Quotes about matter
page 38

“The atrocities perpetrated by the police and the military on the innocent Hindus, especially the Scheduled Castes of Habibgarh in the District of Sylhet deserve description. Innocent men and women were brutally tortured, some women ravished, their houses raided and properties looted by the police and the local Muslims. Military pickets were posted in the area. The military not only oppressed these people and took away stuff forcibly from Hindu houses, but also forced Hindus to send their women-folk at night to the camp to satisfy the carnal desires of the military. This fact also I brought to your notice. You assured me of a report on the matter, but unfortunately no report was forthcoming.”

Jogendra Nath Mandal (1904–1968) Pakistani politician

Excerpted from the resignation letter of J. N. Mandal, Minister for Law and Labour, Government of Pakistan, October 8, 1950. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal https://biblio.wiki/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal

Women , Men , People , Housing
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“But I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we're revolting against the very laws of God himself.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)
1950s
Context: We have adopted in the modern world a sort of a relativistic ethic... Most people can't stand up for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. See, everybody's not doing it, so it must be wrong. And since everybody is doing it, it must be right. So a sort of numerical interpretation of what's right. But I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B. C., and it's wrong in 1954 A. D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we're revolting against the very laws of God himself. [... ] That attitude is destroying the soul of our culture! It's destroying our nation! The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and to be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they're never caught up with. And some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.

God , Hate , Age , Law
Keith Ellison photo

“What role does faith play in my life and when do I talk about it? I talk about it when I'm asked about it. That's pretty much my rule. I don't - I believe that faith is important to Americans, but I also believe very firmly in that constitutional amendment which says Congress shall make no law establishing religion or abridging the free exercise thereof. So it's important in American life, I feel that it is absolutely inappropriate to impose my faith on anyone. But when people want to discuss matters of faith, I find myself willing to do that.”

Keith Ellison (1963) American politician and lawyer

Interview with Michel Martin, Feb 2014. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=283904789

Life , People , Faith , Religion

“Have the climate models been successful in predicting anything? They, of course, predict substantial global warming. This is not surprising given the expressed belief of some of the model builders in the global warming hypothesis and the many parameters in the model that need to be introduced. However, the models also predict unambiguously that the atmosphere is warming faster than the surface of the earth; but all the available observational data unambiguously shows the opposite! Truth in science is always determined from observational facts. One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis. It is absolutely essential that one should be neutral and not fall in love with the hypothesis. If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. "Truth by Assertion" is not science.”

David Douglass

http://www.gravett.org/bizarrescience/archives/003967.html
Letter to the Wall Street Journal

Love , Truth , Science , Success
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo

“We have seen how types of organization, of law, and of consciousness come together into more comprehensive wholes, the forms of social life. These forms of social life, exemplified in my essay by tribal, liberal, and aristocratic society and then again by the varieties of modernity, are the most general types available to social theory. Each of them represents a unique interpretation of what it means to be human. Each confronts its individual members with the recurring demands of human existence, but each presents these in a special way and limits the resources of matter and thought thst can be used to meet them. Perhaps the most pervasive of these continuing problems have to do with the antagonism between the requirements of human individuality and of human sociability, and with the attempt either to subordinate one to the other or to reconcile the two.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Law in Modern Societyː Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (1976), p. 259-260

Life , Law , Way , Problem

“… It was (in part) Gross’s excessive enthusiasm for string theory in the mid-80s that drove me (as an impressionable grad student at Princeton) away from theoretical physics (and into astronomy). String theory may have been a beautiful idea, but it made no predictions that could be tested experimentally in the then-foreseeable future. That’s not science. 
A quarter century later and the theoretical physics community has yet to wake up and realize that there is new physics right under their noses – just not the new physics they’ve been expecting (GUTs, strings, membranes, etc.). Galaxy dynamics are consistent with a single, universal force law, but this unexpected behavior has largely been ignored because it doesn’t fit with particle theorists’ dreams of super symmetric dark matter particles. That we do not understand the observed behavior makes it more interesting than the “expected” (but unobserved) new physics: who ordered this?”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer
Law , Beauty , Dreams , Behavior
Michel De Montaigne photo

“[I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book I

Fools , Understanding , Sense , Strong
Charles Manson photo

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Life , Men , God , War
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo

“The infinite and uncreated spirit that we usually call GOD, a substance of the highest virtue and excellency, produced everything else by emanative causality. God thus is the primary substance, the rest, the secondary; if the former created matter with a power of moving itself, he, the primary substance, is still the cause of that motion as well as of the matter, and yet we rightly say that it is matter which moves itself. "We may define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance indiscernible, that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and dilate itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter," which is the third emanation.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

God

“[Professor Jennifer] Burns doesn't seem to understand that when leftists, or conservatives or liberals for that matter, refer to capitalism, they don't mean what Ayn Rand meant by it. They mean the system that is otherwise known as mercantilism, corporatism, state capitalism, or even fascism—a system in which huge corporations, aided by the state, dominate a heavily-regulated and centrally-directed economy. This is what both conservatives and liberals advocate, this is what the New Left opposed. One New Left guru, the late Murray Bookchin, told me thirty years ago in Boston that he had no quarrel with what Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard meant by the term capitalism, a system in which people divide their labour, specialise in producing certain goods and services, and trade among themselves. Bookchin told me that he would say that that is not capitalism, though there are many different definitions.”

Jeff Riggenbach (1947)

About Murray Bookchin
"Ayn Rand and the Early Libertarian Movement," 2010

People , Understanding
Ben Croshaw photo

“Christians are a funny lot, aren't they? It doesn't seem to matter what their God does, they'll just keep on loving him regardless.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

8 November 2003
Fully Ramblomatic

Love , God

“The inadequacy of the short paragraphs that follow is due to the insufficiency of their expression. They are offered in the hope that the verity which underlies them may penetrate the mist of their presentation and kindle a spark that shall develop into the flame of fulfilment.
Please be so good as to believe that there is nothing whatever mysterious about this matter. If it were easy, should we not all be Buddhas? No doubt, but the apparent difficulty is due to our conditioning. The apparent mystery, on the other hand, is just obnubilation, an inability to perceive the obvious owing to a conditioned reflex which causes us persistently to look in the wrong direction!”

