Quotes about matter
page 65

“Reading in the third millennium B. C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 182
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Sense, Reading

“If you want to get an interesting perspective do not think of Hugh as a traditional 20th century physicist but more of a Renaissance man with interests and skills in many different areas. He was smart and lots of things interested him and he brought the same general conceptual methodology to solve them. The subject matter was not so important as the solution ideas.”

Hugh Everett (1930–1982) American physicist, author of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

Donald Reisler http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/everett.html

Idea, Thinking

“His book has the force of a mob-protest; an outcry from anonymous throats. The wheel turns and turns and it does not matter, one hardly notices that the captain of the company, killed on page 159, is alive again a hundred pages later. It does not matter that every stock situation of the war, suicide, the murder of an officer, the slaughter of prisoners, a vision of Christ, is apportioned to Company K, because the book is not written in any realistic convention. It is the only War-book I have read which has found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is bare, lucid, without literary echoes, not an imitation but a development of eighteenth-century prose.”

William March (1893–1954) United States Marine, novelist, short story writer

In a Graham Greene review of the novel Company K for the newspaper The Spectator.

Reading, War, Books, Christ

“The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place... All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work into contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (Marchand du Sel) e.d. Michel Sanouille and Elmer Peterson, New York 1973, pp. 139-140
posthumous

World, Change, Art

“John is naturally somebody who attracts people to follow him, You know how you can dress any way you want, but if you don’t have natural style, it doesn’t matter? John has that leadership naturally.”

John Terry (1980) English association football player

Marcel Desailly, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/sports/soccer/john-terry-chelseas-dark-knight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Way, People, Nature

“I noticed my brother sent copies of his e-mail to his nephews and nieces, as well as to our siblings. The wonder is not that he knows so much about Church history, but that such matters continue to preoccupy him. Why not let it go?”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Siblings, History

“Carr states that the characters of the Brunhilde are not true archetypes. Why, then they are false archetypes, and these also have their being. Kidd believes that X himself is in the process of becoming the Third Evil to fill the void left by the insufficiency of Papadiabolous and Seaworthy in the roles of devils. But Kidd is Joycean. To complicate matters, Lafferty swears that Finnegan is in no way Joycean, that he is nine hundred years earlier, out of the Yellow Book of Lecan (the Tain Bo Cuailinge), a character out of the Tain.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

This presupposes that Finnegan is identical with Fion McCool as well as with the more derivative Fingal, and also with Cu Chulainn. Well, Finnegan is capable of being all. To those interested in this line I recommend Thurneysen’s Die Irische Helden- und Konigsage.
Interglossia
The Devil is Dead (1971)

Way, Falseness, Books, Evil

“He thinks in one second and does it the next. He is a special player, one who is original and exceptional. He creates space where there is none. Only the very best players can do that. No matter where he gets the ball or how it comes to him, Zidane can get out of trouble. His imagination and his technique are amazing.”

Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager

Edgar Davids, 2000 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/4752511/Guardiola-books-his-chance-to-face-Zidane.html.

Thinking, Imagination

“For me, a director is more important than a big banner. A great director can do wonders. Of course, banners do matter because, ultimately, after all the hard work you put it, the film must release. This will happen only if you work with a good banner or a producer who markets your film well, gives the director whatever he wants, and releases the film.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

[rediff.com, Fame, http://www.rediff.com/movies/2003/jun/12rani.htm, 23 August, 2006]
The Actress' Take On Films

“Now he saw the problem with great clarity. If he lived here, life would be pleasant and safe. But it would also be predictable. A child could be born here, grow up here, die here, without ever experiencing the excitement of discovery. Why did Dona question him endlessly about his life in the burrow and his journey to the country of the ants? Because for her, it represented a world that was dangerous and full of fascinating possibilities. For the children of this underground city, life was a matter of repetition, of habit.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

And this, he suddenly realized, was the heart of the problem. Habit. Habit was a stifling, warm blanket that threatened you with suffocation and lulled the mind into a state of perpetual nagging dissatisfaction. Habit meant the inability to escape from yourself, to change and develop . . .

pp. 132-133
Spider World: The Desert (1987)

Country, Question, Children, Problem

“A glimpse heavenward at a constellation or even at a single star only suggests infinity; actually our vision is limited. We cannot perceive unlimited space; it is immeasurable. The universe, as we know it through our visual experience, is limited. It first came into existence with the formation of matter, and will end with the complete dissolution of matter.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 43
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Universe, Star

