Quotes about making
page 89

“I think he's a very good technician. And he has something in Psycho, he had some moments. Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells very much about him. Not very good things. He is completely infantile, and I would like to know more — no, I don't want to know — about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women. But this picture is very interesting.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On Alfred Hitchcock in an interview with John Simon (1971).

Women, Money, Thinking

“I thought Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. I think this platform originally came out as a response to particularly Roe v. Wade because of that. Before Roe v. Wade, states made those decisions. I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That's what freedom is all about. I think Roe v. Wade hopefully one day will be overturned, and we can go back to the pre-Roe v. Wade days.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

Meet the Press, 2007-11-05
asked if he could run on the 2004 Republican Party platform supporting an amendment to the US Constitution overturning Roe v. Wade

People, Thinking, Decision, Freedom

“You can get carried away with how things were once, and not how you need to make them better.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Wildlife (1990), p. 171

“As we see the threat changing, evolving becoming a more complex threat, we need to make sure that our police and security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need. I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries. And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech on the election trail after the June 2017 London Bridge attack (7 June 2017). http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40181444 2010s, 2017

People, Law, Intelligence, Freedom

“If indeed the literal meaning, understood as it is spoken, should offer some benefit, we will have readily at hand what we need to make the object of our attention. But if something that is said in a hidden fashion, with certain allegories and enigmas, should yield nothing of benefit according to the readily apparent sense, we will turn such words as these over and over in our mind.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

Commentary on the Song of Songs, As translated by Margaret M. Mitchell in Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (2010)

Fashion, Sense

“This one is too elegant, too shiny, like jewelry. It seeks applause. This is clear to me, but difficult to explain, which is what makes abstraction so fascinating. In one sense, abstract art is absolutely nothing, stupid. In 100 years, maybe people will just think it's garbage. But somehow we see something in it; we have a sense of quality. [searching for an illustration of his point, Richter leafs through a catalog to find some of his 'gray monochromes']. I was doing these [monochromes] when I was getting divorced. When you feel totally empty, you do this - but then I saw that one picture was actually better than another. Both were miserable, but the difference was interesting. I loved this: that there must be something, some higher faculty, some progressive sensibility that we find in abstraction. But it is impossible to describe.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love, People, Stupidity, Art

“Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Broken Window (ch. 2)

Death, Money, People, Feeling

“God, who prepares His work for the ages, accomplishes it by the feeblest instruments. It is the method of His providence to produce great results from inconsiderable means. The law which prevades the kingdom of nature is discerned in the history of mankind. Truth makes silent progress, like the water that trickles behind the rocks, and loosens them from the mountain on which they rest. Suddenly the hidden operation is revealed, and a single day suffices to lay bare the work of years, if not of ages.”

John Lanahan (1815–1903)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 389.

God, Truth, Age, Law

“You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.”

Mary Renault book The Mask of Apollo

The Mask of Apollo (1966)

“We're thinking about building the wall as a solar wall, so it creates energy, and pays for itself. And this way Mexico will have to pay much less money, and that's good, right, is that good? You're the first group I've told that to, a solar wall, makes sense, let's see, we're working it out, we'll see, solar wall, panels, beautiful. I mean actually think of it, the higher it goes the more valuable it is, it's like… pretty good imagination [points to his own head], right, good? My idea.”

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

President Trump Holds a Rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/21/president-trump-holds-iowa-rally-live-blog.html (21 June 2017) 2010s, 2017, June

Money, Beauty, Way, Imagination

“Every day you waste a chance, many chances in fact, of getting at your innermost consciousness by expressing yourself as you see yourself, and I say it is a pity because it makes you, year after year and day after day more like anybody else and more anonymous.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 250

Chance

“Inclination snatches arguments
To make indulgence seem judicious choice.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Book 1
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

“It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.”

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

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Fashion

“Don’t overconduct; don’t make unnecessary movements or gestures”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

“Through religious education, our young people also learn respect for and an understanding of other beliefs and how to make a positive difference to themselves and the world by putting their beliefs and values into action.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Cardinal Winning Lecture (February 2, 2008)

People, World, Education, Understanding

“Our research has shown that your body often has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself—and much more quickly than people once realized—when we address the underlying causes of illness. For many people, the choices we make each day in what we eat and in how we live are among the most important underlying causes. When most people are prescribed medications to lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar, they are usually told, “You will have to take this for the rest of your life," often in ever-increasing dosages. Why? Because the underlying causes are not being addressed. When I lecture, I often show a slide of doctors busily mopping up the floor around an overflowing sink without also turning off the faucet.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

The Spectrum (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), p. 16 https://books.google.it/books?id=YgooDmnD6l0C&pg=PA16.

