Quotes about making
page 90

“It makes sense that the bands first show took place in Seattle because as much as L. A. was our address, we had as much in common with the average "L. A." band as Seattle's weather has with Southern California.”

Slash (musician) book Slash

Source: Slash (2007) by Anthony Bozza & Mason Segal,, p. 108.

Sense, Weather

“We're always told that we need to amnesty illegals to shore up Social Security. How, exactly, are people who make so little money that they don't pay income taxes going to save Social Security?”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015, Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)

Money, People

“Had I believed that there is a real chance of reaching an agreement, I would have recommended making an effort. But that is not the case. The choice we will be facing will be between less than a Geneva Accord—which means a return to the 1967 border, the crushing of Jerusalem, and a struggle to our last breath to ward off the international pressure to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees into the shrinking State of Israel—and a comprehensive unilateral move, and I stress the word comprehensive. Through such a move we will define our borders, which under no circumstances will be identical to the Green Line and will include Jerusalem as a united city under our sovereignty.”

Ehud Olmert (1945) Israeli politician, prime minister of Israel

http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000128.htm

Effort, Chance

“It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

People, Soul

“The way to control circumstances is to control the forces within yourself to make a greater man of yourself, and as you become greater and more competent, you will naturally gravitate into better circumstances. In this connection, we should remember that like attracts like. If you want that which is better, make yourself better. If you want to realize the ideal, make yourself more ideal. If you want better friends, make yourself a better friend. If you want to associate with people of worth, make yourself more worthy. If you want to meet that which is agreeable, make yourself more agreeable. If you want to enter conditions and circumstances that are more pleasing, make yourself more pleasing. In brief, whatever you want, produce that something in yourself, and you will positively gravitate towards the corresponding conditions in the external world.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 3, p. 49

People, World, Way, Nature

“A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Letter to Corona Machemer (11 June 1975)

World, Time

“Do you, do you like dreaming of things
so impossible or only the practical
or ever the wild or waiting through all your bad bad days
just to end them with
someone you care about
and do you like making out
and long drives and brown eyes
and guys that just
don't quite fit in”

Chris Carrabba (1975) American musician

So Impossible

Dreams, Guy, Waiting

“He who improvises can never make a perfect line of poetry.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

As quoted in A Dictionary of Art and Artists (1959) by Peter Murray and Linda Murray, p. 321.
undated quotes

Perfection

“To forgive purely because it is nicer to forgive, and to do so when it’s a tough call; to try to speak only kindly of those we know because it is preferable to do so; to enjoy the successes of others because living thus is more enjoyable than the stress of living resentfully: such kind things make us better, lovlier people. And to try to live this way for its own merits, without invoking a supernatural reason for doing so, is to celebrate our humanity and to give kindness back its teeth.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, There’s Probably No God - The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (2009)

People, Way, Forgiveness, Success

“To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is “really” a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. … While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” pp. 8–9
Do What You Will (1928)

Sense, Memory

“Truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", I

Truth

“Let us not be duped into believing that we need to make a choice between dealing with either Assad or Isis. On the surface, this may seem appealing, but it is not an option. There is no choice.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Don’t leave Syria to become a graveyard — this generation’s responsibility to the world (13 October 2015)

“An artist is a socially unattractive person whom socially attractive people make money out of.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Money, People, Personality

“The would-be climber must be able to make himself liked … please his superiors — avoid showing independence except in those matters wherein independence is expected of him by his chiefs… the winners in the race have qualities which disincline them to allow others to be their true selves. Hence the winners snub all those who aim at adequate self-expression, speaking of them as pretentious, eccentric, biased, unpractical, and measuring their achievements by insincere standards.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)

“Normally, misprints are either easily corrected or else so trivial that it makes no difference whether we play the correct or the faulty version. … Nevertheless, on rare occasions, a misprint or slip of the pen may challenge our view of the musical language. These extreme cases may help us understand a little more about the way music acquires meaning, or what it means to say that the music makes sense.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Music, Way, Understanding, Sense

“[W]hat makes a libertarian in America a “right-winger” makes him a “liberal” in most of Europe.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

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

“That is a true sentiment which makes us feel that we do not love our country less, but more, because we have laid up in our minds the knowledge of other lands and other institutions and other races, and have had enkindled afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity, and of the universal beneficence of the Creator.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 442.

