Quotes about matter
page 20

“All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.”

Source: Diary

“True love means that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Pain, Personality, Happiness

“That's the only thing that matters, honey, for someone to see more in you than you thought there was to see.”

Arthur Japin (1956) Dutch author

Source: In Lucia's Eyes

“When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening…. I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.”

Kathleen Norris (1880–1966) American writer

Books

“If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“It didn’t seem to matter how much he resented Percy Jackson; Nico would do anything for him. He hated himself for that.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Hate

“Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Life, Perseverance

“No matter how you feel today, get up, dress up & show up”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Feeling

“Okay. But I'm just going to be out there - having a tea party with her cats or whatever it is she has in mind. You need me? You yell. You want to leave? We go. I'll get you out of here, no matter what.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Cats, Tea

“I just don't see why the past has to matter.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Past

“No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity.”

Shūsaku Endō book Silence

Source: Silence

“He was the closest thing I'd ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn't count. You were either in, or you weren't.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“Nico found a sort of freedom in knowing that eventually, no matter what happened, he would end up at the foot of his father’s throne.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Freedom

“India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. … India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

The Hindu, "The Shashi Tharoor column: A departure, fictionally", Sunday, September 16, 2001 Available Online http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/09/16/stories/13160675.htm <br class="br">2000s

“I see only reminders that nothing lasts forever, not even greatness.”
“Some things last.”
I faced him. “Really? And just what would that be?”
“The things that matter.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

“No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Love, Time

“Remember that no matter where I am or what I'm doing I've got a special place inside me that's all for you. It's been there since the day we met.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

“But sooner or later, no matter who you are, life uses everyone as its whipping boy.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Life, Boy

“No matter how much we know in any area there are always new things to learn and things we have previously learned that we need to be refreshed in.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

Learning

“‎"You want more?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "Even after what we did?"
His mouth took on a sardonic twist. "I'm afraid quantity usually matters for me…"
--THE PRINCESS'S ASSASSINS”

Emma Holly (1961) American writer

Princess

“Human beings have hope. Not matter how desperate things are, they convince themselves that they can change things for the better."

- John Gregory (Clash of the Demons)”

Joseph Delaney book The Spook's Sacrifice

Source: The Spook's Sacrifice

Hope, Change

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss and Peeta (p. 388; closing words of the main text)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."

Life, Spring, Loss

“No one blames her."
"That never matters," said Alec. "Not when you blame yourself.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Memory

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)

Heart

“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Motivational, Back To Work

“No matter how puny your frontal equipment, don't wear the kind with the giant pads inside. If a guy squeezes them, he will wonder why they feel like Nerf balls instead of boobs.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

Guy, Feeling

“It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

“What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

Toni Morrison book God Help the Child

Source: God Help the Child

Children, Forgetting

“When his brain died, all of the memories
held in his gray matter, along with all of the knowledge he had acquired, would simply evaporate
in a flood of chemical reactions.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Knowledge, Memory

“Men are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of genuine contrition.”

Sharon Kay Penman book The Sunne in Splendour

Source: The Sunne in Splendour

Men, Sincerity

“No matter who you are, there is always some part of you that wishes you were someone else, and when, for a millisecond, you get that wish, it's a miracle.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Parting

“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Truth, Faith, Learning, Falseness

“No matter what you’re going through there's no pit so deep that God can’t reach in and get you out.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God

“Don't untie me," she said, "no matter what happens or how much I plead. I'll want to go straight over the edge and drown myself."
"Are you trying to tempt me?"
"Ha-ha.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

"The Myths by Which We Live", in The Rotarian, Vol. 107, No. 3 (September 1965), p. 55
Variant: The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.

Life, Happiness

“I was in analysis. I was suicidal. As a matter of fact, I would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Standup Comic (1999)
Source: Annie Hall: Screenplay

Suicide

“fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Beauty, Time, Happiness

“Do reasons matter when there's nothing that can be done to change things.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Change

“In my mind my obituary is done. It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

Truth

“Did she ever regret her choices? Were her decisions more clear-cut than mine - or are there always shades of gray whe it comes to matters of the heart?”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Decision, Heart

“… no matter where you go or what you do, I'll love every day for the rest of my life.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Love, Life

“You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can't fake, no matter how hard you try”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Personality

“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Mathematics, Problem

“If I should die,” Dalinar said, “then I would do so having lived my life right. It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.”
“The Codes?”
“No. The Way of Kings.”
“That storming book.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Life, Books, Way

“No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Love, Family, Parent

“I know you: You’ll come find me again, you’ll come rescue me no matter what happens. You’ll come for me, and I’ll discover you all over again. I love you. I love you without the memories. I love you right now.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Love, Memory

“You need anything else…

You to touch me like I matter…”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“We speak with one voice,” Walt said. “Especially on this matter. No one hurts Sadie Kane.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Hurt

“People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do… Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: The Dear One

People, Time

“In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“When a man is that special, you know it sooner than you think possible. You recognize it instinctively, and you're certain that no matter what happens, there will never be another one like him.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Thinking

“Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Intelligence, Passion

“An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“What am I? Let's just say I won't fetch a stick for you. I won't beg for treats. And, no matter how nicely you ask, I will not roll over and play dead.”