Life, People

“Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado has announced the birth of a new son, making him the only openly gay member of Congress to be a parent.”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

[Gay congressman announces birth of new son, Associated Press, December 1, 2011, Houston Chronicle]
About

Birth, Parent

“Heaven is always ready to shut its eyes to our sins when they are not committed before the eyes of the world, and when the lack of witnesses makes it impossible to bring the charge home to us.”

Girolamo Gigli (1660–1722) Italian dramaturge

Il cielo chiude volentieri gli occhi a nostri difetti, quando non son fatti avanti gli occhi del mondo, e quando per mancanza di testimoni non possa compire perfettamente il processo contra di noi.
Il Don Pilone (1711), Act III., Sc. V. — (Don Pilone.)
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 312.

World, Home

“He was the only man I have ever known who at any moment, on any subject within his wide range, could make a speech, logically developed, exact in phrasing, fortified with every fact and figure, which could be taken down and printed without revisions.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Sir Arthur Salter, Personality in Politics (London, 1947), p. 198.
About

“It's fascinating that people, there's so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I'm black, so I'm supposed to think a certain way? I'm supposed to have certain opinions? I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.”

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

Interview with Steve Kroft https://web.archive.org/web/20140611214639/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clarence-thomas-the-justice-nobody-knows/ (September 2007). 2000s

People, Way, Thinking, Box

“Now that was very impressive. But before you try to impress the ladies in the balcony, make sure the horns come in.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

Quoted from Freedland, M. André Previn. Century, 1991. p97
To a student conductor.

“Nature does not conquer the world to God. It never has. It never will. In America, with its vast abounding wealth, its grand expanse of prairie, its reach of river, and its exuberant productiveness, there is danger that our riches will draw us away from God, and fasten us to earth; that they will make us not only rich, but mean; not only wealthy, but wicked. The grand corrective is the cross of Christ, seen in the sanctuary where the life and light of God are exhibited, and where the reverberation of the echoes from the great white throne are heard.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 522.

Life, God, World, Nature

“The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Source: Mac Flecknoe (1682), l. 19–24.

Soul, Sense, Night

“p>The inherent contradictions and binds men find themselves in in trying to become less macho in their relationship with a woman were poignantly expressed in a letter written by a young man to a New York newspaper in response to an article that addressed itself to a question posed by a woman writer—whether women would be able to think of a non-macho man as sexy. The letter writer wrote:I am by nature a gentle and non-aggressive 27-year-old man who often finds women turned off sexually by my tenderness and non-macho view of the world. I have come to realize that for all their talk, a lot of women still want the hairy, sexy, war-mongering, aggressive machoman of their dreams. So after several fruitless years as a gentle poet-man, I now turn myself into a heavy machismo when I go out with a woman. It works. I open the doors, I order the food and drinks, I decide which movie or play we will see. I keep my shirt unbuttoned down past my nipples and wear a gold chain around my neck with a carved elephant tusk medallion, and if the relationship is not working out, I make the first move and tell my companion that I'm sorry but we're through.The sad thing about all this is that it works.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

After all those years of being naturally sensitive and gentle, and now I've got to turn myself inside out just to appear sexy. It's fun and it's nice, but I do wish I could just be myself again.</blockquote>
Who Is the Victim? Who Is the Oppressor?, pp. 165–166
The New Male (1979)

Women, Men, War, World

“Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage…Like two out of every ten couples.”

Neil Simon (1927–2018) playwright, writer, academic

Mother, in Barefoot in the Park (1963); cited from The Collected Plays of Neil Simon (New York: New American Library, 1986) vol. 1, p. 207

Marriage, Happiness, Feeling

“I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why. Something must have happened to me sometime.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Opening Lines
Something Happened (1974)

Sex, Night

“The more the father is involved, the more easily the child makes open, receptive, and trusting contact with new people in its life.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 34.

Life, People

“Wilson's analytical theory assumed that the natural and inevitable tendency in any system of government is to have recourse to some sovereign body that will exercise "ultimate supremacy" and have the last say in making collective decisions. It is in this sense that we speak of a government as have a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of authority and use of force in society. Indeed, much of contemporary political science is based on this presumption.”

