Quotes about matter
page 66

“When agony is not present, no matter how imminent it looms, painful change must come from outside. This is a truth.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 20, p. 157

“I have been looking for spontaneous generation for twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible. But what allows you to make it the origin of life? You place matter before life and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years, one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? You move from matter to life because your current intelligence, so limited compared to what will be the future intelligence of the naturalist, tells you that things cannot be understood otherwise. If you want to be among the scientific minds, what only counts is that you will have to get rid of a priori reasoning and ideas, and you will have to do necessary deductions not giving more confidence than we should to deductions from wild speculation.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Original: (fr) La génération spontanée, je la cherche sans la découvrir depuis vingt ans. Non, je ne la juge pas impossible. Mais quoi donc vous autorise à vouloir qu'elle ait été l'origine de la vie? Vous placez la matière avant la vie et vous faites la matière existante de toute éternité. Qui vous dit que, le progrès incessant de la science n'obligera pas les savants, qui vivront dans un siècle, dans mille ans, dans dix mille ans... à affirmer que la vie a été de toute éternité et non la matière.? Vous passez de la matière à la vie parce que votre intelligence actuelle, si bornée par rapport à ce que sera l'intelligence des naturalistes futurs, vous dit qu'elle ne peut comprendre autrement les choses. Qui m'assure que dans dix mille ans on ne considérera pas que c'est de la vie qu'on croira impossible de ne pas passer à la matière? Si vous voulez être au nombre des esprits scientifiques, s, qui seuls comptent, il faut vous débarrasser des idées et des raisonnements a priori et vous en tenir aux déductions nécessaires des faits établis et ne pas accorder plus de confiance qu'il ne faut aux déductions de pures hypothèses."

As quoted in Pasteur et la philosophie (2004), by Patrice Pinet, p. 63

Partially quoted in Louis Pasteur : Free Lance of Science (1950) by René Dubos, p 396

Confidence, Future, Intelligence, Self-confidence

“Mystic Art is spirit expressed into matter. A mystic artist
receives and transmits revelation, providing their art as a medium
for messages from the divine matrix of Creation.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

Art

“The hyper-visibility means that you both can't hide, but also never really feel completely seen by authority figures and by your peer groups. Trapped in that space of hyper-visibility, I think, is where we wrestle with the ideas of, 'What part of me matters?'”

Tressie McMillan Cottom American writer, sociologist, and professor

On the concept of being hyper-visible in “In 'Thick,' Tressie McMillan Cottom Looks At Beauty, Power And Black Womanhood In America” https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/01/21/in-thick-tressie-mcmillan-cottom-looks-at-beauty-power-and-black-womanhood-in-america in WBUR (2019 Jan 21)

Idea, Thinking, Feeling, Parting

“We had gotten over the feeling that one experience was going to make you enlightened forever. We saw that it wasn't going to be that simple.
And for five years I dealt with the matter of "coming down."”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

The coming down matter is what led me to the next chapter of this drama. Because after six years, I realized that no matter how ingenious my experimental designs were, and how high I got, I came down.
At one point I took five people and we locked ourselves in a building for three weeks and we took 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. That is 2400 micrograms of LSD a day, which sounds fancy, but after your fist dose, you build a tolerance; there's a refractory period. We finally were just drinking out of the bottle, because it didn't seem to matter anymore. We'd just stay at a plateau. We were very high. What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. And at the end of the three weeks, we walked out of the house and within a few days, we came down!
And it was a terribly frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was and you felt these new states of awareness, and then you got cast out again.
Be Here Now (1971)

Making love, Feeling

“I really believe in the supreme court. First of all, I'm the youngest in my family and justice matters a lot – the littlest one gets pushed around a lot. And I trust the supreme court, I trust the constitution – so I feel a certain confidence that we'll win.”

Edith Windsor (1929–2017) American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM

On her confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court in “Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer: 'A love affair that just kept on and on and on'” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/26/edith-windsor-thea-spyer-doma) (The Guardian; 2013 Jun 26)

Family, Confidence, Justice, Self-confidence

“We told ourselves that it didn’t matter if there was no word to cement our reality…We were the ones that made it real. And yet, the sense of otherness loomed.”

