Quotes about many
page 70

““The rules that society chooses to live by have always struck me as especially fascinating,” she said. “There are things one can do but not talk about, and there are things one can talk about but not do. There are things—not apparently gender-related—that men can do, but not women, and there are things women can do, but not men. We live in an invisible maze, and we have all learned where to turn and when, so as to find our way through.”
“Some of the rules are good, Mary, and many are necessary,” Lord Darcy said mildly.
“You misunderstood me, my dear,” Mary of Cumberland told him. “As in magic, where there are absolutely essential words to say and gestures to make or the spell won’t work; so in society there are absolutely essential words to say and gestures to make or we won’t understand each other or trust each other, and it will all come tumbling down around us. The problem is that the rules of society, unlike magic, have never been formalized mathematically, and we don’t know which words are essential to the spell and which are just silly words.””

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 132)

Women, Men, Way, Mathematics

“That she [France] has anything to fear from Germany in the future which we can foresee, except what she may herself provoke, is a delusion. When Germany has recovered her strength and pride, as in due time she will, many years must pass before she again casts her eyes Westwards. Germany's future now lies to the East, and it is in that direction her hopes and ambitions, when they revive, will certainly turn.”

John Maynard Keynes book A Revision of the Treaty

A Revision of the Treaty (London: Macmillan, 1922), p. 186

Fear, Hope, Time, Future

“You can see, therefore, that as a life story mine does not matter much. As a means, however, of proving certain facts which I know to be essential to the future happiness and progress of humanity—the fact of the Masters, the unfolding future for which the world war (just ended) is but a preparatory stage, and the possibility of telepathic and direct spiritual contacts and knowledge—what I say may prove to be of service. Many isolated mystics, disciples and aspiring men and women down the ages have known all these things. The time has now come when the masses of men everywhere must know them too.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Introduction
The Unfinished Autobiography (1951)

Life, Women, Men, War

“Many grand notions and titles have over time attached themselves to this place: a paradise at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s richest floral kingdom, a maritime fulcrum between West and East, a European outpost at the foot of the continent, the Tavern of the Seas. But the two names that are the most potent are also two of the earliest: the contradictory claims of this being both a Cape of Storms and a Cape of Good Hope. The tension between these ideas encapsulates many of the tensions of this city.
Legend has it that the first Portuguese navigator to round the southern tip of Africa, Bartolomeu Dias, named this stormy peninsula Cabo das Tormentas. However, King João II rejected Dias’s name in favour of one that would be more inspirational for the Portuguese people: Cabo da Boa Esperança. The turning point for the Lusitanian caravels would spell untold riches in the East. But the dialectic between the two contending titles is as virile today in a city whose promise is limitless and whose socio-political storms act as a sea anchor.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

People, World, Hope, Idea

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life, Men, Books, Family

“In order to provide the German housewife, above all mothers of many children…with tangible relief from her burdens, the Fuhrer has commissioned me to bring into the Reich from the eastern territories some four to five hundred thousand select, healthy, and strong girls.”

Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) German general

1942. Quoted in "Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs" - Page 221 - by Albert Speer - 1970.

Children, Girl, Strong

“For the present at least [1909] I shall restrict my work to the ordinary world of the senses, since that is the world in which we still live. But nevertheless art even now form a transition to the finer regions, which perhaps I am incorrect in calling spiritual, for everything that has form is not yet spiritual, as I read somewhere. But it is nonetheless the path of ascension away from matter. Well dear Querido, with many heartfelt wishes, Piet Mondriaan.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote from Mondrian's letter to Israel Querido, Summer of 1909; published in the weekly magazine 'De Controleur' 23 Oct, 1909; as cited in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 36
1900's

World, Art, Sense, Reading

“Many of our services cost more than do similar services in Europe, because, although we have a substantial quantitative deficiency of public services, the decision-takers and policy-makers, both inside and outside Government as I have said before today, being themselves from the better-off (to use a popular euphemism) sectors of our society, not only demand the highest standards of provision of public services to meet what they consider their own essential needs (for example, in public car parks); but also find it difficult to think of provision for the rest of the population in terms of standards relative to our real total resources.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 24, 1966, page 72.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Cars, Thinking, Decision

“Film is such an extraordinary rich medium which can handle so many different modes of operation, combining together in the same place all these extraordinary disciplines which may be executed in their own right -- music, writing, picture making of all kinds, and I often feel that some filmmakers make films with one eye closed and two hands tied behind their backs.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

Music, Feeling

“The idea of the unconscious mental processes was, in many of its aspects, conceivable around 1700, topical around 1800, and became effective around 1900, thanks to the imaginative efforts of a large number of individuals of varied interests in many lands.”

