Quotes about many
page 31

“Like so many other great observers, Langley was not a mathematician, and like most physicists, he believed in physics. Rigidly denying himself the amusement of philosophy, which consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, he still knew the problems, and liked to wander past them in a courteous temper, even bowing to them distantly as though recognising their existence though doubting their respectability.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Problem, Past

“Self-indulgence takes many forms; and we should bear in mind that there may be a sullen sensuality as well as a gay one.”

Arthur Helps (1813–1875) British writer

Companions of my Solitude. (1901) p.66.

“Let no one charge us with capricious inconsistency in our actions against Albinus, and let no one think that I am disloyal to this alleged friend or lacking in feeling toward him. 2. We gave this man everything, even a share of the established empire, a thing which a man would hardly do for his own brother. Indeed, I bestowed upon him that which you entrusted to me alone. Surely Albinus has shown little gratitude for the many benefits I have lavished upon him. 3. Now |87 he is collecting an army to take up arms against us, scornful of your valor and indifferent to his pledge of good faith to me, wishing in his insatiable greed to seize at the risk of disaster that which he has already received in part without war and without bloodshed, showing no respect for the gods by whom he has often sworn, and counting as worthless the labors you performed on our joint behalf with such courage and devotion to duty. 4. In what you accomplished, he also had a share, and he would have had an even greater share of the honor you gained for us both if he had only kept his word. For, just as it is unfair to initiate wrong actions, so also it is cowardly to make no defense against unjust treatment. Now when we took the field against Niger, we had reasons for our hostility, not entirely logical, perhaps, but inevitable. We did not hate him because he had seized the empire after it was already ours, but rather each one of us, motivated by an equal desire for glory, sought the empire for himself alone, when it was still in dispute and lay prostrate before all. 5. But Albinus has violated his pledges and broken his oaths, and although he received from me that which a man normally gives only to his son, he has chosen to be hostile rather than friendly and belligerent instead of peaceful. And just as we were generous to him previously and showered fame and honor upon him, so let us now punish him with our arms for his treachery and cowardice. 6. His army, small and island-bred, will not stand against your might. For you, who by your valor and readiness to act on your own behalf have been victorious in many battles and have gained control of the entire East, how can you fail to emerge victorious with the greatest of ease when you have so large a number of allies and when virtually the entire army is here. Whereas they, by contrast, are few in number and lack a brave and competent general to lead them. 7. Who does not know Albinus' effeminate nature? Who does not know that his way |88 of life has prepared him more for the chorus than for the battlefield? Let us therefore go forth against him with confidence, relying on our customary zeal and valor, with the gods as our allies, gods against whom he has acted impiously in breaking his oaths, and let us be mindful of the victories we have won, victories which that man ridicules.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book 3, Chapter 6.

Life, God, Hate, Hostility

“Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 124 (23 July 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“A few years ago, I had the good fortune of running across a first edition of Paul's textbook (not the recent reprint of the original text, but an actual 1948 edition). It was a real find. I bought the volume in an online auction for, if my recollection is correct, $35. Talk about consumer surplus! I would have gladly paid many times that.
At the next Boston Fed meeting, I took the book along to get Paul to sign it. Below is the book's title page, along with Paul's gracious inscription.”

N. Gregory Mankiw (1958) American economist

Greg Mankiw, "Memories of Paul" http://gregmankiw.blogspot.kr/2009/12/memories-of-paul.html (December 15, 2009) <br class="br">2000s -

Books, Time

“While our common country has been afflicted, and still suffers, from the greatest calamity a people can experience, our own State has been visited by scourges which, though relieved from the horrors of civil war, has resulted in the loss of immense quantities of property, the depriving of many of our citizens of their homes, or the means of support, and seriously crippling, for the present, the Agricultural interests of the State. Indeed, the high waters of December last did more than destroy property, and desolate homes; and many human lives were lost, while attempting to escape the floods, or generously assisting to relieve others from their perils.”

John Whiteaker (1820–1902) American politician

John Whiteaker (September 8, 1862). Governor John Whiteaker - Governor's Message, 1862 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/RecordView/6777832. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: House and Senate Journal, Salem, Oregon, Henry L. Pittock, State Printer, 1862: Proceedings of the House, Appendix to the House Journal, Page 3.

War, People, Home, Support

“He had never been lonely in his life before he met her, having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed for a companion, and out of all the many millions of the earth's inhabitants there was only one that he wanted.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Prologue
The House of the Four Winds (1935)

Life

“Unlike any other player on the board, the press has no oversight, no mandate, few penalties, and even fewer consequences. Because there are not enough reporters on the ground, too many bureaus have outsourced both their reporting and standards to third party stringers whose spectacular videos of explosions and inflated body counts have shown up on both jihadist recruiting sites and American television screens, simultaneously.”

