Quotes about master
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George William Curtis photo

“In the end the question is: Who is to be master, man or his machines? As long as the control over technology rests primarily on economic calculation, the victor is not likely to be man.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter III, part 10, The Mastery of Technology, p. 161

Antoni Tàpies photo
Kim Il-sung photo

“The people are the masters of the revolution in each country. It is like putting a cart before the horse that foreigners carry out the revolution for them. The revolution can neither be exported nor imported.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Quoted in Kim Il Sung, Master of Leadership (1976) by Takagi Takeo

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Patrick Pearse photo
Mani Madhava Chakyar photo
George William Curtis photo

“Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense!' was the reply, 'that's all very well in theory, but it doesn't work so. The returning of slaves amounts to nothing in fact. All that is obsolete. And why make all this row? Can't you hush? We've nothing to do with slavery, we tell you. We can't touch it; and if you persist in this agitation about a mere form and theory, why, you're a set of pestilent fanatics and traitors; and if you get your noisy heads broken, you get just what you deserve'. And they quoted in the faces of the abolitionists the words of Governor Edward Everett, who was not an authority with them, in that fatal inaugural address, 'The patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invited to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave'. It was as if some kindly Pharisee had said to Christ, 'Don't try to cast out that evil spirit; it may rend the body on departing'. Was it not as if some timid citizen had said, 'Don't say hard things of intemperance lest the dram-shops, to spite us, should give away the rum'? And so the battle raged. The abolitionists dashed against slavery with passionate eloquence like a hail of hissing fire. They lashed its supporters with the scorpion whip of their invective. Ambition, reputation, ortune, ease, life itself they threw upon the consuming altar of their cause. Not since those earlier fanatics of freedom, Patrick Henry and James Otis, has the master chord of human nature, the love of liberty, been struck with such resounding power. It seemed in vain, so slowly their numbers increased, so totally were they outlawed from social and political and ecclesiastical recognition. The merchants of Boston mobbed an editor for virtually repeating the Declaration of Independence. The city of New York looked on and smiled while the present United States marshal insulted a woman as noble and womanly and humane as Florence Nightingale. In other free States men were flying for their lives; were mobbed, seized, imprisoned, maimed, murdered; but still as, in the bitter days of Puritan persecution in Scotland, the undaunted voices of the Covenanters were heard singing the solemn songs of God that echoed and re-echoed from peak to peak of the barren mountains, until the great dumb wilderness was vocal with praise — so in little towns and great cities were heard the uncompromising voices of these men sternly intoning the majestic words of the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, which echoed from solitary heart to heart until the whole land rang with the litany of liberty.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Neil Gaiman photo
Juan Donoso Cortés photo
Gino Severini photo

“.. it was Seurat who first and most successfully established a balance between subject, composition and technique.... the modern world that Seurat wished to paint... I understood his importance as soon as I arrived in Paris [1906]... I chose Seurat as my master for once and for all.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 35; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 12

George Holmes Howison photo
Malachi photo

“A son honors his father,
And a servant his master.
If then I am the Father,
Where is my honor?
And if I am a Master,
Where is My reverence?”

Malachi Biblical prophet

Source: Book of Malachi, Chapter 1, Verse 6, Lines 1-6 (NKJV)

Henry Charles Beeching photo

“First come I; my name is Jowett.
There's no knowledge but I know it.
I am master of this college:
What I don't know isn't knowledge.”

Henry Charles Beeching (1859–1919) English clergyman, author and poet

The Masque of Balliol http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2735.html (1880)

Philip Massinger photo
John Buchan photo

“He who would valiant be against all disaster;
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent;
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

This has appeared on the internet attributed to Buchan, but is actually John Bunyan, as quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (2001) by Martin H. Manser
Misattributed

Edgar Degas photo

“I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament — temperament is the word — I know nothing.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas in conversation with George Moore, later quoted by Moore in Impressions and Opinions (1891)
1876 - 1895

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an inclined plain, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he had previously determined to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or when, in later times, Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime again into metals, by withdrawing and restoring something, a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were in leading strings, because otherwise accidental observations made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature, in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil, who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. Therefore even the science of physics entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its character to the happy thought, that we ought to seek in nature (and not import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason must learn from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason itself has originally placed into nature. Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the dark.”

