life space as a whole and defines its fundamental structure. The procedure in this case is not to add disconnected items but to make the original structure more specific and differentiated. This method therefore proceeds by steps from the more general to the particular and thereby avoids the danger of a "wrong simplification" by abstraction.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 4; partly cited in: Chris Argyris (1952) An introduction to field theory and interaction theory.

Life

“We're here to talk about education. But I want to say something before that…. You know, education, if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

Speech to California students, 31 October 2006 Quoted in Kerry's 'Botched' Joke Backfires, CBS News/Associated Press, 2006-11-01, 2006-11-01 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/01/politics/main2141613.shtml,

Education, Effort, Study

“By believing we are the product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of ethical behavior. For if there is no such thing as moral authority, you can do anything you want. You make everything relative, and there’s no reason for any of our higher values.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Evolution? No" http://archives.adventistreview.org/2004-1509/story2.html, The Adventist Review (2004)

Behavior

“On the contrary, it will be a big gift if I am not King. I do not believe my father is happy to be King. He continues to blame me for making him King. I am happy also not to be King. We look too much like each other. He was deposed and I was deposed. History will talk about my father being deposed in 1970 in a coup d'etat. History will talk about Ranariddh as the deposed prime minister.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

[Julio A Jeldres, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/cambodias-monarchy-search-successor, Cambodia's Monarchy: The search for the successor, 2 April 1999, 8 February 2015, Phnom Penh Post]

Happiness, History

“(on whether he is bipolar.) Wow, what does that mean? … What's the cure? Medicine? Make me like them? Not going to happen. I'm bi-WINNING! I win here and I win there. Now what?”

Charlie Sheen (1965) American film and television actor

On Good Morning America February 28, 2011

“The real emancipation of the Chinese people from age-long slavery would be impossible without the great, sincerely democratic enthusiasm which is rousing the working masses and making them capable of miracles, and which is evident from every sentence of Sun Yat-sen’s platform.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 163–169.
Collected Works

People, Age, Sun, Sincerity

“If a man’s life is not long enough, a dog’s is even shorter and anything you can do to make that fuller is worthwhile.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

The Upland Shooting Life (1971)

Life, Dogs

“I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

February 1855
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Housing

“We trolls say: “Make Philosophy your evening guest, but do not let her stay the night.””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 17, “Binabik” (p. 260).

Night

“Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order… catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 24

Men, Law, Nature

“I don't believe you until you tell me, do you really believe, for example, if they say they are Catholic, "Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?" Mock them. Ridicule them. In public. Don't fall for the convention that we're all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.”

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

Reason Rally, National Mall, Washington, DC,

Religion, Universe, Wine, Christ

“Management as an activity has always existed to make people’s desires through organized effort. Management facilitates the efforts of people in organized groups and arises when people seek to cooperate to achieve goals.”

Daniel A. Wren (1932) American business theorist

Source: The evolution of management thought, 1972, p. 11-12 (in 1972 edition)

People, Effort

“The sense of local community, the feeling of espirit de corps, the satisfaction one gets from belonging to a settled traditional or even tribal order, and the feeling of centeredness and place one gets in the family: These are all wonderful things. But they can, and often do, become poisonous, oppressive, and even tyrannical when the state tries to impose them on the entirety of society. When we try to make the macrocosm of society like the microcosm of the family or tribe, we destroy it every bit as much as when we try to make the microcosm operate according to the rules of the macrocosm.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Family, Feeling, Communication, Sense

“You can't possibly care about debt relief and the Simpsons. If you listen to Ligeti and James Macmillan then why would you want to know who won the United game last night or which Cabernet Sauvignon to drink with your meal tonight? Get back into your box.
Something else missing from the Times of 1968 was anything to do with the home or emotional life. There is nothing about marriage, divorce, children, schools, au pairs, depression, drinking, health, drugs, teenagers, affairs, fashion, sex, successful relationships, failing relationships, interior decor, cancer, infertility, faith, grandparents - or any of the other things that make up the texture of our non-working lives.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Rusbridger (2000) " Versions of seriousness http://www.theguardian.com/dumb/story/0,7369,391891,00.html", The Guardian. 4 November 2000: Cited in: Raymond Boyle (2006) Sports Journalism: Context and Issues. p. 11 According to Boyle 2006 Rusbridger argued that "changes in the broadsheet press simply reflects wider cultural shift in taste and the breaking down of areas of supposedly high and low culture." 2000s

Life, Marriage, Children, Health

“(Referring to the Kuomintang) There are many stubborn elements, graduates in the speciality schools of stubbornness. They are stubborn today, they will be stubborn tomorrow, and they will be stubborn the day after tomorrow. What is stubbornness (wan gu)? "Gu" is to be stiff. "Wan" is to not progress: not today, nor tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow. People like that are called the "stubborn elements". It is not an easy thing to make the stubborn elements listen to our words.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Mao, 1967, as quoted by Jing Huang in The Role of Government Propaganda in the Educational System during the Cultural Revolution in China http://www.pem.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Cultural-Revolution-in-China-paper.pdf.

People, School

“The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Life, People, Sense, Laughter

“Our whole life we’ve lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary—not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I’m asking you to do it again. See what’s really going on here. See what’s real.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 24 (p. 265).

Life, World, Decision, Time

“I think there’s a reason why wine figures into so many religions. There’s something transcendent about it. It’s sort of the way that music is more than the sum of its parts. You have all these elements that make up the terroir that wine can communicate.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

Matthew Lickona (December 24, 2008) "Hedonistic" http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/dec/24/Hedonistic/, San Diego Reader.

