Quotes about matter
page 46

Simone de Beauvoir photo
Douglas Coupland photo

“Faithful horoscope-watching, practiced daily, provides just the sort of small but warm and infinitely reassuring fillip that gets matters off to a spirited start.”

Shana Alexander (1925–2005) Journalist

A delicious appeal to unreason (2005) http://books.google.com/books?id=XVYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=%22Faithful+horoscope-watching,+practiced+daily,+provides+just+the+sort+of+small+but+warm+and+infinitely+reassuring+fillip+that+gets+matters+off+to+a+spirited+start.%22&source=bl&ots=WlTZPOXd1a&sig=B7LI5-SEDOdMddoH_OQp3QlQMOE&hl=en&ei=EJY7TOSIK8XdnAfe-6XfAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22Faithful%20horoscope-watching%2C%20practiced%20daily%2C%20provides%20just%20the%20sort%20of%20small%20but%20warm%20and%20infinitely%20reassuring%20fillip%20that%20gets%20matters%20off%20to%20a%20spirited%20start.%22&f=false

Subramanian Swamy photo

“I was later called by Morarji Desai who said I should not press the matter as it was in the national interest that the basement be kept sealed. The government has something to hide and the issue should be thoroughly investigated.”

Subramanian Swamy (1939) Indian politician

1999-2010
Source: On the hidden basement under the Taj Mahal, as quoted in "Hindus, Muslims in Taj Mahal tussle" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/may/20/20050520-090732-4620r/?page=all, The Washington Times (20 May 2005)

Henry Adams photo
Dave Matthews photo

“Turns out not where, but who you're with, that really matters.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

The Best Of What's Around
Under the Table and Dreaming (1994)

Adam Smith photo

“All money is a matter of belief.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

https://www.amazon.com/All-money-matter-belief-quotes/dp/B01M0HLG6B
Attributed

Michael Richards photo

“Whats the matter, too much for you to handle?”

Michael Richards (1949) American actor

Laugh Factory incident (2006)

Hermann Göring photo
Arthur Cecil Pigou photo

“If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Obscurity of the Poet”, p. 4
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Dr. Seuss photo

“… and the wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones … But those were Foreign Children and it really didn’t matter …”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Caption to a political cartoon against the "America First" movement, showing children being read a story of "Adolf the Wolf", in PM Magazine (1 October 1941)

Roger Scruton photo
Sarah Chang photo
Sonia Sotomayor photo

“No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Reported in Sheryl Gay Stolberg, " Woman in the News: Sotomayor, a Trailblazer and a Dreamer http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/politics/27websotomayor.html?pagewanted=all", The New York Times (26 May 2009).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Freeman Dyson photo
James Comey photo
Plutarch photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Tom McCarthy (writer) photo
Merrick Garland photo

“They tell you in Washington, that if you want a friend get a dog. Harry Truman said that. That is not true. Get a family. This is a hard place to be. No matter how much honor you have, people will attack you one way or the other. And the principle solace that you get is from your family. Because they’re behind you no matter what happens. So never forget about that. Whatever interests you have in your career, you have to balance it with a deep relationship with your family.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U1a8pYMJDM, March 18, 2016, Life Lessons Learned, DC Circuit Court Judge Panel, JRCLS International Law Conference, February 15, 2013, Georgetown University Law Center]; also excerpted quote in:
[March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325]
DC Circuit Court Judge Panel, JRCLS International Law Conference (2013)

Robert Conquest photo

“On political matters basically the best, though not infallible, source is rumor …”

Robert Conquest (1917–2015) poet and historian from England and the United States

From Grover Furr on Robert Conquest http://www.stalinsociety.org/2015/08/05/grover-furr-on-robert-conquest/ at stalinsociety.org',' 2015/08/05

Mike Tyson photo
Marc Randazza photo
Francis Bacon photo
Hugh Plat photo
André Maurois photo
Ervin László photo

“Even the brain, that most delicate and complex of all known organs, is not merely a lot of neurons added together. While a genius must have more of the gray matter than a sparrow, the idiot may have just as much as the genius. The difference between them must be explained in terms of how those substances are organized.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 32: Partly cited in: David Rock, Linda J. Page (2009) Coaching with the Brain in Mind: Foundations for Practice.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Writing should generate ideas into matter, and not the other way around.”