Preface to 2nd edition, Tr. F. Max Müller (1905)
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“Corps, division, and post commanders will afford all facilities for the completion of the Negro regiments now organizing in this department. Commissioners will issue supplies, and quarter-masters will furnish stores, on the same requisitions and returns as are required for other troops. It is expected that all commanders will especially exert themselves in carrying out the policy of the Administration, not only in organizing colored regiments and rendering them efficient, but also in removing prejudices against them.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Order to corps, division, and post commanders https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%22but+also+in+removing+prejudices+against+them%22+%22grant%22&source=bl&ots=zG336mXnGl&sig=GPSCXL3D9zfrVo9I7G2ZcBv2j_o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA2oVChMI3KSiwcSkxwIVi6CACh1v9gF-#v=onepage&q=%22but%20also%20in%20removing%20prejudices%20against%20them%22%20%22grant%22&f=false, Milliken's Bend, Louisiana.
1860s

“These words are being written in reply to the verbal message sent by you. I have been asked (by you) to tell (you) about suppression of the rebellion of Jats in the environs of Delhi.
The fact is that this recluse (meaning himself) has witnessed in the occult world the downfall of the Jats in the same way as that of the Marhatahs. I have also seen it in a dream that Muslims have taken possession of the forts and the country of the Jats, and that Muslims have become masters of those forts and that country as in the past. Most probably, the Ruhelas will occupy those Jat forts. This has been determined and decided in the most secret world. This recluse has not the shadow of a doubt about that. But the way that victory will be achieved is not yet clear. What is needed is prayers from those special servants of Allah who have been chosen for this purpose.
…But keep one thing in your mind, namely, that the Hindus who are apparently in your’s and your government’s employ, are inclined towards the enemies in their hearts. They do not want that the enemies be exterminated. They will try a thousand tricks in this matter, and endeavour in every way to show to your honour that the path of peace is more profitable.
Make up your mind not to listen to this group (the Hindu employees). If you disregard their advice, you will reach the height of fulfilment. This recluse knows of this (fulfilment) as if he is seeing it with his own eyes.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Najibuddaulah Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 106-07.
From his letters

Al-Biruni photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Vitruvius photo
George Eliot photo
David Pogue photo

“For the last 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, "Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it."”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" State of the Art: Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/technology/personaltech/09pogue.html?emc=eta1," The New York Times, July 09, 2009.

Mikhail Bulgakov photo
Kenneth E. Iverson photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
William Stubbs photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo
Sam Manekshaw photo

“I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla, although a great many resemble the latter.”

Sam Manekshaw (1914–2008) First Field marshal of the Indian Army

His view on the military knowledge of politicians quoted in NRIs irked by poor Manekshaw farewell, 7 July 2008, 2 December 2013, Diligent Media Corporation Ltd. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-nris-irked-by-poor-manekshaw-farewell-1176337,

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Dirge
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Marianne Moore photo
Frantz Fanon photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Henri Matisse photo

“We are born with the sensibility of a period of civilization. We are not masters of our production; it is imposed upon us.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

As quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 9
Posthumous quotes

Brook Taylor photo
George W. Bush photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Slavoj Žižek photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Patricia A. McKillip photo
R. G. Collingwood photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Orson Scott Card photo

““A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty.”
“Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works.”
“Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 4 “La Tia” (p. 74).

Roger Ebert photo
Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross photo

“We are the masters at the moment and shall be for some considerable time.”

Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross (1902–2003) British politician

Statement made in a 1946 debate to repeal the Conservatives' "Trade Disputes Act" of 1927 (following a quotation from Through the Looking-Glass in which Humpty-Dumpty observed that the question of definitions of words depended upon who was master: "'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'") The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Third Edition, gives the quotation in this form: "We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come." This has often been misquoted as "We are the masters now." His obituary in The Times (11 July 2003) states "even if in its authentic form it was intended as a factual description rather than a boast, it did Shawcross a good deal of harm. It was certainly uncharacteristic, for he was neither a bully nor a zealot... he was hardly a fierce party warrior." The Independent [London] (11 July 2003) in its obituary states "he accepted that it was one of the most foolish things he ever said." However, an article http://www.newstatesman.com/200307280001 in the New Statesman disputed the Times' obituary, citing eyewitness Lord Bruce in support of the wording, "We are the masters now", and noting a third version http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1946/apr/02/trade-disputes-and-trade-unions-bill#column_1213 in Hansard.

Isadora Duncan photo
Ben Klassen photo
Hilary Hahn photo
John Gray photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
David Woodard photo

“The Master Great Cultural Figure cannot be communicated with, at all.”

David Woodard (1964) American writer, conductor and businessman

Breed the Unmentioned (1985)

Hermann Hesse photo
Meher Baba photo
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay photo

“Prose must be written in language that is well understood by its readers. The world would hardly miss those literary works that are mastered by only half-a-dozen pundits.”

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894) Bengali writer

Peary Chand Mitra's Place in Bengali Literature (as quoted in Bengal Online http://bengalonline.sitemarvel.com/bankimchandra.asp)

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Bashō Matsuo photo

“He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Matsuo Bashō, Collected Haiku Theory, eds. T. Komiya & S. Yokozawa, Iwanami, 1951 (Unknown translator)
Statements

Cato the Elder photo
Samuel Rogers photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“Art will never get its own, nor do its proper work in the discipline of life, until the sense of its sacred character comes once more into the general judgment, and masses of men look upon it as the few great spirits have looked who have been its true masters and interpreters”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.200

Margaret Sullivan (journalist) photo

“Trump is, of course, a master of distraction and media ma­nipu­la­tion. It’s possible to resist being his chump, but it takes continued self-regulation.”

Margaret Sullivan (journalist) American journalist

Journalists in the age of Trump: Lose the smugness, keep the mission. (November 29, 2016)

Jean-François Millet photo
Emily Brontë photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Jürgen Habermas photo
The Mother photo

“I belong to no nation, no civilization, no society, no race, but to the Divine. I obey no master, no rules, no law, no social convention, but the Divine. To Him I have surrendered all, will, life and self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His will, with complete joy, and nothing in his service can be sacrifice, for all is perfect delight.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

from Collected Works of The Mother, Volume 2, Words of Long Ago, p.166 (February, 1920, Japan) http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/mother/on_herself.php Also quoted by Debbie Magee, in "Auroville — The City Of Dawn in South India" (27 February 2009) http://serreal.ning.com/group/greencommunities/forum/topics/auroville-the-city-of-dawn-in, also in Beyond the Mask: The Rising Sign — Part I: Aries — Virgo, Part 1 by Kathleen Burt (1 January 2010) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Q4kbBqVe0RIC&pg=PA46, p. 46
Sayings

Ned Ward photo

“He's as great a master of ill language as ever was bred at a Bear-Garden.”

Ned Ward (1667–1731) English writer

Source: London Terraefilius, No. 3, p. 29, (1707).

Rembrandt van Rijn photo
Enoch Powell photo

“Once you go nuclear at all, you go nuclear for good; and you know it. Here is the parting of the ways, for from this point two opposite conclusions can be drawn. One is that therefore there can never again be serious war of any duration between Western nations, including Russia—in particular, that there can never again be serious war on the Continent of Europe or the waters around it, which an enemy must master in order to threaten Britain. That is the Government's position. The other conclusion, therefore, is that resort is most unlikely to be had to nuclear weapons at all, but that war could nevertheless develop as if they did not exist, except of course that it would be so conducted as to minimise any possibility of misapprehension that the use of nuclear weapons was imminent or had begun. The crucial question is whether there is any stage of a European war at which any nation would choose self-annihiliation in preference to prolonging the struggle. The Secretary of State says, "Yes, the loser or likely loser would almost instantly choose self-annihiliation."”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

I say, "No. The probability, though not the certainty, but surely at least the possibility, is that no such point would come, whatever the course of the conflict."
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/mar/06/defence-army-estimates-1967-68-vote-a in the House of Commons (1 March 1967)
1960s

Hugh Latimer photo

“Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Hugh Latimer (1485–1555) British bishop

To his friend Nicholas Ridley, as they were both about to be burned as heretics for their teachings and beliefs outside Balliol College, Oxford (16 October 1555); as quoted in History of the British Empire (1870) by William Francis Collier, p. 124; also in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, p. 36; and in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989) by Robert Andrews, p. 190.
Variants:
Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
As quoted in the Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, touching Matters of the Church (Foxe's Book of Martyrs) (1563) by John Foxe; also in The London Encyclopaedia, or, Universal Dictionary of Science, Art, Literature, and Practical Mechanics (1829) by Thomas Tegg, p. 455
Be of good cheer, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England, as I hope, by God's grace, shall never be put out.
As quoted in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction (1831) by Reuben Percy and John Timbs, p. 419
Be of good comfort, brother and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
As quoted in Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel (1845) by John Gillies and Horatius Bonar, p. 57
Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, play the man; We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
As quoted in An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1847) by Charles Bridges, p. 126, but he cites Foxe as source, so this is clearly a slight misquotation of Foxe's version.
Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out.
As quoted in The Conscience of Culture (1953) by Everett Tilson, p. 116

Slavoj Žižek photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all of them, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

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

Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill ‘Bolshevism versus Zionism; a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people’ in Illustrated Daily Herald, 8 February 1920.
Early career years (1898–1929)

John Keble photo

“Love masters agony; the soul that seemed
Forsaken feels her present God again
And in her Father's arms
Contented dies away.”

John Keble (1792–1866) English churchman and poet, a leader of the Oxford Movement

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 182.

Jean Metzinger photo
Ernest Flagg photo
James Legge photo

“The Master standing by a stream, said, "It passes on just like this, not ceasing day or night!"”

James Legge (1815–1897) missionary in China

Bk. 9, Ch. 16 (p. 115)
Translations, The Confucian Analects

John Buchan photo
Eugene V. Debs photo