Wei Wu Wei (1895–1986) writer

Foreword
All Else Is Bondage : Non-Volitional Living (1964)

Hope
John A. McDougall photo

“It is no coincidence that the same diet that helps prevent or cure diabetes also causes effortless weight loss, lowers cholesterol and triglycerides, cleans out the arteries, and returns the body to excellent function. But no matter how much research appears saying the same thing over and over again, the tide is unlikely to change because of the economic incentives for the medical establishment of continued illness and profitable treatments.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

“Diet and Diabetes: The Meat of the Matter,” in EarthSave Magazine (November 2002), p. 22; as quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (Lantern Books, 2005), p. 85 https://books.google.it/books?id=BTqLjAOwsSMC&pg=PA85.

Appearance , Change , Loss , Help
Hunter S. Thompson photo

“Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol… but too many adrenaline rushes in any given time span has the same effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits. When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, its only a matter of time before he gets smashed — and when a journalist turns into a politics junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Understanding , Time , Personality
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“If you bungle raising your children I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Interview with NBC News Correspondent Sander Vanocur (1 October 1960) https://web.archive.org/web/20140127091759/http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/joint/joint011060_nbctv03.html

Mother's Day , For Mother , Children , Thinking
Fiona Apple photo

“Interviewer: I read a post on the Internet from a young girl who had been victimized by someone and her position was like, "I can talk about this now because Fiona Apple can talk about what happened to her." Do you look at yourself as a role model for women and girls who've had this experience?
Fiona: That's the only reason I ever brought the whole rape thing up. It's a terrible thing, but it happens to so many people. I mean, 80 percent of the people I've told have said right back to me, "That happened to me too." It's so common, and so ridiculous that it's a hard thing to talk about. It angers me so much because something like that happens to you and you carry it around for the rest of your life. No matter how much therapy you go through, no matter how much healing you go through, it's part of you. I just feel that it's such a tragedy that so many people have to bear the extra burden of having to keep it secret from everyone else. As if it's too icky a subject to burden other people with and everyone's going to think you're a victim forever. Then you've labeled yourself a victim, and you've been taken advantage of, and you're ruined, and you're soiled, and you're not pure, you know.If I'm in a position where people are looking up to me in any way, then it's absolutely my responsibility to be open and honest about this, because if I'm not, what does that say to people? It doesn't change a person -- well, it does change a person but it doesn't take anything away from you. It can only strengthen you. It has made me so angry in the past. Like I wanted to say it to somebody. I really wanted somebody to connect with, somebody to understand me, somebody to comfort me. But I felt like I couldn't say anything about because it was taboo to talk about.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Nuvo, "Fiona Apple: The NUVO Interview" April [1997]

Life , Women , People , Secret
Mo Yan photo

“Bullshit bullshit bullshit… after a string of 'bullshit', he spat out spitefully, Can the cliches! That might work with most people, but not with me. Millions of people all around the world have suffered and been mistreated, but those who become men among men are as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. It's all a matter of fate, it's in your bones. If you're born with the bones of a beggar, that's what you'll spend you life as.”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter Five, Section IV, 'Yichi the Hero'

Life , Men , Fate , People
Leszek Kolakowski photo

“The same ‘ practical’ viewpoint is dominant in Marx’ s conception of the cognitive functions of the mind and its role in the historical process; ‘ practical’ is always regarded as implying ‘ social’, and ‘ social life is practical by its very essence’. So is the task of philosophy as defined in the eleventh Thesis, in what are perhaps Marx’ s most-quoted words: ‘ The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’ It would be a caricature of Marx’ s thought to read this as meaning that it was not important to observe or analyse society and that only direct revolutionary action mattered. The whole context shows that it is a formula expressing in a nutshell the viewpoint of ‘ practical philosophy’ as opposed to the ‘ contemplative’ attitude of Hegel or Feuerbach – the viewpoint which Hess, and through him Cieszkowski, suggested to Marx and which became the philosophical nucleus of Marxism. To understand the world does not mean considering it from outside, judging it morally or explaining it scientifically; it means society understanding itself, an act in which the subject changes the object by the very fact of understanding it.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume I, The Founders, pp. 143-4

Life , World , Way , Quotes
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall photo

“Poetry is like time travel, and poems take us to the heart of the matter”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

About poems that moves her to tears
First World War centenary: the war poem that moves the Duchess of Cornwall to tears The Daily Telegraph 28 June 2014 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10932405/First-World-War-centenary-the-war-poem-that-moves-the-Duchess-of-Cornwall-to-tears.html#disqus_thread

Travel , Time , Heart
Antonio Llidó photo

“Faith in a distant, ephemeral God, solver of problems by house call, has also been left behind. Increasingly I come to understand my religion and priesthood as a committment to the society in which I live. A committment to men and women who struggle for a new social order where slavery has no place, that prepares people to fully realize themselves, in which injustice and exploitation cease to be our daily bread. I understand Jesus Christ as very related to this matter. I understand Jesus Christ as each one of my brothers and sisters. I understand that in uniting with them in this struggle, perhaps I will be capable of overcoming the small and large personal needs that are only relevant because they impede me from fully giving myself to this task.”

Antonio Llidó (1936–1974) Spanish priest

Letter to a friend on March 9, 1971 (from the book Antonio Llidó: Epistolario de un compromiso,Tàndem Edicons,España (1999) ISBN 84-8131-227-4.

Women , Men , God , People

“Mary Follett devoted a lifetime to searching for the true principles of organization which would ensure a stable foundation for the steady, ordered progress of human well-being. That her search was not in vain will be evident to all who read the lectures. Her teaching is not theoretical, but is based on a close study of the practice of a large number of business undertakings. She chose this field of enquiry to supplement her work on local and national government because she realized that the principles which should determine organization are identical, no matter what the purpose which that organization is designed to serve.”