Matt Sanchez (1970) writer, journalist

[Kelly, Jack, Tale of two atrocities: Iraq reporting rife with errors, Bucks County Courier Times, A5, July 6, 2007]

Penalty

“During his lifetime Gurdjieff did not publish any books on the techniques of his teaching, and his pupils were bound to secrecy on the subject. Since his death in Paris in 1949, however, many of his works have been published, and there has been a flood of memoirs by disciples and admirers. Gurdjieff was in almost ever respect the antithesis of Aleister Crowley. Whereas Crowley craved publicity, Gurdjieff shunned it. Crowley was forgotten for two decades after his death; Gurdjieff on the contrary, has become steadily better known, and his influence continues to grow. One of the main reasons for this is that there was so little of the charlatan about him. He is no cult figure with hordes of gullible disciples. What he has to teach makes an appeal to the intelligence, and can be fully understood only by those who are prepared to make a serious effort.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

They Had Strange Powers (1975)

Death, Books, Intelligence, Effort

“In addition to not looking too dangerous to ourselves, we must not look too dangerous to our allies. This problem has many similarities with the problem of not looking too dangerous to ourselves, with one important addition—our allies must believe that being allied to us actually increases their security. Very few of our allies feel that they could survive a general war—even one fought without the use of Doomsday Machines. Therefore, to the extent that we try to use the threat of a general war to deter the minor provocations that are almost bound to occur anyway, then no matter how credible we try to make this threat, our allies will eventually find the protection unreliable or disadvantageous to them. If credible, the threat is too dangerous to be lived with. If incredible, the lack of credibility itself will make the defense seem unreliable. Therefore, in the long run the West will need "safe-looking" limited war forces to handle minor and moderate provocations. It will most likely be necessary for the U. S. to make a major contribution to such forces and to take the lead in their creation, even though there are cases where the introduction of credible and competent-looking limited war forces will make some of our allies apprehensive—at least in the short run. They will worry because such forces make the possibility of small wars seem more real, but this seems to be another case where one cannot eat his cake and have it.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

War, Feeling, Problem

“Many of the greatest masters of the mathematical sciences were first attracted to mathematical inquiry by problems relating to numbers, and no one can glance at the periodicals of the present day which contain questions for solution without noticing how singular a charm such problems still continue to exert. The interest in numbers seems implanted in the human mind, and it is a pity that it should not have freer scope in this country. The methods of the theory of numbers 271 are peculiar to itself, and are not readily acquired by a student whose mind has for years been familiarized with the very different treatment which is appropriate to the theory of continuous magnitude; it is therefore extremely desirable that some portion of the theory should be included in the ordinary course of mathematical instruction at our University. From the moment that Gauss, in his wonderful treatise of 1801, laid down the true lines of the theory, it entered upon a new day, and no one is likely to be able to do useful work in any part of the subject who is unacquainted with the principles and conceptions with which he endowed it.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the theory of numbers

Mathematics, Question, Problem, Universe

“…Don't be disheartened as so many have become - about quotas and reservations in education”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

Affirmative action, not quotas for education': Nariman

Education

“There are many similarities between Hitler’s holocaust strategy and emergence of Islamic so called ideology. Both had common enemy the Jew Merchants. Muhammad had same war fanaticism and hatred against the Jews of Arabia that of the Hitler against the Jews of Germany. Secret of Islamic peace lies in its bloodiest Jihad ideology and power of the sword. That is the conformance of action and ideology between Islam and Nazism”

Shafi Muhammad Burfat (1965) Separatist Leader

2016

War, Secret, Peace

“After having spent years striving to be accurate, we must spend as many more in discovering when and how to be inaccurate.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Accuracy
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

“In the year AH 829 (AD 1425), Ahmud Shah marched to reduce a rebellious zemindar of Mahoor… During this campaign, the King obtained possession of a diamond mine at Kullum, a place dependent on Gondwana, in which territory he razed many idolatrous temples, and erecting mosques on their sites, appropriated to each some tracts of land to maintain holy men, and to supply lamps and oil for religious purposes…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ahmad Shãh I Walî Bahmanî (AD 1422-1435) Kullum (Maharashtra)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Men, Dependency

“I could bear to suffer… so many have suffered. But why must it be like this? I have not deserved it. I have been true in friendship; I have faithfully nursed others in sickness… Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy?”

Willa Cather book My Mortal Enemy

Part II, Ch. 5
My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Friendship, Suffering

“In my earlier days I had read the biography of Sri Ramakrishna written by Romain Rolland. I had read the talk which Vivekananda had delivered long ago about "My Master". I had visited Sri Ramakrishna's room at Dakshineshwar. I had also seen a Bengali film on his life. But what brought me into an intimate and living contact with this great mystic and bhakta and shakta and advaitin, was his Kathamrita. He had not used a single abstraction nor discussed any of the problems which pass as philosophy. His talks embodied expressions of a concrete consciousness which had dropped every trace of the dirt and dross and inertia which characterise what is known as normal human consciousness. The metaphors which sprang spontaneously from this purified consciousness were matchless in their aptness and illumined in a few words the knotted problems which many voluminous works had failed to solve. I was now having my first intimations of immortality towards which Kabir and Nanak and Sri Garibdas had inclined me earlier.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Life, Problem, Reading

“I have done. Well, I've shared a moving vehicle with 18 naked men — not many women do that… fantastic, never felt better.”

Shirley Manson (1966) Scottish singer and artist

On doing things other women don't dare do; Popworld interview with Garbage in 2005 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h4AqIDSzeI.

Women, Men

“In sum, the accommodation of the Republic is not to the spokesmen for the many, which is to say that it is not political. Instead, the accommodation is to the few, or the few as they were in their youth, like Glaucon and Adeimantus, who must be tested by the conversation in order to determine their fitness for philosophy. This is the peculiarity of the Republic: to speak out on the most dangerous of things and to exercise restraint or a rhetoric of indirection in the discussion of that which seems least likely to endanger the city, real or imagined. In slightly different terms, what Socrates calls dialectic enters the city surreptitiously, and it must do so in order to make the city safe for philosophy. In exchange for this safety, philosophy offers to the city a foundation for justice that is exaggerated in the account of the beautiful city but in its more sober version is verified by the course of Western history.”