Love, Feeling, Knowledge, Universe

“When private industry makes a mistake, it gets corrected and goes away. As governments make mistakes, it gets bigger, bigger and bigger and they make more, more and more because as they run out of money, they just ask for more and so they get rewarded for making mistakes. In the meantime that is exactly what we are doing by subsidizing companies which are failing, we have a reverse Darwinism, we've got survival of the unfittest, the companies and people that have made terrible mistakes are being rewarded and other people are being punished and being taxed.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Authors@Google: Peter Schiff (2009)

Money, People

“Make no mistake about it. I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise; we are going to win.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Remarks at a Meeting of the National Alliance of Businessmen (16 March 1968). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28740 1960s

Home, Thinking

“Hamm: If I could sleep I might make love. I'd go into the woods. My eyes would see … the sky, the earth. I'd run, run, they wouldn't catch me.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

Endgame (1957)

Love, Making love, Sleep

“Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 8
This quote is a paraphrase of a lengthier statement, as follows: We ordinarily see, in the actions of the world, that Fortune, to shew us her power in all things, and who takes a pride in abating our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate in emulation of virtue; and most favours those operations the web of which is most purely her own; whence it is that the simplest amongst us bring to pass great business, both public and private; and, as Seiramnes, the Persian, answered those who wondered that his affairs succeeded so ill, considering that his deliberations were so wise, ‘that he was sole master of his designs, but success was wholly in the power of fortune’; these may answer the same, but with a contrary turn.
From Essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton (1877), Book the Third, Chapter VIII — Of The Art Of Conference. Note : this is the version found at Project Gutenberg.
Attributed

Fools

“Let us never imagine that faith can ever be furthered by suppressing doubt, let alone by suppressing evidence. All truth is one, and religion must be as eager as science to know the truth as far as man can perceive it. If something we have treasured as truth is really contradicted by unanswerable evidence, then in the name of the God of truth we must part with it however venerable it may be. Let us never suppose that we can take over faith from our parents without examination, or believe anything merely because another says it is true. But let us not be content with a static agnosticism which never rouses itself to make inquiry. Let us examine the evidence and then in complete loyalty to its trend make a leap both of intellect and will, and, committing ourselves, acting as if all were established, try out in life the faith that carries us on wings after the hard road of fact and reason stops.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.231

Life, God, Truth, Faith

“In the works I paint [now] I can't see any guarantee that I shall make progress.... while better skilled people [artists] - even though their work does not seem so good at the moment - can move forward much more easily.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
Er is in wat ik maak geen waarborg, dat ik vooruit zal gaan.. ..terwijl beter geschoolde lui, ook al lijkt hun werk op het ogenblik niet zoo goed, veel eer, verder kunnen komen.
Breitner, quoted by Jan Veth, in Portretstudies en silhouetten, J. Veth; Amsterdam 1908, p. 204
Jan Veth is remembering Breitner's remark from an earlier walk they made together
1900 - 1923

People, Painting

“How do you want to make white lilies into red roses? Kiss a white Galatea and she will blushingly laugh.”

Friedrich von Logau (1605–1655) German poet

(Sinngedichte III, 10, 8).

Kiss

“Perhaps the central reason that Ahmadinejad’s message, and the hundreds of thousands of voices echoing his call throughout the world, are so dangerous is because the Free World is making precious little effort to assert its own message.”

Caroline Glick (1969) deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post

Reprinted in [Live from NY’s 92nd Street Y continues, http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20071007/AE/71007002, Vail Daily, October 7, 2007]
Discussing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

World, Effort

“We should teach our children to make friends with us, to communicate all their thoughts to us … by this we find many opportunities of teaching them important truths, almost without knowing.”