Seebohm Rowntree (1871–1954) British philanthropist industrialist and sociologist writer

Seebohm Rowntree, "Preface" to Mary Parker Follett with Henry C. Metcalf, and Lyndall Urwick (eds.). Dynamic administration: the collected papers of Mary Parker Follett. Harper & Brother Publishing, 1942

Search , Business , Study , Reading
Edward Heath photo

“We are now faced with massive unemployment, on a scale certainly at the level of the 1930s and to become greater. The improvement in housing, education and the standard of living has stopped. To all of us, that is a matter of the greatest possible regret…One of our intentions after the 1930s was to ensure that the Conservative Party was never again considered to be the party of unemployment. I ask my hon. Friends to think seriously about that in our present circumstances.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1980) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1980/nov/27/industry-and-the-economy
Post-Prime Ministerial

Education , Thinking , Housing

“With regard to the principle [of using symbols to represent sounds], it matters little whether the symbol is an elaborately detailed picture, a slightly stylized drawing, or a drastically abbreviated symbol of essentially abstract form. What is crucial is to recognize that the diverse forms perform the same function in representing sound. To see that writing has the form of pictures and to conclude that it is pictographic is correct in only one sense -- that of the form, but not the function, of the symbols. We can put it this way:
QUESTION: When is a pictograph not a pictograph?
ANSWER: When it represents a sound.”

John DeFrancis book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 140) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)

Way , Question , Sense , Drawing
Saul D. Alinsky photo

“The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. xxiv

World , Faith , Religion , Democracy
Alfred P. Sloan photo

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

Money , War , Cars , Confidence
Richard Feynman photo

“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing — atoms with curiosity — that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture II: "The Uncertainty of Values"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

Life , God , History , Understanding
Calvin Coolidge photo

“The members of this delegation, whom I have much pleasure in receiving, are all American citizens who chance to have been born in other countries than our own. You have called upon me to testify for yourselves and the millions of others who, though not natives to our soil, are in every other respect thorough-going, loyal and devoted Americans. I am glad to welcome you, not only to this place, but to the full privileges and opportunities, and especially to the full responsibilities and duties, of American citizens. It is not very long, as history views matters, since all of us were alien to this soil. I suppose that if Methuselah were at this time an American in his period of middle life, and should drop in on our little party, he would regard us all as upstarts. Fortunately, American ideas of hospitality have been greatly modified since the times when some of my early American forbears argued the matter with the Indian known as King Philip. He and his Indian supporters regarded themselves as the real Americans, and maintained their case all too effectively.”

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

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Life , Pleasure , History , Idea
Alexis Carrel photo

“The conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts.”

Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) French surgeon and biologist

Source: (1935), p. 391

Children
Albert Einstein photo

“In light of knowledge obtained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion, and final emergence into light—only those who have experienced it can understand that.”

Albert Einstein book The World as I See It

"Notes on the Origin of the General Theory of Relativity" (1934) Mein Weltbild, in Ideas and Opinions (1954) ed., Carl Seelig.
1930s

Confidence , Search , Intelligence , Understanding
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“University professors, restricted in this way, are quite happy about the matter, for their real concern is to earn with credit an honest livelihood for themselves and also for their wives and children and moreover to enjoy a certain prestige in the eyes of the public. On the other hand, the deeply stirred mind of the real philosopher, whose whole concern is to look for the key to our existence, as mysterious as it is precarious, is regarded by them as something mythological, if indeed the man so affected does not even appear to them to be obsessed by a monomania, should he ever be met with among them. For that a man could really be in dead earnest about philosophy does not as a rule occur to anyone, least of all to a lecturer thereon; just as the most sceptical Christian is usually the Pope. It has, therefore, been one of the rarest events for a genuine philosopher to be at the same time a lecturer in philosophy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Inzwischen bleiben die solchermaaßen beschränkten Universitätsphilosophie bei der Sache ganz wohlgemuth; weil ihr eigentlicher Ernst darin liegt, mit Ehren ein redliches Auskommen für sich, nebst Weib und Kind, zu erwerben, auch ein gewisses Ansehn vor den Leuten zu genießen; hingegen das tiefbewegte Gemüth eines wirklichen Philosophen, dessen ganzer und großer Ernst im Aufsuchen eines Schlüssels zu unserm, so rätselhaften wie mißlichen Daseyn liegt, von ihnen zu den mythologischen Wesen gezählt wird; wenn nicht etwa» gar der damit Behaftete, sollte er ihnen je vorkommen, ihnen als von Monomanie besessen erscheint. Denn daß es mit der Philosophie so recht eigentlicher, bitterer Ernst seyn könne, läßt wohl, in der Regel, kein Mensch sich weniger träumen, als ein Docent derselben; gleichwie der ungläubigste Christ der Papst zu seyn pflegt. Daher gehört es denn auch zu den seltensten Fällen, daß ein wirklicher Philosoph zugleich ein Docent der Philosophie gewesen wäre.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 153, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 141
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Children , Way , Universe , Appearance

“Suggestions [by employees] are invited on the various matters indicated under the following headings : —
1. New or improved goods.
2. Improvement in method of manufacture.
3. Suggestions appertaining to advertisements or methods likely to increase sales.
4. Improvements with reference to management.
5. Suggestions affecting the social well-being, Athletic and other clubs, Societies, Libraries, Magazine, etc.
6. Any suggestion of whatever character so long as it bears some relation to, or is connected with, the Works at Bournville.”

