Cast a Yellow Shadow (1967)
Reflections on her life, quoted in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/mia-farrow-my-faith-helps-me-through-hard-times-480665.html, 2006
Lord Kiely, p. 89
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Battle (1995)
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“Virus of the Soul,” p. 93
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Game”
“Maybe, but I don't have another life to live to wait around for it.”
Speaking on August 31, 1956 at Griffith Stadium, in response to pitcher Whitey Ford's assurance that he could indeed retire Jim Lemon, who had homered off Ford in each of his previous three at-bats; as quoted in The Greatest Team of All Timeː As Selected by Baseball's Immortals, From Ty Cobb to Willie Mays (1994) by Nicholas Acocella and Donald Dewey, p. 113
Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 57)
Rachel on her adult goals.
Off & On Broadway documentary (2006)
From WHAT MATTERS MOST, a lecture given by Ashleigh Brilliant, May 6 2007, Victoria Hall, Santa Barbara, California. Taken from the author's website: ashleighbrilliant.com
Glass talks to Annabelle Wallis about her career-defining appearance in Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders http://www.theglassmagazine.com/interview-with-annabelle-wallis/ (November 12, 2013)
Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ (1983) as quoted in "Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?" by Ronnie Dugger in Washington Post Outlook (8 April 1984)
As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Al-Ahram Weekly interview (2001)
"on the Israeli atheist convention" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/01/13/on-the-israeli-atheist-convention/, Patheos (January 13, 2013)
Patheos
Hardball with Chris Matthews (26 June 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60xDmowdTCA
2007
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (pp. 624-625)
“Maybe that's how I learned to handle my deep hurt—by forgetting.”
Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 15
In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Location', Spring 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 54
1960's
2011-01-04
O'Reilly Debates Atheist Group President Over Religions Are 'Scams' Billboard
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/transcript/o039reilly-debates-atheist-group-president-over-religions-are-039scams039-billboard
interviewed regarding American Atheists' Huntsville, Alabama "You Know They're All Scams" billboard
Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s Kickstarter milestone https://www.redbull.com/us-en/kingdom-come-deliverance-dan-vavra-interview (April 28, 2016)
I know what I have to do.
As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.
“Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”
Margo Roth Spiegelman, p. 4
Paper Towns (2008)
Six String Orchestra
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)
Helen Schucman (1976), in interview by David Hammond August 1976 in Belvedere, California. Quoted in: The Voice: A Historical Moment with Helen https://acim.org/Scribing/the_voice.html at acim.org. Accessed May 21, 2014. Also online ar merelyacim.wikispaces.com http://merelyacim.wikispaces.com/An+interview+with+Helen+Schucman.
In answer of question: "Regarding the voice you heard in the scribing A Course in Miracles, did it come from outside or from within?"
Attributed
Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 12
"Someday (I Will Understand)"
Lyrics, Britney & Kevin: Chaotic (2005)
Travis McGee series, A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
Context: I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.
“Maybe the heart is part of the mist.
And that's all that there is or could ever exist.”
I Don't Believe
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)
Context: Maybe the heart is part of the mist.
And that's all that there is or could ever exist.
Maybe and maybe and maybe some more.
Maybe's the exit that I'm looking for.
Revolution (2014)
Context: Diablo and I fashioned my beard together in my trailer, together, as cautiously as you’d sculpt a peace treaty between two nations that prefer war to peace. The reality was that my identity outside of filmmaking had become more important to me. I was doing hours of yoga and meditation each day, I was going through a divorce, and the result was a kind of hirsute intransigence. I looked like the cliché of a terrorist and I behaved like one. Except the beard wasn’t the symbol, it was the cause. I feel some guilt about my lack of enthusiasm for acting, like it’s a bit ungrateful. Like I’ve let my teenage self down. Mind you, he let himself down a fair bit, the dirty little pervert. The dreams of my adolescent self were entangled with silvery screens and limousines, and I still feel that I need to offer up superficial sacrifices to his misguided altar. The fact is, though, I find filmmaking a boring process and its ends dubious. This could, of course, be due to the quality of the stuff I’ve done so far, as opposed to an essential rejection of an art form. Maybe if I’d been “R. P. McMurphy” or “The Elephant Man” or “Brian,” I’d feel different. It just wasn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not just the entertainment industry that has seemed like a mirage on arrival. What about clubs and parties? When I’m there I think, “Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this what all the fuss is about?” This feeling of disillusionment perhaps climaxed around the time of my divorce and the making of this subsequent film.