Henry Kirke White (1785–1806) English poet

Letter his White's aunt, 6 January 1800.
Letters

Children, Truth, Communication

“An iniquitous social structure has produced an iniquitous power structure. Individuals and parties are not at fault. Political, social and economic monopolies exclude a large section of the masses from decision-making. To that extent they are undemocratic. So far teams of the ruling elite played and the rest were called to applaud. Now the onlookers are saying we also want to kick and net a goal, and we have our own team.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

On the changes occurring in the political structure of the country
We are ruled by an upper caste Hindu raj

Decision

“I think that repealing or doing away with the corporate income tax is simply getting us back to where we were. We need to understand that the corporate income tax is a double tax, that we all own the corporations and that when income gets distributed to us we pay the tax on that. So we have the highest corporate income tax in the world right now, let's abolish it, let's make it the way that it was to begin with, and that will literally create tens of millions of jobs overnight because this country will be the only place to establish, grow, nurture business. Why won't that happen?”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement at FOX News Debate
YouTube
2011-05-05
http://youtu.be/QRPrZxHUqsA
2012-02-24
Economic Policy

World, Way, Understanding, Business

“It was an honor for me to put on a Chicago Cubs uniform, and I want to personally thank Jim Hendry, the Cubs organization and all the Cub fans for making the past four years so special," Barrett said in a statement. "At the same time, I'm very excited to go to San Diego and do everything that I can to help the Padres win the NL West.”

Michael Barrett (1976) baseball catcher and manager

Barrett bids farewell to his Cubs' fans. The Message was originally posted on his homepage. Cubs deal Barrett to Padres June 20, 2007 http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070620&content_id=2038291&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc

Time, Past, Help, Personality

“But why do they always have to be laughing and making a song-and-dance about everything? I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

White Teeth (2000)

Dance

“I want to apologize to you, my Black brothers and sisters, for being on the new jersey turnpike. I should have known better. The turnpike is a checkpoint where Black people are stopped, searched, harassed, and assaulted. Revolutionaries must never be in too much of a hurry or make careless decisions. He who runs when the sun is sleeping will stumble many times.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

People, Search, Decision, Sister

“What makes the spectacle of Western bourgeois society so repulsive is the waste and squander of resources on needless products of status or display (e. g., the large, heavy automobile; the extravagant packaging of consumer items) for the sake of consumption.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 6, The Public Household, p. 274

“Thus our judgments, if they do not borrow from reason and philosophy a fixity and steadiness of purpose in their acts, are easily swayed and influenced by the praise or blame of others, which make us distrust our own opinions.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Timoleon, sec. 6
Parallel Lives

“In every government there must be somewhat fundamental, somewhat like a Magna Charta, that should be standing and unalterable… that parliaments should not make themselves perpetual is a fundamental.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)

“A ban does not solve the underlying problem behind it. We have to reach out to parents and make sure girls are empowered to make their own choices. At the same time, women who voluntarily choose to wear a headscarf should not be disadvantaged.”

Annette Widmann-Mauz (1966) German politician

About banning headscarves in Germany. German state looks to ban headscarves for girls https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/10/german-state-looks-ban-headscarves-girls/ (10 April 2018), The Daily Telegraph.

Women, Girl, Problem, Parent

“I haven't tried to picture this war in a big, broad-minded way. I'm not old enough to understand what it's all about, and I'm not experienced enough to judge its failures and successes. My reactions are those of a young guy who has been exposed to some of it, and I try to put those reactions in my drawings. Since I'm a cartoonist maybe I can be funny after the war, but nobody who has seen this war can be cute about it while it's going on. The only way I can try to be a little funny is to make something out of the humorous situations which come up even when you don't think life could be any more miserable.”

Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) American editorial cartoonist

Up Front (1945)

Life, War, Way, Guy

“There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism?First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption?The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?”

Barry Schwartz (1946) American psychologist

The Paradox of Choice, Google TechTalks http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200# (April 27, 2006)

People, Thinking, Freedom, Time

“Most of us know Ed Bradley from his 25 years of work on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, and his many interviews with world figures, celebrities and cultural icons. The men and the women who sat in the chair across from Bradley doing his 60 Minutes interviews were figures of importance, people to whom we should pay attention, and we could rely on Bradley to make sure that no skeleton in the darkest corner of his subject's closet was safe from the tenacious journalists.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congressman Danny K. Davis, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Women, Men, People, World

“He's like a PlayStation. I think he can take advantage of every mistake you make. Barcelona are a very good side but of course they have Messi who can make the difference at any moment in the game. He is very young but he can achieve a lot. There are not many players who can score four goals like he did. He has six or seven great years ahead of him and he can become unbelievable.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

On Lionel Messi, (7 April 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/07/barcelona-arsenal-lionel-messi

Game, Thinking

“When a man make of his personnal interests the mainspring of his life and he is greedy to make use of everything that can benefit him, he naturally enters into conflict with other persons, acting also in their interests, hence the disagreements that can become a hundred years old, and drive whole generations to a mutual hate.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 42.