Edward Cadbury (1873–1948) British businessman

Source: Experiments in industrial organization (1912), p. 212; Partly cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003), Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 39

Jopie Huisman photo

“In 1973 I suddenly came into major private problems. I was completely thrown back on myself. Then I found those trousers between the old stuff. A worn-out, eighty times repaired, filthy pair of pants of a milker. I saw myself in it, it reflected the state of my soul. Then I took it with me and painted it [title: Pants of a cow milker]. Moreover because other because people recognized themselves in it, this has become my salvation. I found back my identity through it. As a matter of fact a self-portrait.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: In 1973 raakte ik plotseling in grote privéproblemen. Ik was helemaal op mezelf teruggeworpen. Toen vond ik tussen de rommel die broek. Een afgetobde, tachtig keer verstelde, smerige melkersbroek. Ik zag mijzelf daarin, hij weerspiegelde de toestand van mijn ziel. Toen heb ik hem meegenomen en geschilderd [titel: Broek van een koemelker]. Ook omdat andere mensen zich erin herkenden, is het mijn redding geweest. Ik heb er mijn identiteit door teruggevonden. Eigenlijk een zelfportret.
p 60
Jopie Huisman', 1981

People , Soul , Problem , Time

“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

The Agnostic's Prayer from the novel Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969)

Way , Forgiveness
Joseph Beuys photo

“I believe that planting these oaks is necessary not only in biospheric terms, that is to say, in the context of matter and ecology, but in that it will raise ecological consciousness-raise it increasingly, in the course of the years to come, because we shall never stop planting.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Joseph Beuys (1982), as cited in: Land and environmental art, Jeffrey Kastner, ‎Brian Wallis (1998), p. 164 - about his 7.000 Oaks [see there the image].
1980's

John Calvin photo

“That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 69.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Life , Children , Disease , Affliction

“There was another major phase of split-brain research where we studied the patients as a way of getting at the other questions very much alive in neuroscience, everything from questions about visual midline overlap to spatial attention and resource allocations. At this point the split-brain patients provided a way of examining cortical-subcortical relationships, and other matters.”

Michael S. Gazzaniga (1939) American neuroscientist

[Interview with Michael Gazzaniga, 2011, 12 April, Annals of the New York Academy of Science]

Way , Question , Study
Edward Hopper photo

“Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method, it is the essence of personality.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Quoted by Selden Rodman, inConversations with Artists, Capricorn Books, New York, 1961
1941 - 1967

Personality
Ellen Willis photo

“The project of organizing a democratic political movement entails the hope that one's ideas and beliefs are not merely idiosyncratic but speak to vital human needs, interests and desires, and therefore will be persuasive to many and ultimately most people. But this is a very different matter from deciding to put forward only those ideas presumed (accurately or not) to be compatible with what most people already believe.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"We Need a Radical Left", The Nation (29 June 1998) http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/Radical_Left.html

People , Hope , Idea

“[ John Rawls's] Theory of Justice begins with this assertion: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust …. Truth and justice are uncompromising” (p. 3). How, one might ask. do we know that justice has this preeminence? Rawls’s second basic claim is that we have a particular kind of access to this preeminence: we have an “intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice” (p. 4) over all other considerations including welfare, efficiency, democratic choice, transparency, dignity, international competitiveness, or freedom, and, of course, over any rooted moral, philosophical, or religious conceptions. There is no account of where these intuitions came from, whether they might be in any way historically or sociologically variable, or what role they play in society.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 70-71.

Truth , Justice , Law , Way
Robert Solow photo

“Well, I certainly was not going to study physics, and I knew I was not going to study biology, but I could have become a sociologist or an anthropologist. However, I found sociology a little soft. I think that somewhere in my mind, I probably already had the notion – which turned out to be right – that if I was going to be a social scientist of some kind, I would like a rigorous social science. The analytical aspect of economics already appealed to me. That must have been so. It was not really a matter of chance. But if my wife had said ‘oh, no, economics was terribly boring’, I would probably have found something else to do.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

in Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009)

Thinking , Study , Science , Chance

“I would like to congratulate everybody with the commencement of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercises. This exercise is running simultaneously in Armenia and Germany. We have about 130 participants from 6 countries, this being evidence of importance and actuality of the event. It is notable that the cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of Armenia and the US European Command is developing and implementing a number of projects, and the vivid evidence of this cooperation is this military exercise. This is not the first military exercise in Armenia. Since 2003, we have hosted a number of military exercises organized with the NATO/PfP and the US European Command. It is important that the running of military exercises in Armenia is growing into a good tradition. Especially since, we already have an arrangement of hosting "Cooperative Longbow/Lancer" military exercises in Armenia for 2008. I would also like to mention with appreciation that the planning conference and working meetings before the military exercise would be held in a constructive atmosphere. We have effectively managed to run all preparation activities with joint efforts of the US European Command, the MOD of Armenia and other partners. The communication field is that chain which has fundamental importance for realizing multinational activities. The effectiveness and successes of our cooperation is related to that. This military exercise not only supports the testing of capabilities of participating units and experts, but also an opportunity for developing effective mechanisms for ensuring an interoperability and carrying out the tasks jointly. It is not accidental that Armenia has always expressed its readiness to host such kinds of events, and all participants have been trying to create appropriate conditions for their work. Taking this opportunity, one more time, I would like to thank all participants for their presence here and the US European command for their assistance in organizational matters. I am sure that due to our joint activities, the military exercise would be on a high professional and organizational level. I also hope that while you are in Armenia, you have a chance to make yourselves familiar with our history, culture and will have wonderful impressions. I am sure that on the 10th of May, after the completion of the military exercise, we will ascertain one more time that another multinational military exercise was held with success and fulfilled its tasks. I would like to wish all participants fruitful work and further success. I allow the commencement of the opening of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercise.”