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

Way, Freedom

“When all actions are used for feedback, the consequence of making mistakes will be a corrective and appropriate response, because everything everybody does matters.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

&hellip; The more selective you are in the feedback you accept, the more insane your reasoning will become as you will necessarily reject corrective feedback that would have led to better reasoning. Re: Lisp's future http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ba8f8f34c16d55f3 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Making love

“I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“November: Axe-in-Hand”, p. 68.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

Thinking, Reading

“The heart of the question concerns the presumption of a univerasl human Subject, capable of reducing ethical issues to matters of human rights and humanitarian actions. We have seen that ethics subordniates the identification fo this subject to the universal recognition of the evil that is done to him. Ethics defines man as a victim.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

It will be objected: 'No! You are forgetting the active subject, the one that intervenes against barbarism!'So let us be precise: man is the being who is capable of recognzing himself as a victim.
Source: Ethics, Chapter One, Section III: "Man Living animal or immortal singularity?"

Universe, Evil, Heart, Question

“Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable… But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object—a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal—and become an infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn’t give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else.”

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81

Home, War, Box, Heart

“Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, but in Sokolov’s experience, shitting the pants was more common if it was a straightforward matter of extreme emotional stress. Pants pissing was completely unproductive and suggested a total breakdown of elemental control. Pants shitting, on the other hand, voided the bowels and thereby made blood available to the brain and the large muscle groups that otherwise would have gone to the lower-priority activity of digestion. Sokolov could have forgiven Peter for shitting his pants, but if he had pissed his pants, then it really would have been necessary to get rid of him.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 2
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Fear, People, Men

“He worked quietly for years as keeper of the RFCs and final arbiter in technical matters when consensus couldn’t be reached. Postel believed that decisions he had made in the course of his work over the years had been for the good of the community and that starting a company to profit from those activities would have amounted to a violation of public trust.”

Jon Postel (1943–1998) American computer scientist

Where Wizards Stay Up Late (1996) by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

Decision, Communication

“Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 9

Whore, Water, Wine

“Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader’s mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave make their call at five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in this unfinished and in the main inferior story, are all the elements of Jane Austen’s greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there remains, to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of human values.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925)

Future, Hope, Pleasure, Animals

“Alike in the highest regions of speculation and in the smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle. The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times when such a carrière was open to women, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. Her intellectual gifts did but minister to a moral character at once the noblest and the best balanced which I have ever met with in life.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/186/mode/1up pp. 186-187

Nature, Women, Time, Perfection

“I consequently remained long, and in a less degree have always remained, inexpert in anything requiring manual dexterity; my mind as well as my hands, did its work very lamely when it was applied, or ought to have been applied, to the practical details which, as they are the chief interest of life to the majority of men, are also the things in which whatever mental capacity they have, chiefly shows itself: I was constantly meriting reproof by inattention, inobservance, and general slackness of mind in matters of daily life. My father was the extreme opposite in these particulars: his senses and mental faculties were always on the alert; he carried decision and energy of character in his whole manner and into every action of life: and this, as much as his talents, contributed to the strong impression which he always made upon those with whom he came into personal contact. But the children of energetic parents, frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean on their parents, and the parents are energetic for them.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/36/mode/1up pp. 36–37

Personality, Men, Children, Parent

“My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do, so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly. I did not estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I was rather backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, in comparison with what my father expected from me. I assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons, while I never had inculcated in me the usual respect for them. My father did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/33/mode/1up pp. 33–34

Personality, Age, Study, Self-confidence

“No matter what you have been told by people who make your needs wrong because they don’t want to meet those needs, you cannot un-need what you need.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Making love, People

“We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think. So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Childhood, Family, Success, Children

“I wasn’t really shocked or anything. Because of what I saw after the incident after the NFC championship game. You’ve got a lot of racial backlash, and a lot of racist comments that were uncalled for – I can never see a time where racism is called for. So it didn’t shock me as much as it would have had I not experienced that personally, had I not seen those things. Because it showed me that America still had some progress to make. On equality, and understanding that it doesn’t matter what color you are, you treat people as people. And whether a good person or a bad person, you don’t judge them off the color of their skin. You can know a person is a good person or a bad person by who they are, not by what they look like. In that situation, it just seems like a lot of people gave him a lot of flack, well deserved, but you know – I feel like a lot more people were surprised then they should have been.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

About Donald Sterling's racist remarks.
The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

Time, Understanding, Personality, Bad luck

“I am a Republican, as the two great political parties as now divided, because the Republican party is a National party, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens. There is not a precinct in this vast Nation where a Democrat cannot cast his ballot and have it counted as cast. No matter what the prominence of the opposite party, he can proclaim his political opinions, even if he is only one among a thousand, without fear and without proscription on account of his opinions.”

