Quotes about making
page 99

Albert Einstein photo

“It is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy.”

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

Er ist eine Skala der Proportionen, die das Schlechte schwierig und das Gute leicht macht.
On the Modulor. Letter sent to Le Corbusier (1946); quoted in Modulor (1953)
1940s

Noam Chomsky photo
Derren Brown photo

“Paul [McKenna] and I have been working on making each other’s hair fall out for years now, with some success.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV recordings of stage shows, Svengali (2012), Svengali tour brochure

Bill Downs photo

“The fault of democracy everywhere, including the United States of America, is that too few people make use of it.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

CBS radio broadcast from Berlin on March 2, 1949

Bram van Velde photo

“My work is independent of my will. My best works are created when driven by an inner strength. This has nothing to do with my will. It is that immediate spontaneity of my intense way of living that makes the difference between my work and a lot of other artists who make art works with their mind.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Letter to H. E. Kramer, 14-11-1927, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 46 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

Sinclair Lewis photo
Max Beerbohm photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Larry Fessenden photo
Cato the Elder photo
David Zabriskie photo

“I think a lot of people see food in terms of whether it's going to make them fat or make them skinny. I'm seeing food in terms of how it's going to make me think and will it give me clarity.”

David Zabriskie (1979) road bicycle racer

"Riding the Tour De Vegetable" https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304314404576414124184873028, interview with The Wall Street Journal (29 June 2011).

Ilya Zhitomirskiy photo

“There's something deeper than making money off stuff. Being part of creating stuff for the universe is awesome.”

Ilya Zhitomirskiy (1989–2011) software developer

As quoted in Obituary by RayClaire at Glint (16 November 2011) http://r-c-d.diaryland.com/111117_11.html

Leni Riefenstahl photo

“This film was pivotal in my life, not so much because it was my first successful effort as a producer and director, but because Hitler was so fascinated by this film that he insisted I make a documentary about the Party rally in Nuremberg. The result was Triumph of the Will.”

Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) German film director, photographer, actress and dancer

On The Blue Light: Partly quoted in: Leni Riefenstahl (1992) The sieve of time: the memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl. p. 210

André Breton photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.”

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

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 10

Andrei Codrescu photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side. They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009)

Pentti Linkola photo
Theo de Raadt photo
Pope Gregory VII photo

“That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error.”

Pope Gregory VII Pope from 1073 to 1085

In response to the request made in 1079 by Vratislaus, duke of Bohemia, seeking permission to use Slavonic in local church services.
Awake! magazine December 2011, page 7; They Tried to Keep God’s Word From the Masses.

Babe Ruth photo

“A man who works for another is not going to be paid any more than he is worth; you can bet on that. A man ought to get what he can earn. Don't make any difference whether it's running a farm, running a bank or running a show; a man who knows he's making money for other people ought to get some of the profits he brings in. It's business, I tell you. There ain't no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Responding to a reporter asking whether or not he believed that other players merited salaries comparable to his own (i.e. $52,000 a year, as per Ruth's newly signed 1922 contract), as quoted in "Have to Get More of 'Em,' Says Babe Ruth When He Hears of the Income Tax," in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 10, 1922)

Gloria Estefan photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Hermann Rauschning photo

“Nobody took it [Mein Kampf] seriously, nobody could, for nobody could make head or tail out of it.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 20

“The only American woman deserving a place on U. S. paper currency is, of course, Anne Hutchinson, a devout 17th century Protestant New Englander who was a fearless champion of religious liberty, family, free speech, and equality — not preference — for women in religious affairs. Perhaps a new piece of currency could be created, one to which the attachment of her portrait would do honor. Ms. Hutchinson, however, is out of contention in the Democrats’ virulent anti-Southern currency crusade because her character traits – and the fifteen children she had with one husband — just do not jive with being Modern Democratic Party Women, those who glory in, and seek legal, economic, and political preference for their talents in whining, vamping, aborting, as well as recognition for their indispensable and eagerly given help in making the United States one of the world’s industrial-scale producers of both pornography and the dismembered corpses of infants. There may be something that can be done, however. The portrait of another Democratic icon named Woodrow Wilson now adorns the $100,000 bill, which appears to be to be used mainly in transactions.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