Mikael Harutyunyan (1946) Armenian general

Quoted in 2007 article. [April 27, 2007]

Hope , Exercises , History , Communication
Herbert Marcuse photo

“No matter how close and familiar the temple or cathedral were to the people who lived around them, they remained in terrifying or elevating contrast to the daily life of the slave, the peasant, and the artisan—and perhaps even to that of their masters. Whether ritualized or not, art contains the rationality of negation. In its advanced positions, it is the Great Refusal—the protest against that which is. The modes in which man and things are made to appear, to sing and sound and speak, are modes of refuting, breaking, and recreating their factual existence. But these modes of negation pay tribute to the antagonistic society to which they are linked. Separated from the sphere of labor where society reproduces itself and its misery, the world of art which they create remains, with all its truth, a privilege and an illusion. In this form it continues, in spite of all democratization and popularization, through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The “high culture” in which this alienation is celebrated has its own rites and its own style. The salon, the concert, opera. theater are designed to create and invoke another dimension of reality. Their attendance requires festive-like preparation; they cut off and transcend everyday experience. Now this essential gap between the arts and the order of the day, kept open in the artistic alienation, is progressively closed by the advancing technological society. And with its closing, the Great Refusal is in turn refused; the “other dimension” is absorbed into the prevailing state of affairs. The works of alienation are themselves incorporated into this society and circulate as part and parcel of the equipment which adorns and psychoanalyzes the prevailing state of affairs.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 63-64

Life , People , Truth , World
Dinah Craik photo

“Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose — a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad — yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

Exercises , Madness , Happiness

“It is not that science proves that the world is not moral. Science as such is not concerned with values, and proves nothing of the sort. Nevertheless, as a matter of history, it is science which has suggested this view to the modern mind by its insistence on mechanistic categories.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.
World , History , Science

“St Xavier had come to the East representing both the Pope ‑ as a Legate ‑ and the King as an inspector of missions. As missionary work was a State enterprise charged to the Crown's revenues in Portugal, this identification of national, interests with religious activity should not be a matter of surprise.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Dipika Kakar photo

“I was actually looking forward to it. I just want to play my character, and it does not matter what age I am playing. If I have played the journey from a spinster to a married lady in the show, then why should I have a problem playing a mother? This is something I owe to the show.”

Dipika Kakar (1986) Indian actress

About the character http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tv/news/hindi/Dipika-Simar-Kakar-I-wasnt-uncomfortable-playing-a-makkhi-nor-found-it-funny/articleshow/54364901.cms

Age , Problem
Amit Chaudhuri photo

“The city was still …. Soon the machinery would start working again, not out of any sense of purpose, but like a watch that is wound daily by someone’s hand. Almost without any choice in the matter, people would embark upon the minute frustrations and satisfactions of their daily lives. It was in this moment of postponement that the azaan was heard, neither announcing the day nor keeping it a secret.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Freedom Song (1998)

People , Secret , Sense
Isoroku Yamamoto photo

“A military man can scarcely pride himself on having "smitten a sleeping enemy"; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.”

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884–1943) Japanese Marshal Admiral

Reply made to Ogata Taketora, the Editor in Chief of Asahi Shimbun (9 January 1942) as quoted in The Reluctant Admiral (1979) by Hiroyuki Agawa

Sleep , Anger
Ai Weiwei photo

“They detained me for 81 days, but they never killed me. They clearly told me: 'If we were in the Cultural Revolution, you would have been killed 100 times.' They said: 'We have already improved.' I said: 'I thank you very much. Yes, you have improved. Not because you are really willing to improve yourself, but only because improvement is a matter of surviving.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

Time
Tony Benn photo

“It would be inconceivable for the House to adjourn for Easter without recording the fact that last Friday the High Court disallowed an Act which was passed by this House and the House of Lords and received Royal Assent — the Merchant Shipping Act 1988. The High Court referred the case to the European Court…I want to make it clear to the House that we are absolutely impotent unless we repeal Section 2 of the European Communities Act. It is no good talking about being a good European. We are all good Europeans; that is a matter of geography and not a matter of sentiment. Are the arrangements under which we are governed such that we have broken the link between the electorate and the laws under which they are governed? I am an old parliamentary hand — perhaps I have been here too long — but I was brought up to believe, and I still believe, that when people vote in an election they must be entitled to know that the party for which they vote, if it has a majority, will be able to enact laws under which they will be governed. That is no longer true. Any party elected, whether it is the Conservative party or the Labour party can no longer say to the electorate, "Vote for me and if I have a majority I shall pass that law", because if that law is contrary to Common Market law, British judges will apply Common Market law.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1989) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/13/adjournment-easter-and-monday-1-may on the Factortame case
1980s

People , Law , Communication , Housing
Glenn Beck photo

“It is the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech from Martin Luther King. And what an appropriate day. At first we picked that date, we didn't know and I thought, "oh jeez." But now I think it was almost divine providence. I do. His dream has been so corrupted. Judge a man by the content of his character. Character doesn't even matter anymore in this country. It's time we picked that dream back up and finished the job.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

on his Restoring Honor rally on 2010-08-28
2010s, 2010

Dreams , Thinking , Time , Country
Peter Sloterdijk photo

“The courtly person (cortegiano, gentilhomme, gentleman, Hofmann) has gone through a training in self-esteem that expresses itself in many ways: in aristocratically pretentious opinions, in polished or majestic manners, in gallant or heroic patterns of feeling as well as in a selective, aesthetic sensitivity for that which is said to be courtly or pretty. The noble, far removed from any self-doubt, should achieve all this with a complete matter-of-factness. Any uncertainty, any doubt in these things signifies a slackening in the nobility’s cultural “identity.” This class narcissism, which has petrified into a form of life, tolerates no irony, no exception, no slips, because such disturbances would give rise to unwelcome reflections. The French nobles did not turn up their noses at Shakespeare’s “barbarism” without reason. In his plays one already “smells” the human ordinariness of those who want to stand before society as the best.
With the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie, the place of the “best” is awarded anew. The bourgeois ego, in an unprecedented, creative storming to the heights of a new class consciousness won for itself an autonomous narcissism.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 62

