Quotes about many
page 7

Dallin H. Oaks (1932) Apostle of the LDs Church

Fundamentals of Our Consitutions http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/fundamentals-of-our-constitutions-elder-dallin-h-oaks, 17 September 2010

Religion, Exercises, Dependency

“There’s already an evolution taking place inside of Cuba, a generational change. Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down -- but I’m appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)

People, Tear, Change

“We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 309

Feeling, Thinking

“(upon seeing the movie) I'm a bit nervous about whether people will like it, but I've seen it, and I'm sure they will. It's really good - it's quite scary, it's quite emotional. Even I cried and I don't cry easily! I cried at the end credits when my name came up, and I was, like, Oh my God! I can't believe that's my name! I've met so many people since we started filming and it's been wonderful. I've progressed so far and changed so much since the beginning. It's been like a real journey.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

God, People, Change, Cry

“The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

The Problem of China (1922), Ch. XII: The Chinese Character
1920s

Change

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don't read the sign that says "Beware of Cliff" because you were busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled "How to Build a Chair" instead of a cookbook, your pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling with delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one. I know of a book, for instance, called The Littlest Elf, which tells the story of a teensy-weensy little man who scurries around fairyland having all sorts of adorable adventures, and you can see at once that you should probably read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the lovely things that happened to this imaginary creature in a made-up place, instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that have happened to the three Baudelaire orphans.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Love, People, Books, Mountain

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

" Eleonora http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.9/" (1841).

Deep, Good Night, Dreams, Night

“I was just sixteen and Visconti and the team took me to a gay nightclub. Almost all the crew were gay. The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish. I knew I couldn't react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters.”

Björn Andrésen (1955) actor, musician

Quoted in Matt Seaton, "I feel used," http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/oct/16/gender.film The Guardian, 16 October 2003

Feeling, Suicide

“Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)

Secret, Nature, Passion, Heart

“It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in The Fresno Bee (10 October 1965)
1960s

Home, Christmas, Country

“Those locks of jet are turned to gray,
And she is strange and far away
That might have been mine own to-day —

That might have been mine own, my dear,
Through many and many a happy year —
That might have sat beside me here.”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

Faces in the Fire (1860), st. 8 & 9
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Happiness

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq…. Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

August 1992, at the Discovery Institute in Seattle http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html 1990s

Question, Problem, Thinking, Decision

“I was unable to devote myself to the learning of this algebra and the continued concentration upon it, because of obstacles in the vagaries of time which hindered me; for we have been deprived of all the people of knowledge save for a group, small in number, with many troubles, whose concern in life is to snatch the opportunity, when time is asleep, to devote themselves meanwhile to the investigation and perfection of a science; for the majority of people who imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool of him and mock him.”

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

Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (1070).

Life, People, Truth, Fools

“Red beans come from Southern country,
Few blossoms on vines when Spring comes.
For my sake please pick many of them,
They are the best symbol of true love.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Red Beans" (相思), trans. Zi-chang Tang

Love, Spring, Country

“The impetuous conquests of Alexander, the more politic and premeditated extension of territory made by the Romans, the wild and cruel incursions of the Mexicans, and the despotic acquisitions of the incas, have in both hemispheres contributed to put an end to the separate existence of many tribes as independent nations, and tended at the same time to establish more extended international amalgamation. Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under the influence of one idea, the purity of which was, however, utterly unknown to them. It was Christianity which first promulgated the truth of its exalted charity, although the seed sown yielded but a slow and scanty harvest. Before the religion of Christ manifested its form, its existence was only revealed by a faint foreshadowing presentiment. In recent times, the idea of civilization has acquired additional intensity, and has given rise to a desire of extending more widely the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual national characteristics.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Kosmos (1847)

Men, Truth, Religion, Idea

“Well, since paradoxes are at hand, let us see how it might be demonstrated that in a finite continuous extension it is not impossible for infinitely many voids to be found.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Salviati, First Day, Stillman Drake translation (1974)
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now — of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Home, Nature, Summer, Night

“Already, the United States has imposed strong sanctions on Syria’s leaders. We supported a transfer of power that is responsive to the Syrian people. And many of our allies have joined in this effort. But for the sake of Syria -- and the peace and security of the world -- we must speak with one voice. There's no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

People, World, Peace, Support

“Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contradiction in something's being true which everybody takes to be false. I understand by 'laws of logic' not psychological laws of takings-to-be-true, but laws of truth. …If being true is thus independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for our thought if it would attain truth. They do not bear the relation to thought that the laws of grammar bear to language; they do not make explicit the nature of our human thinking and change as it changes.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Introduction, Tr. Montgomery Furth (1964)
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903