Life, Hate, Nature, Personality

“Anybody who would like to have a long life and make his subsistence expanded, should pay visits to his own relatives.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.74, p. 91
Religious-based Quotes

Life

“Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“As for silver, I never could see any degree of fire make it part with any of its three principles. …But admitting, that some parts of the silver were driven away by the violence of the fire, what proof is there, that it was either the salt, the sulphur, or the mercury of the metal, and not rather a part of it homogeneous to what remained? for besides that the silver, that was left, seemed not sensibly altered, which probably would have appeared, had so much of any one of its principles been separated from it.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Source: The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Part I

Appearance, Parting

“Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking my freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

The last line of this last stanza is also sometimes rendered "This land is made for you and me."
This Land Is Your Land (1940; 1944)

Freedom

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Political will is what it takes to make the impossible possible. Interest and passion for meaningful change can catalyze a new world order that provides opportunity for all. Just imagine all the money the world could save from corruption, and the landmark achievements we could accomplish with the political will to distribute these funds to help reach the people who need it most.”

Geovanny Vicente (1986) Political Strategist, lawyer, international consultant, columnist and university professor

Money, People, World, Way

“It’s funny to read articles about Gordon Gekko as if he exists…. If you really listen to Gekko’s speech, half of it makes sense…. But it’s the excess, losing moderation, that destroys all…. There is nothing inherently wrong with greed as a human motivator, greed motivating evolution…. But there’s a huge disconnect between the classes. It is very demoralizing to work for someone who makes a billion dollars a year while you make just barely enough to make it.”

Oliver Stone (1946) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Wall Street DVD Director’s Commentary (2000)

Motivation, Sense, Reading

“The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Attributed in The Fourth — And by Far the Most Recent 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1990) by Robert Byrne; attributed elsewhere to Nathan M. Rothschild

Money, Way

“If there was anyone who actually fit the category of conservative, if there was such a category of people, they would have a very easy way to deal with the fact that 60% of the children under 2 [in Nicaragua] are suffering probable brain damage. Namely, by paying their debts. Simple conservative principle. But that's beyond unthinkable. Compassionate conservatives might want to go beyond that, if they existed. But they're much more interested in making political capital over the fact that a woman in a vegetative state shouldn't be allowed to die in dignity.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, March 22, 2005 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEvIDiVheys. Quotes 2000s, 2005

Children, People, Way, Suffering

“That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids. Sir Joshua Reynolds speaking of the "Landscape" of Titian & Salvator & Claude says 'Even their skies seem to sympathise with the Subject.' I have often been advised to consider my sky as a 'hite Sheet thrown behind the Objects'. Certainly, if the sky is 'obtrusive,' (as mine are) it is bad, but if they are 'evaded' (as mine are not) it is worse, they must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the 'key note,' the 'standard of Scale' and the chief 'Organ of sentiment.'”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

You may conceive, then, what a "white sheet" would do for me, impressed as I am with these notions.
Letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 42
1820s

Parting

“If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Freeman (1948), p. 170
Variant: By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.

Wealth

“I think of physics as the liberal arts of technology. You understand the fundamental aspects of physics, and then you can learn the technology and understand how it relates to current world problems. I'm teaching the elementary physics that is most useful for someone who is trying to live in a technological world, to contribute to that world, and to make correct decisions.”

Richard A. Muller

as quoted by Devi Mathieu, in Physicist Richard Muller helps prepare tomorrow’s leaders for a technological world http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/26_.shtml, The Berkeleyan, 26 February 2003.

World, Art, Understanding, Problem

“Cézanne made a cylinder out of a bottle. I start from the cylinder to create a special kind of individual object. I make a bottle — a particular bottle — out of a cylinder.”