Robert Smithson (1938–1973) American artist

Cultural Confinement, 1972

John Moffat photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Carl R. Rogers photo

“Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Carl Rogers on Personal Power (1977)

Joe Higgins photo
Enver Hoxha photo

“Our only "crime" is that in Bucharest we did not agree that a fraternal communist party like the Chinese Communist Party should be unjustly condemned; our only "crime" is that we had the courage to oppose openly, at an international communist meeting (and not in the marketplace) the unjust action of Comrade Khrushchev, our only "crime" is that we are a small Party of a small and poor country which, according to Comrade Khrushchev, should merely applaud and approve but express no opinion of its own. But this is neither Marxist nor acceptable. Marxism-Leninism has granted us the right to have our say and we will not give up this right for any one, neither on account of political and economic pressure nor on account of the threats and epithets that they might hurl at us. On this occasion we would like to ask Comrade Khrushchev why he did not make such a statement to us instead of to a representative of a third party. Or does Comrade Khrushchev think that the Party of Labor of Albania has no views of its own but has made common cause with the Communist Party of China in an unprincipled manner, and therefore, on matters pertaining to our Party, one can talk with the Chinese comrades? No, Comrade Khrushchev, you continue to blunder and hold very wrong opinions about our Party. The Party of Labor of Albania has its own views and will answer for them both to its own people as well as to the international communist and workers' movement.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

Rod Serling photo

“I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of war and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words… less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the war that came before.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children.
Other

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Jack Gleeson photo
Michael Lewis photo
James Morrison photo

“But if the rain must fall…It won't matter much to me
If I had you
And all I need is your love.”

James Morrison (1984) English singer-songwriter and guitarist

If The Rain Must Fall
Song lyrics, Undiscovered (James Morrison album) (2006)

Marcus Aurelius photo

“The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything!”

IX, 36
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX

William Jones photo

“The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy… [N]othing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Gotama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

II. pp. 238-239
"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Robert Silverberg photo
Rudy Rucker photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Reporter: Would a reasonable observer say that you are potentially vulnerable to blackmail by Russia or by its intelligence agencies?
Trump: Lemme just tell you what I do. When I leave our country, I’m a very high-profile person, would you say? I am extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards. I’m surrounded by people. And I always tell them — anywhere, but I always tell them if I’m leaving this country, “Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go, you’re gonna probably have cameras.” I’m not referring just to Russia, but I would certainly put them in that category. And number one, “I hope you’re gonna be good anyway. But in those rooms, you have cameras in the strangest places. Cameras that are so small with modern technology, you can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful, or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.” I tell this to people all the time. I was in Russia years ago, with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well — Moscow, the Moscow area did very, very well. And I told many people, “Be careful, because you don’t wanna see yourself on television. Cameras all over the place.”
And again, not just Russia, all over. Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump Press Conference at Trump Tower https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/politics/trump-press-conference-transcript.html,Donald (11 January 2017)
2010s, 2017, January

“There will always be slaves, no matter what people promise and pretend.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 13 "Loneliness"

Adam Roberts photo

“The greatest business people I've met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.”

Michael E. Gerber (1936) American business writer

Source: The E-Myth Revisited, 1995, p. 5

Ned Kelly photo
Daniel Lyons photo
Norman Vincent Peale photo

“It is inconceivable that a Roman Catholic president would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies with respect to foreign relations in matters, including representation to the Vatican.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Formal statement of the committee of 150 Protestant clergymen he represented, opposing the candidacy of ‪John F. Kennedy‬‎ for US President in September 1960, quoted in The Religious Issue: Hot and Getting Hotter in Newsweek (19 September 1960), and in ‪A Question of Character : A Life of John F. Kennedy‬ (1992) by Thomas C. Reeves, p. 191; though as a primary spokesman of the committee, he endorsed the statement, and it is likely he had major influence on its drafting, he was not cited as its author.
Misattributed

“Organisms possess extraordinary attributes, properties that distinguish them from other collections of matter. What are these distinguishing features of living organisms?”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Biochemistry

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo

“The reality of spirit-matter is inevitably translated into and confirmed by a structure of the spirit.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)

Anthony Kenny photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“The fact is all lives matter. That includes black, and it includes white, and it includes everybody else. And we have… Democrats that are afraid to even say that.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted in * 2015-09-09
Donald Trump trashes Black Lives Matter: 'I think they're trouble'
Colin Campbell
Business Insider
http://uk.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-2015-9?r=US&IR=T
2010s, 2015

Jayant Narlikar photo
John Steinbeck photo
Frank Herbert photo
William Herschel photo
Richard Salter Storrs photo

“To speak for Him will be our impulse. No matter how timid, nervous, self-diffident, we are in ourselves, as we touch His pierced and royal hand, we shall be instantly masterful and strong.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 561.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Mary Harris Jones photo

“No matter what your fight, don't be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.”