Edith Windsor (1929–2017) American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM

On wanting to legitimize her relationship (as quoted in “Gay rights icon Edie Windsor’s sheer force carries ‘A Wild and Precious Life’” https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/arts/books/2019/10/08/gay-rights-icon-edie-windsors-sheer-force-carries-a-wild-and-precious-life/) (Tampa Bay; 2019 Oct 8)

Sense, Reality

“Whether we live 10 years or 10,000 years, what matters most are the meaning of life and the quality of life.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Life

“The functional regions of the brain which subserve physical agony, the "pain centres", and the mainly limbic substrates of emotion, appear in phylogenetic terms to be remarkably constant in the vertebrate line. The neural pathways involving serotonin, the periaquaductal grey matter, bradykinin, dynorphin, ATP receptors, the major opioid families, substance P etc all existed long before hominids walked the earth. Not merely is the biochemistry of suffering disturbingly similar where not effectively type-identical across a wide spectrum of vertebrate (and even some invertebrate) species. It is at least possible that members of any species whose members have more pain cells exhibiting greater synaptic density than humans sometimes suffer more atrociously than we do, whatever their notional "intelligence."”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Family, Pain, Intelligence, Suffering

“Much more seriously, in those traditional eco-systems that we chose to retain, millions of non-human animals will continue periodically to starve, die horribly of thirst and disease, or even get eaten alive. This is commonly viewed as "natural" and hence basically OK. It would indeed be comforting to think that in some sense this ongoing animal holocaust doesn't matter too much. We often find it convenient to act as though the capacity to suffer were somehow inseparably bound up with linguistic ability or ratiocinative prowess. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and a great deal that it isn't.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Suffering, Nature, Animals, Thinking

“According to an old rule of psychic contagion: that absence of clarity or outright confusion in one, just one specific, local matter will end by infecting the whole of one's judgment.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Death Kit (1967), p.160

“When people act like niggers, no matter who they are, the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Jason to Caddy
The Sound and the Fury (1929)

People

“Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew
.. I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1980s, 1984 letter to Encyclopedia Judaica Source: from 1st paragraph, verified page 137 of "White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was Fought on the Chessboard" by Daniel Johnson, published 2008 https://books.google.ca/books?id=7Lzd7SaQA_YC&pg=PA137

Nature

“Human beings face ever more complex and urgent problems, and their effectiveness in dealing with these problems is a matter that is critical to the stability and continued progress of society”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: Program On Human Effectiveness, 1996, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/Archive/Post68/PrHumanEffectiveness.html

Problem

“Ask questions stubbornly, very proud men who seeing themselves right without knowing anything about the matter. This shows lack of piety, a tendency to ranting, a weak mind, and excessive vanity. [...] If you hear, or read writing (you object to), do not react with violence until you have proof that what is expressed is wrong. Do not accept that with the enthusiasm of the credulous man either until being wholly convinced of that. In both situations you blind yourself and drift away from truth… Act like a person who has no preconceived views, one ready to know and accept what is right and reject what is wrong.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 116

Reading, Question, Personality, Truth

“I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely far‐sighted and clear‐headed in matters that are internal to their businesses. They are incredibly short sighted and muddle‐headed in mat ters [sic!] that are outside their businesses but affect the possible survival of business in general. This short sightedness is strikingly exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price guidelines or controls or incomes policies. There is nothing that could do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a centrally controlled system than effective governmental control of prices and wages. The short‐sightedness is also exemplified in speeches by business men on social responsibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the ptirsuit [sic!] of profits is wicked and im moral [sic!] and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls, business men seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Time, Business, Help, Suicide

“Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever... As you sow, so shall you reap. It's a very old proverb of mankind. As you sow, so shall you reap. Sometime you may have killed that man, and then sometime now he comes to kill you... What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it's our own karma.
That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion. Whosoever sins, whoever is killed, it doesn't matter. It's a sin. And sin.. is a punishable offense. Because when you sin, when you've killed some man, what you are killing? You are killing the cosmic potential within the individual. Individual is cosmic. Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man...When you kill a man like that you deprive him from getting to his human right.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in CNN Larry King Weekend:Interview With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/12/lklw.00.html, (2002)

Peace, Religion, Success, Happiness

“No one has more than a given number of minutes... in which he can work, and no matter how great his ability he will soon find his limitations. If, however, he uses that ability in finding and teaching others as capable as himself, or in certain details even more so, the limits to his sphere of operations are hard to set.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

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Girl, Communication, Parting, People

“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

movie Dead Poets Society

John Keating character

Business, World, Idea, Change

“I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.”