I Don't Believe
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)
The Sound of Silence
Song lyrics, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964)
Context: And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
2010s, Farewell Speech (2017)
Context: When you encounter obstacles — because I guarantee you, you will, and many of you already have — when you are struggling and you start thinking about giving up, I want you to remember something that my husband and I have talked about since we first started this journey nearly a decade ago, something that has carried us through every moment in this White House and every moment of our lives, and that is the power of hope — the belief that something better is always possible if you're willing to work for it and fight for it.
It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us. The hope that when people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves.
Acceptance speech for the 1970 National Medal for Literature, New York, New York (2 December 1970)
Context: If, in the middle of World War II, a general could be writing a poem, then maybe I was not so irrelevant after all. Maybe the general was doing more for victory by writing a poem than he would be by commanding an army. At least, he might be doing less harm. By applying the same logic to my own condition, I decided that I might be relevant in what I called a negative way. I have clung to this concept ever since — negative relevance. In moments of vain-glory I even entertain the possibility that if my concept were more widely accepted, the world might be a better place to live in. There are a lot of people who would make better citizens if they were content to be just negatively relevant.
The Paris Review interview
Context: Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem — don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer. If most poetry doesn’t seem to be in any sense confessional, it’s because the strategy of concealment, of obliquity, can be so compulsive that it’s almost entirely successful.
Letter to his brother Jeff from Guadalcanal (28 January 1943); p. 28
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: I'm going to ask you something. If I do get killed, and I honestly don't see how I can help it, I want you to write that book we were thinking about when I enlisted. If I get it, it's a cinch I won't be able to do it, and it would make me feel a whole lot better to know that if not my name and hand, at least, the thot of me would be passed on and not forgotten entirely. You know, sort of put into the book the promise that I had and the things I might have written so at least the knowledge of talent wasted won't be lost... If I get it, no one will ever know to what heights I might have gone as a writer. Maybe if you wrote about the promise that was there, all wouldn't be lost.
C-SPAN interview, October 14, 2004
Context: Everybody wrings their hands about Fox News. You know, "fair and balanced? Why, that's snide!" Yeah, okay, maybe they're not fair and balanced, but CNN used to have the slogan "You Can Depend on CNN". Guess what? I watch it, no you can't. So what's the difference?
Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3 "Footnote on Criticism", pp. 85-104
Context: Truth, indeed, is something that is believed in completely only by persons who have never tried personally to pursue it to its fastness and grab it by the tail. It is the adoration of second-rate men — men who always receive it as second-hand. Pedagogues believe in immutable truths and spend their lives trying to determine them and propagate them; the intellectual progress of man consists largely of a concerted effort to block and destroy their enterprise. Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever will be discovered. Nevertheless, the rubber-stamp thinking of the world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth — that error and truth are simply opposites. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. This is the whole history of the intellect in brief. The average man of today does not believe in precisely the same imbecilities that the Greek of the Fourth Century before Christ believed in, but the things that he does believe in are often quite as idiotic.
Perhaps this statement is a bit too sweeping. There is, year by year, a gradual accumulation of what may be called, provisionally, truths — there is a slow accretion of ideas that somehow manage to meet all practicable human tests, and so survive. But even so, it is risky to call them absolute truths. All that one may safely say of them is that no one, as yet, has demonstrated that they are errors. Soon or late, if experience teaches us anything, they are likely to succumb too. The profoundest truths of the Middle Ages are now laughed at by schoolboys. The profoundest truths of democracy will be laughed at, a few centuries hence, even by school-teachers.
Open Letter To Satanists
Context: It's so much easier to create our own gods; gods that are fully knowable. Those are the gods of atheism, occultism, religion and sometimes even Christianity. Then, of course, there are those prejudices that we demand of our gods. Women who take offense at a "male" God create for themselves a female or neuter god. There, we have all the racial gods, the black gods, white gods, and cultural gods, the Spanish gods, African gods, Indian gods and so on. All of them called god. And yet none of them are truly Him. Some may be tiny glimpses of Him. Maybe His big toe or little finger, but nothing more. Others are not even that. They’re only delusions from our prejudices.
Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland. (1939) First lines
Context: It was a bank holiday, and Mr Tompkins, the little clerk of a big city bank, slept late and had a leisurely breakfast. Trying to plan his day, he first thought about going to some afternoon movie and, opening the morning paper, turned to the entertainment page. But none of the films looked attractive to him. He detested all this Hollywood stuff, with infinite romances between popular stars.
If only there were at least one film with some real adventure, something unusual and maybe even fantastic about it. But there was none. Unexpectedly, his eye fell on a little notice in the corner of the page. The local university was announcing a series of lectures on the problems of modern physics, and this afternoon's lecture was to be about Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Well, that might be something!
2010s, 2016, Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (9 March 2016)
Context: Poverty is increasing. And if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guestworkers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are right now.... You have guestworker programs that have been described by the.... In this country, immigration reform is a very hot debate. It’s divided the country. But I would hope very much, that as we have that debate, we do not, as Donald Trump and others have done, resort to racism and xenophobia and bigotry. This idea of suddenly, one day or maybe a night, rounding up 11 million people and taking them outside of this country is a vulgar, absurd idea that I would hope very few people in America support.
“Maybe the world.. has run out of room.. for monsters.”
Swamp Thing (1983–1987)
Interview with Laura Knoy, New Hampshire Public Radio (5 November 2003)
Context: I think we're at a time in American history that's probably analogous to, maybe, Rome before the first emperors, when the Republic started to fall... I think if you look at the pattern of events, if you look at the disputed election of 2000, can you imagine? In America, people are trying to recount ballots and a partisan mob is pounding on the glass and threatening the counters? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a political party which does its best to keep any representatives from another party — who've even been affiliated with another party — from getting a business job in the nation's capital? Can you imagine a political party that wants to redistrict so that its opponents can be driven out entirely?... it's a different time in America and the Republic is — this election is about a lot more than jobs. I'm not sure everybody in America sees it right now. But I see it, I feel it.
Revolution (2014)
Context: On the short walk to the front past the others, either bowing or kneeling or whirling or howling, I feel glad that my life is this way; so full of jarring experience. Sometimes you feel that life is full and beautiful, all these worlds, all these people, all these experiences, all this wonder. You never know when you will encounter magic. Some solitary moment in a park can suddenly burst open with a spray of preschool children in high-vis vests, hand in hand; maybe the teacher will ask you for directions, and the children will look at you, curious and open, and you’ll see that they are perfect. In the half-morning half-gray glint, the cobwebs on bushes are gleaming with such radiant insistence, you can feel the playful unknown beckoning. Behind impassive stares in booths, behind the indifferent gum chew, behind the car horns, there is connection.
As quoted in Conversations with Edward Albee (1988) by Philip C. Kolin, p. 176
Context: I survive almost any onslaught with a shrug, which must appear as arrogance, but really isn't because I'm not an arrogant person. When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions — that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. That's all. And then you go about your business, assuming you'd be the first to know if your talent has collapsed.
I don't think I've been a commercial playwright ever. By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing — which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring. I very seldom get it anyway, and then it's accidental when I do. … So I write those things that interest me.
The Story of the Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern.