Juan Gris (1887–1927) Spanish painter and sculptor

Response to questionnaire circulated to the Cubists by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, editors of L'Esprit Nouveau # 5 (February 1921), pp. 533-534; trans. Douglas Cooper in Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, His Life and Work (1947)

“He once told a reporter he wanted his obituary to be short - "just make it born in Russia, first lesson at 3, debut at 7, debut in America in 1917."”

Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) Lithuanian violinist

Chicago Sun-Times Article date: December 13, 1987 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3860317.html

“Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“There are writers who exist to confirm people's feelings about themselves and to make them feel comforted or not alone. That's the opposite to what I do. I'm presenting people with unacceptable or hostile characters, and my desire is to make them understood.”

Nicola Barker (1966) English novelist

Interview in The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2067715,00.html 29 April 2007

Hostility, People, Feeling

“I wasn't part of that hothouse thing. I didn't go to the Yehudi Menuhin school. I grew up with the idea of trying to make music available to people of all abilities.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Guardian - 26/05/2000
Childhood

People, School, Music, Idea

“There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features, is stripped off.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Autobiography (1890) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AutoB.html 1890s

World, Suffering

“I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have, fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

Quoted by Theodore Dreiser in A Photographic Talk with Edison http://books.google.com/books?id=ZrIYCWaZCjwC&q=%22I+never+did+anything+worth+doing+by+accident%22+%22nor+did+any+of+my+inventions+come+indirectly+through+accident+except+the+phonograph+No+when+I+have+fully+decided+that+a+result+is+worth+getting+I+go+about+it+and+make+trial+after+trial+until+it+comes%22&pg=PA118#v=onepage, Success magazine (February 1898). 1800s

Success, Business

“Where it concerns himself,
Who's angry at a slander makes it true.”

Ben Jonson Catiline His Conspiracy

Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene i

“It takes only one man to make an artist, but forty to make an Academician.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

Quoted by Robert Ross in a eulogy. http://www.archive.org/stream/aubreybeardsley00rossrich#page/16/mode/2up

“It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: My personal theology is described in the Gifford lectures that I gave at Aberdeen in Scotland in 1985, published under the title, Infinite In All Directions. Here is a brief summary of my thinking. The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is elementary physical processes, as we see them when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole. Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence.

God, Law, Nature, Universe

“We tried in our simple way to lead our life in a manner that may make a difference to those of others.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on freedom fighters, Upon Receiving the Roosevelt Freedom Award (8 June 2002). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes 2000s

Life, Way

“In my first year of marriage I have often wept and the tears fall often as they did in my childhood - in large drops. They occur when I hear music and when I see beautiful things which move me. In the last analysis, I live alone just as much as I did in my childhood. This aloneness makes me sometimes sad and sometimes happy. I believe it deepens one's life. One lives less according to outward appearances... One lives inwardly.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

note from her Journal, March 1902; as quoted by Susan P. Bachrach, in 'Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) Woman and Artist as Revealed Through Her Depiction of Children', (text on: Fembio - Notable Woman International: Biographies http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography_extra/paula-modersohn-becker/) 1900 - 1905

Life, Marriage, Happiness, Sadness

“I am not fond of the Germans by any means but at the present time it is more advantageous to use them than to challenge them. An independent Poland is very dangerous to Soviet Russia: it is an evil which, however, at the present time has also its redeeming features; for while it exists, we may safely count on Germany, because the Germans hate Poland and will at any time make common cause with us in order to strangle Poland. … Everything teaches us to look upon Germany as our most reliable ally. Germany wants revenge, and we want revolution. For the moment our aims are the same. When our ways part they will be our most ferocious and our great enemies. Time will tell whether a German hegemony or a Communist federation is to arise out of the ruins of Europe.”

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

Quoted from a "Speech to followers" by Ost-Information (Berlin), No. 81 (4 December 1920); as quoted in The Foreign Policies of Soviet Russia (1924) by A. L. O. Dennis, p. 154.
Attributions

Hate, Way, Revenge, Evil

“There are basically three formations of the argument by the Republicans: First, they start by making stuff up. You kind of have to wonder if any of them actually read the bill: 137 new agencies — not true; new IRS agents - not true; 'death panels' - not true; Members aren't covered — not true; no tort reform in it — not true. You know, I want to just advise people watching at home playing that now popular drinking game of you take a shot whenever the Republicans say something that's not true, please assign a designated driver. This is going to be a long afternoon.”