Mary Harris Jones (1837–1930) Irish-born American labor and community organizer

Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones, p. 125 http://books.google.com/books?id=lFFfyG6DPXMC&pg=PA125

Philippe Starck photo

“A toothbrush is 28 grams of matter, 28 francs to buy and it's made to get rid of scraps of meat from between the teeth. Every gram of matter must provide its service as best it can. My trade is to be a producer of fertile surprises, an opener of doors in people's head.”

Philippe Starck (1949) French architect and industrial designer

Starck (1994) Psychanalyse de l'object Starck" in: Le Monde Jan 27, 1994: Cited in: Philippe Patrick Starck (2003) Starck in words. p. 43

Algis Budrys photo

“You look like any other brainless jackanapes,” he mused, “but apparently there’s some gray matter left in your artfully coiffed skull after all.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

The End of Summer, p. 22
The Unexpected Dimension (1960)

Kapil Dev photo
Shamini Flint photo
Stevie Ray Vaughan photo
Carl Sagan photo
John Osborne photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1780, p. 446
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Don Soderquist photo
Anna Laetitia Barbauld photo
Jacques Derrida photo

“No one can deny the suffering, fear, or panic, the terror or fright that can seize certain animals and that we humans can witness. … No doubt either, then, of there being within us the possibility of giving vent to a surge of compassion, even if it is then misunderstood, repressed, or denied, held at bay. … The two centuries I have been referring to somewhat casually in order to situate the present in terms of this tradition have been those of an unequal struggle, a war (whose inequality could one day be reversed) being waged between, on the one hand, those who violate not only animal life but even and also this sentiment of compassion, and, on the other hand, those who appeal for an irrefutable testimony to this pity. War is waged over the matter of pity. This war is probably ageless but, and here is my hypothesis, it is passing through a critical phase. We are passing through that phase, and it passes through us. To think the war we find ourselves waging is not only a duty, a responsibility, an obligation, it is also a necessity, a constraint that, like it or not, directly or indirectly, no one can escape. Henceforth more than ever. And I say “to think” this war, because I believe it concerns what we call “thinking.””

The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there.
Specters of Marx (1993), The Animal That Therefore I Am, 1997

Halldór Laxness photo
Willem de Sitter photo

“Both the law of inertia and the law of gravitation contain a numerical factor or a constant belonging to matter, which is called mass. We have thus two definitions of mass; one by the law of inertia: mass is the ratio between force and acceleration. We may call the mass thus defined the inertial or passive mass, as it is a measure of the resistance offered by matter to a force acting on it. The second is defined by the law of gravitation, and might be called the gravitational or active mass, being a measure of the force exerted by one material body on another. The fact that these two constants or coefficients are the same is, in Newton's system, to be considered as a most remarkable accidental coincidence and was decidedly felt as such by Newton himself. He made experiments to determine the equality of the two masses by swinging a pendulum, of which the bob was hollow and could be filled up with different materials. The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its active mass, its inertia is proportional to its passive mass, so that the period will depend on the ratio of the passive and the active mass. Consequently the fact that the period of all these different pendulums was the same, proves that this ratio is a constant, and can be made equal to unity by a suitable choice of units, i. e., the inertial and the gravitational mass are the same. These experiments have been repeated in the nineteenth century by Bessel, and in our own times by Eötvös and Zeeman, and the identity of the inertial and the gravitational mass is one of the best ascertained empirical facts in physics-perhaps the best. It follows that the so-called fictitious forces introduced by a motion of the body of reference, such as a rotation, are indistinguishable from real forces…. In Einstein's general theory of relativity there is also no formal theoretical difference, as there was in Newton's system…. the equality of inertial and gravitational mass is no longer an accidental coincidence, but a necessity.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

p, 125
"The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity" (1933)

Robert Lynn Asprin photo
Shimon Peres photo

“India and Israel are co-operating on security and intelligence matters because we have a common enemy: terrorism.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

Rahul Bedi, Israel and India draw Closer, 14 March 2002, http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir020314_1_n.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20080212170448/http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir020314_1_n.shtml

Cesare Pavese photo
Aldo Leopold photo
William Saroyan photo
Paul Tillich photo
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman photo
Ture Nerman photo
Ayumi Hamasaki photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“Height doesnt matter, talent does.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

"‘6 bold statements of Nikita Gokhale’" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/marathi/movies/6-bold-statements-of-Nikita-Gokhale/6-bold-statements-of-Nikita-Gokhale/photostory/45617534.cms.TimesOfIndia.com. December 23, 2014.

Francis Burnand photo

“It ’s no matter what you do
If your heart be only true,
And his heart was true to Poll.”

Francis Burnand (1836–1917) British comic writer and dramatist

True to Poll.

Joni Madraiwiwi photo