Life , Way , Feeling , Personality
Richard Cobden photo

“With this question of Denmark and Germany, two issues are brought clearly before us—I mean the question as to the dynastic, secret, irresponsible, engagements of our Foreign Office, and also the question which is not ancient but new, and which must be taken into consideration in all our foreign policy from this time—the question of nationalities—by which I mean the instinct, now so powerful, leading communities to seek to live together, because they are of the same race, language, and religion. Now, what is the Treaty of 1852, of which we have heard so much, and which forms the pivot and basis of this discussion? Eight gentlemen met in London about the celebrated round table to settle the destinies of a million of people, who were never consulted on the matter at issue. Let us take note of this event. It is the last page in the long history of past diplomatic action. It will not be repeated again. I mean that there will never again, in all probability, be a Conference meeting together to dispose for dynastic purposes of a population whose wishes they do not take into account.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1864/jul/05/address-to-her-majesty in the House of Commons (5 July 1864).
1860s

People , Secret , Religion , History
Ray Comfort photo

“Reptiles don't turn into birds no matter how long you leave them.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution (2009)

Bird
Aron Ra photo

“It doesn’t matter what you believe; all that matters is why you believe it, and how accurate you can show your beliefs to be.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, A Letter to a Certain Christian http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/10/12/a-letter-to-a-certain-christian/ (October 12, 2013)

Richard Dawkins photo

“Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.
But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could… fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case… who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.
We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.
A successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee. Even if the hybrid were infertile like a mule, the shock waves that would be sent through society would be salutary. This is why a distinguished biologist described this possibility as the most immoral scientific experiment he could imagine: it would change everything! It cannot be ruled out as impossible, but it would be surprising.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins Chimpanzee Hybrid? The Guardian, Jan 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/02/richard-dawkins-chimpanzee-hybrid?commentpage=2

Life , People , Imagination , Question
Anthony Watts photo

“The sun is still the number 1 factor in our energy balance. No matter how much people argue about CO2, they can't successfully explain the pre industrial revolution 900-1300AD Medieval Warming Period or the cold 1645-1715 AD Maunder Sunspot Minimum that coincided with European crop failure, famine and disease while linking it with our modern day issues with CO2 to climate change. Yet sunspots and solar cycles can and do explain both.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Anthropogenic Warming? http://web.archive.org/web/20070304183056/http://www.norcalblogs.com/post_scripts/archives/2006/10/anthropogenic_w_1.html#comments, norcalblogs.com, 22 October, 2006.
2006

People , Disease , Failure , Change

“Let us delve a little deeper into the matter of Income Tax. The long-suffering Public are blamed and where discovered heavily penalised for submitting wrong returns. No doubt there are many black sheep, as in all other walks of life, who deliberately do so, but, however, it is true that most of those who adopt this unsavory practice have been forced to do so. Let us consider what happens.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Income Tax

Life , Suffering

“So at the point where you make the choice, there is this moment where scores of men stand around, and they debate and they argue and they discuss and they read little signs on the road. And a barrel, a big barrel, full of cards and full of information. You sift through it: 'Oh, George went this way, Sam went this way, Louie went that way. What am I going to do?' There's choices being made. And they stand around and they debate, and sometimes companies'd argue and they split, and there'd be fights, and We'll go this way and We'll go that way. So it was a life-and-death choice, everybody knew it to be that. Wasn't just some casual matter of saving a few hours, it might save your life.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

About disagreements in which routes to take on the way to California
The West (1996)

Life , Death , Men , Way
Ahad Ha'am photo

“Between things sacred and profane there is this difference among others. In profane matters the instrument derives its worth from the end, and is valued for the most part only in so far as it is a means to that end; and consequently we change the instruments as the end demands, and finally, when the end is no longer pursued, the instruments automatically fall into disuse. But in sacred matters the end invests the instrument with a sanctity of its own. Consequently, there is no changing or varying of the instrument; and when the end has ceased to be pursued, the instrument does not fall out of use, but is directed towards another end. In other words: in the one case we preserve the shell for the sake of the kernel, and discard the shell when we have eaten the kernel; in the other case we raise the shell to the dignity of the kernel, and do not rob it of that dignity even if the kernel withers, but make a new kernel for it.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Sacred and Profane" (1891), p. 41

Change , Parting
Michel Foucault photo

“A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

“Practicing criticism, or, is it really important to think?”, interview by Didier Eribon, May 30-31, 1981, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. L. Kriztman (1988), p. 155

“It may seem as if Kant was content with such a radically dualistic view of human action, but ultimately he was not. … What Kant is assuming here is that morality is not just a matter of making rightful or virtuous choices, but also requires us to put those choices into practice by attempting to realize the goals or ends that they entail in the arena of action, that is, nothing less than the realm of spatial, temporal, and causal nature in which we live and act.”

Paul Guyer (1948) American philosopher

Kant (2006; 2014), Introduction

Nature
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self-consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 18 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Context: The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite Matter. As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom. All will readily assent to the doctrine that Spirit, among other properties, is also endowed with Freedom; but philosophy teaches that all the qualities of Spirit exist only through Freedom; that all are but means for attaining Freedom; that all seek and produce this and this alone. It is a result of speculative Philosophy, that Freedom is the sole truth of Spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite; consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its Unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self- destructive, as verging towards its opposite [an indivisible point]. If it could attain this, it would be Matter no longer, it would have perished. It strives after the realization of its Idea; for in Unity it exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self-consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.