Stanley Rosen (1929–2014) American philosopher

Plato's Republic: A Study (2005), Introduction

Youth, Justice, Beauty, Exercises

“I still don't look at movies twice. It's funny, I just feel I got it the first time. With music it's different. People respond so differently to the whole issue of seeing a movie many times. I'm astonished when I talk to really good critics, who know their stuff and will see a film eight or ten or twelve times. I don't see how they can do it without hating the movie. I would.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Perils of Being Pauline," interview with Francis Davis, The New Yorker (October 2001).
Interviews

Hate, People, Music, Feeling

“In many of the cases of conceptual innovation, … creating the conceptual tools is a precondition to coming to a clear understanding of what the problem was in the first place. It is very difficult to describe the transition after it has taken place because it is difficult for us to put ourselves back into the situation of confusion, indeterminacy, and perplexity that existed before the new “tool” brought clarity and this means it is difficult for us to retain a vivid sense of what a difference having the concept made. We can just barely imagine ourselves in a world in which there are no states, as opposed to local barons, warlords, clans, primitive communal forms of village organisation, etc.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 48.

World, Imagination, Communication, Understanding

“Many are the consolations of literature, and not the least such solace occurs when an annoyingly virtuous hero succumbs to carnal temptation.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 11 (p. 245)

Literature

“Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U. S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations.
Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 6.

Justice, Support

“While this day was legally established many years ago as an occasion to be devoted to the memory of our country's dead, it can not but each year refresh the sentiment of respect and honor in which our country holds their living comrades. Of those great armies that maintained the long struggle from 1861 to 1865, which ranked in size with any the world had ever before seen, but a few shattered ranks now remain. The old valor yet lives. The old devotion to country, the old loyalty to the flag remain: But the youth and physical vigor which caused them to be characterized as the boys in blue are gone from these heroes of a former generation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Youth, World, Boy, Memory

“But let them tell you what type of an Apostle or prophet God promised them. Was it a man from some of the enemy colleges and universities with an arm full of degrees coming from these institutions of learning of the enemy?Let them read their scriptures and see what type of man God promised to choose for a last messenger. How many of the prophets in the past were educated men of the civilization in which they were born before the call of God?”

Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) American religious leader

Message to the Blackman (1965)

Men, God, Education, Learning

“I'm not anti-Semitic. My Gospels are not anti-Semitic. I've shown it to many Jews and they're like, it's not anti-Semitic. It's interesting that the people who say it's anti-Semitic say that before they saw the film, and they said the same thing after they saw the film.”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

"Gibson: I'm not anti-Semitic", Tom Tugend, Jerusalem Post, February 9, 2004

People

“For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we’re adjusting.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2010s, Interview with David Marchese (2018)

Problem

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 <br class="br">About

Life, People, School, Family

“The economy - once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance, has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated… The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered… The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 7; discussing sectors of society which Mills feels have only recently become the dominant factors in determining the ultimate course of society.

“The easier your job, the more you got paid. John had suspected this for many years, but here was the proof: pulling down five hundred bucks an hour to sit in the afternoon sun on top of an L. A. office tower.”

Max Barry book Jennifer Government

Source: Jennifer Government (2003), Chapter 40, page 138

Sun

“Well, the issue of a standing UN army has been raised by many because, quite frankly, the way we operate today is like telling Ottawa that I know you need a fire station but we will build one when the fire breaks. We have no army. When the crisis breaks then we begin to put an army together. We go around to governments and begin asking for troops. The question with a standing UN army is that it raises issues of budget issues, legal issues, where do you place it, under what jurisdiction? And the big boys, big countries don't want it. The smaller countries are also nervous.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Way, Boy, Question, Country

“It is highly doubtful if the Mughal period deserves the credit it has been given as a period of religious tolerance. Akbar is now known only for his policy of sulh-i-kul, at least among the learned Hindus. It is no more remembered that to start with he was also a pious Muslim who had viewed as jihãd his sack of Chittor. Nor is it understood by the learned Hindus that his policy of sulh-i-kul was motivated mainly by his bid to free himself from the stranglehold of the orthodox ‘Ulamã, and that any benefit which Hindus derived from it was no more than a by-product. Akbar never failed to demand daughters of the Rajput kings for his harem. Moreover, as our citations show, he was not able to control the religious zeal of his functionaries at the lower levels so far as Hindu temples were concerned. Jahãngîr, like many other Muslim kings, was essentially a pleasure-seeking person. He, however, became a pious Muslim when it came to Hindu temples of which he destroyed quite a few. Shãh Jahãn did not hide what he wanted to do to the Hindus and their places of worship. His Islamic record on this score was much better than that of Jahãngîr. The reversal of Akbar’s policy thus started by his two immediate successors reached its apotheosis in the reign of Aurangzeb, the paragon of Islamic piety in the minds of India’s Muslims. What is more significant, Akbar has never been forgiven by those who have regarded themselves as custodians of Islam, right upto our own times; Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is a typical example. In any case one swallow has never made a summer.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Pleasure, Motivation, Learning, Time