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

As quoted in Words of Our Hero, Ulysses S. Grant https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22the+one+thing+i+never+wanted+to+see+again+was+a+military+parade%22&source=bl&ots=zH525oYpJn&sig=ACfU3U0GLPNgij-FmXIDwgWp_Kg8zDskWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4uc7PzKniAhUq1lkKHWhlBfQQ6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20one%20thing%20i%20never%20wanted%20to%20see%20again%20was%20a%20military%20parade%22&f=false, by Jeremiah Chaplin, p. 57 1880s, Speech at Warren, Ohio (1880)

Fear

“The Republican party is a party of progress and of liberality toward its opponents. It encourages the poor to strive to better their children, to enable them to compete successfully with their more fortunate associates, and, in fine, it secures an entire equality before the law of every citizen, no matter what his race, nationality, or previous condition. It tolerates no privileged class. Every one has the opportunity to make himself all he is capable of.”

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

Ulysses S. Grant, as quoted in Words of Our Hero, Ulysses S. Grant https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22the+one+thing+i+never+wanted+to+see+again+was+a+military+parade%22&source=bl&ots=zH525oYpJn&sig=ACfU3U0GLPNgij-FmXIDwgWp_Kg8zDskWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4uc7PzKniAhUq1lkKHWhlBfQQ6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20one%20thing%20i%20never%20wanted%20to%20see%20again%20was%20a%20military%20parade%22&f=false, by Jeremiah Chaplin, p. 59 1880s, Speech at Warren, Ohio (1880)

Making love, Law, Children

“There is a reason why I focus more in my carreer on practical things like relationships and what to do with emotions - it's because all of this interdimensional information that I could have a conversation about with you, DOES NOTHING FOR YOUR DAILY LIFE. Nothing. Really, it doesn't matter how many extraterrestrials there are in the universe and what they are doing in your day to day life… What matter's is whether you can have a relationship because life literally is relationships. Even if you want to have a conversation about the universe - it's about your relationship to the universe.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Universe, Life

“Although styles of leadership change with the times, one constant remains: people are always ambivalent about those in power. They want to be led but also to feel free; they want to be protected and enjoy prosperity without making sacrifices; they both worship the king and want to kill him. When you are the leader of a group, people are continually prepared to turn on you the moment you seem weak or experience a setback. Do not succumb to the prejudices of the times, imagining that what you need to do to gain their loyalty is to seem to be their equal or their friend; people will doubt your strength, become suspicious of your motives, and respond with hidden contempt. Authority is the delicate art of creating the appearance of power, legitimacy, and fairness while getting people to identify with you as a leader who is in their service. If you want to lead, you must master this art from early on in your life. Once you have gained people’s trust, they will stand by you as their leader, no matter the bad circumstances.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 15 : Make Them Want to Follow You
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Imagination, Time, Loyalty, Bad luck

“Most of us spend our lives avoiding the thought of death. Instead, the inevitability of death should be continually on our minds. Understanding the shortness of life fills us with a sense of purpose and urgency to realize our goals. Training ourselves to confront and accept this reality makes it easier to manage the inevitable setbacks, separations, and crises in life. It gives us a sense of proportion, of what really matters in this brief existence of ours. Most people continually look for ways to separate themselves from others and feel superior. Instead, we must see the mortality in everyone, how it equalizes and connects us all. By becoming deeply aware of our mortality, we intensify our experience of every aspect of life.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 18 : Meditate on Our Common Mortality
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Understanding, Death, People, Way

“There is no possibility for two people to stay connected and close if they are in different parallel perceptual realities, no matter if their bodies are in the same place. And it is intimacy and attunement that will bridge the gap between these different parallel realities that make us so utterly alone.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Reality, People, Making love

“You deserve a relationship where your feelings matter. And the fastest way to get to that relationship is to decide that your emotions, including your positive emotions, matter to you. And your positive emotions should matter to you enough that you are willing to follow them in whatever direction they wish to take you.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Way, Feeling

“You deserve a relationship where your feelings matter. And the fastest way to get to that kind of relationship is to decide that your emotions matter to YOU. If you stop abandoning yourself when you are experiencing negative emotions, you will come to trust that you will always be there for yourself. You will feel a deep sense of inner peace arise within you.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

book The Anatomy of Loneliness

Way, Peace, Feeling, Sense

“Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Love, Making love, Wisdom

“the first flint was flaked this landing was merely
a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,
still don't fit us exactly, modern
only in this—our lack of decorum.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: Moon Landing (1969), Lines 10–16

Time

“He was waiting for me to say something. He was staring at me. This, I think, is the first time I dared myself to stare back at him. Usually, I'd cast a glance and then look away—look away because I didn't want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of his eyes unless I'd been invited to—and I never waited long enough to know whether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because I didn't want to give anything away; look away because I couldn't acknowledge how much he mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of his always reminded me of how tall he stood and how far below him ranked.”

André Aciman book Call Me By Your Name

Part 2, p. 78
Call Me By Your Name (2007)

Time, Waiting, Thinking, Love

“Many medical and legal professionals believe that in many ways marijuana is actually less harmful than my drug of choice, alcohol. So if adults choose to use marijuana instead of alcohol, the governments, as a matter of freedom and liberty, should not be able to prohibit them from doing so.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

“Regulate marijuana like wine,” April 10, 2011, 2012, Gray’s campaign website, http://www.judgejimgray.com/grayarticles2.php

Way, Marijuana, Alcohol, Freedom

“Sending Robert Downey, Jr. to prison for drug use makes no more sense than locking up Betty Ford for using alcohol. Now if it's Darryl Strawberry and he uses drugs while driving, that's a different matter; he should do time.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

As quote in Coast Magazine, Jim Wood, “Interview—Judge James P. Gray—The Newport Beach resident talks about America's War on Drugs” (June 2001) Vol.10 No. 7

Sense, Making love, Time, Alcohol

“One feature of our own society that seems decidedly anomalous is the matter of sexual advertisement. As we have seen, it is strongly to be expected on evolutionary grounds that, where the sexes differ, it should be the males that advertise and the females that are drab. Modern western man is undoubtedly exceptional in this respect. It is of course true that some men dress flamboyantly and some women dress drably but, on average, there can be no doubt that in our society the equivalent of the peacock’s tail is exhibited by the female, not by the male. Women paint their faces and glue on false eyelashes. Apart from special cases, like actors, men do not.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 9. Battle of the Sexes

Painting, Sex, Falseness, Women

“Doesn’t matter how old the speaker is, it’s the words that matter.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Moon (2014), p. 148

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

William H. McRaven (1955) United States admiral

McRaven wrote in a February 20 editorial in the Washington Post about the dismissal by the president of the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, for having briefed congressional intelligence committee members about emerging evidence of foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/william-mcraven-if-good-men-like-joe-maguire-cant-speak-the-truth-we-should-be-deeply-afraid/2020/02/21/2068874c-5503-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

Future, Truth, Self-confidence, Evil

“I'm not the important one. It doesn't matter what I do.”

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (1984) a member of the British royal family

Referring to his position as 'the spare' behind elder brother William (before William had children of his own)
Source: Seward, Ingrid. William and Harry. London: Arcade, 2003. ISBN: 9781559706902.

“Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer, either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept by the earth in their own place.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

As translated and quoted by Bryant, ibid.
Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), Astronomia nova (1609)

Light, Universe, Nature

“I was almost driven to madness in considering and calculating this matter. I could not find out why the planet would rather go on an elliptical orbit. Oh, ridiculous me! As the liberation in the diameter could not also be the way to the ellipse. So this notion brought me up short, that the ellipse exists because of the liberation. With reasoning derived from physical principles, agreeing with experience, there is no figure left for the orbit of the planet but a perfect ellipse.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

As translated and quoted in John Freely, Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), in chapter 58, at an unspecified page.
Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), Astronomia nova (1609)

Perfection, Way, Madness

“Do what will keep you happy forever present is just a matter of hours.”

Albara Almerf (2000)

Happiness

“Cruelty is cruelty under whatever colouring it may appear; and whether exercised on a man or on a fly, cruelty is still cruelty. It matters not whether the victim be furnished with two legs or with four, with wings, with fins, or with arms; where there is sensation, there is subject for cruelty, and in proportion to the degree of sensation will its action operate.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 11, pp. 149–150

Exercises, Appearance, Flying

“Now because 18 months ago the first dawn, 3 months ago broad daylight but a very few days ago the full sun of the most highly remarkable spectacle has risen — nothing holds me back. I can give myself up to the sacred frenzy, I can have the insolence to make a full confession to mortal men that I have stolen the golden vessel of the Egyptians to make from them a tabernacle for my God far from the confines of the land of Egypt. If you forgive me I shall rejoice; if you are angry, I shall bear it; I am indeed casting the die and writing the book, either for my contemporaries or for posterity to read, it matters not which: let the book await its reader for a hundred years; God himself has waited six thousand years for his work to be seen.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

Book V, Introduction
Variant translation: It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
As quoted in The Martyrs of Science; or, the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841) by David Brewster, p. 197. This has sometimes been misquoted as "It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."
Variant translation: I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony... I write a book for the present time, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for its readers, as God has also waited six thousand years for an onlooker.
As quoted in Calculus. Multivariable (2006) by Steven G. Krantz and Brian E. Blank. p. 126
Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), Harmonices Mundi (1618)

Forgiveness, God, Waiting, Reading

“Under the chilling effects generated by Beijing and Hong Kong governments, we are strongly aware how they arrest activists no matter whether they behave progressively or moderately...All we ask for is just to urge Beijing and Hong Kong governments to withdraw the bill, stop police brutality and respond to our calls for a free election.”

Joshua Wong (1996) Hong Kong activist, Secretary-general of Demosistō

August 30, 2019 Hong Kong activists arrested including Joshua Wong in crackdown on protests https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests/hong-kong-activists-arrested-including-joshua-wong-in-crackdown-on-protests-idUSKCN1VK02X?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29

“When a word is used to provoke hatred, it does not matter what the word actually means. What matters is only what the haters insist it means - the meaning they give it, the common prejudices they exploit.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"The Power of Words" (1978)

“What matters an eternity of damnation to someone who has found in one second the infinity of joy?”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Mais qu'importe l'éternité de la damnation à qui a trouvé dans une seconde l'infini de la jouissance? IX: "Le Mauvais Vitrier" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose_-_IX._Le_Mauvais_Vitrier Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

Joy

“If it should be shown further that this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the classification of mental types.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 151
about Handwriting

“We will never abandon Ireland or the Irish people no matter what happens, because this solidarity is the very purpose of the European project.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Brexit: EU stands fully behind Ireland, says Barnier https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47847700 BBC News (8 April 2019) 2017, 2019

People

“Socialism is possible only in a state that is united domestically and free internationally. The bourgeoisie and Marxism are responsible for failing to reach both goals, domestic unity and international freedom. No matter how national and social these two forces present themselves, they are the sworn enemies of a socialist national state.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Freedom

“The faith in the nation is a matter for everyone, never a group, a class or an economic clique. The eternal must be distinguished from the temporal. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Faith, Hate, People, Love

“When we claim that "God does not exist," we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over, that God who from nothing created the universe, from chaos matter, that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

God, Personality, Universe, Way

“It totally matters to me that teenagers think I'm cool. I mean, teens keep their fingers on the pulse of culture. When things shift, it's usually because they shift them. They call the shots. So if teenagers think I'm cool, then hopefully they'll want to get down with whatever I'm doing. My hope is that reading and writing becomes the new "waiting in line to buy Jordans."”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

As quoted in [Garcia, Elisa, Get to Know Jason Reynolds, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/03/interview-jason-reynolds, New York Public Library, 10 March 2020, April 3, 2015]

Waiting, Thinking, Hope, Reading

“All cultural translation necessitates some interpretation and simplification. No sane reader would be able to make sense of a text which consisted exclusively of directly translated, unmediated quotations from informants. Compression and editing are therefore necessary elements of cultural translation. Moreover, no matter how outstanding an anthropologist is, as a fieldworker, as a writer and as an analyst, the text always represents a selection, and it will always to a greater or lesser extent be marked by the subjectivity of the translator.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Sense, Making love

“In reality, artists are no more courageous or noble or single-minded than the farmers who go to extreme lengths, in extreme weather, to protect their herd. Or a restaurateur who—having waved goodbye to her last customer at midnight—hauls herself out of bed at 4 A.M. the following morning to make sure she’s at the market in time to buy the best produce. Or, for that matter, a master bricklayer who has calloused fingers and an aching back from days spent building a house.”

Will Gompertz (1965) British journalist

Think Like an Artist (2015)

Courage, Time, Housing, Reality

“Half a century ago in Holism and Evolution Jan Smuts tried to synthesize Darwin's evolutionary theory, Einstein's physics, and his own insights to account for the evolution of mind as well as matter. Wholeness, Smuts said, is a fundamental characteristic of the universe—the product of nature's drive to synthesize.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

Universe, Nature

“We call upon you to witness, however, in the name of the Lord, beloved sons, Catholics who in the kingdom of the Gauls are united, being mindful of your religion and the faith of your fathers, we counsel you from the innermost feelings of our heart lest you secede from it, inasmuch as it is the one and the true religion, which bestows eternal life and protects citizens, even societies, and makes them prosperous. Take special care lest you proffer ears to the insidious voices of this secular sect, whose voices furnish death, and avoid in this way all usurpers whether they are called archbishops, bishops or parish priests, so that there is nothing in common between you and them, especially in divine matters...in one word, cling to us: for no-one can be in the Church of Christ unless he is unified with the visible head of the Church itself and is strengthened in the cathedral of Peter.”

Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) pope and sovereign of the Papal States

Charitas (13 April 1791), quoted in Philip G. Dwyer and Peter McPhee (eds.), The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2002), p. 50

Faith, Religion, Death, Heart

“It is a matter of harmonizing these movements, thus arriving at a new possibility for beauty.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s, It Shall Move - On Mobile Sculptures (1932)

Beauty

“The purpose here is to demonstrate the diversity of classical formulae which appeared in architectural design, and if we look at classical architecture as a repertoire of forms rather than statements of specific design credos we can challenge teleological constructions of stylistic histories. The method of grouping the architecture from given periods of time under general stylistic labels has, without doubt, been the backbone of the discipline of architectural history. And when used skilfully and carefully it can provide useful punctuation marks in the lengthy and complex narrative that is the subject-matter of the history of western building. Yet it is only one of many tools with which to explore social and cultural contexts.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 3 : On classical ground : Histories of style

Appearance, History, Time

“I am no prophet — and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

“Architecture differs from a work of art, which can be displayed in different settings and the subject-matter, form and meaning will remain unchanged. The physicality of any built structure can be altered over time as additions and alterations are made. Moreover, a building or work of architecture can change its function as it meets the different demands of its occupants, although its exterior appearance may be unaltered. And its meaning may change depending on the nature of the context. This reveals some of the problems of interpreting historic architecture from a modern-day perspective as the physical changes and different cultural contexts transform the object.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 1 : Reading the past : What is architectural history?

Time, Dependency, Nature, Art

“It’s time to let the secret out: mathematics is not primarily a matter of plugging numbers into formulas and performing rote computations. It is a way of thinking and questioning that may be unfamiliar to many of us, but is available to almost all of us.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Introduction (p. 3)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

Time, Question, Thinking, Secret

“I’m proud of young black america. I’m proud of them, even if they are misunderstood. I’m proud of them for using their voices, their way. Racism, classism, fear, it all exists. Still. It’s here, embedded into the fibers of our society. But I have to be honest, I do believe that because of technology, no matter how problematic it can be, and the rapid spreading of information, I’d like to believe there is a slow awakening occurring, and that our babies, or at least the generation after them will have a very different reality here. I know my role is to do what so many have done before me in this tradition — tell the stories, unashamed and unafraid.”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

As quoted in [Brown, Lesley-Ann, The Graceful Power of Novelist Jason Reynolds, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/graceful-power-novelist-jason-reynolds-n399721, 10 March 2020, NBC News, August 22, 2015]

Way, Baby, Fear, Reality

“Metamorphosis is death. Inside a pupa larval flesh breaks down utterly, as if in chemical spill. Eyes do not become other eyes nor mouthparts mouths. All parts are lost in a reconfiguring slop, as absolutely formless as a salted slug, that ex liquid nihilo self-organizes into a quite other animal. A cocoon is not a transformation pod but an execution chamber, one that doubles as a birthplace, and is parsimonious with matter.”

China Miéville book The 9th Technique

The 9th Technique (p. 104)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Animals, Self-confidence, Death, Parting

“Search not to find how other men offend,
But by that glass thy own offences mend;
Still seek to learn, yet care not much from whom,
(So it be learning) or from whence it come.
Of thy own actions, others' judgments learn;
Often by small, great matters we discern:
Youth what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 225

Search, Learning, Youth, Age

“History teaches us that civilizations flourish, die and disappear. Sometimes they died swiftly, sometimes in a slow lingering death. And sometimes, as with Rome and others, echoes of that civilization find new life ain later cultures. To lose the conscious memory of an entire civilization is especially tragic and dangerous, because each civilization, no matter how grand or flawed, is a laboratory of human ideas and ideals, of dreams and nightmares. We can learn from all of them.”

Michael Hamilton Morgan (1951) American writer

Lost History, p. 1

History, Dreams, Learning, Memory

“My plan is to introduce the legislation – it’s already drafted – which sets out what our measures of poverty will be. That’s been an often-disputed issue. We will finally have some agreement that will be in law. From there, we’ll go ahead and set those targets. Certainly it will be a matter of priority, but the legislation comes first.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

Law

“Many will know for the first time that they count, that they matter in the scheme of things. An unfamiliar sense of self-esteem will replace their present hopelessness; drugs of all kinds will cease their hold on men. Quietly, men’s tears will flow in humble gratitude and longing for the good.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

Time, Gratitude, Self-confidence, Sense

“Legal intervention costs money; legal intervention opens up new avenues for abuse, including totalitarian excesses by government officials who seek to determine preferences on personal matters.”

Richard Epstein (1943) American legal scholar

[Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism, https://books.google.com/books?id=B36vxZZ4cLcC, June 2003, University of Chicago Press, 978-0-226-21304-0] (quote from p. 157)

Money, Personality

“Journalism is the most Americanized of all professions, and nothing is more American than the belief that economic matters trump ideological ones. There is very little talk of ideology in coverage of any country. Western journalists here see a poor North facing off against a rich South and laugh at the notion that the former might have serious designs on the latter. They don’t seem aware of what I call the South’s state-loyalty deficit.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Isaac Chotiner (January 2018)

Loyalty, Country

“Why does it matter whether a country is defined as developing or not? Because it means that policymakers here can distract voters into thinking that crises are constantly diplomatic, military or trade based when actually the problems that America needs to fix most urgently are right here – they’re the crises of health and education. Had those problems been better addressed, the nation would not be struggling as desperately as it is right now.”

Mona Chalabi (1987) British data journalist

Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is, 6 April 2020

Country, Health, Problem, Thinking

“I guess in the end I'm a bit like Bill Clinton on this matter, who said that he thought [abortion] should be safe, legal and rare. And I underline 'rare'.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Stated in interview: "The Contender". 60 Minutes. ninemsn.com.au. 5 March 2010 http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1020354. Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015)

“[T]o require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 94-95
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Religion

“What vexations there are in the external customs which are thought to belong to religion, but which in reality are related to ecclesiastical form! The merits of piety have been set up in such away that the ritual is of no use at all except for the simple submission of the believers to ceremonies and observances, expiations and mortifications (the more the better). But such compulsory services, which are mechanically easy (because no vicious inclination is thus sacrificed), must be found morally very difficult and burdensome to the rational man. When, therefore, the great moral teacher said, 'My commandments are not difficult,' he did not mean that they require only limited exercise of strength in order to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, as commandments which require pure dispositions of the heart, they are the hardest that can be given. Yet, for a rational man, they are nevertheless infinitely easier to keep than the commandments involving activity which accomplishes nothing... [since] the mechanically easy feels like lifting hundredweights to the rational man when he sees that all the energy spent is wasted.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View https://books.google.com/books?id=TbkVBMKz418C. Translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809320608. Page 33. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Religion, Heart, Teachers, Reality

“Before you go to bed, think of three things that went well today. I don’t care if it’s a little crazy thing – it doesn’t matter…Take some music you love and if you can’t dance, go do 10 minutes of jumping jacks. Get yourself all cheered up.”

Goldie Hawn (1945) American actress, film director, and producer.

On remaining centered and positive in “Goldie Hawn: ‘I was born with a high set point for happiness’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/13/goldie-hawn-i-was-born-with-a-high-set-point-for-happiness in The Guardian (2020 Apr 13)

Music, Thinking, Dance, Love

“I cannot let this book go no matter how many times I read it...it is as adorable as Lord Krishna.”