Kelley Armstrong book Living with the Dead

Source: Living with the Dead

Dead

“You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Light

“This is the danger of loving: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Love

“I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

“It didn't matter whether he was nearby or far away. His image would drift up into your mind just when you least expected it, shocking you, making your chest pound. Making your heart ache.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Asleep

Source: Asleep

Heart

“I want to believe that I'm not wrong. I want to believe that life isn't full of darkness. Even if storms come to pass, the sun will shine again. No matter how painful and hard the rain may beat down on me.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Life, Pain, Sun

“Just tell me you don't love me, and I'll let the matter drop."
"What?"
"What I said. Just say, 'Rai, I don't love you and I never will'. It's that simple."
"Raisa, this is getting us nowhere."
"Say it!”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

Love

“No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

Source: The Autobiography of My Mother

Love, Past, Happiness

“I still love you. I will always love you, and that is all that matters. I will forgive you anything, and I will forgive you this.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Lost in Time

Love, Forgiveness

“It doesn't matter. You are what you are. I am what I am. We are the same-when you take the time to remember me.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

Time

“Butch nodded as if he knew exactly what was doing. "Like I said, my man, it's whatever. You and me? Same as always, no matter who you screw. Although… if you're into sheep, that would be tough. Don't know if I could handle that.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher, sky-diver, I'm going to get you”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Death

“Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.” Master Ittei commented, “Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

“When you jump off a cliff, is it better to land on jagged rocks or burning lava? I know this one. The answer is obvious: It doesn't matter where you land. You just jumped off a cliff.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Sandman Slim

“The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace.”

Michel Houellebecq Soumission

Source: Soumission

Peace, Beauty, Suffering, Past

“But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick”

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

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Restless Farewell

“I am just two and two. I am hot. I am cold. I'm the parent of numbers that cannot be told. I'm a gift beyond measure, a matter of course, and I'm yielded with pleasure- when taken by force.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Pleasure, Parent

“Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

“‎When she looked up at him, it was suddenly easy for her to imagine that her fears were pointless. That he would love her no matter what she told him, and that he was the kind of man who loved her already and would love her forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love, Fear, Imagination

“I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy—it’s a matter of balance.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Flying

“But in life we don't usually get to choose the time of our defining moments. We just have to stand and face them when they come, no matter what sort of a state we're in.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Life, Time

“a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Variant: because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. no matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment.
Source: Just Listen

World, Thinking, Change, Personality

“An a priori decision to eliminate spiritual intelligence from consideration is no more justifiable than a decision to admit it by fiat or on faith. After all, once one includes the understanding of the personal realm within a study of intelligence, such human proclivities as the spiritual must legitimately be considered. There certainly are no easy grounds for a decision, but several other intelligences deal with phenomena other than sheer physical matter. If the abstract realm of mathematics constitutes a reasonable area of intelligence (and few would challenge that judgment), why not the abstract realm of the spiritual?”

Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist

Source: Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century, 1999, p. 51

Faith, Intelligence, Mathematics, Understanding

“Apple is becoming the JC Penney of tech. I think that there is a sense that the company is in a tailspin, and it doesn't seem to matter what they do right now. … Whatever product that is coming out in September is a clear loser. We haven't seen it yet, but it is a loser.”

James Cramer (1955) stockbroker, television personality, author

Cramer: Apple Is 'Becoming the JC Penney of Tech' http://cnbc.com/id/100609331 in CNBC Executive Edge (2 April 2013)

Thinking, Sense

“A million and a half of people spread over the Atlantic seaboard might be thought no great number; but it was a new thing in the world. …which had in fact been carefully noted by Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet on The Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.—that within three-quarters of a century the population of the continental colonies had doubled every twenty-five years, whereas the population of Old England during a hundred years past had not doubled once and now stood at only some six and a half millions. …With these facts in mind, one might indeed say that a people with so much vitality and expansive power was abundantly able to pay taxes; but perhaps it was also a fair inference, if any one was disposed to press the matter, that unless it was so minded, such a people was already, or assuredly soon would be, equally able not to pay them.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