“Barack and Michelle Obama arrived on the North Portico just before 10:00 a. m. Laura and I had invited them for a cup of coffee in the Blue Room, just as Bill and Hillary Clinton had done for us eight years earlier. The Obamas were in good spirits and excited about the journey ahead. Meanwhile, in the Situation Room, homeland security aides from both our teams monitored intelligence on a terrorist threat to Washington. It was a stark reminder that evil men still want to harm our country, no matter who is serving as president. After our visit, we climbed into the motorcade for the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue. I thought back to the drive I'd made with Bill Clinton eight years earlier. That day in January 2001, I could never have imagined what would unfold over my time in office. I knew some of the decisions I had made were not popular with many of my fellow citizens. But I felt satisfied that I had been willing to make the hard decisions, and I had always done what I believed was right. At the Capitol, Laura and I took our seats for the Inauguration. I marveled at the peaceful transition of power, one of the defining features of our democracy. The audience was riveted with anticipation for he swearing-in. Barack Obama had campaigned on hope, and that was what he had given many Americans. For our new president, the Inauguration was a thrilling beginning. For Laura and me, it was an end. It was another president's turn, and I was ready to go home.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 474

Men, Peace, Hope, Democracy

“Those perilous climbings [with her sister Claudia, in the Palo Duro Canyon, 1916] were frightening, but it was wonderful to me and not like anything I had known before. The fright of the day was still with me in the night and I would often dream that the foot of my bed rose straight up into the air — then just as it was to fall I would wake up. Many drawings came from days like that, and later some oil paintings.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

About climbing the Palo Duro Canyon, 1916
1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Dreams, Sister, Drawing, Painting

“Beware of privilege. It stinks of rotten rotten fish heads, many of which were lapping the shore beneath the jetties.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

The America's Cup, p. 47
The Joke's Over (2006)

Fish

“The Duke (Cesare) is a good-natured man, but he cannot tolerate affronts. I have often told him that Rome is a free city, and that everyone may write and speak as he pleases. Evil is even spoken of me, but I let it pass." The Duke replied: "Rome is accustomed to write and speak; it is well, but I will teach such people repentance."* The Pope finally reminded him how much he himself had forgiven, and especially at the time of Charles VIII's invasion, so many cardinals, whom the King himself had called his betrayers. "I could," he said, "have sentenced the Vice-Chancellor and Cardinal Vincula to death, but I did not wish to harm anyone, and I have forgiven fourteen great nobles.”

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503) pope of the Catholic Church 1492-1503

Report of the Ferrarese ambassador, Beltrando Costabili to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, February 1, 1502. Archives of Modena: As quoted in History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1900), Ferdinand Gregorovius, George Bell & Sons, London, Volume 7, Part 2 (1497-1503), p. 486. http://books.google.com/books?id=kW1OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA486&dq=%22often+told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PQRlUeiiBIPA9QT4s4H4CA&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22often%20told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false See also L. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol.6, p. 12. http://books.google.com/books?id=hk1DAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA112&dq=%22told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ojZlUeS7Dob49QTTn4HQBw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false. (Commonweal writes: “Whatever his faults, the Pope appears to have been of a forgiving and clement disposition, pardoning foes when he had them in his power, and becoming reconciled with those who had bitterly opposed him. With Savonarola — pulpit methods, by the way, were scarcely as novel and extraordinary then as our author (Peter de Roo) thinks — Alexander VI dealt on the whole rather patiently, more so, indeed, than our author, who is hardly fair to the friar.” -- Commonweal (1924), Commonweal Publishing Company, volume 1, p. 185. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition&btnG=#hl=en&tbm=bks&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&oq=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&gs_l=serp.3...1287.1287.1.1562.1.1.0.0.0.0.79.79.1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.8.psy-ab.VnzmdIrn1SQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44990110,d.eWU&fp=5b7686e7449457e7&biw=1294&bih=770)

Death, People, Nature, Evil

“Love does not always choose the same dwelling place, it makes many exploits in men here below; It has its night, its day, and its many levels: only the one who has overall happiness is content. It moves, it suffers in God, its first cause and the unique happiness of the celestial Spirits; It is there that it is always equally enraptured, by the Seraphic love which is above all things.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Holy Sepulchre Canticle

Love, Men, God, Suffering

“For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chicago Tribune (1 April 1998)

Women, Men, People, Courage

“There is no question that religions have historically played the role of making people contented with their lot. …such a doctrine would be very appealing to the ruling classes of a society. …Many societies, for this reason alone, encourage the contentment with your lot that the religious premise of heaven affords.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

People, Religion, Question

“Some have argued that the seeds to most fruit should not be eaten since they contain cyanide. It is true that many seeds contain cyanide, but that does not mean they cannot be eaten. Water has hydrogen and oxygen both dangerous around fires! Yet water is used to put fires out! The cyanide in seeds is locked into a molecule that renders it harmless to all human cells except cancer cells. There are scores of Web sites touting the eating of seeds or the laetrile (B-17) derivative to treat and cure cancer. Could it be that God put all we need in the original foods to prevent all diseases?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 48

God, Disease, Food, Water

“Unity of intent is on the lips of many, but in the hearts of few.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Heart

“Trade unions and strikes cannot help in times of crisis when there is no demand for this “commodity”, they cannot change the conditions which, convert labour-power into a commodity and which doom the masses of working people to dire need and unemployment. To change these conditions, a revolutionary struggle against the whole existing social and political system is necessary; the industrial crisis will convince very many workers of the justice of this statement.”