Lancelot Law Whyte book The Unconscious Before Freud

The Unconscious Before Freud (1967)

Imagination, Idea, Effort

“Upon this Occasion many Methods have been invented of secret Writing, or Writing in Cipher, a Thing heretofore scarce known to any but the Secretaries of Princes, or others of like Condition; but of late Years, during our Commotions and civill Wars in England, grown very common and familiar, so that now there is scarce a Person of Quality, but is more or lesse acquainted with it, and doth as there is Occasion, make use of it.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

War, Secret, Personality

“It has always been my dream in life to help as many people as possible. That dream and many more have come true for me and my family, and I find my greatest rewards come from sharing what I have received with others. Emilio and I established this foundation to expand our charitale work in an effort ot help those less fortunate. Our focus with the foundation has always been to help the many inidividuals whose challenges have fallen through the cracks of the traditional charitable organizations.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

announcment of February 9, 2007, fundraising gala benefit, including a dinner and concert at the Estefans' residence on Star Island, near Miami, Florida, for the Brain Institute at Miami Children's Hospital (cbs4.com January 16, 2007)
2007, 2008

Life, People, Family, Dreams

“Subject…. no specific scene but many incidents. – The first word I spoke was Argula – it has no meaning. I was then five years old. Thus I called this painting 'Argula' as I was entering a new period closer to my instincts.
(Technique..:) Hundreds and hundreds of layers of paint to obtain the weight of reality – Art this period I measured by weight. [mid 1930's]”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

in his reply to Questionnaires of the MOMA museum, 1941
Gorky's quote refers on his multi-layered painting technique Gorky applied those days
1930 - 1941

Art, Reality, Painting

“Her face is bent out of shape, but still recognizable. There are too many teeth in her mouth, now. It is torn open at the sides. Split along her cheeks, so the weird jagged stones of her teeth can breathe.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

One Bloody Thing After Another

“Since it seems to be the nature of man that he wants to go to hell as quickly as possible, it is not surprising that effective base rhetoricians can greatly accelerate this process for millions. … Many individuals try to drive men into slavery, as if they were cattle, but only a few succeed. These we hail as “great historical figures.” I submit that we cannot judge the noble rhetorician by this standard. Since he urges men to be better than they are, the noble rhetorician cannot possibly succeed in changing those who prefer to remain as they are or become evil. Indeed, because his task is to bring men to themselves, not to him, the noble rhetorician ought not to be judged by his manifest effect on others at all. Rather, he ought to be judged by the clarity and steadfastness with which he proclaims his counsel. Should not a single person heed his advice, the noble rhetorician would still have to be judged successful in proportion as he succeeds in perfecting his own language. … In the final analysis, what Karl Kraus sought was to purify himself by purifying his own language. He achieved his goal. He dies a semantic saint in a semantically satanic society.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: Anti-Freud (1990), pp. 56-57.

Men, Hell, Nature, Evil

“It is universally agreed, that custom, in time, becomes a second nature, forcing men to use that, whether good or bad, to which they have been habituated; in fact, we see habit, in many instances, gain the ascendency over reason. This is so undeniably true, that, virtuous men, by keeping company with wicked, often fall into the same vicious course of life. Seeing and considering all this, I have decided to write on the vice of intemperance, in eating and drinking. Now, though all are agreed, that intemperance is the parent of gluttony, and sober living the offspring of abstemiousness, yet, owing to the power of custom, the former is considered a virtue, and the latter as mean and avaricious, and so many men are blinded and besotted to such a degree, that they come to the age of forty or fifty, burdened with strange and painful infirmities, which render them decrepit and useless, whereas, had they lived temperately and soberly, they would in all probability, have been sound and hearty, to the age of eighty and upwards.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

Life, Men, Pain, Age

“Today that rarely happens. Most often the songs are used as a relief. They have nothing to do with the film per say. And all look almost the same. Just replace the central characters and a step here and there…choreography remains the same in most cases. So does the beat. We have so many classical dances and folk dances in the country but nobody seems to be using them.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

Dance, Country

“General systems theory deals with the most fundamental concepts and aspects of systems. Many theories dealing with more specific types of systems (e. g., dynamical systems, automata, control systems, game-theoretic systems, among many others) have been under development for quite some time. General systems theory is concerned with the basic issues common to all these specialized treatments. Also, for truly complex phenomena, such as those found predominantly in the social and biological sciences, the specialized descriptions used in classical theories (which are based on special mathematical structures such as differential or difference equations, numerical or abstract algebras, etc.) do not adequately and properly represent the actual events. Either because of this inadequate match between the events and types of descriptions available or because of the pure lack of knowledge, for many truly complex problems one can give only the most general statements, which are qualitative and too often even only verbal. General systems theory is aimed at providing a description and explanation for such complex phenomena.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic and Y. Takahare (1975) General Systems Theory, Mathematical foundations. Academic Press. Cited in: Franz Pichler, Roberto Moreno Diaz (1993. Computer Aided Systems Theory. p. 134

Game, Mathematics, Knowledge, Problem

“Two things a master commits to his servant's care — the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, "Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost." Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. "Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little. care and thought about it."”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 560.

God, Soul, Clothes

“Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 2, section 11.
The Cunning Man (1994)

Love, People, Art, Universe

“Before the Industrial Revolution all techniques in use were supported by very narrow epistemic bases. That is to say, the people who invented them did not have much of a clue as to why and how they worked. The pre-1750 world produced, and produced well. It made many path-breaking inventions. But it was a world of engineering without mechanics, iron-making without metallurgy, farming without soil science, mining without geology, water-power without hydraulics, dye-making without organic chemistry, and medical practice without microbiology and immunology. The main point to keep in mind here is that such a lack of an epistemic base does not necessarily preclude the development of new techniques through trial and error and simple serendipity. But it makes the subsequent wave of micro-inventions that adapt and improve the technique and create the sustained productivity growth much slower and more costly. If one knows why some device works, it becomes easier to manipulate and debug it, to adapt to new uses and changing circumstances. Above all, one knows what will not work and thus reduce the costs of research and experimentation.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Joel Mokyr, " The knowledge society: Theoretical and historical underpinnings http://ehealthstrategies.comnehealthstrategies.comnxxx.ehealthstrategies.com/files/unitednations_mokyr.pdf." AdHoc Expert Group on Knowledge Systems, United Nations, NY. 2003.