Near Truths and Hotel Rooms (2003)
Context: (Spoken) You get out in the desert and there's no signs. And of course it was just me and all my friends, it was all guys in the car, so we drove about another two and a half hours before we ever pulled over and asked anybody where we was. And we were on this thing called the Devil's Backbone Highway, right, so we finally pull into this place uniquely named "The Devil's Backbone Tavern." We go in, and all the guys say I gotta go in, you know. And so I go in there, and it's one of them bars, like everyone's drinking beer and there are like, say, twenty people in there and they have maybe, say, seventeen teeth total in the whole place. And I'm not a good fighter, or very good at protecting myself at all, you know! And I thought, well this could - this may not work out. So I saw behind the bar there was this one older woman; she looked like she was in her eighties and she kinda hunched over like I remember my grandma started to do, she kinda, she had curly white hair, and she's all... I thought, well, I could take her...
“Maybe altruism is our most primitive attribute out of reach, beyond our control.”
"The Tucson Zoo", p. 10
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)
Context: Maybe altruism is our most primitive attribute out of reach, beyond our control. Or perhaps it is immediately at hand, waiting to be released, disguised now, in our kind of civilization as affection or friendship or attachment. I can’t see why it should be unreasonable for all human beings to have strands of DNA coiled up in chromosomes, coding out instincts for usefulness and helpfulness. Usefulness may turn out to be the hardest test of fitness for survival, more important than aggression, more effective, in the long run, than grabbiness.
"1997 XF<sub>11</sub> – the true story" in The Journal of the British Astronomical Association Vol. 109, No.1 (February 1999) https://archive.is/20121220165604/www.britastro.org/jbaa/archive/marsden.htm.
Context: It is probably a good idea to search, at some level, for asteroids that come to the Earth's general vicinity. But merely counting the asteroids found is not sufficient. It is desirable to follow up each discovery to examine whether it can or can not be a threat during the next century or so. Objects for which the threat cannot be eliminated should be singled out for special study, notably to the extent of searching for old images in photographic archives. 1997 XF11 was noteworthy for the apathy shown to it prior to the very widespead announcement in March. If proper attention had been given to it earlier, the circumstances that led to the announcement would never have occurred. Sometimes statistics will conspire to draw attention to a problem. Maybe they are trying to tell us something.
Shawn Hubler, "At 50, City Lights illuminates the past", http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20030615/ai_n14549339 Oakland Tribune/Los Angeles Times on findarticles.com, 2003-06-15. : On City Lights' profits for the year.
2000s
“Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself.”
Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy (1993)
Context: Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Basically, it's made up of two separate words — "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
Kingsnake podcast interview http://club.kingsnake.com/index.php?/archives/66-Podcast-Interview-with-Alice-Cooper.html (26 May 2006).
Context: It's so funny that people think I actually ran for President. I am maybe the most un-political person you're ever going to meet. When I put "Elected" out, it was definitely a satire... "Alice Cooper for President"... when everybody realized I was running against Nixon, you known, even on a joke level, I think I got a lot of write-in votes.
"Self Esteem" (31 May 2007)
Context: If you're coming into this YouTube thing, do it because of what you can do for other people... Don't worry so much about yourself, and if you're doing ok, and if you love yourself — you do, trust me. Think of what you can do for other people... Not some kind of self review, not some kind of day or week or however long to make sure you feel good about yourself — but thinking about the other people all around you, all the time, who could always — always use a hand, one way or another, even if it's kindness. Think of that instead. And maybe you are starting to notice my quote on the page "Look without, and you will be fulfilled within — without a doubt." I really mean that — look without, without of yourself — not within.
Context: We're confronted all the time with evolving viruses and bacteria. The Red Queen really rules the biological world, and we have to keep running just to keep up pace with the changing microorganisms. Yet policymakers and the public deny vaccination, and evolution itself, and question the value of biomedical research. Maybe they don't believe in evolution, but the microorganisms trying to kill us are taking full advantage of it.
“I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us.”
Story notes for The Golden Man (1953), in the short story anthology The Golden Man (1980)
Context: Here I am saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries, a view which John W. Campbell, Jr. deplored. We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't.
“People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.”