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

Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 25–30.
Collected Works

People, Justice, Change, Time

“Then in 1839, almost two decades before the mutiny, we rose against the British. Our punishment was severe. They disbanded our police and army of 50,000, transferred our capital to Kollam, dumped two British regiments on us, and ordered us to pay for their upkeep. Thomas Munroe named himself Diwan of Travancore. When our spirit still did not flag, they brought in missionaries. But we did not get gobbled up by Western thought. We travel abroad occasionally, but it has not affected or changed our simple way of life. Why am I telling you this? So that you get an idea of how much our life has revolved around our faith, despite so many outside influences and kept us going.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

On retaining his identity inspite of Britih control, in “The riches belong to nobody, certainly not to our family.”
The riches belong to nobody, certainly not to our family, 2009

Life, Faith, Way, Travel

“The real issue here, if you look at the Koch Brothers' agenda, is: look at what many of the extreme right-wing people believe. Obamacare is just the tip of the iceberg. These people want to abolish the concept of the minimum wage, they want to privatize the Veteran's Administration, they want to privatize Social Security, end Medicare as we know it, massive cuts in Medicaid, wipe out the EPA, you don’t have an Environmental Protection Agency anymore, Department of Energy gone, Department of Education gone. That is the agenda. And many people don’t understand that the Koch Brothers have poured hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party and two other kinds of ancillary organizations to push this agenda.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Regarding the United States federal government shutdown of 2013, [Sanders, Bernie, MSNBC News Interview (7 October 2013) (06:41), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LC_4h8rk9E, 7 October 2013, YouTube, 12 October 2013]
[Staff, Bernie Sanders Says Koch Brothers Shut Down Government Via Citizens United, http://www.inquisitr.com/984880/bernie-sanders-says-koch-brothers-shut-down-government-via-citizens-united, 8 October 2013, The Inquisitr, 12 October 2013]
2010s

People, Education, Understanding, Tea

“Another kind of honest graft. Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There was an awful howl by the reformers, but don’t you know that Tammany gains ten votes for every one it lost by salary raisin’? p. 6”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 1, Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft

“Oh! how many actions, how many fabulous exploits
Remain without glory in the midst of the night.”

Pierre Corneille book Le Cid

Ô combien d’actions, combien d’exploits célèbres
Sont demeurés sans gloire au milieu des ténèbres.
Don Rodrigue, act IV, scene iii.
Le Cid (1636)

Night

“Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter I
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Life, Religion, Personality, Forgetting

“Often I’ve stated how I hate to be wrong. That has aborted many a tempting error, but not all of them. But I hate much more to stay wrong. Early on, I’ve learned to check back on earlier proclamations. One can learn much from one’s own errors and precious little from one’s triumphs. By September of 1945, it was becoming obvious that oversaving was not going to cause a deep and lasting post-war recession. So then and there, I cut my losses on that bad earlier estimate.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

New millennium, An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson, 2003

Hate, War, Error, Learning

“Standing outside a factory farm, the first question that comes to mind is not a moral but a practical one: Where is everybody? Where are the owners, the farmers, the livestock managers, the extra hands, anybody? I have been driving around the North Carolina countryside on a Thursday afternoon in January 2001, pulling in at random to six hog farms, and have yet to find a single farmer or any other living soul. … There are so many factory farms around here that they are easy to miss. I doubt that the average visitor just passing through even knows what they are …”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

Soul, Question

“In order to win this war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing. It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe and Asia, but it will not avert his doom. With every month that passes the many proud and once happy countries he is now holding down by brute force and vile intrigue are learning to hate the Prussian yoke and the Nazi name as nothing has ever been hated so fiercely and so widely among men before. And all the time, masters of the sea and air, the British Empire—nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world—will be on his track bearing with them the swords of justice.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (9 February 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1009
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Men, Hate, War, World

“As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 1, The Corporation's Rise To Dominance, p. 17

People, Fear, Suffering, Time

“Suddenly I am like the poster boy of music, but I think the whole idea is to realise how deep is the base of Indian art and culture, how many fabulous young artistes there are, how many incredible great senior artistes are present today but not seen in limelight. We all have our turn at being the spokesperson for something or the other," the renowned musician.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I am not torchbearer of Indian classical music: Zakir Hussain

Art, Music, Boy, Idea

“The Muslim idea of God is, in many ways, more abstract, more remote and less human, certainly, than the Christian and the God of the Old Testament, who has passions and has angers and often behaves very much like a human being in the various stories. The Muslim is more remote, aloof, distant, and has to be obeyed. He has many, many different facets.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

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

God, Way, Idea, Distant

“This extremist ideology is not true Islam. I have said it myself many, many times, and it’s absolutely right to do so. And I’ll say it again today. But simply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work, because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims. … It is an exercise in futility to deny that. And more than that, it can be dangerous. To deny it has anything to do with Islam means you disempower the critical reforming voices; the voices that are challenging the fusing of religion and politics; the voices that want to challenge the scriptural basis which extremists claim to be acting on; the voices that are crucial in providing an alternative worldview that could stop a teenager’s slide along the spectrum of extremism.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)

Religion, Exercises, Time

“I had long believed that the Heath aberration of authoritarian centralist corporatism apart, most of the values, ethos and policies of Conservatism were strongly supported by working-class voters. Those voters—especially the socio-economic groups C1 and C2—I saw as natural Conservatives who nevertheless saw themselves for tribal reasons as Labour voters. However much we tried to reach them by argument, we always failed because they were unable to identify themselves with the representatives of the Tory Party they saw. I was determined to be a Conservative who spoke their language, not just what is often described as my flat North-London accent—which was after all my mother tongue—but their practical realism, lack of humbug and strong attachment to many traditional standards and values.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

Norman Tebbit, Upwardly Mobile (Futura, 1991), p. 172.