People, World, Error, Support

“One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti-smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers”

Robert N. Proctor (1954) American historian

Robert N. Proctor, " The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-45 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2352989/pdf/bmj00571-0040.pdf." BMJ: British Medical Journal 313.7070 (1996): 1450.

World, Support

“The two men who lived there were father & son – that his name was Maretts [perhaps Maritz] … We gave him some tracts which he received with great pleasure – observing this we asked if he had a bible, he feelingly answered no, and that when he was last in the Cape about two years ago he was about purchasing a bible, but he found he had not as many dollars with him as would pay for it. Mr. Moffat immediate brought his octavo bible from which he preached and presented it to him. He hugged the bible in his arms with the apparent affection as if it has been his own child. I mentioned that it would show him the way to heaven, which he said he believed it would do. Nothing which I witnessed on the journey delighted me more than the manner in which the father and son acted towards this copy of the scriptures. After the evening worship was over they carried the treasure in triumph to their home.”

John Campbell (missionary)

Campbell's recollection in 1819 after a visit to Swellendam, quoted in Die Wêreld van Susanna Smit, 1799–1863, Schoeman (1995)

Men, Pleasure, Way, Home

“Hitler had a great dislike for the Danes for the following reason: the Danish king had been congratulated by Hitler on his birthday, and the king answered cryptically with 'Many thanks.' Hitler was said to have had an attack of rage. And ever since then Hitler hated Denmark.”

Rudolf Mildner (1902) Chief of the Gestapo at Katowice

To Leon Goldensohn (12 February 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Hate, Birthday, Rage

“We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, p. 57

World, Understanding, Knowledge

“The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many moods I especially cherish the chin commanding, the chin in doubt, and the chin at bay.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

Curtains (1961)

Mood

“News of the atrocities, which have recently been perpetrated by the Turkish king in Constantinople and have now been divulged, has so inflamed a man [Cusa himself] who once saw that region, with zeal for God, that amongst many sighs he asked the Creator of all things if in His kindness He might moderate the persecution, which raged more than usual on account of diverse religious rites. Then it occurred that after several days—indeed on account of lengthy, continuous meditation—a vision was manifested to the zealous man, from which he concluded that it would be possible, through the experience of a few wise men who are well acquainted with all the diverse practices which are observed in religions across the world, to find a unique and propitious concordance, and through this to constitute a perpetual peace in religion upon the appropriate and true course.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Men, God, World, Peace

“Just like the threat of mutually assured destruction from nuclear weapons, an extensive war in space would make space useless, and the decisions taken today will influence the use of space for many generations to come.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Meta-Geopolitics of Outer Space - (2012) p.285

War, Decision

“We all walk softly away.
We would stay and be the nurse but
there are too many of us and we are too worried to help.
It is love that walks away
and yet we have terrible mouths
and soft milk hands.
We worry with like.
We walk away like love.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"To Like, To Love"
Poems 1971-1973 (1981)

Love, Help

“My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts. So was the kid next door, and so was the kid next door. It was just the way it was. Many of the children I've seen were broken by their parents, which was the German-Austrian mentality. Break the will. They didn't want to create an individual…. It was all about conforming. I was one who did not conform and whose will could not be broken. Therefore I became a rebel. Every time I got hit, and every time someone said, 'You can't do this,' I said, 'This is not going to be for much longer, because I'm going to move out of here… of course, I had no plan how.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Fortune magazine (August 2004).
2000s

Children, Way, Parent, Time

“The domination of becoming produces another sort of fragmentation, which may be called “presentism.” Allen Tate has made the point that many modern people to whom the word “provincial” is anathema are themselves provincials in the to an extreme degree. Indeed, modernism is in essence a provincialism, since it declines to look beyond the horizon of the moment, just as a countryman may view with suspicion whatever lies beyond his country.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 67.

People, Country

“Nothing is so difficult to change as the traditional habits of a free people in regard to such things. Such changes may be easily made in despotic countries like Russia, or in countries where notwithstanding theoretical freedom the government and the police are all powerful as in France… Can you expect that the people of the United Kingdom will cast aside all the names of space and weight and capacity which they learnt from their infancy and all of a sudden adopt an unmeaning jargon of barbarous words representing ideas and things new to their minds. It seems to me to be a dream of pedantic theorists… I see no use however in attempting to Frenchify the English nation, and you may be quite sure that the English nation will not consent to be Frenchified. There are many conceited men who think that they have given an unanswerable argument in favour of any measure they may propose by merely saying that it has been adopted by the French. I own that I am not of that school, and I think the French have much to gain by imitating us than we have to gain by imitating them. The fact is there are a certain set of very vain men like Ewart and Cobden who not finding in things as they are here, the prominence of position to which they aspire, think that they gain a step by oversetting any of our arrangements great or small and by holding up some foreign country as an object of imitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Thomas Milner Gibson (5 May 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 507.
1860s

Men, People, School, Dreams

“Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks. This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry…. [The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it…. in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto… —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

I. Bernard Cohen, Preface to Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton (1952)

World, Imagination, Nature, Problem

“Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 44
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

Men, World, Law, Fashion

“Ever since Darwin tied knots between human beings and the rest of the animal world, many people have frantically attempted to untie them again, declaring that even though our roots are in the animal world we have left them so far behind as to make any comparisons utterly meaningless. To some extent this is true, because the quality that makes us unique in the biological kingdom is the enormous capacity to learn.”