Vincent Ostrom (1919–2012) American academic, educator and political scientist

Vincent Ostrom (2008), The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, p. 87; Cited in: " Vincent Ostrom on Woodrow Wilson and Political Monism http://discoursesonliberty.blogspot.nl/2012/04/vincent-ostrom-on-woodrow-wilson-and.html" at discoursesonliberty.blogspot.nl, 2012/04

Exercises, Nature, Decision, Sense

“A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Mr. Webb"
Our Town (1938)

Women, Way, Wedding

“All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power.”

Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) British writer, founder of the garden city movement

Introduction.
Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898)

Love, People, Beauty, Hope

“We are a strong country in a rather sick world. … Our problems are not so much racial as radicals wish to make them.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As Prime Minister in a Business Week interview, USA, 4 April 1982, as cited in the Sunday Express, and Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, PW Botha in his own words, p. 15, 41

World, Problem, Strong, Country

“New England is about right. And the Pacific Coast would make a nice, other Italy. But as for the rest of the country, I honestly don't know what to do with it. Do you?”

Bertrand Collins (1893–1964)

[Militancy Avoided, https://www.newspapers.com/image/106297158/, December 22, 2016, Oakland Tribune, August 26, 1934]

Country

“We have to be cognizant of the fact that they've had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them, foreign money, foreign weapons, so we have to make this the top priority.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money

“When I am designing, I make a selection of music that will be the inspiration behind the whole collection… I will be blasting that music—it becomes a journey I take in my brain to transfer that sound to the clothing.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

Interview Magazine (December 15, 2010)

Music, Clothes

“If you're a twofisted, spineless progressive (a mighty fashionable stance nowadays) Offissa Pupp, who forcefully asserts the will of socalled society, becomes a cosmic angel; while Ignatz Mouse, who forcefully defies society's socalled will by asserting his authentic own, becomes a demon of anarchy and a fiend of chaos. But if—whisper it—you're a 100% hidebound reactionary, the foot's in the other shoe. Ignatz Mouse then stands forth as a hero, pluckily struggling to keep the flag of free will flying; while Offissa Pupp assumes the monstrous mien of a Goliath, satanically bullying a tiny but indomitable David. Well, let's flip the coin—so: and lo! Offissa Pupp comes up. That makes Ignatz Mouse "tails."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Now we have a hero whose heart has gone to his head and a villain whose head has gone to his heart.
A Foreword to Krazy (1946)

Angels, Shoe, Fashion, Heart

“The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)*

* The analogy between the sea squirt and the associate professor was first pointed out, I think, by the neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 177

Life, Home, Search, Thinking

“All the difference in the world are as nothing compared to this: the difference between being you and being me. It makes the chasms between gods and men, between men and women, between dead and alive, seem almost trivial.You are you. She is someone else. Between lie the stars.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 14

Women, Men, God, Lie

“Most men – not just the men in Brentwood – are scared of powerful women with brains. There’s something in a man that makes him want to have power over a woman – whether it’s in the bedroom or because they earn more money. It boosts their egos.”

Jodie Marsh (1978) English glamour model and television personality

Interview in The Metro http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/39209-60-seconds-jodie-marsh#ixzz1o9GF3Az0, undated.

Women, Men, Money

“They could pray, they had the illusion that a divine plan governed this best of all possible worlds, while I was left in bleak, stormy limbo, dismally aware that the universe makes no sense and that the only universal truth there is is that Entropy Eventually Wins.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Thomas the Proclaimer (1972), Chapter 3, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” (p. 76)

Truth, World, Sense, Universe

“In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Men, Hostility, Sea

“If you want to make a chili, you're going to break some cows.”

Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger

"Roderick On The Line" podcast, October 2011
Podcasts, Other podcasts

“My principles require me merely to invite you to agree, while expecting the contrary. Missionaries do not make converts with such a message: millions are not mobilized by such tepid phrases. That is why the merely intellectual compulsion to regard human diversity and flux is unlikely to prevail against simpler systems of misunderstanding truly capable of altering the world in which we live.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

World

“If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come. As a matter of selfish policy, leaving right and humanity out of the question, we cannot wisely pursue any other course. Other governments mainly depend for security upon the sword; ours depends mainly upon the friendship of the people. In all matters, in time of peace, in time of war, and at all times, it makes its appeal to the people, and to all classes of the people. Its strength lies in their friendship and cheerful support in every time of need, and that policy is a mad one which would reduce the number of its friends by excluding those who would come, or by alienating those who are already here.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Friendship, War, People, Peace

“Part of what a good dad can do, then, is to make sure that his daughter also gets involved with team sports, and to help her with the lessons in life that are innate to any team empowering itself. –page119.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Father and Child Reunion (2001)

Life, Sport, Help, Parting

“You need to understand that informed intuition, rather than analytical reason, is the most trustworthy decision-making tool to use.”