Bangalore Nagarathnamma (1878–1952) Indian singer

Medium Article - A tale of two devadasis - 22 May 2019 https://medium.com/@theteluguarchive/a-tale-of-two-devadasis-603ee867a172 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20200415202020/https://medium.com/@theteluguarchive/a-tale-of-two-devadasis-603ee867a172 About Radhika Santawanam (Appeasing Radhika)

Books, Reading, Time

“The second I saw those bastards coming down the street, I knew it was over for me. I’m dead. It’s just a matter of time is all.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

“That’s always true,” Lydia said, her mind taken with other matters. “For everyone.”
The Churn (2014)

Time, Dead

“In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focus criticism on capitalism and the vulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons. Viruses are part of nature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 in the United States and millions elsewhere. Recent viruses include SARS, MERS and Ebola. What matters to public health is each society's preparedness: stockpiled tests, masks, ventilators, hospital beds, trained personnel, etc., to manage dangerous viruses. In the U.S., such objects are produced by private capitalist enterprises whose goal is profit. It was not profitable to produce and stockpile such products, that was not and still is not being done. Nor did the U.S. government produce or stockpile those medical products. Top U.S. government personnel privilege private capitalism; it is their primary objective to protect and strengthen. The result is that neither private capitalism nor the U.S. government performed the most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain public health and safety. U.S. capitalism's response to the coronavirus pandemic continues to be what it has been since December 2019: too little, too late. It failed. It is the problem.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

History, Light, Health, Nature

“It is time the nation should be roused from its philanthropic dream; that it should see this matter in the true light; and that some means should be taken to put a stop to the increase of Blacks in this country, at any rate, where they have made no little progress in changing the colour of the inhabitants. It is truly shocking to see the number of English women, who are married to Negroes: our streets and public walks are continually disgraced by the disgusting spectacle; and whom are we to blame but ourselves for foolishly yielding to the importunities of those who have the address to make us pay for the genteel education of these sable intruders?”

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

Political Register (5 June 1802), p. 702
1800s

Time, Country, Light, Dreams

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

History, Question, Nature, Universe

“By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Conserving Forest Communities"
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

Time, Dependency, Freedom, People

“The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country — or, for that matter, a region — to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people’s ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Bad Big Idea"
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

Food, Country, People, Health

“No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. [...] A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Picador 2015 edition ISBN 9781250062581, p. 3
No Place to Hide (2014)

Fear

“Attend me. How do you prove that there are eggs in a bird’s nest? Don’t strain your gray matter: go climb the tree and find out. There is no other way.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Time for the Stars

Source: Time for the Stars (1956), Chapter 8, “Relativity” (p. 82)

Way, Bird, Tree

“Go down to City Hall and see what is on the agenda for the next council meeting—garbage collection, water supply, it does not matter which one—then go and learn everything you can about it. Read past reports, talk to people, learn the topic until you know it as well as anyone. Then when you get up to speak, or to make a suggestion for change, your voice will be heard because you are knowledgeable. That is how reform works.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

According to daughter Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, as told to biographer Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (2009), p. 130.
Attributed

Reading, Past, People, Learning

“The press, television, and movies make heroes of vandals by calling them whiz kids. ... There is obviously a cultural gap. The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

"Reflections on Trusting Trust" http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/360000/358210/reflections.pdf, 1983 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 27 (8), August 1984, pp. 761-763.

Making love, Housing

“It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Men, Feeling, Change

“‘It is necessary to add,’... ‘that true Islam cannot thrive without freedom of thought in every single matter, in every single doctrine, in every single dogma.’”

Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee (1899–1981) Indian educator, jurist, author, diplomat, and Islamic scholar

Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

Freedom

“Private armies, and for that matter private air forces- are expensive, wasteful, and unnecessary.”

William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim (1891–1970) former Governor-General of Australia

Source: Defeat Into Victory (1961), p. 457

“The numerical side of the theory of relativity is derived from the failure of all attempts to detect the relative motion of matter and ether.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

page 23 https://books.google.com/books?id=hwpKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA23 Relativity for All, London, 1922

Failure

“Matter, space, and time ... according to the relativist, are types of relations between events.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

page 12 https://books.google.com/books?id=hwpKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA12 Relativity for All, London, 1922

Time, Relation ships

“The direct knowledge of matter that mankind can acquire is a knowledge of the average behaviour and relations of the crowd of molecules.”

Joseph Larmor (1857–1942) Irish physicist and mathematician

[Bakerian lecture.―On the statistical and thermodynamical relations of radiant energy, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 83, 560, 1909, 82–95, 10.1098/rspa.1909.0080] (p. 82)

Knowledge, Relation ships