Quotes about making
page 79

Max Horkheimer photo

“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)

Octavia E. Butler photo
Matt Sanchez photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“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)

Ernest Hemingway photo
Charles Stross photo

“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?”

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

Sarah Palin photo
Poul Anderson photo
Satya Nadella photo

“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)

Phillip Guston photo
Alexander Calder photo
Vitruvius photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
John Rupert Firth photo

“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

Théodore Rousseau photo

“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

Dmitry Medvedev photo
Henri Fantin-Latour photo
Lillian Hellman photo
Henri Nouwen photo

“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

Josh Homme photo
Lew Rockwell photo
Andy Goldsworthy photo
João Sousa photo

“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,

James Joyce photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“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)

Curtis Mayfield photo

“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)

George W. Bush photo
John Updike photo
William Alfred Fowler photo

“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.

Ron Paul photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
Enoch Powell photo

“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

Jennifer Beals photo
Heidi Klum photo

“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

Averroes photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

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

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

Joseph Conrad photo

“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

James Jeans photo
Hirokazu Yasuhara photo

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

Hirokazu Yasuhara (1965) Japanese video game designer

Gamasutra interview (2008)

Nigel Lythgoe photo

“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

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Rensis Likert photo

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

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Source: The Human Organization, 1967, p. 50

Geert Wilders photo
George W. Bush photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Zoroaster photo
Ron Paul photo

“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

Jan Smuts photo

“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

Kurt Lewin photo
John F. Kerry photo

“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,

Ben Carson photo

“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)

Norodom Ranariddh photo
Charlie Sheen photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
George Bird Evans photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Tad Williams photo

“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).

Peter F. Drucker photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Alan Rusbridger photo
Mao Zedong photo

“(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.

Pearl S.  Buck photo
Maynard James Keenan photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
William Wordsworth photo
George Peacock photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Herbert Spencer photo

“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)

William Stukeley photo

“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).

Donald J. Trump photo
Davey Havok photo
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher photo

“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

Orson Scott Card photo
José Martí photo
Tsai Ing-wen photo
Jennifer Shahade photo
Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo

“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.

Hans von Seeckt photo
Cornelia Parker photo

“I think your subconscious knows far more than your conscious, so I trust it. I just make it first and then it becomes much clearer to me why.”

Cornelia Parker (1956) English artist

Source: Simon Hattenstone. "Cornelia Parker: a History of Violence." in: The Guardian. May 25, 2010.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“No man of the first rank is ever satisfied with his accomplishments, no matter what others make of them.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 9 (p. 127)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Let music make less terrible
The silence of the dead;
I care not, so my spirit last
Long after life has fled.”

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

Source: The Venetian Bracelet (1829), Lines of Life

George S. Patton photo

“Fatigue makes cowards of all of us.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

War as I knew it (1947), as cited in Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations, By Hugh Rawson, Margaret Miner, p. 258 https://books.google.com/books?id=whg05Z4Nwo0C&pg=PA258(via books.google.com).