Geoffrey Moore book Crossing the Chasm

Source: Crossing the Chasm, 1991, p. 67

Understanding, Decision

“Grant us Thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee,
Till all Thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

"Lord Of All Being" (1848).

Truth, Light, Heart

“O Innocence, the sacred amulet
'Gainst all the poisons of infirmity;
Of all misfortune, injury, and death,
That makes a man in tune still in himself;
Free from the hell to be his own accuser,
Ever in quiet, endless joy enjoying;
No strife nor no sedition in his powers;
No motion in his will against his reason,
No thought 'gainst thought—
But (all parts in him, friendly and secure,
Fruitful of all best things in all worst seasons)
He can with every wish be in their plenty;
When the infectious guilt of one foul crime
Destroys the free content of all our time.”

George Chapman The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron

Act IV, scene i.
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608)

Death, Hell, Time, Joy

“(…) Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Clean, well-ordered life
Source: "I am That." P.31.

Life, People, Truth, Fear

“Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy—a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men, Democracy, Game

“Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes— that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. Still, vanity, with a woman’s whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests. How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a husband as crown-prince by your side—himself in fact a subject— while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better!”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Women, Men, Marriage, World

“Sometimes I just want to tell a story regardless of whether it fits what the show is saying. I’ve been in a lot of writing rooms where somebody says an idea and everyone’s dying, like laughing so they’re delirious. It’s like a black hole in a good way, everything starts to fall into it, you know what I mean.
And then after a few minutes everybody calms down and somebody says yeah, we can’t do it that way, it doesn’t make any sense, because it hurts this thing and this. And then everyone gets a little—has a moment of silence for the idea and moves on, and something amazing was kept away from the public.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Time http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/22/louis-ck-interview-part-1-fatherhood-and-fear/#ixzz2LfKg3gu2 (2011)

Way, Idea, Sense, Silence

“Having to remind others of your American status, fear of being connected to the enemy because of ancestral ties, the threat so prevalent that it makes you put not one but two giant flags outside is not right.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Fear

“When I said that I make out with dudes, there was a slight sense of sexual rebellion in that. And I probably even made it a bigger deal than it was.”

Peter Wentz (1979) American musician

"This Charming Man," interview, Out.com (August 2008)

Sense

“I don't believe this country will ever come to grips with child abuse until they make the obvious, simple connection between today's victim and tomorrow's predator. As long as they believe a Ted Bundy or a John Wayne Gacy is a biogenetic mistake as opposed to a beast that was built and a monster that was made, they'll continue to blithely walk around, saying, 'I'm against child abuse.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Todd Taylor's interview October 23, 2001, on Razorcake.com.

Country

“It is a mistake to let aesthetics drive your rational decision making.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Pwned: How copyright turns us all into IP serfs", UNC iBiblio (22 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkBX-981_es

Decision

“It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

As quoted in The Complete Phil Ochs : Chords of Fame (1978) by Almo publications

Life, World, Religion, Art

“It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

World, Beauty, Understanding, Thinking

“… a single generation enamoured of foreign ways is almost enough in history to risk the whole continuity of civilization and learning. Ages of accumulation are entrusted to the frail bark of each passing epoch by the hand of the past, desiring to make over its treasures to the use of the future. It takes a certain stubbornness, a doggedness of loyalty, even a modicum of unreasonable conservatism maybe, to lose nothing in the long march of the ages; and, even when confronted with great empires, with a sudden extension of the idea of culture, or with the supreme temptation of a new religion, to hold fast what we have, adding to it only as much as we can healthfully and manfully carry.”

Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and a disciple of Swami Vivekananda

p. 2 https://archive.org/stream/mythsofthehindus00niveuoft#page/n21/mode/2up Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (1913)

Age, Religion, Way, History

“No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad.”