L. Frank Baum photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Philip K. Howard photo
Hector Berlioz photo

“A singer who is able to sing even sixteen measures of good music in a natural and engaging way, effortlessly and in tune, without distending the phrase, without exaggerating accents to the point of caricature, without platitude, affectation, or coyness, without making grammatical mistakes, without illicit slurs, without hiatus or hiccup, without making insolent changes in the text, without barks or bleats, without sour notes, without crippling the rhythm, without absurd ornaments and nauseating appoggiaturas – in short, a singer able to sing these measures simply and exactly as the composer wrote them – is a rare, very rare, exceedingly rare bird.”

Un chanteur ou une cantatrice capable de chanter seize mesures seulement de bonne musique avec une voix naturelle, bien posée, sympathique, et de les chanter sans efforts, sans écarteler la phrase, sans exagérer jusqu'à la charge les accents, sans platitude, sans afféterie, sans mièvreries, sans fautes de français, sans liaisons dangereuses, sans hiatus, sans insolentes modifications du texte, sans transposition, sans hoquets, sans aboiements, sans chevrotements, sans intonations fausses, sans faire boiter le rhythme, sans ridicules ornements, sans nauséabondes appogiatures, de manière enfin que la période écrite par le compositeur devienne compréhensible, et reste tout simplement ce qu'il l'a faite, est un oiseau rare, très-rare, excessivement rare.
À travers chants, ch. 8 http://www.hberlioz.com/Writings/ATC08.htm; Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay (trans.) The Art of Music and Other Essays (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) p. 69.

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Iris DeMent photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo
George Lucas photo
Charles Lamb photo

“For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Letter to Coleridge (August 6, 1800)

Max Scheler photo

“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 54-55

David C. McClelland photo

“The entrepreneurial role appears to call for decision-making under uncertainty.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 210

Patrick Dixon photo
George W. Bush photo
Edward Payson photo
Bernie Sanders photo
George Santayana photo
Vitruvius photo
François Fénelon photo

“If we can find the will I strongly believe we can still make Britain’s approach to talent a bit more X-factor (without Simon Cowell) and a bit less Downton Abbey.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Jo Cox: Opportunity must knock in a fairer society http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-opportunity-must-knock-in-a-fairer-society-1-6857022 (24 September 2014)

Richard Nixon photo
David Brooks photo
Ela Bhatt photo

“Every human being has something, a spiritual element, that makes them want to do better, to reach higher.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

Derren Brown photo
Sharron Angle photo
Jodi Benson photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Don Soderquist photo

“Today’s great leaders will make sure they have all the important information, appropriate discussion, and reflection so that they can act decisively when time is of great importance.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 119.
On Leading Well

Robinson Jeffers photo

“I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Shine, Perishing Republic" (1939)

Peter Gabriel photo

“Don't give up
'cos you have friends
Don't give up
You're not beaten yet.
Don't give up
I know you can make it good…”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Don't Give Up
Song lyrics, So (1986)

Suzanne Collins photo
John Calvin photo

“Even if this earth is only a vestibule, we ought undoubtedly to make such a use of its blessing that we are assisted rather than delayed in our journey.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 84.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Philippe Starck photo
George Eliot photo
Gore Vidal photo

“Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992)
1990s

R. Venkataraman photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.”
Si igitur meliora sunt ea quae natura quam illa quae arte perfecta sunt, nec ars efficit quicquam sine ratione, ne natura quidem rationis expers est habenda. Qui igitur convenit, signum aut tabulam pictam cum aspexeris, scire adhibitam esse artem, cumque procul cursum navigii videris, non dubitare, quin id ratione atque arte moveatur, aut cum solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua contemplere, intellegere declarari horas arte, non casu, mundum autem, qui et has ipsas artes et earum artifices et cuncta conplectatur consilii et rationis esse expertem putare. [88] Quod si in Scythiam aut in Brittanniam sphaeram aliquis tulerit hanc, quam nuper familiaris noster effecit Posidonius, cuius singulae conversiones idem efficiunt in sole et in luna et in quinque stellis errantibus, quod efficitur in caelo singulis diebus et noctibus, quis in illa barbaria dubitet, quin ea sphaera sit perfecta ratione.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 34
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Will Eisner photo
R. G. Collingwood photo
Gerald of Wales photo