Ming-Na Wen (1963) Macau-born American actress

An Interview with Ming-Na https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/10/27/an-interview-with-ming-na (27 October 2004)

Thinking, People, Relation ships

“We all believe silly things. What matters is how silly and how many.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

“Time and Matter are both ideas. Matter makes a more immediate impression on Man, but Time’s effects are longer lasting.”

Michael Moorcock book The Time Dweller

Source: The Time Dweller (p. 22), Short fiction, The Time Dweller (1969)

Idea, Making love, Time

“Consciousness, the great poem of matter, seems so unlikely, so impossible, and yet here we are with our loneliness and our giant dreams.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 3 “Taste” (p. 130)

Dreams, Loneliness

“The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and makres real advances in science.”

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

http://umich.edu/~scps/html/01chap/html/summary.htm
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

Imagination, Question, Problem, Mathematics

“Kids are kids. No matter what year it is, no matter what language they speak or culture they’re in. There is something deeply universal about being a teenager, and I try to capture that universality in the things that I write.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Universe

“It is, of course, men who are more likely to inhibit themselves for the sake of appearing to be sensible and dependable.[…] If pressed, I will agree that more women than men wish to appear wonderfully sensitive and intuitive, and may stop being realistic […] in order to deceive themselves and other people. On the other hand, women in general tend to be more realistic and yet in certain matters more open-minded than men, more ready to resist that pressure of opinion. They are less likely to be put into blinkers by ideas.
Moreover […] as a rule the average woman notices far more than the average man; she has a better eye for detail than he has; she makes a more alert witness.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 8, p. 182

Dependency, People, Appearance, Idea

“In the end, the “model” that came into existence in the USSR was not socialist but totalitarian. This is a serious matter to be reflected on by all who seriously aspire to progress for the benefit of the human race.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

“Call your mother . It seems every time we talk she tells people I'm in appropriate with you. I don't want to make matters worse for you or myself.”

Hunter Biden (1970) American lawyer, investment advisor, and second son of former Vice President Joe Biden

26 July 2018 to Natalie Biden

Making love, People, Time

“To radicalize the question of phenomenology is not only to aim for a pure phenomenality but to seek out the mode according to which it originally becomes a phenomenon -- the substance, the stuff, the phenomenological matter of which it is made, its phenomenologically pure materiality. That is the task of material phenomenology. Prior to this being-toward-the-outside in which everything is properly speaking placed outside of itself and in which every reality is a priori emptied and dispossessed of itself and thus becomes its contrary, an irreality, and prior to the abandonment and undoing that is called death and that would be unable to exist on its own, material phenomenology is devoted to the discovery of the reign of a phenomenality that is constructed in such a surprising way that the thought that always thinks about the world never thinks about it. To the internal structure of this originary manifestation, there belongs no Outside, no Separation, no Ek-stasis. Its phenomenological substance is not visibility. None of the categories that have been used by philosophy since the Greeks at any rate, are appropriate for it.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Question, Thinking, Way, Reality

“Regarding the constant change of the world, visible to our coarse organs, as well as its dissolution, Buddhism points out that those dissolutions are temporary and periodical; for, according to the principle of evolution guided by the law of individual and collective Karma, the disappearing world will in turn manifest a new world with all its contents, just as our Universe was manifested from the primary substance—matter.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Universe, World, Law, Change

“Each of us can contribute, though. With our votes, our voices, our food choices, our skills and our dollars. We must overhaul both corporate practices and government policies. We must transform culture. Building community around solutions is the most important thing. I am never going to give up working to protect and restore this magnificent planet. Every bit of habitat we preserve, every tenth of a degree of warming we prevent, really does matter. Thankfully, I'm not motivated by hope, but rather a desire to be useful.”

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (1980) American marine biologist and policy expert

Source: A love story for the coral reef crisis https://www.ted.com/talks/ayana_elizabeth_johnson_a_love_story_for_the_coral_reef_crisis (April 2019)

Motivation, Communication, Hope, Food

“The architects of the Constitution had the intention of making a republican and federal government which would endure with stability, insure justice, promote the general welfare and be proof against usurpation, either by the few and the rich or by the poor and the many. For the founding of a republic they had guides. For a federal system they had none. But they thoroughly believed that help could be found in the successes and failures of the past. They knew all about the ‘class struggle’—so, for that matter, did the Greek philosophers, although you would think from our young socialist friends that Karl Marx was the first person ever to notice it. They knew all about Fascism and its causes, although they called it by another name.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 52-53
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Justice, Success, Past, Personality

“It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed. Those books may no longer be available for consultation, they may exist only in the vague memory of a reader or in the vaguer-still memory of tradition and legend, but they have acquired a kind of immortality.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

A History of Reading (1996)
Source: The Library at Night, p. 123

Books, Memory

“The universe is always stranger than you think.
It didn’t matter how broad her imagination was, how cynical, how joyous and open, how well researched or wild minded. The universe was always stranger. Every dream, every imagining, however lavish and improbable, inevitably fell short of the truth.”

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

Source: The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Chapter 50 (p. 522)

Imagination, Dreams, Universe, Truth

“Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay.”

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

Source: The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Chapter 8 (p. 87)

Parting

“Opinion has been right to fasten upon sovereignty as the central issue. Either British entry is a declaration of intent to surrender this country's sovereignty, stage by stage, in all that matters as a nation, and makes a nation, or else it is an empty gesture, disgraceful in its hollowness alike to those who proffer and to whose who accept it. The superior people laugh at those who talk about losing our Queen and our Monarchy. ... The Queen is the Queen in Parliament, as truly today as when her predecessor, Tudor Henry, observed that ‘we are nowhere so high in our estate royal as in this Our High Court of Parliament’. The question which the people of this country will have proposed to them is: will you, or will you not, continue to be governed by the Queen in Parliament? It is no less than that, and they have understood it.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in Doncaster (19 June 1971), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (1973), p. 119

Country, Making love, People, Question

“There is a great affinity in me with the Hindu genius - that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy and speculative, but destitute of ambition, personality and will. Pantheistic disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action - these are all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has been developed by years and circumstances. Still the West has also its part in me. What I have found difficult to keep up a prejudice in favor of my form, nationality or individuality whatever. Hence my indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest or opinions of the moment. What does it all matter? It is not perhaps not a bad thing,' he says, 'that in the midst of the devouring activities of the Western world there should be a few Brahmanical souls.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Source: Amie1, Henri Frederic Amie! s journal: The Journal intime of Henri-Frederic Amie! p. 159 161,224. and 269.
Quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

Soul, Imagination, Indifference, Personality

“Well, the purpose of reform really is directed to the encouraging of growth and employment. I quite agree that to launch into a full scale battle on general reform for academic reasons would be unwise. The central purpose behind the reform must therefore be to encourage those changes in our tax laws which will encourage economic growth for that purpose, and not merely because it might have some longer range interest or significance. The primary job will be to encourage the flow of capital into those areas which stimulate the national growth and not diminish it. But it is going to be a tough fight, because once you spell out, as I said before, reform, it's bound to affect adversely the interests of some, while favoring the interests of others. Therefore reform may be a longer task, and we are anxious that in the effort to get reform, that we do not lose the very important matter of tax reduction for the sake of the economy.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Fight, Change, Law, Effort

“Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. Surely the lesson of the last decade is that budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions, and any new recession would break all deficit records. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Way, Truth, Country

“It is a most important decision that we make as a nation. But all of you have lived through the last four years and have seen the significance of space and the adventures in space, and no one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of mastery of space. I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Success, Country, Thinking, Decision

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Imagination, Reading, Time, War

“It’s really hard coming to L.A. as an Australian, you land on American soil and you start fresh. The profile you had in Australia doesn’t really matter; You start again.”

Ashleigh Brewer (1990) Australian actress

Source: THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL’s Ivy — Get to Know Ashleigh Brewer! https://www.soapsindepth.com/posts/cbs/the-bold-and-the-beautiful-ashleigh-brewer-ivy-forrester-132580 (May 17, 2017)

“Soon we will have people on Mars, and we truly will be multi-planetary. And the young boy or the young girl who will be going to Mars could be in this audience or listening today. I have wanted to work at JPL on these missions since I was 14 years old and I am privileged to be a part of it. And this is a remarkable time in the space program, and we are all in this journey together. So the next time you think you don't have enough time in your day, just remember, it's all a matter of your Earthly perspective.”

Nagin Cox (1965) NASA scientist

Source: What time is it on Mars? https://www.ted.com/talks/nagin_cox_what_time_is_it_on_mars (November 2016)

Time, Girl, People, Boy

“There is no distinction here between the kinds of service, provided they are unselfish, strenuous, moved by the ideal to help and serve... I cannot give you one by one the numerous divisions of the Way of Service. Anything that is of value to human life is included on that way. Choose then what way you will, because of your capacities and your opportunities; it matters not as regards the treading of the first steps.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 20

Way, Life, Help

“Now, one of the great facts which underlie the whole possibility of a Path of Human Perfecting, that I must take for granted throughout the lectures — for to deal with it as a matter for argument would lead us far away from our subject — one of the fundamental facts in Nature, is the fact of reincarnation. That means the gradual growth of man through many lives, through many experiences of the physical world, of the intermediate world, and also of the world called heaven. Evolution would be too short to enable a man to grow from imperfection to perfection, unless he had many opportunities, a long, long road to lead him upward.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Perfection, World, Nature

“There is a Path which leads to that which is known as Initiation, and through Initiation to the Perfecting of Man; a Path which is recognized in all the great religions, and the chief features of which are described in similar terms in every one of the great faiths of the world. You may read of it in the Roman Catholic teachings as divided into three parts: (1) The Path of Purification or Purgation; (2) the Path of Illumination; and (3) the Path of Union with Divinity. You find it among the Mussulmans in the Sufi — the mystic — teachings of Islam, where it is known under the names of the Way, the Truth and the Life. You find it further eastward still in the great faith of Buddhism, divided into subdivisions, though these can be classified under the broader outline. It is similarly divided in Hinduism; for in both those great religions, in which the study of psychology, of the human mind and the human constitution, has played so great a part, you find a more definite subdivision. But really it matters not to which faith you turn; it matters not which particular set of names you choose as best attracting or expressing your own ideas; the Path is but one; its divisions are always the same; from time immemorial that Path has stretched from the life of the world to the life of the Divine.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Faith, Religion, Study, Time

“When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropaths, that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal? In these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendour; as Browning says: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of Hill Light For us in the dark to rise by. And if in those cases the brain change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality. That was the first answer which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether there is any law that nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains? May it not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different from the ordinary, the normal brains of man?”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

Soul, God, Law, Light

“In the midst of normal activity, whatever it may be, there is a distant Signal, almost like heraldic trumpets. Everyone takes the Signal calmly, and with it, everyone stops speaking or whatever he may be doing. It is the Signal that He (or They) is coming through His Kingdom. There is no awestruck prostration or falling down on one's knees. Rather, the attitude is most matter-of-fact It is an occurrence to which all are accustomed and to comply takes absolute precedence over everything. There are no exceptions.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 8. Because the Bible Tells Me So

Distant

“You may have to wait longer than you would like, you may have to bear privations; but, bear and forebear. Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful.”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Letter to the Sisters at Jasper 1842-03-20.

Way, Self-confidence, Confidence, Waiting

“There was no question that I was deeply afraid of what might happen to me if the "condition" continued. I was much more concerned about the possibility of a growing mental illness than a physical deterioration. I had studied enough psychology and had enough psychologist and psychiatrist friends to compound such fears. Moreover, I was afraid to discuss the matter with these friends. I was afraid that I would then be classified as their "patients," and lose the closeness that equality (normalcy) brings. Non-professional friends in business and community would be worse. I would be labeled a freak or psychotic, which could seriously affect my life and the lives of those close to me. Finally, it seemed to be something to keep from my family. It seemed unnecessary that they worry along with me.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 2. Search and Research

Family, Life, Study, Question

“On my good days and bad days, when I’m shining or standing in the shadows, no matter what I face, God is my strength. My goal is to build a platform where I can spread the Gospel. Share the good news freely and to all who have ears to hear.”

Joel Courtney (1996) American actor

Exclusive Interview With “Super 8” And “The Kissing Booth” Star Joel Courtney https://daman.co.id/exclusive-interview-with-super-8-and-the-kissing-booth-star-joel-courtney/ (June 6, 2011)

Bad luck, God

“We need to have perspectives in candidates that reflect the perspectives of a younger generation... Young people have demands and unmet needs. One thing I want to do is say that we can make change and enact legislation that will help. Investment in clean energy, environmental action, real criminal justice reform, and college debt reform are issues that matter to millennials but get little attention in a Senate dominated by boomers and members of the Greatest Generation.”

Jon Ossoff (1987) American politician

Quoted in Fortune (magazine), Jon Ossoff becomes the only senator under 40, injecting some much-needed youth, by Nicole Goodkind, (6 January 2021)

Justice, Help, People, Making love

“The last year has really brought home that it is truly a matter of life and death. The tangible, human stakes, the real-life consequences when we are led by fools, and when we are led by people who are more concerned with their own enrichment than they are with the financial well-being of the families that pay their salary. We can get direct financial relief to people fast, and I know that this incoming administration wants to do it. But if we don’t win these Senate races, they’re gonna block help for the people because they’re not going to want to relieve suffering. If the Republicans hold the Senate, they’re gonna block it... Every vote will count, every vote will matter, and we saw in November how every vote mattered. And the second is, there will be a big difference in your daily life depending on the outcome here.”

Jon Ossoff (1987) American politician

Quoted in Jon Ossoff Talks With Rasheeda About What Dems Can Achieve If They Win Georgia Runoffs, By Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone (magazine), (4 January 2020)

Family, Home, Dependency, Help

“To treat every person, no matter what his creed or race, as a special soul, is a mark of Islam.”

Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918–2004) Sheikh of Abu Dhabi (1918-2004)

1 https://en.vogue.me/culture/the-most-inspirational-quotes-from-the-late-sheikh-zayed/

Personality, Soul

“[Nature] turns us out into the world without giving us any choice in the matter; though all other suffrages and freedoms are perfectly insignificant in comparison with that of which we are thus deprived, an effective and enlightened vote on the question: Shall I, or shall I not, be born?”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

World, Nature, Freedom, Question

“There are laws far more powerful for us Catholics, far more powerful than those espoused in Party political agendas and pushed by the vested interests of powerful pressure groups: Natural law, the structures of the human personality built into mankind by God the Creator into the mind and heart of human beings, and the Divine law, the law of Almighty God expressed in the Commandments and in the New Ways of Jesus Christ, illustrated so clearly in the Gospels; Divine and Natural Law which we must always obey and which can never be trumped by the Laws of man, however democratically expressed by Parliament – whichever Parliament – when they clash with the Laws of God. The Law of God is a much higher Law, the ultimate Law. To rebel against the design of the Creator is a grave matter indeed!”

Stephen Robson (1951) Bishop of Dunkeld

Bishop Stephen Robson’s homily https://www.dunkelddiocese.co.uk/chrism-mass-st-andrews-cathedral-2019/ (17 April 2019)

God, Law, Personality, Heart

“Sometimes people think that it’s a very simple matter to become a Catholic, that it’s like changing your uniform, that’s not the way it is. It requires a profound transformation at so many levels.”

Jeffrey N. Steenson (1952) American bishop

Leader of Anglican ordinariate recalls joy of first year https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/leader-of-anglican-ordinariate-recalls-joy-of-first-year (November 27, 2012)

Way, Thinking, People, Change

“But I don’t believe in a civil war. No matter how agitated the atmosphere gets and no matter how hard the president and his advisers try to aggravate the situation, I am absolutely confident of the people’s common sense.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

1990s, There won't be a civil war (1991)

Confidence, War, People, Self-confidence

“You felt something huge and marvelous of which you are part, and in the moments you described, you forgot yourself for you were one with your world and with the sky above it, and even the stars looking down. There is nothing larger or more wonderful than that. Still, there are those who would prefer self. They will accept any belief, no matter how foolish, if it guarantees them personal immortality. I know people like that. But there are others who know themselves well enough to realize how limiting that is.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Singer from the Sea (1999), Chapter 24, “People from the Sea” (p. 382)

Personality, Star, People, Self-confidence

“No matter which way I go I know now that I will never have peace.
For peace is certainty, and there is no certainty but death.”

Leigh Brackett book The Long Tomorrow

Source: The Long Tomorrow (1955), Chapter 29

Way, Peace, Death

“When one sees, the variety and abundance of beautiful and bloodless fruits that gorge the markets of civilisation and considers the amount of art available for cooking and compounding this abundance, and considers, too, what might be still further accomplished in the production and preparation of foods by scientific attention to the matter, it seems so strange, so sad, and so frightful, that man, elected by the accidents of evolution to be the model and schoolmaster of the world, and adapted so signally to a guiltless diet, should continue to perpetrate in the daylight of the twentieth century the barbarous, blood-sucking atrocities of the reptile.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Is Man a Plant-Eater?, p. 130

Food, Beauty, Art, World

“Suppose we human beings were hunted with traps by a race of giants loo feet high, very ingenious, and absolutely without conscience so far as their treatment of us was concerned. Suppose that, in spite of all our vigilance, we were continually falling into these traps, which were hidden all about us, and compelled in order to escape to eat off our own arms or legs. Suppose that even then one out of every five of us was so ill-starred as to be caught a second time, and ended up, after hours or days of unspeakable agony, by having his head smashed into a jelly by a big club. Suppose we were absolutely helpless in the matter, and that our victimisers had no higher purpose in inflicting these fiendish outrages than to get a scalp or a jawbone to dangle about their demoniacal necks. Suppose, finally, in order to complete the analogy, that these people imagined themselves to be highly civilised and enlightened. What sort of an opinion do you think we would have in the course of ages as to the real character of these people and of their fitness to be the models and superintendents of a planet?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 70–71

Imagination, Time, Star, People

“I feel like saying over and over and over, what I have said many times before, that we do not know the world of living, longing, suffering, enjoying life in the midst of which we have evolved. The inhabitants of our own fields and dooryards are strangers to us. We are so little, and proud, and selfish, we never think it worth while to stop and look into their faces and get acquainted with them. It never occurs to us what a great favour it would be to them if we would actually get over into their places occasionally and realise what tragedies are constantly being enacted in their lives as a result of our insensate natures. We treat them with no consideration or respect because we have no understanding of them; and we do not understand them because we do not care anything at all about the matter. We are too busy tossing bouquets at ourselves to have much time or thought left for anybody else. We have grown up in the belief that all those who have a different shape from what we have were intended, not for life and happiness and immortality, as we were, but for death and wretchedness and chymification, and we are too dull-minded and selfish to make any change now.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Thesis of the New Ethics, p. 37

Selfishness, Time, Understanding, Making love

“A hundred years from now, when people look back at this period, they will marvel at the stupidity of it all: the stress, the motion sickness, and the self-neglect we put ourselves through. So we have two choices. We can be among the last people caught up in the “more bubble” when it bursts, or we can see the madness for what it is and join the growing community of Essentialists and get more of what matters in our one precious life.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Journal Articles

People, Communication, Self-confidence, Stupidity

“Life today is fast and full of opportunity. The complication is we think we have to do everything. The implication of this is we end up being pulled into endless distractions without pausing to really think. My position is we can make a different choice. We can discern what is really essential. We can design a life that really matters.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Journal Articles

Life, Thinking, Making love

“Is fashion important? Is it important to talk about luxury? Does it really matter if you’re going to wear a red dress or not? Finally, I thought, Because of that woman, it is important. You make people dream. You make people think. You have to give them stories. You have to introduce fantasy. Fashion is how we bring them into the world today. That is my job.”

Alber Elbaz (1961–2021) Israeli fashion designer

Source: Interview, 2009, https://www.interviewmagazine.com/fashion/alber-elbaz

Dreams, People, Thinking, World

“Wherever you travel
I'll be there, I'll be there
Wherever you travel, I'll be there
And the creed and the colour
And the name won't matter
I'll be there.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

When I Needed A Neighbour (1965)

Travel

“I was hungry and thirsty
Were you there, were you there?
I was hungry and thirsty, were you there?
And the creed and the colour
And the name won't matter
Were you there?”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

When I Needed A Neighbour (1965)

“Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires,
Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Versus (1949), Possessions are Nine Points of Conversation

World, Thinking, People

“I will love you no matter what.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

I will love you if you are stupid, if you slip and fall on your face, if you do the wrong thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human being——I will love you no matter.
Source: Living, Loving, and Learning (1982), p. 53

Love, Making love

“For my own part I am deeply convinced that all excess in the public expenditure beyond the legitimate wants of the country is not only a pecuniary waste—for that is a comparatively trifling matter—but a great political and a great moral evil. It is a characteristic of the mischief which arise from financial prodigality, that they creep onwards with a noiseless and surreptitious step; that they are unseen and unfelt until they have reached a magnitude absolutely overwhelming, and then at length, we see them, as perhaps they now exist in the case of one at least among the great European nations, so fearful and menacing in their aspect that they seem to threaten the very foundations of national existence.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1861/apr/15/first-night#column_595 in the House of Commons (15 April 1861) 1860s

Parting, Fear, Evil, Country

“No matter how young you are, stand up, and speak up. Take action before it’s too late! We are the last generation with a chance to solve this broken world, so let’s all do it together!”

Massin Akandouch (2001) Amazigh activist

October 23, 2019. Massinissa Akandouch's's message at the 2019 Global Climate Strike in Barcelona. https://www.instagram.com/p/B3-PFWOoQ66

World, Chance

“I know that God only works for good in the lives of His children. Our responsibility is to search for God's will, find it, and do it to the best of our imperfect ability. The outcome is already decided. And it is always for good. As a matter of faith, I never question outcomes.”