Support, Nature, Strong

“Astronomers… have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 16

Art, Music, Star, Science

“O! many a shaft at random sent
Finds mark the archer little meant!
And many a word, at random spoken,
May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!”

Walter Scott The Lord of the Isles

Canto V, stanza 18.
The Lord of the Isles (1815)

Heart

“Many Americans make the mistake of assuming that space research has no values here on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the wartime development of radar gave us the transistor, and all that it made possible, so research in space medicine holds the promise of substantial benefit for those of us who are earthbound. For our effort in space is not as some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to develop the earth. It is a working partner and a coproducer of these resources. And nothing makes this clearer than the fact that medicine in space is going to make our lives healthier and happier here on earth.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

Truth, Nature, Effort

“No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many scholars who are elected by all the men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Anthem (1937)

Wisdom, Men, Law, Travel

“Many of us associate the Christian faith as a list of do's and dont's, to be sure. But the Christian life is to be oriented in relationship, why is there so much talk of formula? Could it be that the reason we are more interested in forumla than relationship is that we would like to deal with our need for religion without dealing with the complications of relationship? That even though we have chosen the Christian faith instead of "poppycock religion," we ultimately want the same thing as the pagan? And what is that? Easy answers, comfortable sentiments, beliefs that make us feel good. So we go through the motions. We go to our churches, we read our self-help books, we watch our religious television, and we check each item off our to-do list as if we were doing work for pay. One thing I am sure of. This is not the kind of real-life faith I'm looking for.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Life, Books, Faith, Religion

“We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures and listening to poor music. We urge them to look at as many good pictures and hear as much good music as they can, convinced that this is the way in which they will come to understand and appreciate art and music.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People, Art, Music, Way

“It must not be forgotten that the rules of Courts of equity are not, like the rules of the common law, supposed to have been established from time immemorial. It is perfectly well known that they have been established from time to time — altered, improved, and refined from time to time. In many cases we know the names of the Chancellors who invented them.”

George Jessel (jurist) (1824–1883) British politician

In re Hallett's Estate (1880) 13 Ch.D. 696, 710.

Law, Time

“The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door." The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?" Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Nobel Prize lecture http://nobelpeaceprize.org/en_GB/laureates/laureates-2007/gore-lecture/, 10 December 2007.

Courage, Question, Thinking, Future

“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Home, Science, Waiting

“How many other opinions, as universally prevailing and as much respected, will in like manner pass away?”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. xlix

Universe

“There is a distinguishing difference of meaning between Jesus and Christ. His given name was Jesus; his honorific title was "Christ." In his little human body called Jesus was born the vast Christ Consciousness, the omniscient Intelligence of God omnipresent in every part and particle of creation. This Consciousness is the "only begotten Son of God," so designated because it is the sole perfect reflection in creation of the Transcendental Absolute, Spirit or God the Father.
It was of that Infinite Consciousness, replete with the love and bliss of God, that Saint John spoke when he said: "As many as received him [the Christ Consciousness], to them gave he power to become the sons of God." Thus according to Jesus' own teaching as recorded by his most highly advanced apostle, John, all souls who become united with Christ Consciousness by intuitive Self-realization are rightly called sons of God….”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

Love, God, Soul, Intelligence

“Of the range of images in Upper Paleolithic art, the most arresting are the therianthropes. There are not many… but they seize the imagination. The most famous is the so-called sorcerer… In a manner unusual for Upper Paleolithic images, the sorcerer is staring directly out of the wall, a full-face stare that transfixes the spectator.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art, Imagination

“No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start. It starts with a process of radicalisation. When you look in detail at the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were first influenced by what some would call non-violent extremists.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

“The British Navy is to us a necessity and, from some points of view, the German Navy is to them more in the nature of a luxury. Our naval power involves British existence. It is existence to us; it is expansion to them. We cannot menace the peace of a single Continental hamlet, nor do we wish to do so no matter how great and supreme our Navy may become. But, on the other hand, the whole fortunes of our race and Empire, the whole treasure accumulated during so many centuries of sacrifice and achievement would perish and be swept utterly away if our naval supremacy were to be impaired. It is the British Navy which makes Great Britain a great Power.”

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

Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: Speech in Glasgow (9 February 1912), quoted in The Times (10 February 1912), p. 9

Peace, Nature

“I think I only needed something to hold on to. It has never been about depravity. It's always been about melody. But melody and I met in many depraved situations. Meeting melody is the victory of the empty spiralling nightmare.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Extract from Prison Diaries, published in The Guardian, 2006
Music and politics

Thinking, Victory

“In the mean time, synthetic organic methodology has experienced an explosive expansion, which is due to two fundamentally different types of developments: (i) theclassical reactionshave been modified to become regio-, diastereo-, and enantioselective, and to become catalytic (cf. organocatalysis). (ii) The—mostly catalytic—use of transition-metal derivatives has enriched organic synthesis withnew types of reactions(cf. metathesis), which can almost all be rendered enantioselective by employing chiral ligands on the metal centers. Many of the resulting procedures for carrying out certain transformations have turned out to be of broad scope and to be generally reliable, so that—for brevity—they were named after their inventor(s) in synthetic discussions, and that’s all about Name Reactions. It is, therefore, not surprising that several monographs on this subject have appeared and that new editions of books on Name Reactions are essential. (…)
Name Reactions are at the core of the art of organic synthesis!”