Religion, Music, Way, Communication

“I'll go backstage, before a show, and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. You know I'm inspecting, I want to make sure everything is good, the dresses, "Is everyone OK?", you know they're standing there with no clothes, "Is everybody OK?", and you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”

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

Comments about his ownership of Miss Universe on the Howard Stern Show https://soundcloud.com/user-735086019/101g1 (11 April 2005) 2000s

Women, Men, Clothes

“To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Across the Plains

Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. XII, A Christmas Sermon.

Men, Secret, Imagination, Idea

“I'm a writer who plays the piano. As I write, I find new things I like. I make them into what I call principles, and they become part of my playing vocabulary. That's the secret of what you get from composing. You get to discover things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. Much like a speech pattern, your improvisation patterns can get stale if you don't keep building your vocabulary. Each time you re voice something, you change the sound. When you do this enough, you get used to those sounds, and they start to come out as you play. You end up using voicings that aren't common, which gives you an auditory identity.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Voicing With a Heart"

Secret, Change, Time, Parting

“Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. I, l. 340.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Music

“It is now more than twenty years since I somewhat rashly undertook to write the Life of Dr. Young. For many years, however, after making this engagement, I found myself so much occupied by the duties of a very laborious college office, that I had no leisure to commence the work; and when the possession of leisure would have enabled me to have done so, my health became so seriously deranged that I felt myself unequal to any continued and severe literary labour. The undertaking was consequently abandoned, and it was proposed to transfer it to other hands; but it was not found easy to secure the services of a person who possessed sufficient scientific knowledge to enable him to write the life of an author whose works were so various in their character and not unfrequently so difficult to understand and analyse, as those of Dr. Young.”

George Peacock (1791–1858) Scottish mathematician

Life of Thomas Young (1855)

Life, Health, Understanding, Knowledge

“Josh's actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn't mean 'unforgivable.' He and his family dealt with it and were honest and open about it with the victims and the authorities. No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story. Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things. […] They are no more perfect a family than any family, but their Christian witness is not marred in our eyes because following Christ is not a declaration of our perfection, but of HIS perfection. […] Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Regarding Joshua Duggar, who admitted to molesting five minor girls, including his own sisters, when he was 14 years old.

People, Family, Support, Christ

“The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

Knowledge

“This mighty wall of four score miles in length is only exceeded by the Chinese wall, which makes a considerable figure upon the terrestrial globe, and may be discerned at the moon.”

William Stukeley (1687–1765) English antiquarian

Private letter published in The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley (1887) Vol. 3, p. 142. (1754).

“I’ve known a long time. If I thought he was a racist, or alt-right, or any of the things that we can, you know, the terms we can use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him. First of all, I’m the one that makes the decision, not Steve Bannon or anybody else.”

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

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Thinking, Decision, Time

“I really think for the good of this world that, if I could have it my way, the whole world would be vegan and straightedge. So that’s why I feel it’s important to create an awareness of this lifestyle, create an awareness of the choices people make. To bring awareness about those lifestyles can bring a positive change, if only on the level of an individual.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Fly magazine, November 2009

People, World, Way, Feeling

“We left our element, the sea, to make ourselves into a conscript nation fighting on the Continent with four million soldiers out of a population of forty millions.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

p. 53. https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/53/mode/1up Memories (1919) https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/n0/mode/2up

Fight, Sea

“I want to see the king.
Wonderful. I'm glad for you.
Why are you so glad?
Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Life

“It was imperative to make common cause with the oppressed, in order to secure a new system opposed to the ambitions and governing habits of the oppressors.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1881)

“I also hope that Mainland China does not misinterpret or misjudge the current (cross-strait) situation, or think that Taiwanese will bow to such pressure. In a democratic society, this kind of pressure is felt by all. No administration in Taiwan can make a decision that runs counter to public opinion.”

Tsai Ing-wen (1956) President of the Republic of China

President urges talks with Beijing: report, Focus Taiwan, 1, October 5, 2016, 6 October 2016 http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201610050021.aspx,

Hope, Thinking, Decision

“I’m only interested in playing competitively if there’s serious money on the line. I love playing, but at this point I need a concrete incentive to devote the time necessary to make that happen. If chess was my only love, I’d do it in spite of the financial hurdles. But because I love so many other things, writing and editing in particular, it makes sense to me to focus on that now.”

Jennifer Shahade (1980) chess player

Gothamist interview (2006)

Love, Money, Sense, Time

“We cannot doubt that all things are regulated by a supreme Being, who, while he has imprinted on matter forces which show his power, has destined it to execute effects which mark his wisdom… Let us calculate the motion of bodies, but let us also consult the designs of the Intelligence which makes them move.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Oeuvres De Mr. De Maupertuis (1752) vol. iv p. 22; as quoted by Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain, The Principle of Least Action (1913) p. 6.

Wisdom, Intelligence

“As I consider a future political and economic agreement with Great Russia to be the immutable aim of our foreign policy, we must attempt at least not to make an enemy of Russia…I refuse to support Poland, even if that means that Poland will be eaten up. On the contrary, I reckon with this, and if at the moment we cannot help Russia to regain her old Imperial frontiers, we should at least not hinder her from doing so…The same applies to Lithuania and Latvia.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to General von Massow (31 January 1920), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 67-68.

Support, Future, Help