Milan Kundera The Joke

Žádné pocínání není samo o sobe dohré ani zlé. Teprve jeho místo v rádu ciní je dobrým ci zlým.
The Joke (1967)

“a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the said
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

warty bliggens, the toad

Beauty, Light, Universe, Sun

“The staff officer must be kept in his place. But this does not mean that he must be kept down, that he must be discouraged, that his initiative and imagination must be checked. On the contrary, all these characteristics should be encouraged. The important question is, through what channel are they to be directed? They should, of course, Bow through the responsible operating executive, not around him.
This process may be described in terms of the following sequence: the staff official makes a recommendation; it is approved by the responsible executive who, in his authoritative capacity, announces to those below him in the hierarchy that the recommendation is going to be adopted. Thereafter there are many details in connection with putting it into effect that can be carried out more effectively by the staff official than by the line official and with a saving of time to the latter. So long as the subordinates in the hierarchy are aware that this delegation is authorized and that the staff officer is not acting independently, unification of managerial responsibility is not impaired and there is no loss of influence and responsibility in the part of the executive.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Meshing of Line and Staff", 1945, pp. 102-104, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 306-7

Imagination, Question, Loss, Time

“The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say "Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles."”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

"Important Work of Uncle Sam's Lawyers", American Bar Association Journal (April 1931), p. 238, reprinting an address to the Federal Bar Association, Washington, D.C. (February 11, 1931), where the chief justice spoke of the "extraordinary development of administrative agencies of the government and of the lawyer's part in making them work satisfactorily and also in protecting the public against bureaucratic excesses", according to the article's subtitle

People, Way, Country

“We have to work sincerely and responsibly to thwart any attempt to divide the Arab nation into small groups, with which foreign countries would deal separately. This would eventually be in the interests of Zionism, which stands behind such policies, formulating the relevant theories and promoting distorted information to world politicians, especially in the West, in order to make them adopt an approach which is harmful to the Arab nation and is even against the legitimate interests of their own countries.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

World, Sincerity, Country

“And now they were making music from the screams of the dying. Of the dead. The were dancing to it in the low-rent clubs. What it must be like, Miller thought, to be young and soulless.
But no. That wasn’t fair. Diogo was a good kid. He was just naive. The universe would take care of that, given a little time.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 44 (p. 445)

Music, Universe, Time, Dance

“I will live to make myself not feared.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

As quoted in The Historians' History of the World (1904) by Henry Smith Williams, p. 423

Fear

“If we admit the existence of the prophetic mission, by putting the idea of possibility, which is in fact ignorance, in place of certainty, and make miracles a proof of the truth of man who claims to be a prophet it becomes necessary that they should not be used by a person, who says that they can be performed by others than prophets, as the Mutakallimun do.”

Averroes book On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy

Part 2: The Advent of the Prophets; Opening sentence
On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy

Truth, Idea, Personality

“Once there was a megalomaniac in the Sugamo hospital who called himself "Ashiwara Shōgun." He hung a cardboard medal around his neck and bestowed dignified words to those he met to take with them on their way. Now that the war is over, we can see clearly that what the military did wasn’t at all different. And now they want to reintroduce medals yet again… After winning the Russo-Japanese war, we thought we’d won colonies. But what really came of it? After losing the Second World War, we realized that we had only earned the hatred of the Russians… Everyone is talking about loyalty to the fatherland. The question is simply where this loyalty will take us. I too was completely convinced when I went to war against the Russians, but after our defeat, I realized that we had done something that we shouldn’t have. In any case, it’s better not to make war in the first place.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

Zen ni kike (To you) (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1987)

War, World, Way, Question

“The honours system gets to grade people. Graded grains make finer rice.”

Richard Mottram (1946) British civil ervant

April 2004, explaining to the Commons committee on public administration why there are so many different levels of honours Hoggart, Simon. 'Sir Humphrey reveals his Dusty Springfield side' http://politics.guardian.co.uk/redbox/comment/0,9408,1206669,00.html, The Guardian (30 April 2004).

People

“And yet in this I desired, as far as I durst, that I might have full sight of Hell and Purgatory. But it was not my meaning to make proof of anything that belongeth to the Faith: for I believed soothfastly that Hell and Purgatory is for the same end that Holy Church teacheth, but my meaning was that I might have seen, for learning in all things that belong to my Faith: whereby I might live the more to God’s worship and to my profit.
But for my desire, I could of this right nought, save as it is aforesaid in the First Shewing, where I saw that the devil is reproved of God and endlessly condemned. In which sight I understood as to all creatures that are of the devil’s condition in this life, and therein end, that there is no more mention made of them afore God and all His Holy than of the devil, — notwithstanding that they be of mankind — whether they be christened or not.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 33

Life, God, Faith, Hell

“The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"
Mere Christianity (1952)

Love, Life, Men, God

“Hinduism never seemed to be something foreign or alien to me or inappropriate to my circumstances living in the West. It is the very religion of nature and consciousness in the broadest sense, which makes it relevant to everyone.”