Dieter Seebach (1937) German chemist

Foreword to A. Hassner and I. Namboothiri, Organic Syntheses Based on Name Reactions: A practical guide to 750 transformations Third Edition (2012)

Books, Art, Appearance, Time

“I have found a boat, small with two sails, that would make me happy. Unfortunately, I need one hundred francs.... and I haven't got it! If you want, I could give you two canvases which you could sell, just to make you some many and you could give me the hundred francs... Kahnweiler [Paris' art-dealer] is the only one who gives me money, and just what we need to live on.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Quote from Derain's letter, 23 August 1909 to Maurice de Vlaminck, in Lettres à Vlaminck, p. 205; as cited and translated in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by F. Whitlum-Cooper and Cleo Nisse http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 10 - note 8

Money, Art, Happiness

“But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man ‘entitles’ him to them, because his being man does it: what do I care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, for example, counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the ‘sanctuary of his inner nature’ (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my — might.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 219
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Life, God, Nature

“Apparently an "art"—which almost by definition cannot be put into words—is probably best communicated by approaching it from many sides and doing so repeatedly, hoping thereby students will finally master enough of the art, or if you wish, style, to significantly increase their future contributions to society.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Hope, Art, Communication, Future

“Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Abhorsen (2003), p. 60.

“Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.” … “My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”… “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

[The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”
James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London,l829,1957), 2 vols., I quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

People, Age, Religion, Art

“Even today I wonder why those Germans didn't wait for me at the villa and send someone to look for me in Turin. It is because of their failure that I am still free and up here. Why I should have been saved and not Gallo, or Tono, or Cate, I don't know. Perhaps because I'm supposed to suffer for others? Because I'm the most useless and don't deserve anything, not even punishment? Because I went into a church that time? The experience of danger creates more cowards every day. It makes one stupid. I have reached the point of being alive only by chance, when many better men than I are dead, I don't like it, it's not enough. At time, after having listened to the useless radio and looked through the windows at the empty vineyards, I think that living by accident is not living, and I wonder if have really escaped.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The house on the hill (1949), Chapter 16, p. 144

Men, Stupidity, Failure, Thinking

“I can count on one of my hands, how many competent people are working in the [Hungarian] media today. But the situation is also woeful in the areas of theatre, film production and fine arts. The whole Hungarian culture is in a deep crisis, the putrescence reigning this country – in a cultural, economic, political, moral and mentalecological sense – consumes everything.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Egy kezemen meg tudom számolni, hány alkalmas ember dolgozik ma a médiában. De siralmas a helyzet a színház, a filmgyártás és a képzőművészet területén is. Az egész magyar kultúra mélységes válságban van, a rothadás, ami uralja az országot – kulturálisan, gazdaságilag, politikailag, etikailag és mentálökológiailag – mindent elemésztő.
Idegen test az RTL Klubon - Puzsér Róbert-interjú, hvg.hu, 2012. március 20.
Quotes from him, Interviews

People, Art, Sense, Country

“If there was any justice in this world, I would have been a dead man at least two times over. By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming – thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. … [When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Kitchen Confidential (2000)

Life, People, World, Sadness

“Many people would argue that the most dangerous inhabitant of the earth is currently the self styled 43rd president of the United States. Not so much in deed anymore as in word. Because to hear that man speak is to wish upon yourself physical harm.”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

John Oliver: Terrifying Times (2008)

People

“There are things which we feel to be good and true, though in the cold light of reason and calculation many things remain incomprehensible and dark. And though the society in which we live considers such actions thoughtless, or reckless, or I don't know what else, what can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us? And though it may be that we cannot argue against the reasoning sentiment and to act from impulse, one would almost conclude that some people have cauterized certain sensitive nerves within them, especially those which, combined, are called conscience. Well, I pity those people; they travel through life without compass, in my opinion.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo, from The Hague, c. 11 January 1883; as cited in Dear Theo: the Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh; ed. Irving Stone and Jean Stone (1995), ISBN 0452275040
1880s, 1883

Love, Life, People, Travel

“Time travel destabilizes history.
History is a child of contingency; so many events depend on critical misunderstandings or transient encounters that even the apocryphal butterfly’s wing is apt to stir up a storm in short order.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 8, “Confessions” (p. 177)

Travel, History, Time, Dependency

“Months later, Roger Cohen would write in The New York Time that preventing an attack on Banja Luka was "an acto of consummate Realpolitik" on our part, since letting the Federation [of Bosnia-Herzegovina] take the city would have "derailed" the peace process. Cohen, one of the most knowledgeable journalists to cover the was, misunderstood our motives in opposing an attack on Banja Luka. A true practitioner of Realpolitik would have encouraged the attack regardless of its human consequences. In fact, humanitarian concerns decided the case for me. Given the harsh behavior of Federation troops during the offensive, it seemed certain that the fall of Banja Luka would lead to forced evictions and random murders. I did not think the United States should contribute to the creation of new refugees and more human suffering in order to take a city that would have to be returned later. Revenge might be a central part of the ethos of the Balkans, but American policy could not be party of it. Our responsibility was to implement the American national interest, as best as we could determine it. But I am no longer certain we were right to oppose an attack on Banja Luka. Had we known then that the Bosnian Serbs would have been able to defy or ignore so many of the key political provisions of the peace agreement in 1996 and 1997, the negotiating team might not have opposed such an attack. However, even with American encouragement, it is by no means certain that an attack would have taken palce - or, if it had, that it would have been successful. Tuđman would have had to carry the burden of the attack, and the Serb lines were already stiffening. The Croatian Army had just taken heavy casualties on the Sarva. Furthermore, if it fell, Banja Luka would either have gone to the Muslims or been returned later to the Serbs, thus making it of dubious value to Tuđman. There was another intriguing factor in the equation - one of the few things that Milošević and Izetbegović had agreed on. Banja Luka, they both said, was the center of moderate, anti-Pale sentiment within the Bosnian Serb community, and should be built up in importance as a center of opposition to Pale. Izetbegovic himself was ambivalent about taking the city, and feared that if it fell, it would only add to Croat-Bosnian tensions.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 166-167

Fear, Peace, Behavior, Communication

“As I see it humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce our population. We probably need to do all three. m31m37-m31s56”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

Way, Change

“There was such idiot minstrelsy in rain,
So many clappers going without bells,
That these bethous compose a heavenly gong. One voice repeating, one tireless chorister,
The phrases of a single phrase, ke-ke,
A single text, granite monotony”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

“The German Youth Movement started quite inconspicuously: a band of secondary schoolboys in Berlin, bored to death by their homes and schools and grown-ups in general, sought to elude this adult world by spending their Sundays and holidays roaming the countryside - what we call hiking, an unheard of pursuit in those days…Hiking became symbolic, standing for Back to Nature against modern civilization; the free-lance spirit as against gregariousness, yet, paradoxically, the urge for comradeship against atomizing individualism…In 1933 the Nazis swallowed up the groups on the nationalistic fringe and shattered the bulk of the Bünde as bulwarks of the individualistic and independent spirit…Today, I suppose, for many of its former members the Youth Movement represents no more than a store of youthful memories. But a small but by no means negligible minority did receive a basic shaping and moulding which held good for the rest of their lives, the essence of that fleeting spirit of the Movement: a shared vision of the true nature of man and his place in the universe,…; a special kind of awareness to Nature; an extremely keen sense of intellectual and spiritual responsibility and a peculiar sanity and sobriety of judgment. This is quite a lot to be thankful for.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Appendix, Broken Lights Diaries and Letters 1951-1959.

Death, Youth, World, School

“Erdogan really needs to get a grip on himself, if only because, sadly, Turkey needs him right now as the least bad option in a confused situation. He may be every Turk’s first choice but he sure is the second choice of many. The first thing he needs to do is to take a deep breath since breathing is not one of those things that the ruler had better not do. Next, he needs to restore a measure of discipline within his camp, at least as far as the narrative of the events is concerned.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Turkey – Towards a “One and a Half Party” System http://english.aawsat.com/2016/08/article55355819/opinion-turkey-towards-one-half-party-system, Ashraq Al-Awsat (5 Aug, 2016).

“I want to move forward, I don't want to move back. And I don't want to hurt the Clintons. I really don't. She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious; probably, I assume you sold a lot of newspapers. … It's just not something that I feel very strongly about. … I'm not looking to look back and go through this. This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time.”

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

About not prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Pain, Way, Feeling, Suffering

“I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.
2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.
3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down.
4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Keynesianism Explained http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/keynesianism-explained (September 15, 2015) <br class="br">The Conscience of a Liberal blog

Money, Pain, Question, Loss

“For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 126

People, Parting

“If I shout:
Ideal, Ideal, Ideal
Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge,
Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom
I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

As quoted in The Dada Almanac: Berlin 1920, (1983) ed. Richard Huelsenbeck, transl. Malcolm Green, p.127
1920s

People, Books, Law, Intelligence

“I never imagined so many people would be enjoying it this much. I wrote this book essentially as a group of fictional characters exploring ideas that I found personally intriguing.”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

"Decoding the Da Vinci Code author" BBC (7 April 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3541342.stm

People, Books, Imagination, Idea

“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

Men, Stupidity, Suffering

“Prof Brown used to say, if it is worth doing, it must be worth publishing. Faraday had said much the same many years earlier. In science, we “ work, finish and publish”. These statements have guided me all through my professional life.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Source: Climbing the Limitless Ladder: A Life in Chemistry (2010), p. 30

Life, Science

“It is these two thoughts of union and peace which appear to me to be especially appropriate for our consideration on this day. Like all else in human experience, they are not things which can be set apart and have an independent existence. They exist by reason of the concrete actions of men and women. It is the men and women whose actions between 1861 and 1865 gave us union and peace that we are met here this day to commemorate. When we seek for the chief characteristic of those actions, we come back to the word which I have already uttered — renunciation. They gave up ease and home and safety and braved every impending danger and mortal peril that they might accomplish these ends. They thereby became in this Republic a body of citizens set apart and marked for every honor so long as our Nation shall endure. Here on this wooded eminence, overlooking the Capital of the country for which they fought, many of them repose, officers of high rank and privates mingling in a common dust, holding the common veneration of a grateful people. The heroes of other wars lie with them, and in a place of great preeminence lies one whose identity is unknown, save that he was a soldier of this Republic who fought that its ideals, its institutions, its liberties, might be perpetuated among men. A grateful country holds all these services as her most priceless heritage, to be cherished forevermore.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Women, Men, War, People

“Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid
Fairy Tales (1835)

Water, Sea

“Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working so hard to distribute Android phones globally that whether you like [Android 4.0] or not … you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

Source: Google's Schmidt: Android leads the iPhone http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57338276-264/googles-schmidt-android-leads-the-iphone in CNET (7 December 2011).