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

Origins (1977)

People, World, Learning, Animals

“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 562–569
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Wisdom

“Towns should be laid out not as an exact square nor with salient angles, but in circular form, to give a view of the enemy from many points. Defense is difficult where there are salient angles because the angle protects the enemy rather than the inhabitants.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter V, Sec. 2

“I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all my fellow mortals.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Terry Gifford, LLO, page 696
1900s, Stickeen (1909)

Life, Wisdom, Dogs, Light

“But that is the way of the place: down our many twisting corridors, one encounters story after story, some heroic, some villainous, some true, some false, some funny, some tragic, and all of them combining to form the mystical, undefinable entity we call the school. Not exactly the building, not exactly the faculty or the students or the alumni — more than all those things but also less, a paradox, an order, a mystery, a monster, an utter joy.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 9, A Pedagogical Disagreement, II

School, Way, Joy, Falseness

“How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)

“You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

Patrick McDonald (October 13, 1988) "David Lee Roth: Outrageous or normal?", The Advertiser.

Music, Star, Learning, Drawing

“Many mellow Cydonian suckets
Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine,
From the ruby-rimmed beryline buckets
Star-gemmed, lily-shaped, hyaline;
Like the sweet golden goblet found growing
On the wild emerald cucumber-tree,
Rich, brilliant, like chrysophrase glowing
Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee.”

Thomas Holley Chivers (1809–1858) 19th century American poet

Rosalie Lee.

Beauty, Star, Tree

“French spoliation claims. During the last session of the Congress legislation was introduced looking to the payment of the remaining claims generally referred to as the French spoliation claims. The Congress has provided for the payment of many similar claims. Those that remain unpaid have been long pending. The beneficiaries thereunder have every reason to expect payment. These claims have been examined by the Court of Claims and their validity and amount determined. The United States ought to pay its debts. I recommend action by the Congress which will permit of the payment of these remaining claims.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

“Yes, secularism does propose a physical and purposeless universe, and many (but not all) of us accept the notion that our sense of self is a neuronal illusion. But although the universe is purposeless, our lives aren’t. This conflation of a purposeless universe (i. e., one not created for a specific reason) with purposeless human lives is a trick that the faithful use to make atheism seem nihilistic and dark. But we make our own purposes, and they’re real. Right now my purpose is to write this piece, and then I’ll work on a book, and later I’ll have dinner with a friend. Soon I’ll go to Poland to visit more friends. Maybe later I’ll read a nice book and learn something. Those are real purposes, not illusory purposes to which Douthat wants us to devote our only life.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Douthat on the rampage against secularism, gets it all wrong http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/douthat-on-the-rampage-against-secularism-gets-it-all-wrong/" December 23, 2013

Life, Books, Faith, Sense

“I think many non-Jews don't realise the tremendous emotional heat that is involved here in the second half of the twentieth century. A heat that derives from the Holocaust. That is to say the destruction, the mass murder of the Jews in Eastern Europe where most of the Jews were. That both the Israelis and the Jews of the United States are the bereaved children of that population who were murdered. And the bond between the Jews of the United States and the people of Israel has the emotional intensity derived from that common bereavement. And that is what gives. I do understand that people resent the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country [the US], but that power derives from that elemental basic bond of the common bereavement and the horror that is there in the background. Therefore, Jews in the United States do react strongly – and that's what makes this a very powerful lobby, and it is – they do react strongly to anything that seems to them to threaten the connection of the United States in Israel, which is Israel's lifeline. They see this as threatening. This may be an exaggerated fear, but always there is the shadow there of a possible new Holocaust. Israel overrun. The people of Israel massacred again.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008) Irish politician

C-SPAN (March 26 1986).

Children, People, Fear, Understanding

“In an ever-advancing spiral the public was made to believe that only Hollywood-style extravaganzas were worth seeing and that only they could give an accurate sense of the world of art. The resulting box-office pressure made the museums still more dependent on corporate funding. Then came the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s. Many individual donors could no longer contribute at the accustomed rate, and inflation eroded the purchasing power of funds. To compound the financial problems, many governments, facing huge deficits—often due to sizable expansions of military budgets—cut their support for social services as well as their arts funding. Again museums felt they had no choice but to turn to corporation for a bail-out.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

1980s, "Museums, Managers of Consciousness," 1983

World, Art, Support, Problem

“Operations research has many precursors and allied fields, including Taylorism (after Frederick W. Taylor), scientific management and management science, industrial engineering and systems analysis. As one early textbook explained, the roots of OR "are as old as science and the management function. Its name dates back only to 1940" (Churchman et al. 1957: 3). Certainly its practitioners have expended much energy and ink in search of an acceptable definition of OR. Morse tried unsuccessfully to halt the debate by declaring OR to be 'the activity carried on by members of the Operations Research Society' (Morse 1953: 159) But his colleagues were not so easily dissuaded from debate. Much of the concern with definition focused on the sometimes elusive distinctions between OR and neighbouring fields; the attempt to define, or redefine, OR was also born of the desire to allow the subject to evolve beyond the orthodoxy of wartime experience. Crucial considerations included the balance between model and application, and the complexity of the mathematics involved.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Source: Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences (2003), p. 841.