Truth, Law, Understanding, Nature

“Thank you very much. I honor my late husband Raymond Parks, other Freedom Fighters, men of goodwill who could not be here. I'm also honored by young men who respect me and have invited me as an elder. Raymond, or Parks as I called him, was an activist in the Scottsboro Boys case, voter registration, and a role model for youth. As a self-taught businessman, he provided for his family, and he loved and respected me. Parks would have stood proud and tall to see so many of our men uniting for our common man and committing their lives to a better future for themselves, their families, and this country. Although criticism and controversy has been focused on in the media instead of benefits for the one million men assembling peacefully for spiritual food and direction, it is a success. I pray that my multiracial and international friends will view this [some audio unclear] gathering as an opportunity for all men but primarily men of African heritage to make changes in their lives for the better. I am proud of all groups of people who feel connected with me in any way, and I will always work for human rights for all people. However, as an African American woman, I am proud, applaud, and support our men in this assembly. I would a lot like to have male students of the Pathways to Freedom to join me here and wave their hands, but I don't think they're here right now. But thank you all young men of the Pathways to Freedom. Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Rosa Park speech to social activists assembled in Washington, D.C. ( 1995) http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/2316-rosa-parks-speech-at-the-million-man-march)

Love, Men, God, People

“More broadly, I think that the -- if you look at some of the most successful countries in the world, they’re actually pretty small countries -- like Singapore, for example -- that on paper look like they have no assets, and yet, if you go to Singapore, it has one of the highest standards of living in the world. What is it that Singapore did that might be replicable? Well, one of the most important things they did was they made an enormous investment in their people. And if you’ve got a highly skilled, highly educated workforce, if you’ve set up rules of law and governance that are transparent and non-corrupt, then you can attract actually a lot of service industries to supplement the tourist industry, because people would want to locate in your country. You could envision people wanting to operate and have offices there where you’ve got a trained workforce. And these days, so many businesses are operating over the Internet that if you’ve got a really skilled workforce that provides value added, you will attract companies and you’ll attract businesses.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

People, World, Education, Law

“[In the world below…] The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows in the path; but the soul which desires the body, and which… has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds or have been concerned in foul murders or other crimes… from that soul everyone flees and turns away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

World, Soul, Suffering, Evil

“I do differ from you radically in respect to familiar things & scenes; for I always demand close correlation with the landscape & historic stream to which I belong, & would feel completely lost in infinity without a system of reference-points based on known & accustomed objects. I take complete relativity so much for granted, that I cannot conceive of anything as existing in itself in any recognisable form. What gives things an aspect & quasi-significance to us is the fact that we view things consistently from a certain artificial & fortuitous angle. Without the preservation of that angle, coherent consciousness & entity itself becomes inconceivable. Thus my wish for freedom is not so much a wish to put all terrestrial things behind me & plunge forever into abysses beyond light, matter, & energy. That, indeed, would mean annihilation as a personality rather than liberation. My wish is perhaps best defined as a wish for infinite visioning & voyaging power, yet without loss of the familiar background which gives all things significance. I want to know what stretches Outside, & be able to visit all the gulfs & dimensions beyond Space & Time. I want, too, to juggle the calendar at will; bringing things from the immemorial past down into the present, & making long journeys into the forgotten years. But I want the familiar Old Providence of my childhood as a perpetual base for these necromancies & excursions—& in a good part of these necromancies & excursions I want certain transmuted features of Old Providence to form part of the alien voids I visit or conjure up. I am as geographic-minded as a cat—places are everything to me. Long observation has shewn me that no other objective experience can give me even a quarter of the kick I can extract from the sight of a fresh landscape or urban vista whose antiquity & historic linkages are such as to correspond with certain fixed childhood dream-patterns of mine. Of course my twilight cosmos of half-familiar, fleetingly remembered marvels is just as unattainable as your Ultimate Abysses—this being the real secret of its fascination. Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating—the charm of many familiar things being mainly resident in their power to symbolise or suggest unknown extensions & overtones.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (7 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 214
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret, Dreams, Feeling, Cats

“At present, many of the ablest minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the Sun of December 20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but, on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence, it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. Any city, at a distance, whatsoever, from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Men, Peace, Sun, Fight

“Let us look for our light in our feelings. There is a warmth in them that contains many clarities.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Feeling, Light

“Pimen [writing in front of a sacred lamp]:
One more, the final record, and my annals
Are ended, and fulfilled the duty laid
By God on me a sinner. Not in vain
Hath God appointed me for many years
A witness, teaching me the art of letters;
A day will come when some laborious monk
Will bring to light my zealous, nameless toil,
Kindle, as I, his lamp, and from the parchment
Shaking the dust of ages will transcribe
My true narrations.”

Aleksandr Pushkin Boris Godunov

(Variant translation):
One more story, just one more,
And then my history's completed,
All my chronicles written down
And my sinner's debt repaid to God.
Not for nothing.
The Lord appointed me to bear witness
For many many years and it was he
Taught me the art of creating books.
One day, in the far future,
some hard-working monk
Will find my painstaking,
anonymous writings.
He'll light his lamp,
as I light mine,
He'lll shake the dust of centuries from these scrolls.
Then he'll copy out, carefully, these true accounts,
So the descendants of today's Christians
May know the past of their native land
Remember their mighty Tsars warmly
For their glory and their knidness
And our Lord's mercy on their sins and crimes.
In my old age I live my life anew.
Pushkin, Alexander (2012). Pushkin's Boris Gudunov. Oberon Books.
Boris Godunov (1825)

God, Age, Art, Light

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit 2015

People, World, Faith, Way

“Notwithstanding the eminent difficulties of the mathematical theory of sonorous vibrations, we owe to it such progress as has yet been made in acoustics. The formation of the differential equations proper to the phenomena is, independent of their integration, a very important acquisition, on account of the approximations which mathematical analysis allows between questions, otherwise heterogeneous, which lead to similar equations. This fundamental property, whose value we have so often to recognize, applies remarkably in the present case; and especially since the creation of mathematical thermology, whose principal equations are strongly analogous to those of vibratory motion. This means of investigation is all the more valuable on account of the difficulties in the way of direct inquiry into the phenomena of sound. We may decide the necessity of the atmospheric medium for the transmission of sonorous vibrations; and we may conceive of the possibility of determining by experiment the duration of the propagation, in the air, and then through other media; but the general laws of the vibrations of sonorous bodies escape immediate observation. We should know almost nothing of the whole case if the mathematical theory did not come in to connect the different phenomena of sound, enabling us to substitute for direct observation an equivalent examination of more favorable cases subjected to the same law. For instance, when the analysis of the problem of vibrating chords has shown us that, other things being equal, the number of oscillations is hi inverse proportion to the length of the chord, we see that the most rapid vibrations of a very short chord may be counted, since the law enables us to direct our attention to very slow vibrations. The same substitution is at our command in many cases in which it is less direct.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Bk. 3, chap. 4; as cited in: Moritz (1914, 240)
System of positive polity (1852)

Law, Way, Mathematics, Question

“In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn’t do well. They’d get bad openings. You cannot compare the playing strength, you can only talk about natural ability. Memorization is enormously powerful. Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca, and especially against the players of the previous century, like Morphy and Steinitz. Maybe they would still be able to outplay the young kid of today. Or maybe not, because nowadays when you get the opening advantage not only do you get the opening advantage, you know how to play, they have so many examples of what to do from this position. It is really deadly, and that is why I don’t like chess any more.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, October 16 2006 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_35_3.MP3 2000s

Nature, Dependency, Dead

“Before he died, Guru Govind Singh had commissioned Banda Bairagi, a Rajput from Jammu to go to the Punjab and punish the wrong-doers. Banda more than fulfilled his mission. He was joined by fresh formations of the Khalsa and the Hindus at large gave him succour and support. He roamed all over the Punjab, defeating one Muslim army after another in frontal fights as well as in guerilla warfare. Sirhind, where Guru Govind Singh's younger sons had been walled up, was stormed and sacked. The bullies of Islam who had walked with immense swagger till only the other day had to run for cover. Large parts of the Punjab were liberated from Muslim despotism after a spell of nearly seven centuries. The Mughal empire, however, was still a mighty edifice which could mobilize a military force far beyond Banda's capacity to match. Gradually, he had to yield ground and accept defeat as his own following thinned down in battle after battle. He was captured, carried to Delhi in an iron cage and tortured to death in 1716 A. D. Many other members of the Khalsa met the same fate in Delhi and elsewhere. The Muslim governor of the Punjab had placed a prize on every Khalsa head. The ranks of the Khalsa had perforce to suffer a steep decline and go into hiding.”

Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716) Sikh military commander

Swarup, Ram, & Goel, S. R. (1985). Hindu-Sikh relationship. (Introduction by S.R. Goel)

Death, Fate, Support, Suffering

“My troubles are many
They're deep as a well
I swear there ain't no Heaven
And I pray there ain't no hell
But I'll never know by living
only my dying will tell.
And when I die
and when I'm gone
There'll be, one child born
And a world to carry on, to carry on.”

Laura Nyro (1947–1997) American musician and songwriter

"And When I Die"
Lyrics

World, Hell

“A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than they all.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Luria, Act v.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, People

“The administrative function has many duties. It has to foresee and make preparations to meet the financial, commercial, and technical conditions under which the concern must be started and run. It deals with the organization, selection, and management of the staff. It is the means by which the various parts of the undertaking communicate with the outside world, etc. Although this list is incomplete, it gives us an idea of the importance of the administrative function. The sole fact that it is in charge of the staff makes it in most cases the predominant function, for we all know that, even if a firm has perfect machinery and manufacturing processes, it is doomed to failure if it is run by an inefficient staff.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 908

World, Communication, Idea, Failure

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

José Saramago book Raised from the Ground

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Men, Fate, Secret, World

“So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone.”
Donec eris sospes, multos numerabis amicos: tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.