David Frawley (1950) American Hindu teacher

How I Became A Hindu - My Discovery Of Vedic Dharma

Religion, Nature, Sense

“It is an honor to be nominated as Director of National Intelligence. A robust and responsible intelligence infrastructure is essential to our homeland security, and if confirmed I will ensure our national security decision-makers have every piece of information they need to protect the American people from the threats facing our nation. There is no higher priority than keeping America safe, and I will utilize every tool at my disposal to make that happen.”

Dan Coats (1943) 5th and current Director of National Intelligence, former United States Senator from Indiana

President-Elect Donald J. Trump Nominates Former U.S. Senator Dan Coats Director of National Intelligence https://greatagain.gov/dni-e1ff90566dcb#.h2txkfboq (January 7, 2017)

People, Intelligence, Decision

“Grammar little by little is not a thing. Which may gain.
There. Make twenty-five be a woman. The meaning of that does not interest me. It is a complexion that interests that makes ridiculous because that does not make it something else. But it does make them which is again me.
Make twenty-five be a woman. I do not lose it. The color is there. Do you see. Dependent entirely upon how one word follows another. Who knows how Howard likes hearing. I can do it so easily it always makes grammar but is it grammar. Forget grammar and think about potatoes. Grammar after all has to do with why they were presented.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

How to Write (1931), Ch. 4: A Grammarian [Dover, 1975, ISBN 0-486-23144-5] p. 109

Color, Thinking, Dependency, Forgetting

“This is what I wanted to tell Monsignor di Volterra [Soderini] when he came to Urbino, but I could not entrust him with the secret. Now that my opportunity has come, I have known very well how to make use of it, and I have done a great service to your masters.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare to Macchiavelli, after telling him why he ordered his men to attack the soldiers of Vitelli and Orsini (December, 1502) as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XVII: The Beautiful Stratagem

Secret

“The laws of social development are not identical with the laws in the natural sciences. The content of the social laws is not nature but second nature: coagulated history. They are manmade, but they also make men; they are dialectical, at once subject and object.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 65

Men, Law, History, Nature

“Mr. Arkwright, after many years intense and painful application, invented, about the year 1768, his present method of spinning cotton, but upon very different principles from any invention that had gone before it. He was himself a native of Lancashire; but having so recently witnessed the ungenerous treatment of poor Hargrave, by the people of that county, he retired to Nottingham, and obtained a patent in the year 1769, for making cotton, flax, and wool into yarn. But, after some experience, finding that the common method of preparing the materials for spinning (which is essentially necessary to the perfection of good yarn) was very imperfect, tedious, and expensive, he turned his thoughts towards the construction of engines for that purpose; and, in the pursuit, spent several years of intense study and labour, and at last produced an invention for carding and preparing the materials, founded in some measure on the principles of his first machine. These inventions, united, completed his great original plan. But his last machines being very complicated, and containing some things materially different in their construction, and some others materially different in their use, from the inventions for which his first patent was obtained, be procured a patent for these also in December, 1775.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 23

Pain, Study, Perfection

“Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions.”

Maurice Strong (1929–2015) Canadian businessman

Source: "Facing Down Armageddon: Environment at a Crossroads," essay by Maurice Strong in World Policy Journal, Summer, 2009 "Successful management of today's traumatic processes of change will not be easy to achieve. Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions, particularly in terms of safeguarding the global environment that this transition will require and whose results are often not immediately apparent."

Democracy, Decision, Strong, Box

“I wanted to get my partner Daniela a special and valuable engagement present, but we had long agreed that a diamond ring – or other comparably expensive present – didn't make sense for us. Instead of money, I decided to "spend" a resource more valuable to both of us: time and creative energy.”

Holden Karnofsky (1981) American nonprofit executive

In "Data Is Forever: The Engagement Gift I Gave" https://medium.com/@holden0/data-is-forever-the-engagement-gift-i-gave-123e75e1ca71, July 2016

Money, Sense, Time

“I think it's a disgrace for the international community that we have allowed so many conflicts to become frozen, and we are not making a serious effort to solve them.”