Search, Mathematics, Science

“Too many christians have been chargeable with… confounding the Logos of Plato with that of John, and making of it a second person in the trinity, than which no two things can be more different.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Personality

“(William Berger) was a guy who had everything. He was handsome, knew how to act. He could have gone all the way to the top. But he got mixed up with drugs. I got a couple of parts because he was busy or he was arrested. When I made that Crea film, Berger had just been arrested because somebody had left drugs in his place, on the Costa Amalfi. His wife died in prison. I didn't get along with him because he was too hippy or what they call it, and I'm square! I don't drink, I don't smoke, and that's the way it is…But I knew so many psychedelic sophisticates in the early 1950s in Paris, that I just have my problems with them.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Way, Guy, Drink, Business

“Immediately I felt the weight of my deficiencies, and realized how polluted my consciousness had become. The voice continued speaking, giving me a welcome distraction.
“Despite your many deficiencies, I have been drawn to you by the intensity of your greed and desperation for transcendence. In fact, I have been sanctioned by higher authority to reveal your shortcomings to you. I therefore beg you to listen closely, for this is a rare opportunity that may not come again for many lifetimes.””

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

“I braced myself for a rude awakening…”
?
Books, The Beggar, Volume II: Crying Out for the Mercy (Hari-Nama Press, 1998)

“I’m a member of the Pascua Yaqui Nation and as an indigenous person, the fur trade represents so much more to me than just animal abuse. It represents cultural genocide. They were the foot soldiers of an invasion and conquest in the “new world.” They were the ones who introduced disease. They were the ones who introduced alcoholism. They were the ones who introduced gunpowder and many, many things that led to our decimation.”

Rod Coronado (1966) Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist

A Voice for Liberation http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/video/msr/coronado.html

Alcohol, World, Disease, Animals

“The excitement I underwent before the bout was something I’ll never forget. For a week I trained extra hard. I ran extra long distances. Every night when I went to bed I dreamed I was fighting. It was so clear – I would be going at it hot and heavy, then I would bring over a right hand and he would go down, the fight was over. Then the fight began. Here all the nervousness went out of me. I was doing what I wanted to do. It all seemed like something I had done many times before. And you know what? In the third round, just as I dreamed, I hit him with a hard right hand. Down he went and he didn’t get up. I had knocked him out.”

Eder Jofre (1936) Brazilian boxer

Jofre, E. Boxing & Wrestling. Vol 2, No 9. March 1963, Page 17, Why I am the Strongest Little Champ.

Dreams, Time, Fight, Training

“Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

As quoted in Morning of the Magicians (1963) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Berger, p. 181

Universe, Chance

“It’s been said many times in world art writing that one can find some of painting’s meaning by looking not only at what painters do, but what they refuse to do.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

1940 - 1955
Source: Contemporary American Painting, University of Illinois, Urbana 1952, p. 226

World, Art, Time, Painting

“A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one. The last redoubt holding out for me was the year-day principle (on which I had written a defense in 1972 for the Southern Publishing Association Daniel volume which was published in 1978). This collapsed when I handled hundreds of books of commentary on Revelation in the Library of Congress stacks and found that the respective authors had in many cases suggested dates that seemed appropriate for their own time but ridiculous later. It became clear that we, as Adventists, had done the same as our predecessors.”

Desmond Ford (1929–2019) Australian theologian

Desmond Ford on His Previous Defense of the Year Day Principle http://www.atoday.com/content/desmond-ford-his-previous-defense-year-day-principle", Adventist Today, 2006

Books, Fools, Change, Time

“Dynamic restlessness and concern with time would appear to go with high w Achievement and static "classicism" with low n Achievement, but on closer examination many flaws in the analogy are evident.”

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

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 301

Appearance, Time

“[I believe in Oliver Cromwell] because he was a great fighting Dissenter. He was perhaps the first statesman to recognize that as soon as the Government became a democracy the Churches became directly responsible for any misgovernment. His great idea was to make Christ's law the law of the land, and any obstacle to this he ruthlessly swept away. How he would have dealt with Romish practices now! He said to the priest who babbled his Paternosters in Peterborough Cathedral, "Leave off your fooling and come down, sir." There was the man for the Ritualists (cheers)— worth a wagon-load of Bishops. How he would have dealt with the House of Lords! From the House of Commons he would have removed many a bauble, and he would have shaken his head and said, "The Lord deliver us from Joseph Chamberlain."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches at the City Temple, London (25 April 1899) for the 300th anniversary of Oliver Cromwell's birth, quoted in The Times (26 April 1899), p. 12.
Backbench MP

Law, Fools, Democracy, Idea

“We see the same lack of critical thinking and inconsistency in our privacy with regard to government spying and Fourth Amendment and search and seizure issues. There are a number of issues where Americans — and I have to say conservatives — are like sheep, and they’re sheep being led to the slaughter without critically examining what it is that the government is doing and what it is that their government is allowing big corporations that are "too big to fail" to do to us. This is no different than the mortgage crisis, and some other crises in our country where some companies are just too big to fail, and they have spread so much money in so many people’s pockets on both sides of the aisle that there’s nobody left to speak for the consumers.”