“When they come together to make music, the Welsh sing their traditional songs, not in unison, as is done elsewhere, but in parts, in many modes and modulations. When a choir gathers to sing, which happens often in this country, you will hear as many different parts and voices as there are performers.”
In musico modulamine, non uniformiter, ut alibi, sed multipliciter, multisque modis et modulis, cantilenas emittunt. Adeo ut in turba canentium, sicut huic genti mos est, quot videas capita, tot audias carmina discriminaque vocum varia.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Book 1, chapter 13, p. 242.
Descriptio Cambriae (The Description of Wales) (1194)

Audrey Hepburn photo
Conor McGregor photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo
Alexander McCall Smith photo
Pope Sixtus V photo

“She certainly is a great queen, and were she only a Catholic she would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs; she is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all.”

Pope Sixtus V (1520–1590) pope

On Queen Elizabeth I of England, said to the Venetion ambassador in Rome in the autumn of 1585, reported in Walter Walsh, The Jesuits in Great Britain (1903), p. 111.

Jeremy Irons photo
Richard Feynman photo

“Nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it's a wonderful problem, because it doesn't look so easy.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" Simulating Physics with Computers http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf", International Journal of Theoretical Physics, volume 21, 1982, p. 467-488, at p. 486 (final words)

Donald J. Trump photo
Bellamy Young photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo
Thorstein Veblen photo
Mary Wollstonecraft photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
W. S. Gilbert photo

“Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells,
I'm a dealer in magic and spells,
In blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses,
In prophecies, witches, and knells.

If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"—
If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax—
You've but to look in
On our resident Djinn,
Number seventy, Simmery Axe!”

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

Mr Wells' song, Act I.
"Simmery Axe" is the traditional pronunciation of "St. Mary Axe", a road in the City of London.
In Gilbert's day, the last building was number 68, though number 70 was built later.
The Sorcerer (1877)

Alex Jones photo

“They said if you just turn against Trump it would be better, but he was doing good, and that's what makes it so bad… If he had been a piece a crap from the beginning, it wouldn't be so bad. But we made so many sacrifices. And now he's crapping all over us.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

The Alex Jones Show, 13 April 2018; quoted in "Watch Alex Jones cry over Trump's decision to bomb Syria" https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/alex-jones-cry-syria/ by Christine Friar, The Daily Dot (14 April 2018).
2018

Carl Lewis photo
Harold Macmillan photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Edward Said photo
Gary Johnson photo
Nigella Lawson photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Norman Schwarzkopf photo

“Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.”

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army general

Quoted in "The Military Quotation Book" (2002) by James Charlton, p. 60

“Time has been called God's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. In the same spirit, noise is Nature's way of making sure that we don't find out everything that happens. Noise, in short, is the protector of information.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

von Baeyer did not originate the quip about time, which dates back at least as far as the 1929 book "The Man Who Mastered Time" by Ray Cummings, where it appears on p. 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=YdZEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22everything+from+happening+at+once%22#search_anchor.
Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 14, Noise, Nuisance and necessity, p. 127-128

John Allen Paulos photo

“Any bit of nonsense can be computerized—astrology, biorhythms, the I Ching—but that doesn’t make the nonsense any more valid.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 68)

Francis Crick photo

“And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

Of Molecules and Men (1966)

Michael Bloomberg photo

“If you want to get the best people to run for office, we’ve got to make the rules easier, and simpler, and more understandable to get on the ballot.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.nycivic.org/MediaArchive/BloombergSpeech041110.html
Election Reform

Chris Hedges photo
Ward Cunningham photo

“There is an art to knowing where things should be checked and making sure that the program fails fast if you make a mistake. That kind of choosing is part of the art of simplification.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

Richard Brautigan photo

“A friend came over to the house
a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again. After he finished
reading it, he said, "It makes me want to write poetry."”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

"Hey! This Is What It's All About"
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster