Quotes about many
page 42

Nick Bostrom photo
Bell Hooks photo

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Jean Froissart photo

“So that battle was fought as you have heard, in the fields of Maupertuis, six miles from the city of Poitiers, on the nineteenth day of September, 1356. It began in the early morning and was finished by mid-afternoon, although many of the English did not return from the pursuit until late evening…There died that day, it was said, the finest flower of French chivalry, whereby the realm of France was sorely weakened and fell into great misery and affliction, as you will hear later.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Ensi fu ceste bataille desconfite que vous avés oy, qui fu ès camps de Maupetruis à deux liewes de le cité de Poitiers, le vingt unième jour dou mois de septembre, l'an de grasce Nostre Signeur mil trois cens cinquante six. Si commença environ heure de prime, et fu toute passée à none; mès encores n'estoient point tout li Englès qui caciet avoient, retourné de leur cace et remis ensamble…Et fu là morte, si com on recordoit adonc pour le temps, toute li fleur de la chevalerie de France: de quoi li nobles royaumes fu durement afoiblis, et en grant misère et tribulation eschei, ensi que vous orés recorder chi après.
Book 1, pp. 142-3.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Derren Brown photo

“How many powerful memories are triggered by smell and taste? Your mother’s old perfume, the smell your father’s breath, the taste of the soap they’d make you eat.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Yuval Noah Harari photo
Rajiv Malhotra photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Bernard Lewis photo

“Coming back to Iraq, obviously the situation has been getting worse over time, but I think it is still salvageable. We now have a political process going on, and I think if one looks at the place and what's been happening there, one has to marvel at what has been accomplished. There is an old saying, no news is good news, and the media obviously work on the reverse principle: Good news is no news. Most of the good things that have happened have not been reported, but there has been tremendous progress in many respects. Three elections were held three fair elections in which millions of Iraqis stood in line waiting to vote and knowing they were risking their lives every moment that they did so. And all this wrangling that's going on now is part of the democratic process, the fact that they argue, that they negotiate, that they try to find a compromise. This is part of their democratic education.
So I find all this both annoying and encouraging. I see that more and more people are becoming involved in the political process. And there's one thing in Iraq in particular that I think is encouraging, and that is the role of women. Of all the Arab countries, with the possible exception of Tunisia, Iraq is the one where women have made most progress. I'm not talking about rights, a word that has no meaning in that context. I'm talking about opportunity, access. Women in Iraq had access to education, to higher education, and therefore to the professions, and therefore to the political process to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the Arab world, as I said, with the possible exception of Tunisia. And I think that the participation of women the increasing participation of women is a very encouraging sign for the development of democratic institutions.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Michael E. Porter photo
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh photo

“Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Said while presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student. When informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania for six months, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans and was told that he was not, as quoted in "Duke under fire for Romanian orphans 'joke'" http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=255&id=998522006 in The Scotsman (8 July 2006)
2000s

Edward R. Murrow photo
Aron Ra photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Derren Brown photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Bernard Lewis photo

“There are other difficulties in the way of accepting imperialism as an explanation of Muslim hostility, even if we define imperialism narrowly and specifically, as the invasion and domination of Muslim countries by non-Muslims. If the hostility is directed against imperialism in that sense, why has it been so much stronger against Western Europe, which has relinquished all its Muslim possessions and dependencies, than against Russia, which still rules, with no light hand, over many millions of reluctant Muslim subjects and over ancient Muslim cities and countries? And why should it include the United States, which, apart from a brief interlude in the Muslim-minority area of the Philippines, has never ruled any Muslim population? The last surviving European empire with Muslim subjects, that of the Soviet Union, far from being the target of criticism and attack, has been almost exempt. Even the most recent repressions of Muslim revolts in the southern and central Asian republics of the USSR incurred no more than relatively mild words of expostulation, coupled with a disclaimer of any desire to interfere in what are quaintly called the "internal affairs" of the USSR and a request for the preservation of order and tranquillity on the frontier.
One reason for this somewhat surprising restraint is to be found in the nature of events in Soviet Azerbaijan. Islam is obviously an important and potentially a growing element in the Azerbaijani sense of identity, but it is not at present a dominant element, and the Azerbaijani movement has more in common with the liberal patriotism of Europe than with Islamic fundamentalism. Such a movement would not arouse the sympathy of the rulers of the Islamic Republic. It might even alarm them, since a genuinely democratic national state run by the people of Soviet Azerbaijan would exercise a powerful attraction on their kinsmen immediately to the south, in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Another reason for this relative lack of concern for the 50 million or more Muslims under Soviet rule may be a calculation of risk and advantage. The Soviet Union is near, along the northern frontiers of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan; America and even Western Europe are far away. More to the point, it has not hitherto been the practice of the Soviets to quell disturbances with water cannon and rubber bullets, with TV cameras in attendance, or to release arrested persons on bail and allow them access to domestic and foreign media. The Soviets do not interview their harshest critics on prime time, or tempt them with teaching, lecturing, and writing engagements. On the contrary, their ways of indicating displeasure with criticism can often be quite disagreeable.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Ben Carson photo

“Carol James, who is my physician's assistant and my right-hand person, frequently teases me by saying, "It's because women need only half of their brain to think as well as men. That's why you can do this operation on so many women."”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 161

Mikhail Leontyev photo

“English: New York swines. Listen, I was a dissident, suppressed by the KGB, unlike very many present fighters for democracy. I never, in principle, in the program — it didn't occur to me that I should leave this country. It is my country. Mine!”

Mikhail Leontyev (1958) Russian television pundit

Сволочи нью-йоркские. Слушай, я был диссидентом, профилактированным КГБ, в отличие от очень многих нынешних борцов за демократию. Я никогда, у меня в принципе, в программе, в голове не сидело, что я могу из этой страны уехать. Это моя страна. Моя!
Михаил Леонтьев: "Пид…в не люблю! Это зря ты. Наверное, зря" (Стенограмма прямого эфира), Federal Post, 2005-01-24, 2007-03-25 http://www.federalpost.ru/www/print_18140.html,

Earl Warren photo
Yvette Rosser photo

“Proposals to include Sanskrit in the course offerings were rejected numerous times by scholars who wanted to protect JNU from what they considered to be a majoritarian or Hindu Nationalist agenda. When I questioned Romila Thapar, a well known historian from JNU, about this issue in July 2000, she explained that if students want to learn Sanskrit, “there are so many Maths and Piths around where they can go.””

Yvette Rosser (1952) American activist

She added that “most of the regional colleges have some kind of Sanskrit program”.
Rosser, Yvette Claire (2003). Curriculum as Destiny: Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Dissertation). University of Texas at Austin.

Abu Musab Zarqawi photo

“The battles are many, and the names used are varied. But the goal is one: a Crusader-Rafidite [Rafidites – Shiites, used derogatorily by Sunni extremists] war against the Sunnis.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi Declares "Total War" on Shiites, States that the Sunni Women of Tel'afar Had Their "Wombs Filled with the Sperm of the Crusaders" http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/853.htm (September 2005).

Max Beckmann photo
Hugh Gaitskell photo
Eunice Kennedy Shriver photo

“In ancient Rome, the gladiators went into the arena with these words on their lips: let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. Today, all of you young athletes are in the arena. Many of you will win. But even more important, I know you will be brave and bring credit to your parents and to your country. Let us begin the Olympics, thank you.”

Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921–2009) sister of John F. Kennedy and founder of Camp Shriver

Speech at the first http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/eunice-kennedy-shriver-1921-2009-she-changed-the-world-for-people-with-mental-disabilities-128100168/115313.html Special Olympics, Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois (20 July 1968)

Donald Barthelme photo
Ted Hughes photo
Christopher Marlowe photo

“Religion
Hides many mischiefs from suspicion.”

Barabas, Act I, scene ii
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)

Terry McAuliffe photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
George W. Bush photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“Involuntarily and without any definite motive, I had a thought that often occurs to me. Not only did I begin drawing relatively late in life, but it may also be that I shall not live for so very many years to come… I think I may presume without rashness: that my body will keep a certain number of years "quand bien meme" - a certain number, say between six and ten years for instance… This is the period on which I reckon firmly.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, Summer 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 309), p 23
1880s, 1883

Shashi Tharoor photo

“Pluralist India must, by definition, tolerate plural expressions of its many identities.”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

The Hindu, "After the Dust is Settled", April 15, 2001
2000s

George W. Bush photo
Charlton Heston photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Björn Ulvaeus photo
David Morrison photo
Apollonius of Tyana photo

“Approve and pursue the kind that is in accordance with nature. But avoid the kind that claims to be inspired: people like that about tell lies about Gods, and urge us to do many foolish things.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

Attributed to Apollonius. Quoted from Ram Swarup (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections, Chapter India and Greece

Alice A. Bailey photo
John Rogers Searle photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Are you proud o' yourself, Jeff? I could have been seriously injured last week. And you got a lot of nerve faking an eye injury and leaving me to fend for myself, especially considering you're the one who injured my eye in the first place. As far as what you said earlier about me making the whole thing up, coming out here with your cute eye patch mocking me: I wanna show you something, Jeff." (takes out a little plastic jar of some sort of liquid eye medicine)
"This, is polymoxin bisulfate. I have to apply this to my eye three times a day. The only way you obtain this is with a prescription, from a doctor. Now, I know, you know a thing or two about prescription medication, but I don't think you realize is that you have to go to a doctor to legally obtain some. Unlike you, Jeff, this is the only foreign substance I will allow in my body. So if you wanna imitate me, why don't you try living a clean lifestyle? Why don't you try living, a straightedge lifestyle? "Jeff… you've got two strikes. You know how many I have? Zero. Jeff, you know how many times I've been suspended? Zero. You know how many times I've been to a rehab facility? That's right- zero. And do you know what your chances are of beating me at Night of Champions?”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

(long pause)
"Zero."
Addressing Jeff Hardy before his match with the Great Khali, both to prove that his eye injury is real (in storyline) and to drive home a point about the drug-related mistakes of Jeff's past as recently as 16 months ago. July 10, 2009.
Friday Night SmackDown

Paul A. Samuelson photo

“In the preface to the reissue of Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, Frank Knight makes the penetrating observation that under the conditions envisaged above the velocity of circulation would become infinite and so would the price level. This is perhaps an over-dramatic way of saying that nobody would hold money, and it would become a free good to go into the category of shell and other things which once served as money. We should expect too that it would not only pass out of circulation, but it would cease to be used as a conventional numeraire in terms of which prices are expressed. Interest bearing money would emerge. Of course, the above does not happen in real life, precisely because uncertainty, contingency needs, non-synchronization of revenues and outlay, transaction frictions, etc., etc., all are with us. But the abstract special case analyzed above should warn us against the facile assumption that the average levels of the structure of interest rates are determined solely or primarily by these differential factors. At times they are primary, and at other times, such as the twenties in this country, they may not be. As a generalization I should hazard the hypothesis that they are likely to be of great importance in an economy in which there is a “quasi-zero" rate of interest. I think by this hypothesis one can explain many of the anomalies of the United States money market in the thirties.”

Source: 1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947, Ch. 5 : Theory of Consumer’s Behavior

Ali Khamenei photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans. How can she be President of our country when she has such contempt and disdain for so many great Americans?”

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

[Clinton walks back 'deplorables' comment: I 'regret' using the term to describe 'half' of Trump's supporters, Beremy, Berke, Business Insider, 10 September 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/clinton-regrets-deplorables-comment-2016-9/]
2010s, 2016, September

Emo Philips photo

“How many people here have telekinetic powers? Raise my hand.”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

E=MO² (1985)

Christopher Hitchens photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Tom Robbins photo
Heinrich Neuhaus photo

“As for the piano, I was left to my own devices practically from the age of twelve. As is frequently the case in teachers' families, our parents were so busy with their pupils (literally from morning until late at night) that they hardly had any time for their own children. And that, in spite of the fact that with the favourable prejudice common to all parents, they had a very high opinion of my gifts. (I myself had a much more sober attitude. I was always aware of a great many faults although at times I felt that I had in me something "not quite usual".) But I won't speak of this. As a pianist, I am known. My good and bad points are known and nobody can be interested in my "prehistoric period". I will only say that because of this early "independence" I did a lot of silly things which I could have easily avoided if I had been under the vigilant eye of an experienced and intelligent teacher for another three or four years. I lacked what is known as a "school". I lacked discipline. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; my enforced independence compelled me, though sometimes by very devious ways, to achieve a great deal on my own and even my failures and errors subsequently proved more than once to be useful and educational, and in an occupation such as learning to master an art, where if not all, then almost all depends on individuality, the only sound foundation will always be the knowledge gained as the result of personal effort and personal experience.”

Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964) Soviet musician

The Art of Piano Playing (1958), Ch. 1. The Artistic Image of a Musical Composition

R. Venkataraman photo
Ray Comfort photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“But that has changed when a few months later during a lull in the battle of the attack on Verdun, he was telling his comrade a dirty anecdote. To his amazement, his buddy did not laugh: “Kutscher, didn’t you find that one funny?” The reaction of poor fellow to joke was no longer a laughing matter: a shrapnel of an enemy grenade struck him right into the heart - he collapsed dead to the ground. "I still see myself on the edge of the trench. A bright light, brighter than the atomic bomb struck me: he is now standing before holy God! And the next thought was: if we had sat in different arrangement, then the splinter grenade would have hit me instead, and then I would be standing face-to-face before God right now! My friend was laying dead in front of my eyes. For the first time in many years, I folded my hands and uttered a prayer, which consisted of only one sentence: "Dear God, I beg You, do not let me fall before I'll be sure not go to hell!"" A few days later, he then entered with a New Testament in the hand a broken French farmhouse, fell to his knees and prayed: Jesus! The Bible says that you have come from God in order to save sinners. I am a sinner. I cannot promise anything in the future, because I have a bad character. But I do not want to go to hell, if I get a shot. And so, Lord Jesus, I surrender myself to you from head to foot. Do with me whatever you want!"”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Since there was no bang, no big movement, I just went out. I had found the Lord, a gentleman to whom I belonged."
Jesus Our Destiny
Source: [ВИЛЬГЕЛЬМ (Wilhelm), БУШ (Busch), Приди домой (Come home), CLV, Christliche Literatur -Verbreitung, Bielefeld, 8, 158, 1995, http://www.manna.lv/nopirkt/Pridi-domoj/389397721X.html, Russian, 3-89397-721-X, 2011-11-19]

Kathy Freston photo
Benjamin Spock photo
Thomas Gray photo
Kurt Lewin photo
William Grey Walter photo
Max Boot photo
Willard van Orman Quine photo

“Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.”

Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician

"On What There Is", p. 4. a humorous comment on the idea "unactualized possible".
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“The death toll is not nearly high enough… too many [jihadists] have escaped.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Referring to the Fallujah offensive on November 2004
Speech at Kenyon College, Ohio http://collegian.kenyon.edu/article.php?id=2400, (2004-11-15): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2004

Donald E. Westlake photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“And there the lovely Lily grew,
The summer's purest flower,
And many a tiny fairy knew
The shelter of its bower”

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

(7th June 1834) The History of the Lily
(25th October 1834) The Exile. See under Translations from the French
(1835) For Versions from the German, see under Translations from the German
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Milton Friedman photo
Nick Bostrom photo
William McDougall photo
Aurangzeb photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Richard Feynman photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Through the vote, you'll change nothing in this country. Nothing, absolutely nothing. We'll only get change, unfortunately, when we go into a civil war here someday and do a work the military regime didn't do, killing as much as thirty thousand people, starting with FHC. It's all right if some innocent people die. Innocent people die in many wars.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Referring to the then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) at the program Câmera Aberta at Band on 23 May 1999. O dia que Bolsonaro quis matar FHC, sonegar impostos e declarar guerra civil http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/politica/republica/o-dia-que-bolsonaro-quis-matar-fhc-sonegar-impostos-e-declarar-guerra-civil-8mtm0u0so6pk88kqnqo0n1l69. Gazeta do Povo (10 October 2017).

David Lloyd George photo
David Mitchell photo

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Robert Sheckley photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Prince photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Otto Weininger photo

“There are men who are willing to marry a woman they do not care about merely because she is admired by other men. Such a relation exists between many men and their thoughts.”

Es gibt Männer, die imstande sind, eine Frau, die sie in keiner Weise anzieht, zu heiraten—bloß weil sie den anderen gefällt. Und solche Ehen gibt es auch zwischen so manchen Menschen und ihren Gedanken.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 104.

Eugene J. Martin photo
Robert Owen photo