Harmeet Dhillon (1969) American lawyer

Exclusive – Harmeet Dhillon: Silicon Valley ‘Actively Trying to Blacklist’ Conservatives ‘Through Some Hiring Engines’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2018/04/20/dhillon-silicon-valley-actively-trying-blacklist-conservatives-hiring-engines/ (April 19, 2018)

Money, People, Search, Thinking

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

http://books.google.com/books?id=VsMLYjEsyaEC&pg=PA446
Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446 (Beacon Press paperback edition)
1930s

History

“Opening my first Donald Duck comic book felt like seeing the daylight again for someone who had been trapped underground by a mine-disaster for many days. I squinted cautiously because my eyes hadn't gotten used to the dazzlingly bright sun of Duckburg yet, and I greedily sucked the fresh breeze into my dusty lungs that came drifting over from Uncle Scrooge's money bin. I was back home again, in a decent world where one could get flattened by steam-rollers and perforated by bullets without serious harm. A world in which people still looked proper, with yellow beaks or black knobs instead of noses. And it was here that I met the man who would forever change my life - Donald Duck.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Memories of Duckburg, http://www.helnwein.com/texte/helnweintexts/artikel_398.html, Zeit Magazin, Hamburg, 1989

Life, Money, People, Books

“Did not Nietzsche too warn of that “life-destroying enlightenment” that touches on our life-supporting self-delusions? Can we afford to shake up the “basic fictions” of privacy, personality, and identity? Be that as it may, in this question both old and new conservatives have come to the hard decision to take the “stance” of defending, against all the demands of reflection, their “unavoidable lies for living,” without which self-preservation would not be possible. That they are aided in this by the general fear of self-experience, which competes with curiosity about self-experience, does not have to be expressly emphasized. Thus the theater of respectable, closed egos goes on everywhere, even where the means have long been available to secure better knowledge. Crosswise to all political fronts, it is the “ego” in society that offers the most resolute resistance against the decisive enlightenment. Scarcely anyone will put up with radical self-reflection on this point, not even many of those who regard themselves as enlighteners.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 60

Life, Fear, Question, Support

“Deeply as many people deplored the policy which at a critical moment in European history gave Hitler a free hand in the East to develop his ambitious schemes of domination, strongly opposed as we were to many features of the Soviet system, we had no hesitation in proclaiming that as enemies of our enemies we should do all we could to help the Russian people in their fight. … It was not unlikely that Hitler hoped to be able to launch from Moscow a great peace offensive. He would like to proclaim himself the saviour of Europe from Bolshevism. … He would deceive no one in the Government. The great mass of the people in this country and in the countries of the British Commonwealth and Empire would not be deceived. We would not make peace with the Nazi gang because such a peace would be no peace. It would be a betrayal of everything for which this country stood.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Neath, South Wales (13 July 1941) after the German invasion of Russia, quoted in The Times (14 July 1941), p. 2.
War Cabinet

People, Peace, Hope, History

“The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process.”

Richard Middleton British musicologist

[Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ISBN 0631212639, Middleton, Richard, 1999]

Music, Time, Country

“I desired as many as could to join together in fasting and prayer, that God would restore the spirit of love and of a sound mind to the poor deluded rebels in America.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Journal entry (1 August 1777), published in The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley (1827), p. 104
General sources

Love, God

“Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

Men, Age, Evil

“"I don't think I would be too comfortable with many of his compliments… He's a butcher!" "More than that, my friend… he is a warmaster. And that makes him a master butcher."”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 21

Thinking

“In one inconceivably complex cosmos, whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the combination of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Anticipating the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics by 20 years.
Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XV: The Maker and His Works; 2. Mature Creating (p. 180)

History, Universe

“Machine-held strings of binary digits can simulate a great many kinds of things, of which numbers are just one kind. For example, they can simulate automobiles on a freeway, chess pieces, electrons in a box, musical notes, Russian words, patterns on a paper, human cells, colors, electrical circuits, and so on. To think of a computer as made up essentially of numbers is simply a carryover from the successful use of mathematical analysis in studying models. Most of this series of lectures has been devoted to applications of computers, and this is not the time to give details about their usefulness. I merely wish to point out certain types of things being done with computers today that could not have been done in 1945. Some of these are technological, some are intellectual.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

As cited in: Zenon Pylyshyn (1970) Perspectives on the computer revolution. p. 379
"Educational implications of the computer revolution," 1963

Music, Color, Mathematics, Thinking

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

This is presented as a statement of 1877, as quoted in From Telegraph to Light Bulb with Thomas Edison (2007) by Deborah Headstrom-Page, p. 22.
1800s

Success, Inspirational, Motivational, Wise

“The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people … have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

“The Last Ten Years,” Political Register (4 January 1812).