Ovid book Tristia

I, ix, 5
Tristia (Sorrows)

Life

“By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Prologue: Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs.
New millennium, Swimming Across: a Memoir, 2001

War, People, Democracy, Time

“It will be a very hard thing to leave the country that God gave us. Our friends are buried there, and we hate to leave these grounds…. There is something strong for us — that fool band of soldiers that cleared out our lodges and killed our women and children. This is hard on us. There at Sand Creek — White Antelope and many other chiefs lie there; our women and children lie there. Our lodges were destroyed there, and our horses were taken from us there, and I do not feel disposed to go right off to a new country and leave them.”

Little Raven (Arapaho leader) (1810–1889) Southern Arapaho chief

At the signing of the Little Arkansas Treaty (October 1865), as quoted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), p. 100

Women, God, Hate, Children

“We have hopes about that because the process which has continued for many years must lead to a peaceful resolution. But of course it will depend on the willingness of Armenia to comply to international law norms, to withdraw the troops from the international recognized territories of Azerbaijan, and then peace will be established”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

Euronews interview on issue of Nagorno-Karabakh (02 February 2010) http://www.euronews.com/2010/02/02/interview-with-ilham-aliyev-president-of-azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh

Peace, Law, Hope, Dependency

“A great many things are dying very violently all the time. The best days for violent deaths are Tuesdays. They are the yellow-paint days. Saturdays are second best -- or worst. Saturdays are red-paint days. The Great Death Game is therefore a contest between red-paint days and yellow-paint days. So far yellow-paint days are winning by thirty-one corpses to twenty-nine. Whatever the colour, a violent death is always celebrated by a firework.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Drowning By Numbers

Death, Game, Time, Painting

“It is not also taught you in Scripture, that you should desire St. Rock to preserve you from the pestilence, to pray to St. Barbarra to defend you from thunder or gun-shot, to offer St. Loy an horse of wax, a pig to St. Anthony, a candle to St, Sithine. But I should be too long, if I were to rehearse unto you all the superstitions that have grown out of the invocation and praying to saints departed, wherewith men have been seduced, and God's honour given to creatures.
This was also no small abuse that we called the images by the names of the things, whom they did represent. For we were won't to say, "This is St. Ann's altar;"-"My father is gone a pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham;"-" In our church St. James standeth on the right hand of the high altar." These speeches we were wont to use, although they be not to be commended. For St. Austin in the exposition of the 113th Psalm affirmeth, that they who do call such images, as the carpenter hath made, do change the truth of God into a lie. It is not also taught you in all Scripture.
Thus, good children, I have declared how we were wont to abuse images, not that hereby I condemn your fathers, who were men of great devotion, and had an earnest love towards God, although their zeal in all points was not ruled and governed by true knowledge, but they were seduced and blinded partly by the common ignorance that reigned in their time, partly by the covetousness of their teachers, who abused the simplicity of the unlearned people to the maintenance of their own lucre and glory. But this be profitable, for if they had, either Christ would have taught it or the Holy Ghost would have revealed it unto the Apostles, which they did not. And if they did, the Apostles were very negligent that would not make some mention of it, and speak some good word for images, seeing that they speak so many against them. And by this means Anti-christ and his holy Papists had more knowledge or fervent zeal to give s godly things ad profitable for us, than had the very holy saints of Christ, yea more than Christ himself and the Holy Ghost. Now forasmuch, good children, as images be neither necessary nor profitable in our churches and temples, nor were not used at the beginning in Christ's nor the Apostles' time, nor many years after, and that at length they were brought in by bishops of Rome, maugre emperors' teeth; and seeing also, that they be very slanderous to Christ's religion, for by them the name of God is blasphemed among the infidels, Turks, and Jews, which because of our images do call Christian religion, idolatry and worshiping of images: and for as much also, as they have been so wonderfully abused within this realm to the high contumely and dishonor of God, and have been great cause of blindness and of much contention among the King's Majesty's loving subjects and are like so to be still, if they should remain: and chiefly seeing God's word speaketh so much against them, you may hereby right well consider what great causes and ground the King's Majesty had to take them away within his realm, following here in the example of the godly King Hezekias, who brake down the brazen serpent, when he saw it worshiped, and was therefore praised of God, notwithstanding at the first the same was made and set up by God's commandment, and was not only a remembrance of God's benefits, before received, but also a figure of Christ to come. And not only Hezekias, but also Manasses, and Jehosaphat, and Josias, the best kings that were of the Jews, did pull down images in the time of their reign.”