Nature , Freedom , Dependency
Wassily Kandinsky photo

“[ Schoenberg's ] music leads us into a realm where musical experience is a matter not of the ear but of the soul alone, and at this point the music of the future begins.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, 1911; in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, transl. Michael T. Sadler (1914); reprint. New York: Dover, 1977), p. 17
1910 - 1915

Music , Soul , Future
Aron Ra photo

“… it's one thing to believe in something that might be true (like God in general or Christianity specifically) even though neither can be substantiated or tested in any objective way. But it is a whole other matter to willfully deceive others into believing things which are definitely not true -like creationism, especially when we can also prove that those doing this know their assorted arguments are bogus, and know they’re lying to our children, and that they hope to continue doing so under the guise of “education”. Creationism extorts support through peer-pressure, prejudice, and paranoid propaganda, and sells itself with short, simplistic slogans which appeal to those who don’t want to think too much, or are afraid to question their own beliefs. Worst of all, it actually forbids critical inquiry, and promotes anti-intellectualism, and it is based on at least a dozen foundational falsehoods. First and foremost among them is the idea that accepting evolution requires the rejection of theism, if not all other religious or spiritual beliefs as well.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY, Youtube (November 11, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God , Children , Education , Hope

“The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth. Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war. The history of nation states is written around the dates of war, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

Foreword (1984) to The Market for Liberty (1970)

War , Peace , Art , History
Antoni Tàpies photo

“It is essential to bear in mind that the world of the mystics, like that of modern physics, cannot always be 'explained' in normal words, but often 'shows' itself the better through visual images.. [from the accumulation of matter and of objects to the radicalism of a gesture, it is a matter of] painting the essential and nothing more”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Tàpies is citing here Llull
in his 1990 speech 'L'art modern, la mística i l'humor' ('Modern Art, Mysticism and Humour'), Barcelona: Editorial Empúries i Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1993; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Presse Release, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), p. 12
insisting on his 'magma works' like 'Montseny-Montnegre' and 'Díptic amb dues formes corbes' (Diptych with Two Curved Shapes), 1988.
1981 - 1990

World , Painting
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. […]
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. […] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that the degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.
"A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
Some of these ideas were included in the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949) (see below).

Life , Men , People , Truth
Clarence Thomas photo

“This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U. S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new-yitna?id=UsaThom&images=images/modeng&data=/lv6/workspace/yitna&tag=public&part=24, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library (October 11, 1991).
1990s

Way , Idea , Thinking , Tree
Colin Wilson photo

“Jung fiercely resented the implication that he was a hypocritical, self-seeking Judas, a 'rat'. Yet there was just enough truth in it to strike home. He was undoubtedly a man who liked his own way, no matter what the cost to others.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: C. G. Jung: Lord of the Underworld (1984), p. 72

Truth , Way , Home
Willie Mays photo

“I never had any training. I never had a guy say to me, "Do it this way, do it that way." When I was growing up, I was the last guy to get picked for every team that I was on. If they needed a pitcher, I pitched. If there was a catcher needed, I caught. First baseman, shortstop, whatever position they needed, that's what I played. I felt I was the best all-around athlete on that particular team. Most of them couldn't do that, everybody wanted to play a position. It didn't matter what position I played. I just had fun and enjoyed it.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

Way , Guy , Training
Frances Kellor photo

“Americanization today is little more than an impulse, and its context, as popularly conceived, is both narrow and superficial. As French has been the language of diplomacy in the past, so English is to be the language of the reconstruction of the world. English is the language of 90,000,000 people living in America. The English language is a highway of loyalty; it is a medium of exchange; it is the open door to opportunity; it is a means of common defense. It is an implement of Americanization, but it is not necessarily Americanization. The American who thinks that America is united and safe when all men speak one language has only to look at Austria and to study the Jugo-Slav and Czecho-Slovak nationalistic movements. The imposition of a language is not the creation of nationalism. A common language is essential to a common understanding, and by all means let America open such a line of communication. The traffic that goes over this line is, however, the vital thing, and what that shall be and how it is to be prepared are matters to which but little thought has been given. Even those who urge the abolition of all other languages are indefinite about the restriction. Shall a man after he has learned English be allowed to get news in a foreign language paper and to worship in his native tongue; and if not, what becomes of the liberty which he is urged to learn English in order to appreciate? Are foreign languages to be encouraged as an expression of culture and to be denied as a means of economic and political expression? The English language campaigns in America have failed because they have not secured the support of the foreign-born. Men must have reasons for learning new languages, and America has never presented the case conclusively or satisfactorily. Furthermore, wherever the case has been presented, it has not been done with the proper facilities and under favorable conditions. The working day must not be so long that men cannot study.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Men , People , World , Communication
William H. Gass photo

“The devil does not sign contracts with just anyone. Upon the tens of millions, no judgment is pronounced. For them there is death, of course, but no doom. The trouble with history is its incorrigible and horrifying honesty. Only the truly doomed matter a damn to it. History is the abyss of the doomed.”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p.185

Death , History
Mark Ames photo

“Anything, no matter how bizarre, was cited as the cause for slave rebellions except for the most obvious source: slavery.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part II: The Banality of Slavery, page 50.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

Igor Tamm photo

“Creativity makes life valuable. Man is the sole creator; he stands out from the swarming masses of petty little folks. It doesn't matter what kind of creativity it is - whether scientific or socio-political - it's of equal value.”

Igor Tamm (1895–1971) Russian physicist

as quoted by [Gennadiĭ Efimovich Gorelik, Antonina W. Bouis, The world of Andrei Sakharov: a Russian physicist's path to freedom, Oxford University Press, 2005, 019515620X, 41]

Life
Henry Hazlitt photo

“In the last decade or two there has grown up in this country, principally under the leadership of Professor Milton Friedman, a school calling itself the Monetarists. The leaders sometimes sum up their doctrine in the phrase: "Money matters," and even sometimes in the phrase: "Money matters most."”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money , School , Country
Dave Barry photo

“We travel because, no matter how comfortable we are at home, there's a part of us that wants - that needs - to see new vistas, take new tours, obtain new traveler's checks, buy new souvenirs, order new entrees, introduce new bacteria into our intestinal tracts, learn new words for "transfusion," and have all the other travel adventures that make us want to french-kiss our doormats when we finally get home.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (1991)

Travel , Home , Kiss , Learning
Johann Gottfried Herder photo

“The nature of man remains ever the same: in the ten thousandth year of the World he will be born with passions, as he was born with passions in the two thousandth, and ran through his course of follies to a late, imperfect, useless wisdom. We wander in a labyrinth, in which our lives occupy but a span; so that it is to us nearly a matter of indifference, whether there be any entrance or outlet to the intricate path.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe.
Vol. 2, p. 186; translation vol. 2, pp. 266-7
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Wisdom , World , Nature , Passion
Harry V. Jaffa photo

“Abraham Lincoln was self-educated. His curriculum included Shakespeare, the Bible, Euclid and the Declaration of Independence, the monuments to the freedom of the human soul, the possession not of western man, but of a humanity compounded of all colors and every condition. In Independence Hall on February 22, 1861, Lincoln asked what it was, above all else, that went forth to the world on July 4, 1776. It was not, he said, the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the motherland, but something in that Declaration giving hope to the world for all future time. The declaration gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all would have an equal chance. These are the principles upon which the Republican Party must stand, in 1996 no less than in 1860.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Men , World , Education , Hope
Peter Sloterdijk photo

“Our thinking is becoming much more morose than precise. … Capacity of thought does not keep pace with what is problematic. Hence the self-abdication of critique. … Because everything has become problematic, everything is also somehow a matter of indifference.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

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

Thinking , Indifference
Emil M. Cioran photo

“It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Men , Soul , Time , Reading
P.G. Wodehouse photo

“I don't know if you have ever seen a tiger of the jungle drawing a deep breath preparatory to doing a swan dive and landing with both the feet on the backbone of one of the minor fauna. Probably not, nor, as a matter of fact, have I.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)

Drawing
John Gray photo

“Against the many Russian thinkers influenced by Hegel who believed that history was governed by universal laws to which one could only submit, Turgenev upheld the freedom of different societies to pursue different paths of development and of individuals to pursue, even in opposition to powerful historical forces, their own goals and values. Here Turgenev endorsed the celebrated dictum of Alexander Herzen, with whom he disagreed on other matters: that history has no libretto. Human history is a realm of contingency and unpredictability, in which each generation faces conflicts that have no ideal solution.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.105)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

Law , History , Freedom , Universe
Stephen L. Carter photo

“These children…well, they have no concept. None. All they want to do is win. That is your culture. America spoils chess, as it spoils all things. Art? What art? Winning, all you Americans can think of is winning. Winning and getting rich. Your country is too young to have so much power. Too immature. Yet, because of your power, everybody pays attention. Everybody. You are teaching the world that only one thing matters!”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Karl, Ch. 26, Sam Loyd's Challenge
The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002)

Children , World , Art , Thinking

“He fought despairingly to go deeper into the blackness of a sleep, any sleep, even the sleep of death or some form of non-existence, but even with the loss of consciousness he dreamt he was awake, lying on the bed trying desperately to sleep. If he could find some way to prove that time had passed, no matter how short that time, he could tell himself that he had slept and perhaps then, just perhaps, he would feel rested.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Death , Way , Feeling , Lying
Mickey Spillane photo

“When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Life , People , Books , School
Agatha Christie photo

“It’s so dreadfully easy — killing people… And you begin to feel that it doesn’t matter… That it’s only you that matters! It’s dangerous — that.”

Agatha Christie book Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile (1937)

People , Feeling
Aron Ra photo

“Personally I think the only meaning your life will ever have is whatever your involvement means to someone else. The best strategy I think, if you want your life to mean something, try making someone else’s life meaningful. But if you want your life to mean something five billion years from now, it won’t –no matter what. Sorry. But what matters now still matters now.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Life , Thinking , Personality
Halldór Laxness photo

“How is one to have any respect for the world where nothing else matters except who can lie the most plausibly and steal the most?”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Þórunn of Kambar
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

World , Lie
Georg Cantor photo

“The potential infinite means nothing other than an undetermined, variable quantity, always remaining finite, which has to assume values that either become smaller than any finite limit no matter how small, or greater than any finite limit no matter how great.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

"Mitteilungen" (1887-8)

Carl Sagan photo

“Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 103

Life , Children , World , Family
Wassily Kandinsky photo

“If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
1910 - 1915

Beauty , Hope , Art , Feeling
James MacDonald photo

“It’s not unlikely that God would lie—that would be a matter of probability. It is impossible for God to lie.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 51

God , Lie

“A system is a set of objects with relationships between the … in may be described generally as a complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a causal network, … Also, we are mainly interested in systems within which some process is continually going on, including an interchange with an environment across the boundary. It is generally agreed that when we deal with the more open system with a highly flexible structure, the distinction between the boundaries and the environment becomes a more and more arbitrary matter, dependent upon the purpose of the observer.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Cited in: Addison C. Bennett (1978) Improving management performance in health care institutions: a total systems approach.. p. 40
A methodology for systems engineering, 1962

Dependency
Philip DeFranco photo

“When you cut out a man's tongue, you make his words matter that much more.”

Philip DeFranco (1985) American video blogger and YouTuber

BANNED! BIG CREATORS GETTING THE BOOT OVER NEW SCANDAL! (Published 20 July 2016, at 5min 21 sec) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI4r0mSe7BY&feature=youtu.be&t=5m21s
BANNED! BIG CREATORS GETTING THE BOOT OVER NEW SCANDAL! (2016)

Akio Morita photo

“…I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 145.

School , Past
Dinah Craik photo

“Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Last words, after suffering a heart attack, while in a period of preparation for her adopted daughter Dorothy's wedding. (12 October 1887)

George Biddell Airy photo

“It is not simply that a clear understanding is acquired of the movements of the great bodies which we regard as the system of the world, but it is that we are introduced to a perception of laws governing the motion of all matter, from the finest particle of dust to the largest planet or sun, with a degree of uniformity and constancy, which otherwise we could hardly have conceived. Astronomy is pre-eminently the science of order.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

World , Law , Understanding , Science
Charles Olson photo

“When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter,
he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself
in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, “The kingfishers!
who cares
for their feathers
now?” His last words had been, “The pool is slime.””

Charles Olson (1910–1970) American writer

Part I, 2
The Kingfishers (1950)

Night