Martti Ahtisaari (1937) Finnish politician and former President of Finland

Telephone interview with Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org (10 October 2008) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2008/ahtisaari-telephone.html

Communication, Thinking, Effort

“In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it. Then we – now don't laugh, that's really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what, if this is right, if this law that we guessed is right, to see what it would imply. And then we compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.”

Richard Feynman book The Character of Physical Law

same passage in transcript: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NnquxdWFk&t=16m46s The Character of Physical Law (1965) Variant: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.

Law, Beauty, Nature, Science

“Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

No. 153 (25 August 1711)
The Spectator (1711-1714)

Pleasure, Youth, Age, Sex

“I admit it worked fairly well but my first reaction was to get up and walk away from the job, but I couldn't. Once you've heard music like that with the picture, it makes your own scoring more difficult to arrive at, it clouds your thinking. Later, as an inside joke, I included a snippet of the Strauss in the score-and some critic pounced on me for stealing. You can´t win.”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

Tony Thomas, Music for the Movies (1973), p. 209

Music, Thinking

“A firm may be defined as an institution which buys things, transforms them in some way, and then sells them with the purpose of making a profit. The things a firm buys we shall call "inputs." The things it sells we shall call "outputs." The process whereby the things it buys are transformed into the things it sells we shall call the "process of production." In any process of buying to sell again a process of production is always involved…
A business, therefore, is a process whereby certain inputs, valued in dollars in some way, are transformed into outputs, also valued in dollars in some way.”

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

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 377

Way, Business

“Little miss dismissed can't miss like a detuned radio

I cannot believe you when you tell me what you know

And nothing will be broken if your house is made of stone

But you know as I do it will never be a home

We want it, they got it

They claim we'll die without it

But something tells me they are wrong

So what will you do when they call your name and you're not ready to go?

Everyone will stare at you and tell you what you know

That you're in too deep and you can't quite keep your secrets, one and all

We might just make it after all, on our own

We might just make it after all

But we had one foot on the gas and one foot in the grave

Everyone was laughing when we said we had it made”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"One Foot on the Gas, One Foot in the Grave" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/04/

Secret, Home, Housing

“As I grow older, I have had to discard some ideas and policies because they no longer make sense. This strikes me as entirely healthy. I would invite others to do the same.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Preface, p. ix
The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998)

Idea, Sense

“In order to make it look dramatic, they staged what was ridiculed by some Israeli commentators, correctly, they staged a national trauma… There was a huge media extravaganza, you know, pictures of a little Jewish boy try to hold back the soldiers destroying his house… And a lot of the settlers were allowed in, so there could be a pretense of violence, though there wasn't any… The withdrawal could have been done perfectly quietly. All that was necessary was for Israel to announce that on August 1st the army will withdraw. And immediately the settlers, who had been subsidized to go there in the first place, and to stay there, would get on to the trucks that are provided for them and move over to the West Bank where they can move into new subsidized settlements. But if you did that way, there wouldn't have been any national trauma, any justification for saying, "never can we give up another 1 mm² of land". What made all of this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of what was described in Haaretz as "Operation National Truama 1982". After Israel finally agreed to Sadat's 1971 offer, they had to evacuate northeastern Sinai, and there was another staged trauma, which again was ridiculed by Israel commentators. By a miracle, none of the settlers who were resisting needed a Band-Aid, while Palestinians were being killed all over the place.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The Current Crisis in the Middle East" at MIT, September 21, 2006 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/403/ Quotes 2000s, 2006

Way, Boy, Housing

“My goal was never to make Facebook cool.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg First Public Q&A ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFhBLWU9LyU, YouTube, 6 November 2014 Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Why I wear the same T-shirt every day http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11217273/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-Why-I-wear-the-same-T-shirt-every-day.html, The Telegraph, 7 November 2014

“Try to understand why a transaction makes sense to your counterparty....”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

Understanding, Sense

“Listen, if you're from Arizona I'm not making fun of your home. I'm making fun of you for gathering there and building a community in an oven. Smooth move.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Arizona Summers
Poetry

Home, Communication

“.. [by making his work 'Onement', in 1948].. from then on I had to give up any relation to nature, as seen [by himself till then]. That doesn't mean that I think my things are mathematical or removed from life. By 'nature' I mean something very specific. I think that some abstractions - for example Kandinsky's - are really nature paintings. The triangles and the spheres or circles could be bottles. They could be trees, or buildings. I think that in 'Euclydean Abyss' and 'Onement' I removed myself from nature. But I did not remove myself from life.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

interview, April 1965, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'The Listener', Aug. 1972; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 37
1960 - 1970, Interview with David Sylvester 1. Spring 1965