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury

The Life, Martyrdom, and Selections from the Writings of Thomas Cranmer https://books.google.com/books?id=FvNeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=The+Life,+Martyrdom,+and+Selections+from+the+Writings+of+Thomas+Cranmer+...&source=bl&ots=LbXiMjz5Zp&sig=0pi5SHuxfdt_YUoiJcxvLgr7x5E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzmZL_wsfaAhVl6YMKHWubBkcQ6AEILDAB by Thomas Cranmer, p.139-142, (1809)

Love, Men, God, Children

“But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle...”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Fate, Disease, Motivation, Hell

“The ideas that America should be a 'melting pot' or that all Americans should identify as American are now unutterable in educated company. Indeed, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as 'offensive”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

representing imperialism and capitalism.
2010s, A Dark Time in America (2016)

Education, Idea

“And I had been very encouraged by the, I think, interest in President-elect Trump’s wanting to work with my team around many of the issues that this great country faces. And I believe that it is important for all of us, regardless of party and regardless of political preferences, to now come together, work together to deal with the many challenges that we face.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Presidential transition of Donald Trump (November 2016)

Thinking, Country

“Too many people want to have written.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

People

“In infancy I was afraid of the dark, which I peopled with all sorts of things; but my grandfather cured me of that by daring me to walk through certain dark parts of the house when I was 3 or 4 years old. After that, dark places held a certain fascination for me. But it is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now—but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 I have been whirled through formless abysses of infinite night and adumbrated horrors as black & as seethingly sinister as any of our friend Fafhrd's [a nickname Lovecraft used for Fritz Leiber] "splatter-stencil" triumphs. That's why I appreciate such triumphs so keenly, I have seen these things! Many a time I have awaked in shrieks of panic, & have fought desperately to keep from sinking back into sleep & its unutterable horrors. At the age of six my dreams became peopled with a race of lean, faceless, rubbery, winged things to which I applied the home-made name of night-gaunts. Night after night they would appear in exactly the same form—& the terror they brought was beyond any verbal description. Long decades later I embodied them in one of my Fungi from Yuggoth pseudo-sonnets, which you may have read. Well—after I was 8 all these things abated, perhaps because of the scientific habit of mind which I was acquiring (or trying to acquire). I ceased to believe in religion or any other form of the supernatural, & the new logic gradually reached my subconscious imagination. Still, occasional nightmares brought recurrent touches of the ancient fear—& as late as 1919 I had some that I could use in fiction without much change. The Statement of Randolph Carter is a literal dream transcript. Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none even approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 416-417
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, People, Youth, Age

“Freedom exalts power; and, as is always the collateral effect of increasing strength, tends to induce a spirit of liberality. Coercion stifles power, and engenders all selfish desires, and all the mean artifices of weakness. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a portion of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Beauty, Freedom, Selfishness

“Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 37.

Books, Way, Clothes

“Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)

Universe, Science, Chance

“I often asked myself the following question. There is no doubt that at all times for many men one of the greatest tortures of their lives has been the contact, the collision with the folly of their neighbours. And yet how is it that there has never been attempted — I think this is so — a study on this matter, an Essay on Folly? For the pages of Erasmus do not treat of this aspect of the matter.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Men, Question, Thinking, Study

“Never before have so many people understood so little about so much.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

People

“In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 73
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Age, World, Home, Failure

“I do not think it can be questioned that sympathy is a genuine motive, and that some people at some times are made somewhat uncomfortable by the sufferings of some other people. It is sympathy that has produced the many humanitarian advances of the last hundred years. We are shocked when we hear stories of the ill-treatment of lunatics, and there are now quite a number of asylums in which they are not ill-treated. Prisoners in Western countries are not supposed to be tortured, and when they are, there is an outcry if the facts are discovered. We do not approve of treating orphans as they are treated in Oliver Twist.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

People, Motivation, Question, Thinking

“My work in the future must be devoted entirely to pure mathematics in its abstract meaning. I shall apply all my strength to bring more light into the tremendous obscurity which one unquestionably finds in analysis. It lacks so completely all plan and system that it is peculiar that so many have studied it. The worst of it is, it has never been treated stringently. There are very few theorems in advanced analysis which have been demonstrated in a logically tenable manner. Everywhere one finds this miserable way of concluding from the special to the general, and it is extremely peculiar that such a procedure has led to do few of the so-called paradoxes. It is really interesting to seek the cause.
In analysis, one is largely occupied by functions which can be expressed as powers. As soon as other powers enter—this, however, is not often the case—then it does not work any more and a number of connected, incorrect theorems arise from false conclusions. I have examined several of them, and been so fortunate as to make this clear. …I have had to be extremely cautious, for the presumed theorems without strict proof… had taken such a stronghold in me, that I was continually in danger of using them without detailed verification.”

Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) Norwegian mathematician

Letter to Christoffer Hansteen (1826) as quoted by Øystein Ore, Niels Henrik Abel: Mathematician Extraordinary (1957) & in part by Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972) citing Œuvres, 2, 263-65

Way, Mathematics, Study, Light

“There are so many highly esteemed ones who became miserable and humiliated just because of their bad temper and morals; and humble people who have attained eminence and the highest honors because of good temper and morals.”

Ali (601–661) cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol. 71, p. 396

People

“Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different; she has still many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if this is so in literature, the freest of all professions for women, how is it in the new professions which you are now for the first time entering?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"Professions for Women"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

Women, Books, Literature, Thinking

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign rally on Memorial Day, New Mexico (26 May 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/studentnews/05/26/transcript.tue/ 2008

Sense, Strong, Memory

“So much easier is it to do many things than to do one thing for a long time continuously.”
Adeo facilius est multa facere quam diu.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book I, Chapter XII, 7; translation by H. E. Butler
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Time

“(On Ainsley Harriott) I must admit, I tend to think - with Ainsley - if you're that happy, you haven't really understood the world. You see, I think that cheeriness is all very well. Beyond a certain point it becomes quite offensive. And how many versions of what is, basically, your dinner can Ainsley do? There must be executives stalking the corridors of White City, thinking 'We need a new idea for Ainsley. He's so jolly. What can we have? We've had him doing Can't Cook, Won't Cook, Ready Steady Cook, Barbecues. We need something new, different, edgy. How about this? We like this. Ainsley's Death-Row Dinners.' Yes, the jolly chef tours the condemned man with a last supper to remember. We can have the recipes in the Radio Times - Ainsley's Humanely Fried Chicken, with a lethal injection of butter!”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

guaranteed to make the governor say 'Pardon'. (Wrap Up Warm tour, May 2004)
Stand-up

Death, World, Idea, Thinking

“I love reading books. In fact I have so many books at home that my mom has asked me not to purchase anymore. I feel books give a lot of knowledge and allow us to think from different perspectives. My all time favourite books are What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey and The Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. I like to read from fiction to philosophical all of them. The last book I finished reading was Adultery by Paulo Coelho.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

Sukirti Kandpal on #WorldBookDay http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/features/worldbookday-tv-celebs-and-their-love-reading-150423/

Love, Books, Feeling, Home

“If you have a love for the game of cricket, whether you are a player, an ex-player or simply an onlooker, many will be the pleasures in your life.”

Keith Andrew

The Pleasures of Cricket (1989), Introduction

Love, Life, Pleasure, Game

“Whenever I travel the world, from Europe to Africa, South America to Southeast Asia, one of the things I most enjoy doing is meeting young men and women like you. It’s more fun than being in a conference room. And it’s also more important -- because you are the young leaders who will determine the future of this country and this region. So I’m going to keep my remarks short at the top, because I want to take as many questions and comments from you.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)

Women, Men, World, Travel

“I tell you that if natural bodies have it from Nature to be moved by any movement, this can only be circular motion, nor is it possible that Nature has given to any of its integral bodies a propensity to be moved by straight motion. I have many confirmations of this proposition, but for the present one alone suffices, which is this. I suppose the parts of the universe to be in the best arrangement, so that none is out of its place, which is to say that Nature and God have perfectly arranged their structure. This being so, it is impossible for those parts to have it from Nature to be moved in straight, or in other than circular motion, because what moves straight changes place, and if it changes place naturally, then it was at first in a place preternatural to it, which goes against the supposition. Therefore, if the parts of the world are well ordered, straight motion is superfluous and not natural, and they can only have it when some body is forcibly removed from its natural place, to which it would then return by a straight line, for thus it appears that a part of the earth does [move] when separated from its whole. I said "it appears to us," because I am not against thinking that not even for such an effect does Nature make use of straight line motion.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

A note on this statement is included by Stillman Drake in his Galileo at Work, His Scientific Biography (1981): Galileo adhered to this position in his Dialogue at least as to the "integral bodies of the universe." by which he meant stars and planets, here called "parts of the universe." But he did not attempt to explain the planetary motions on any mechanical basis, nor does this argument from "best arrangement" have any bearing on inertial motion, which to Galileo was indifference to motion and rest and not a tendency to move, either circularly or straight.
Letter to Francesco Ingoli (1624)

God, World, Nature, Thinking

“Since many of today’s best-known manufacturers no longer produce products and advertise them, but rather buy products and “brand” them, these companies are forever on the prowl for creative new ways to build and strengthen their brand images.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999

Way

“The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 437.
(Buch II) (1893)

Appearance

“Nothing is more uncommon than a very large or a very small man; and this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white; and whether the instances you select be man or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes, but many are in the mean between them.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Dogs

“Let us be under no illusion. The Jewish spirit, which was responsible for the alliance of large-scale capital with Marxism and was the driving force behind so many anti-Spanish revolutionary agreements, will not be got rid of in a day.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Victory speech in Madrid (19 May 1939)

“Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict. I have been in the heat of battle when colored men, asked me to protect them. I have placed myself between them and the bullets of my men, and told them they should be kept unharmed. Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I'll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

1870s, Speech before the Pole-Bearers Association (1875)

Men, War, Color, Heart

“How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Disappointment, Dependency

“How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Books, Suffering

“What part should nature play in a work of art? Where should the line be drawn? And from the standpoint of practical procedure - should one work directly from nature or merely study and remember it? Too much freedom frightens me, poor imitator that I am, and yet my head is filled with so many images evoked by what I see around me at all times that nature seems insignificant and banal.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Quote from a letter to Maurice Dennis, 1889; as quoted by John Rewald in Pierre Bonnard; MoMA - distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 14 - note 7

Art, Nature, Study, Freedom

“He that planteth a tree is the servant of God,
He provideth a kindness for many generations,
And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Friendly Trees.