People, World, Past, Country

“We speak of the matter [of this science] in the sense of its being what the science is about. This is called by some the subject of the science, but more properly it should be called its object, just as we say of a virtue that what it is about is its object, not its subject. As for the object of the science in this sense, we have indicated above that this science is about the transcendentals. And it was shown to be about the highest causes. But there are various opinions about which of these ought to be considered its proper object or subject. Therefor, we inquire about the first. Is the proper subject of metaphysics being as being, as Avicenna claims, or God and the Intelligences, as the Commentator, Averroes, assumes.”
loquimur de materia "circa quam" est scientia, quae dicitur a quibusdam subiectum scientiae, uel magis proprie obiectum, sicut et illud circa quod est uirtus dicitur obiectum uirtutis proprie, non subiectum. De isto autem obiecto huius scientiae ostensum est prius quod haec scientia est circa transcendentia; ostensum est autem quod est circa altissimas causas. Quod autem istorum debeat poni proprium eius obiectum, uariae sunt opiniones. Ideo de hoc quaeritur primo utrum proprium subiectum metaphysicae sit ens in quantum ens (sicut posuit Auicenna) uel Deus et Intelligentiae (sicut posuit Commentator Auerroes.)

Duns Scotus (1265–1308) Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed

Quaestiones subtilissimae de metaphysicam Aristotelis, as translated in: William A. Frank, Allan Bernard Wolter (1995) Duns Scotus, metaphysician. p. 20-21

God, Intelligence, Sense, Science

“The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized.”

Constantinianism Policies

John Howard Yoder, "The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 200

War, World, Art, Reality

“Of course we may assume many general and non-historical meanings for secularism, but turning a subject that is in all its existence a historical matter into a non-historical matter is a blatant mistake.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

(Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, Nov 2005).
Attributed

“The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

Life, World, Feeling, Reality

“Nonsense. I think that the problem isn't with them downloading the song, the problem is when they buy the record and when they burn a million discs off their computer for all their friends. That's the reason why every single band, no matter who you are, your sales are chopped by fifty to sixty percent after your first week out. It's a huge problem, but instead of giving people more reasons to buy the product, they don't worry about that. I think you have to enhance the value of the product. Like when KISS was putting out records, their 'Alive' record sold so well because it made you feel like you were part of the concert experience. There was also an actual program in the thing, all these pictures, the KISS Army stuff… There's so much stuff that added to the value of that package. There wasn't a KISS fan out there who didn't want the whole thing, because everything that came along with the music was so worthwhile to them. It's not rocket-science, this stuff.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

Disturbed's David Draiman Offers 'Solution' To Illegal Music Downloading http://www.webcitation.org/64oENbO3B, Blabbermouth.net, 11 July 2003)

People, Music, Feeling, Kiss

“If one's enemies know where you are, no matter how well protected you are, you can be gotten.”

Robert Ferrigno (1947) American writer

Prayers For The Assassin (2006)

“In my paintings, the question on whether figures are similar or not is not of any importance, the slightest change of figure or color can create a new painting and it doesn't really matter if a subject is revisited by an artist repeatedly. With enough time in between paintings, an artist can always bring to it something new.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Source: Ayandegan (1973), p. 4

Color, Question, Change, Time

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Alcohol, Food, Hell, Drink

“Only a book written by the God who knows the end from the beginning could predict the future with one hundred percent accuracy. The God of the Bible (unlike all other “gods”) is not limited by time, space, or matter. He created all of those on Day One and is “above” and “outside of” and “not limited by” His creation in any way. We are the ones who are limited by time, space, and matter, not God. The fact that He knows the future does not mean that He controls the future and we are robots acting out a pre-programmed set of instructions. He has complete knowledge, yet we have complete control at all times. He could step in and control everything, but then we would be robots and not humans. It is called Free Will. That’s a gift God gave to mankind.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), pp. 6-7

God, Books, Way, Knowledge

“Generally speaking, I am not interested in the future and don't believe in it. First, I guess it is true that I don't trust the future, but, more to the point, I don't even trust the "myself" of tomorrow, nor, for that matter, of the day after. Basically, all I know, and all I am capable of understanding, is the "me" that is here, now, the "me" that has dragged his past with him to this point.”

Yohji Yamamoto (1943) Japanese fashion designer

Wim Wenders. Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989). (The above transcription is from Kiyokazu Washida. The Past, the Feminine, the Vain in Talking to Myself (2002), Ch. 1: Fashion, or the Gaze at the Past).

Understanding, Past, Future