Anthony Weiner (1964) American politician

Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijmgZGtvkxg on the floor of the House, on Republicans' statements on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (January 19, 2011)

Death, People, Home, Game

“God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

God, People, Thinking

“The sphinx atropos squeakes when hurt, nearly as loud as a mouse, which, when uttered in the most plaintive tone, naturally shocks the human heart, and makes it shudder at the thought of destroying inoffensive animals merely for the sake of curiosity. I cannot help reflecting on this tyranny, this wanton cruelty, exercised by thoughtless man, on many animals but especially in insects: 'tis certain, that every animal possessing life, has feeling; and, therefore, is as capable of suffering pain, as of enjoying pleasure; and, as Shakespeare humanely expresses “The poor beetle crushed beneath the foot, feels the pangs of death as great as when a monarch falls.””

James Barbut English painter and naturalist

Gentle reader, pardon this digression, my feelings commanded my pen.
The Genera Insectorum of Linnæus, Exemplified by Various Specimens English Insects drawn by Nature (1781)

Life, Death, Pain, Pleasure

“Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Ignorance of Death" (1940), line 3; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 78.
The Complete Poems

Death

“Industry suffers from the managerial dogma that for the sake of stability and continuity, the company should be independent of the competence of individual employees. Hence industry rejects any methodological proposal that can be viewed as making intellectual demands on its work force. Since in the US the influence of industry is more pervasive than elsewhere, the above dogma hurts American computing science most. The moral of this sad part of the story is that as long as computing science is not allowed to save the computer industry, we had better see to it that the computer industry does not kill computing science.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra Computing Science

Dijkstra (1999) "Computing Science: Achievements and Challenges" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1284.html (EWD 1284). 1990s

Sadness, Suffering, Science, Parting

“The outstanding quality accomplishments of industry during the past decade are familiar history. Particularly during World War II, the accomplishments made by the precision equipment in our tanks and guns and planes were indelibly impressed upon the entire world. This results side of the quality picture makes impressive reading.
Not so pretty a picture is presented when the behind-the-scenes effort to assure these high-quality standards is examined. It may be summarized by noting that many industries are now in a position where, for every dollar spent in planned production, many additional cents are lost owing to the poor quality of their products while in process of manufacture.
These data show that, while we have generally found our quality failures in the factory instead of after shipment, our techniques for so doing are often excessively costly and wasteful. They can be tolerated by no industry striving to maintain and improve its competitive position.
This is a situation with which industry is vitally concerned. It is one calling for the new techniques that have come to be popularly classified under the label of quality control.”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. 8; Chapter 1: What is quality control?

War, World, History, Failure

“Wall Street won’t change until we make it clear that no bank is too big to fail and no CEO is too big to jail.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Wells Fargo’s Business Model is Fraud https://medium.com/@SenSanders/wells-fargos-business-model-is-fraud-d19fb6fbe0a8#.pu31ehcy2, Medium (22 September 2016) 2010s, 2016

Change

“Why can't a Democrat get fired up about protecting the environment and enacting gun control legislation just as right wing republicans get fired up about making sure that children have access to assault weapons and banning 'The catcher in the rye' and 'Harry Potter?”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"imo" http://www.moby.com/journal/2002-12-28/imo.html, journal entry (28 December 2002) at moby.com

Children

“Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

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

1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)

Justice, Heart, Indifference

“I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.”

Albert Finney (1936–2019) English actor

Reply when asked if he thought he was a lot like the character he plays in Big Fish in an interview with Paul Fischer at Dark Horizons (2 December 2003).

Truth, Lie, Thinking

“In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

When asked about intention for a magazine in Berlin (http://www.pulse-berlin.com/)

Love, Dreams, Music, Way

“[After becoming a vegetarian] My digestion is better, my thinking is better, and I'm calmer, stronger, and lighter. It's also easier to make weight. I'm not cutting calories though. Last month I went completely vegan, I don't eat anything with a heartbeat.”