God, Tree

“I think basically the youth of today are just having so many problems and they are sort of confused…This is their method, of escaping…Just like I sleep to escape my problems.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1970s

Youth, Problem, Thinking, Sleep

“A Loaf holds many grains of corn
And many myriad drops the Sea:
So is God's Oneness Multitude
And that great Multitude are we.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

God, Sea

“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.”

Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) English author

"A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839). Source: Thomas de Quincy. On Murder (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 84

Time, Drink, Thinking

“Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

"Preface"
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

People, Books, Soul, Cats

“No one doubts—certainly not I—that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 4 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2HCH0004 Christian Science (1907)

Education, Disease, Dreams, Exercises

“As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

Children, Youth, World, Way

“My friends and relations … urged … that the quantity [of food] I took was too little for one so advanced in years; against this, I urged that nature was content with little, and that with this small quantity, I had preserved myself for many years in health and activity, that I believed as a man advanced in years, his stomach grew weaker, and therefore the tendency should be to lessen the amount of food rather than to increase. I further reminded them of the two proverbs, which say; he who has a mind to eat a great deal, must eat but little; eating little makes life long, and, living long, he must eat much; and the other proverb was: that, what we leave after making a hearty meal, does us more good than what we have eaten.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

Life, Health, Food, Nature

“Colours no longer looked as brilliant to me as they use to do [Monet's sight was beginning to fail], I no longer painted shades of light so correctly. Reds looked muddy to me, pinks insipid, and the intermediate or lower notes in the colour scale escaped me. As for forms, I could see them as clear as ever, and render them as decisively. At first I tried pertinacity. How many times I have remained for hours near the little bridge, exactly were we are now, in the full glare of the sun, sitting on my camp-stool, under my sunshade, forcing myself to resume my interrupted task and to recapture the freshness my palette had lost! A waste of effort. What I painted was more and more mellow.... and (when) I compared it with what I used to do in the old days. I would fall into a frantic rage, and I slashed all my pictures with my penknife.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

remark by Monet – between 1900 and 1920 – on his 'Water lilies' paintings; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 131-132
1900 - 1920

Decision, Effort, Light, Rage

“It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Picasso (1937), quote in: William Rowlandson (2007), Reading Lezama's Paradiso. p. 115.
Reply by Picasso when he was asked to explain the symbolism in the Guernica.
1930s

Understanding

“One capitalist always kills many.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 836.
(Buch I) (1867)

“You, Knights of Columbus, are particularly fitted to play a great part in the movement for national solidarity, without which there can be no real efficiency in either peace or war. During the last year and a quarter it has been brought home to us in startling fashion that many of the elements of our nation are not yet properly fused. It ought to be a literally appalling fact that members of two of the foreign embassies in this country have been discovered to be implicated in inciting their fellow-countrymen, whether naturalized American citizens or not, to the destruction of property and the crippling of American industries that are operating in accordance with internal law and international agreement. The malign activity of one of these embassies has been brought home directly to the ambassador in such shape that his recall has been forced. The activities of the other have been set forth in detail by the publication in the press of its letters in such fashion as to make it perfectly clear that they were of the same general character. Of course, the two embassies were merely carrying out the instructions of their home governments.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

War, Peace, Law, Home

“Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic. If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato's Republic. Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever written. In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus turned it from its natural course. The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither country nor patriot. The very words should be struck out of our language. The reason does not concern us at present, so that though I know it I refrain from stating it.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book I

Books, Education, Spring, Nature

“And what shall I say of the poets? Oh, this poor century of ours! In the coming year many of them will make their start, but not one of them is as bad as Cervantes, or idiotic enough to praise Don Quixote.”

Lope De Vega (1562–1635) Spanish playwright and poet

De poetas no digo: buen siglo es éste. Muchos están en ciernes para el año que viene; pero ninguno hay tan malo como Cervantes ni tan necio que alabe a don Quijote.
Letter dated August 14, 1604; cited from Nicolás Marín (ed.) Cartas (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1985) p. 68. Translation by Ilsa Barea, from Sebastià Juan Arbó Cervantes: Adventurer, Idealist, and Destiny's Fool (London: Thames and Hudson, 1955) p. 204.