L. Lin Wood (1952) American lawyer

20 May 2021 https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1395227279748255745/photo/1

Search, God, Faith, Question

“When we consider that resources will one day be mined from planets other than the earth, that matter and energy are totally interchangeable, and that basic chemical elements can be transmuted, we realize that resource seeds are so abundant that they do not impose practical limitations on the creation of wealth at all.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression, (2003), p. 19

Wealth

“Still you can't keep doing the coulda and the woulda and the shoulda. And if there's one thing I know it's this. Doesn't matter how smart you are, or even how careful or lucky, there's some mistakes you just keep making over and over.”

Tim Winton (1960) Australian writer

Part III, Ch.4 - p.238, 239
The Shepherd's Hut (2018)

Making love

“[I]f they were negotiating with a foreign country on a matter which might threaten war, it was so far from embarrassing the negotiation, that it would strengthen it, to place ourselves in a position to repel any sudden and unforeseen attack.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1845/jun/13/maritime-defences#column_524 in the House of Commons in favour of rearmament (13 June 1845) 1840s

War, Country

“Surrounded by hordes of people, busy with all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world - such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too risky to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, part of the crowd.”

Sören Kierkegaard book The Sickness unto Death

Source: The Sickness unto Death

“I began with the premise that, deep down, everybody wants to censor something. Human beings, no matter how committed to the principles of free speech, have deep-seated distrust of the open marketplace of ideas, especially when they themselves—or the groups to which they belong—are ‘victims’ of the excesses of free speech.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Source: Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002), p. 176

Idea

“The old murals came from the heart,” Zima said. “I painted on a huge scale because that was what the subject matter seemed to demand.”

Alastair Reynolds Zima Blue

“It was good work,” I said.
“It was hack work. Huge, loud, demanding, popular, but ultimately soulless. Just because it came from the heart didn’t make it good.”
Zima Blue (p. 395)
Short fiction, Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006)

Painting, Heart

“The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Time, Appearance, Relation ships, Question

“It seems amazing that those who advocate energy conservation haven't noticed what happens: As soon as some energy is freed up by conservation, the technological world-system gobbles it up and demands more. No matter how much energy is provided, the system always expands rapidly until it is using all available energy, and then it demands still more.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015), p. 56

World

“We should keep in mind that in this country there is a general discrimination against minorities and the poorest workers. It is a widespread mentality which can also affect this tragedy. The fact that the rich are better off than the poor, having saved their own land, is a serious matter which the government must address.”

Max Rodrigues French fencer

Pakistan: some Christians denied aid unless they convert to Islam https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=7460 (September 6, 2010)

Country

“I follow in this tradition because I believe literature matters, and in this book I insist that Asian American literature literally embodies the contradictions, conﬂicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

Source: As quoted in “Race & Resistance Literature & Politics In Asian America" (2002) p.3

Future, Literature, Books

“Sometimes in our activist and production-oriented American society and culture we succumb to pragmatism looking at the Christian life and our sharing in the apostolic mission of the Church as a matter being able to “do” things for Christ, the Church or others. In fact, the Christian life is a gift and a call to truth and love given to us by God. It is first a matter of "being," of simply existing as a person created by God and redeemed by him in Christ. We live out this truth and love in specific ways according to our age, talents, and unique vocation. At no point are the sacraments about what we have done or promise to do for God. They are God's free gift of grace to us. At the same time, these gifts of love entail an obligation to bear witness to God's love in word and deed by our collaboration in freedom with the grace given.”

Álvaro Corrada del Río (1942) Puerto Rican Catholic bishop

Pastoral Reflection on the Sacrament of Confirmation http://www.americancatholicpress.org/Bishop_Corrada_Pastoral_Reflecton%20_on_Confirmation.html (October 7, 2005)

God, Time, Freedom, Personality

“Don't underestimate the power of your enemy, no matter how big or small, one day it could be to your detriment.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

“There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the intercepted messages to the evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of cryptography is very easily dealt with by discrete machinery, physics not so easily.”

Alan Turing Intelligent Machinery

"Intelligent Machinery." This passage was one of the epigraphs to Cryptonomicon, the influential novel by Neal Stephenson, in which Turing was a fictionalized character. It shared a page with a quote from Imelda Marcos.

Universe, Problem, Law