Maureen Shea (1981) American boxer

“Interview: Outside the Ring With Boxer Maureen Shea (11 June 2007) http://animalliberationfront.com/Saints/Sports_Misc/MaureenShea.htm,” by Kelly Jad'on of Blogcritics.

Thinking

“One crosses the brink of literalness into poetry by desiring, noticing, fixing on something and wondering what to make of it.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Review of 'Stanley Cavell and the Claim to Reason' Critical Inquiry, vol 6, no 4 Summer 1980 U of C P

“Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“Dragonfly” (p. 201)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Courage

“It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved.”

Isa Bowman (1874–1958) British actress

Page 1.
The Story of Lewis Carroll (1899)

Love, Effort

“The narrowest patriotism could be made to appear noble, the foulest accusations could be represented as an indignant outburst of humanitarianism, and the meanest and most vindictive aims falsely disguised as idealism. Everything was legitimate which could make the soldiers go on fighting.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

Appearance, Fight, Falseness

“[T]he North’s ideology glorifies the heart over the mind, instincts over consciousness, which makes rash decisions more likely to be made, even quite low down the military command structure. There is therefore a significant danger of some sort of limited clash at any time. But that has always been the case.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

Decision, Time, Heart

“The fact is, growing hemp for industrial purposes would make it a very useful plant. It can be a fiber for clothing, a source of paper, even an alternative fuel. Canada is already using hemp this way. I simply don't see that cannabis grows wild on earth just so humans can eradicate it.
Of course, the work of eradicating marijuana creates jobs within law enforcement. If we made it legal, and taxed it like we do tobacco and alcohol, maybe those law enforcement people could start paying more attention to murders and terrorism. I also think it's time for people to rise up against the prescription drug industry, the biggest opponent of legalization. You have to remember that they don't want anything out there that they can't make a profit from. Marijuana is a weed, and that means you can grow it, essentially free. This doesn't sit well with the pharmaceutical industry, and I think our Food and Drug Administration is nothing but a puppet whose strings the industry pulls.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 10 (p. 190)

People, Alcohol, Law, Food

“Roger: Well, because you’re guaranteed to see Buddy make some funny faces, you’re guaranteed that Chris will say something that is sort of out of line or inappropriate, and I’m gonna play a bunch of fuckin’ really fast bass licks, it’s gonna be great.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“[Godzilla kenpo] is a combination of karate and the kinds of moves I make while playing Godzilla. I developed it to help me from becoming too worn out while playing Godzilla.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1993)

Help

“The only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

The Book of Ammon

Waiting, Heart

“No longer shall the intrigues and mischief-making of the imperialists deceive us. No longer shall our work be interrupted under flimsy pretexts. We are working to attain a bright and better future, ensuring freedom and prosperous living not only to ourselves but to posterity.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

Speech delivered in the gardens of the Shaab Hall (May 1, 1959).
Principles of the 14th July Revolution (1959)

Freedom, Future

“Martin himself had of course a serious intention and must, for all his motley, be regarded as a heroic figure. Nor have I any sympathy with those who make prim mouths at him for introducing scurrility into a theological debate, for debate was precisely what the bishops had suppressed. Those who refuse to let their opponents dispute have no right to complain if they hear instead lewd catcalls in the streets; in a sense, it is what they have chosen.”

Martin Marprelate (1588–1589)

C. S. Lewis English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) p. 405.
Criticism

Sense

“What difference does it make that one should "prove" a philosophical point, if that point has nothing to do with spreading freedom throughout the land?”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: God of the Oppressed (1975, 1997), p. 46

Freedom

“I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives.”

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

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

People, Age, Change

“What makes love making and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

"If on a winter's night a traveller". Chapter 7. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver (1981).