“Much more naturally than you do: because flight is a much more natural consequence of fear than of hate. He doesn't flee men because he hates them, but because he is afraid of them. He doesn't flee them in order to harm them, but to try o escape the harm they wish to do to him. They, on the contrary, don't seek him through friendship, but through hate. They seek him and he flees from them just as in the wilderness of Africa, where there are few men and many tigers, the men flee the tigers, the men flee the tigers, and the tigers seek the men.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Men, Hate, Friendship, Fear

“We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all the rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species. That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in the beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist… these Species were sometimes fertilised out of congeners, that is other Species of the same Genus, whence have arisen Varieties.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Fundamenta fructificationis (1742). As quoted in John S. Wilkins (2009), "Species: A History of the Idea," University of California Press. p. 72

Imagination, Nature, Parent, Change

“I regard [the many worlds interpretation] as self-evidently correct. [T. F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves. ] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering—is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Heard in person by this contributor when Hawking showed-up in a Caltech physics class taught by Robert Christy in 1980 or '81; when asked about collapse of the state-vector he whispered to his assistant Chris (surname unknown) something at which point Chris stood up and said 'Stephen is paraphrasing Herman Göring by saying "When I hear the words 'Schrödinger's Cat' I reach for my gun."'. Source: In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345 http://books.google.com/books?id=qjYbQ7EBAKwC&lpg=PA345&ots=F6VWymjiPx&dq=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&pg=PA345#v=onepage&q=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&f=false

World, People, Time, Cats

“Many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment, and imagine living your whole life like that. Always, this moment is not quite good enough because you need to get to the next one.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

ABC News Interview

Life, People, Imagination

“So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Mississippi

“The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts — so many millions of miles further off are we!”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Travel, Star, Light, Heart

“God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment — but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 48
The Antichrist (1888)

God

“There are people in this country who are the great destroyers; they wish to destroy the kind of free society we have. They wouldn't have the freedom and the kind of society they wish to impose on us. Many of those people are in the unions. Many many people in the unions do not wish to strike, and I think many of those who struck in hospitals and in the ambulance service didn't wish to. I'm not suggesting that every strike is dominated by those, but a number are.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Thames TV TV Eye (24 April 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104040 Leader of the Opposition

People, Thinking, Freedom, Country

“Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.””

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Money, Pain, People, Lie

“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

People, Way, History, Loss

“I’ve said many times that there isn’t a country in the world that would find billions of barrels of oil and leave it in the ground while there is a market for it.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Speaking about the Trans Mountain Pipeline, as quoted by The Guardian, Canada approves controversial Kinder Morgan oil pipeline https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/29/canada-approves-kinder-morgan-oil-pipeline-justin-trudeau (30 November 2016). 2016

World, Time, Country

“When Paul thought about his effortless rise in the hierarchy, he sometimes, as now, felt sheepish, like a charlatan. He could handle his assignments all right, but he didn’t have what his father had, what Kroner had, what Shepherd had, what so many had: the sense of spiritual importance in what they were doing; the ability to be moved emotionally, almost like a lover, by the great omnipresent and omniscient spook, the corporate personality. In short, what Paul missed was what made his father aggressive and great: the capacity to really give a damn.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 6 (pp. 66-67)

Lovers, Sense, Personality

“Here I come to one of the memoir writer’s difficulties — one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: ‘This is what happened’; but they do not say what the person was like to whom it happened. Who was I then? Adeline Virginia Stephen, the second daughter of Leslie and Julia Prinsep Stephen, born on 25th January 1882, descended from a great many people, some famous, others obscure; born into a large connection, born not of rich parents, but of well-to-do parents, born into a very communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate, late nineteenth century world.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"A Sketch of the Past" (written 1939, published posthumously)

People, World, Communication, Failure

“Moreover, humour is itself but a superficial view of that which is in truth both tragic and terrible—the contrast between human pretence and cosmic mechanical reality. Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration. All great humorists are sad—Mark Twain was a cynic and agnostic, and wrote "The Mysterious Stranger" and "What Is Man?" When I was younger I wrote humorous matter—satire and light verse—and was known to many as a jester and parodist. … But I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest—the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 54
Non-Fiction

God, Truth, World, Sadness

“I, who have defended many prisoners of conscience such as the seven imprisoned Baha'i leaders and others, would face unacceptable restrictions on my human rights work if I returned to Iran, if I were not arrested, now my own lawyer - who also represents many other activists - is detained, and her lawyer has been threatened with arrest for defending her. Where is the justice if your lawyer is arrested for defending you?”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

About the arrest of Nasrin Sotoudeh. Iran: Lawyers' defence work repaid with loss of freedom, 1 October 2010, Human Rights Watch, 26 April 2011, https://www.webcitation.org/6BiSr3nos, 26 October 2012 https://www.hrw.org/fr/news/2010/10/01/iran-lawyers-defence-work-repaid-loss-freedom,

Justice

“So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

Children, Way, Nature, Parent

Quotes about many page 7

Quotes about many
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