People

“Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children."”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), p. 213.
Criticism

Women, Men, Children, Age

“Aurangzeb’s religious policy had created a division in the Indian society. Communal antagonisms resulted in communal riots at Banaras, Narnaul (1672) and Gujarat (1681) where Hindus, in retaliation, destroyed mosques. Temples were destroyed in Marwar after 1678 and in 1680-81, 235 temples were destroyed in Udaipur. Prince Bhim of Udaipur retaliated by attacking Ahmadnagar and demolishing many mosques, big and small, there. Similarly, there was opposition to destruction of temples in the Amber territory, which was friendly to the Mughals. Here religious fairs continued to be held and idols publicly worshipped even after the temples had been demolished.64 In the Deccan the same policy was pursued with the same reaction. In April 1694, the imperial censor had tried to prevent public idol worship in Jaisinghpura near Aurangabad. The Vairagi priests of the temple were arrested but were soon rescued by the Rajputs.65 Aurangzeb destroyed temples throughout the country. He destroyed the temples at Mayapur (Hardwar) and Ayodhya, but “all of them are thronged with worshippers, even those that are destroyed are still venerated by the Hindus and visited by the offering of alms.” Sometimes he was content with only closing down those temples that were built in the midst of entirely Hindu population, and his officers allowed the Hindus to take back their temples on payment of large sums of money. “In the South, where he spent the last twenty-seven years of his reign, Aurangzeb was usually content with leaving many Hindu temples standing… in the Deccan where the suppression of rebellion was not an easy matter… But the discontent occasioned by his orders could not be thus brought to an end.””

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Hindu resistance to such vandalism year after year and decade after decade throughout the length and breadth of the country can rather be imagined than described.
Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 6

Money, Imagination, Communication, Country

“When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched.
And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

This last line has often been paraphrased: "You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them."
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer (1966)

Dogs, Dreams, Sense, Loss

“Physics, chemistry, astrophysics are obviously the ideal field for the tidy mind …in the biological and geological sciences the tidy mind often goes astray and the passive, unmathematical approach may me more suitable.
…The sciences that deal with natural process, geology or geography, or with life, zoology or botany, have an immensely more complicated task than physics or chemistry.
… A particular danger, I believe, lies in an oversimplified use of mathematical or statistical methods of investigation, in which obviously erroneous results may be obtained by a selection of only a few of many relevant factors to be considered.”

Claud William Wright (1917–2010) British paleontologist

From "Order and Disorder in Nature", 1958 Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 69, 2, 77-82.

Life, Mathematics, Nature, Science

“Too many. Things I do not care for But one thing that I adore. Is a girl like you.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

A Girl Like You
Song lyrics

Girl

“Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared are Catholic women, so ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for access to the healthcare we need.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Women, War

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

February 18, 2009.<br>Remarks at the Department of Justice African American History Month Program. http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090218.html <br class="br">2000s

Way, Feeling, History, Understanding

“Many people don’t realise just what a valuable lifeline libraries can be.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

People

“Why did it occur to anyone to believe in only one God? And conversely why did it ever occur to anyone to believe in many gods? To both these questions we must return the same answer: Because that is how the human mind happens to work. For the human mind is both diverse and simple, simultaneously many and one. We have an immediate perception of our own diversity and of that of the outside world. And at the same time we have immediate perceptions of our own oneness.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” p. 12
Do What You Will (1928)

God, World, Question, Time

“Earlier one person would do a sam and the audience ten feet away knew that a new tukda was about to begin but now fifty of us did the same movement with the same precision; the audience even two hundred feet away knew and understood. Yes, we connected to many because we were many presenting one. We simply enlarged ourselves by being many more of us and we engulfed the stage.”

Birju Maharaj (1938) Indian dancer

When he changed over from solo form to group ballet of synchronized action and rhythm thus creating a dynamic impact on the audience in [Raksha Bharadia, Me A Handbook For Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=J3BwcatTTZIC&pg=PT179, 2006, Rupa & Company, 978-81-291-1058-9, 179–]

Personality

“Asimov: Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. For example, what difference did it make to the people of the ancient world that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire? Obviously, that event made some difference to a lot of individuals. But if you look at humanity in general, you'll see that life went on pretty much as it had before the conquest.
On the other hand, consider the changes that were made in people's daily lives by the development of agriculture or the mariner's compass… and by the invention of gunpowder or printing. Better yet, look at recent history and ask yourself, "What difference would it have made if Hitler had won World War II?" Of course, such a victory would have made a great difference to many people. It would have resulted in much horror, anguish, and pain. I myself would probably not have survived.
But Hitler would have died eventually, and the effects of his victory would gradually have washed out and become insignificant—in terms of real change—when compared to such advances as the actual working out of nuclear power, the advent of television, or the invention of the jet plane.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, Pain, War, People

“The easiest and most popular way of practically refuting… any Fallacy is, by bringing forward a parallel case, where it leads to a manifest absurdity. A metaphysical objection may still be urged against many cases in which we thus reason from calculation of chances; an objection not likely indeed practically to influence any one, but which may afford the Sophist a triumph over those who are unable to find a solution.”