Love, Making love, Time, Reading

“!-- Setting forth once more, embarking upon the search once again: the narrow path that snakes among livid rocks and desolate, camel-colored hills; white houses hanging suspended from cliffs, looking as though they were about to let go and fall on the wayfarer’s head; the smell of sweating hides and cow dung; the buzz of afternoon; the screams of monkeys leaping about amid the branches of the trees or scampering along the flat rooftops or swinging from the railings of a balcony; overhead, birds circling and the bluish spirals of smoke rising from kitchen fires; the almost pink light on the stones; the taste of salt on parched lips; the sound of loose earth slithering away beneath one’s feet; the dust that clings to one’s sweat-drenched skin, makes one’s eyes red, and chokes one’s lungs; i --> Images, memories, fragmentary shapes and forms — all those sensations, visions, half-thoughts that appear and disappear in the wink of an eye, as one sets forth to meet…. The path also disappears as I think of it, as I say it.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 1

Color, Search, Bird, Thinking

“My eyes are fully open to my awful situation, I shall go at once to Roderic and make him an oration,
I shall tell him I've recovered my forgotten moral senses, and I don't care tuppence ha'penny for any consequences.
Now I do not want to perish by the sword or by the dagger, but a martyr may indulge a little pardonable swagger
And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, but I've got to die to-morrow, so it really doesn't matter!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Ruddigore (1887)

Sense

“Shoot first and inquire afterwards, and if you make mistakes, I will protect you.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

Instruction to the Prussian police (1933); as quoted in The House that Hitler Built (1937) by Stephen Henry Roberts. p. 63

“I myself in my work tend to humanize everything, to relate mountains to people, tree trunks to the human body, pebbles to heads & figures, etc… To cut out & make a taboo any organic representational element or human reference & then say the artist has gained freedom, seems as silly as locking yourself up in a small cell & saying 'now I know where I am – this is freedom – freedom from the outside world”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

critic on the idea of pure Abstract art by Moore
1940 - 1955
Source: 'Unpublished notes' for 'Art and Life', 1941, HMR Archive; as quoted in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, edited by Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, p. 114

People, World, Art, Mountain

“It was because of this guy I had gone out with and had been really, really close with. I really loved him. I felt that he was my best friend. But he was a teenaged guy, and they don't think a lot of times. He mistreated me and then he came back. I couldn't even be friends with him for awhile. I cared about him, but it was just a situation where he kept trying to be friends with me, but I knew that he just wanted to be friends with me so he could have the option of making a move on me whenever he wanted to. And because I was so infatuated with him, and even in love with him, I was always available for that. It made me feel weak every time I would fall for that. And I would look forward to him making a move on me, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that he was playing with me. And after awhile, I didn't even care anymore because I wanted him so much.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

On Shadowboxer from Tidal,
from Nuvo, "Fiona Apple: The NUVO Interview" April [1997]

Love, Guy, Feeling, Thinking

“The fear of losing money is real. Everyone has it. Even the rich. But it’s not fear that is the problem. It’s how you handle fear. It’s how you handle losing. It’s how you handle failure that makes the difference in one’s life. That goes for anything in life, not just money. The primary difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they handle that fear.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Life, Money, Fear, Failure

“By and by an obscure individual, a young man, rose up, and, in the midst of all Christendom, proclaimed the startling news that God had sent an angel to him; that through his faith, prayers, and sincere repentance he had beheld a supernatural vision, that he had seen a pillar of fire descend from Heaven, and saw two glorious personages clothed upon with this pillar of fire, whose countenance shone like the sun at noonday; that he heard one of these personages say, pointing to the other, 'This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.' This occurred before this young man was fifteen years of age; and it was a startling announcement to make in the midst of a generation so completely given up to the traditions of their fathers; and when this was proclaimed by this young, unlettered boy to the priests and the religious societies in the State of New York, they laughed him to scorn. 'What!' said they, "visions and revelations in our day! God speaking to men in our day!" They looked upon him as deluded; they pointed the finger of scorn at him and warned their congregations against him. 'The canon of Scripture is closed up; no more communications are to be expected from Heaven. The ancients saw heavenly visions and personages; they heard the voice of the Lord; they were inspired by the Holy Ghost to receive revelations, but behold no such thing is to be given to man in our day, neither has there been for many generations past.'”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

This was the style of the remarks made by religionists forty years ago. This young man, some four years afterwards, was visited again by a holy angel.
Journal of Discourses 13:65-66 (December 19, 1869).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision

Men, God, Age, Faith