Life, Mathematics, Nature, Thinking

“Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making — Pish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Hell

“Constantly ask yourself, 'What level is above this one?' This makes things different. Take personal problems for example. Problems are not solved by choosing between this and that. The very need to choose indicates misunderstanding. Problems are solved by outgrowing both this and that.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power

Problem, Personality

“I think that when you make a record, an album, it has to be a discovery for the person listening to it, so you don't want to pat everything out and say "this was that, this is definite, that's how it happened and that's what you should feel and that's what you should like or dislike."”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

It's personal discovery."
From an interview with Russell Brand in 2009
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Feeling, Thinking, Personality

“It appears that soon after the introduction of bowling-alleys they were productive of very evil consequences; for they became not only exceedingly numerous, but were often attached to places of public resort, which rendered them the receptacles of idle and dissolute persons; and were the means of promoting a pernicious spirit of gambling among the younger and most unwary part of the community. The little room required for making these bowling-alleys was no small cause of their multiplication, particularly in great towns and cities. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these nurseries of vice were universally decried, and especially such of them as were established within the city and suburbs of London, where the ill effects arising from them were most extensive.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 269
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Bowling alleys

Communication, Universe, Appearance, Evil

“Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn't come from God's Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, "Pastor, how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation."Isn't that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don't do it with purple paper and red ink, you're not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.And that's what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

The Response, American Family Association prayer rally, Reliant Stadium, Houston, , quoted in * 2011-10-08
Jeffress Says Satan Is Behind Roman Catholicism
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jeffress-says-satan-behind-roman-catholicism

Life, Money, God, People

“We came up with the idea of people who are attracted to criminals, especially those who might write to a criminal in jail saying, “I understand you, I sympathize with what you’re going through,” and they just sort of pin all their hopes and dreams on somebody who they think is misunderstood but who is in fact rather dangerous. The fact that Harley might have gone from this intelligent, cool therapist to this crazed clown woman was both very interesting and very tragic to us. We thought that had the makings of a great Batman villain — like Batman himself, his villains start off human but then some tragedy happens and warps them into what they are today.”

Paul Dini (1957) writer

Paul Dini reflects on 25 years of Harley Quinn http://ew.com/books/2017/09/05/paul-dini-25-years-of-harley-quinn/ (September 5, 2017)

People, Dreams, Hope, Intelligence

“I included songs which were aimed at making listeners think a little more deeply about faith in general. People of The Boxes for example, is not just a fable with implied reference to Jews and Christians, but it also points out that we who call ourselves "Muslims" are also living in a box sometimes. I wanted to help myself and the listeners realise our own faults too — to stop being so judgmental of others and to get ourselves out of the dogmatic boxes we have trapped ourselves in.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

On his album The Prophet’s Hands
Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)

People, Faith, Thinking, Help

“Our existence in this world seems insignificant within the extent of space and of time. Therefore, nonreligious people have to come to terms with living in a world full of uncertainty and unknowns. Nevertheless, many people prefer facing the uncertainty, rather than believing in a certainty that makes no sense to them.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 8, “Science and Religion: Scientists Just Do Science” (pp. 136-137; minor grammatical errors corrected silently)

People, World, Sense, Time

“…[the] apostles of various kinds of error presented themselves. They were those like Sir Oswald Mosley who were fascinated by the spectacle of brutal power. They would like to use it themselves. They grovelled to Nazi dictatorship in order that they could make people in their turn grovel to them. … At the other end of the political scale were the Trotsky-ite Communists, furious fanatics whose sole aim was to throw the world into one supreme convulsion. Then there was Sir Stafford Cripps, who was in a class by himself. He wished British people to be conquered by the Nazis in order to urge them into becoming Bolsheviks. It seemed a long way round. (Laughter.) And not much enlightenment when they got to the end of their journey. Lastly, there were the absolute non-resisters like Canon Sheppard and Mr. Lansbury. They were pious men, but they would lead the country to ruin, even more surely than all the others.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Men, People, World, Way

“Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Campaign address before the Republican-for-Roosevelt League, New York City (3 November 1932), reported in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1928–1932 (1938), p. 857
1930s

History, Time

Quotes about making page 89

Quotes about making
page 89