Richard Whately (1787–1863) English rhetorician, logician, economist, and theologian

Source: Elements of Rhetoric (1828), p. 52-53

Way, Chance

“You obviously never saw Wilt Chamberlain play who undoubtedly was the greatest scorer this game has ever known. When did MJ ever average 50.4 points per game plus 25.7 rebounds? (Wilt in the 1962 season when blocked shot statistics were not kept). We will never accurately know how many shots Wilt blocked. Oh, by the way in 1967 and 68, Wilt was a league leader in assists. Did MJ ever score 100 points in a game? How many times did MJ score more than 60 points in a game? MJ led the league in scoring in consecutive seasons for 10 years but he did this in an NBA that eventually expanded into 30 teams vs. when Wilt played and there were only 8 teams.”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in an open letter to Scottie Pippen after Scottie Pippen referred to Michael Jordan and Lebron James as the greatest scorer and greatest player, respectively. http://lakersblog.latimes.com/lakersblog/2011/05/kareem-abdul-jabbar-questions-scottie-pippens-argument-that-lebron-james-may-be-the-greatest-player-.html <br class="br">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Chamberlain

Way, Game, Time, Season

“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.”

William Bradford (1590–1657) English Separatist leader in Leiden, Holland and in Plymouth Colony (1590-1657)

Ch. 7.

Light

“If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 2, p. 8
Leviathan (1651)

Men, People, Fear, Dreams

“While Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of Web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. … even people inside the distortion field [at Apple] will begin to resent being told half a story.”

Jim Balsillie (1961) Canadian businessman

RIM's Balsillie Slams Jobs, Says Users Are 'Tired' of Apple http://pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371119,00.asp in PC Magazine (19 October 2010)

People, Thinking

“Of what value is the study of management?
The study of management has been omitted from the student's training until comparatively recently, for a very different reason than was psychology. It was never doubted that a knowledge of management would be of great value to anyone and everyone, and many were the queer schemes for obtaining that knowledge after graduation. It was doubted that management could be studied otherwise than by observation and practice. Few teachers, if any, believed in the existence, or possibility, of a teaching science of management. Management was assumed by many to be an art, by even more it was thought to be a divinely bestowed gift or talent, rather than an acquired accomplishment. It was common belief that one could learn to manage only by going out on the work and watching other managers, or by trying to manage, and not by studying about management in a class room or in a text book; that watching a good manager might help one, but no one could hope really to succeed who had not " the knack born in him."”

Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) American psychologist and industrial engineer

Source: Psychology of management, 1914, p. 2-3

Books, Hope, Art, Knowledge

“There are many special interests skilful at manipulating circumstances and communications in such a way as to benefit their own ends and not necessarily the public good.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Preface, p. 9
Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002)

Way, Communication

“If organized team sports develop managerial skills for a corporate setting, pickup team sports are more like training to be an entrepreneur… Pickup team sports are still about 99% male. That is, this form of preparation to be an entrepreneur is about 99% male socialization. I believe this is one of many contributors to why men who run their own business earn twice what their female counterparts earn.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 156.

Men, Business, Sport, Training

“UNICEF does amazing work. I thought I was a worldly person, and then I started working with them and realized I don’t know as much of my world as I need to. And if I don’t know as much about my world as I need to, then many, many, many people don’t. So I’m thrilled to be in a position to be able to talk about it. And so I’m gonna.
—'FLY (online) magazine, November, 2005 issue”

Clay Aiken (1978) singer-songwriter, actor, record producer

On Charity

People, World, Personality

“One of my many favorite tattoos I’ve seen of myself is from a photo shoot I did for the cover of a compilation called Punk Fiction that came out in the 90s. And my friend who was putting it together asked me to re-create the movie poster for Pulp Fiction with me in place of Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace on the bed smoking a cigarette with the wig on and everything. So I went in and did that and it was the cover of the record and posters were made. Since then I’ve seen a portrait tattoo of me as Mia Wallace. That’s my favorite. And that was years before I was publicly dressing as a woman, which I’ve been doing for years now onstage and off. I think Mia Wallace was just one of my earlier excuses to strut around in women’s clothing.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

http://web.archive.org/web/20101014172908/http://rocknrolltales.com/read/afi

Women, Photo, Thinking, Tattoo

“The Athenian empire lasted for fifty years at the most, and the stupendous creation of Alexander the Great for less. What has been the fate of succeeding imperialisms? That of Spain endured on the grand scale for little more than a century; that of Napoleon for a decade; the British Empire is less than two centuries old, and in its present form is a thing of yesterday. In the brief span of recorded history empires have had a shorter life than many monarchies, theocracies, and even republics. The Augustan alone reached a venerable age. In the coming of Christianity it had to face the greatest of all historic convulsions, but such was its potency that it weathered the storm and influenced profoundly the organization of the Christian church.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

Life, Fate, Age, History

“2591. If I leave thee a moderate Fortune, as my Father left me, and thou provest wise and virtuous, it will be sufficient. It's none of the least of God's Favours, that Wealth comes not trolling in upon us; for many of us should have been worse, if our Estates had been better.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

These precepts were first collected as advice for Fuller's son John.
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1751) : Many a Man would have been worse, if his Estate had been better.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

God, Wealth