After Dark
Context: People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far the maintenance of life is concerned. They are all just fuel. Advertising filler in the news paper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills; when you feed them to fire, they are just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'oh This is Kant' or 'Oh This is Yomuri evening edition' or 'Nice tits', while it burns. To the fire, they are nothing but scraps of paper. It is the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories : there is no distinction — they are all just fuel
Address to the Constituent Assembly (1947)
Context: A division had to take place. On both sides, in Hindustan and Pakistan, there are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it, but in my judgement there was no other solution and I am sure future history will record is verdict in favour of it. And what is more, it will be proved by actual experience as we go on that was the only solution of India's constitutional problem. Any idea of a united India could never have worked and in my judgement it would have led us to terrific disaster. Maybe that view is correct; maybe it is not; that remains to be seen.
“Maybe it's maudlin, but so am I. I get chills every time I sing it, even when sober.”
Letter to Maxwell Perkins (21 October 1946); p. 80
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: Also by the way, I have found a title for this book. From Here to Eternity. Taken from the "Whiffenpoof" song, of Yale drinking fame. It goes: "We are little black sheep who have gone astray, baa... baa... baa. Gentlemen songsters out on a spree, damned from here to eternity. God have mercy on such as we. Baa, etc." Maybe it's maudlin, but so am I. I get chills every time I sing it, even when sober.
The Paris Review interview
Context: Goethe called his work one big confession, didn’t he? Looking at his work in the broadest sense, you could say the same of Shakespeare: a total self-examination and self-accusation, a total confession—very naked, I think, when you look into it. Maybe it’s the same with any writing that has real poetic life. Maybe all poetry, insofar as it moves us and connects with us, is a revealing of something that the writer doesn’t actually want to say but desperately needs to communicate, to be delivered of. Perhaps it’s the need to keep it hidden that makes it poetic—makes it poetry. The writer daren’t actually put it into words, so it leaks out obliquely, smuggled through analogies. We think we’re writing something to amuse, but we’re actually saying something we desperately need to share.
Speech on the 50th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Prague Castle (10 December 1998)
Context: The history of the human race has generated several papers articulating basic moral imperatives, or fundamental principles, of human coexistence that — maybe in association with concurring historical events — substantially influenced the fate of humanity on this planet. Among these historic documents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — adopted fifty years ago today — holds a very special, indeed, unique position. It is the first code of ethical conduct that was not a product of one culture, or one sphere of civilization only, but a universal creation, shaped and subscribed to by representatives of all humankind. Since its very inception, the Declaration has thus represented a planetary, or global commitment, a global intention, a global guideline. For this reason alone, this exceptional document — conceived as a result of a profound human self-reflection in the wake of the horrors of World War II, and retaining its relevance ever since — deserves to be remembered today.
“Tonight's show is about doubt. Or maybe it isn't - haven't made my mind up yet.”
Dandelion Mind (2010)
"Don Quixote at Eighty" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16115, The New York Review of Books (13 March 2003)
Context: Maybe the unconscious is overrated... What if your unconscious is full of false consciousness or bad faith? What if it's more like a trash compactor than a dreamcatcher? What if it's a diseased hump, a vampire bat, an alien abductor? Somewhere in Pieces and Pontifications, somebody asked him: "Why can't the unconscious be as error-prone as the conscious?" It was a Freudian question he never answered.
Book III : Exile from Oblivion, Ch. 28
Wanderer (1963)
Context: The sun beats down and you pace, you pace and you pace. Your mind flies free and you see yourself as an actor, condemned to a treadmill wherein men and women conspire to breathe life into a screenplay that allegedly depicts life as it was in the old wild West. You see yourself coming awake any one of a thousand mornings between the spring of 1954, and that of 1958—alone in a double bed in a big white house deep in suburban Sherman Oaks, not far from Hollywood.
The windows are open wide, and beyond these is the backyard swimming pool inert and green, within a picket fence. You turn and gaze at a pair of desks not far from the double bed. This is your private office, the place that shelters your fondest hopes: these desks so neat, patiently waiting for the day that never comes, the day you'll sit down at last and begin to write.
Why did you never write? Why, instead, did you grovel along, through the endless months and years, as a motion‑picture actor? What held you to it, to something you so vehemently professed to despise? Could it be that you secretly liked it — that the big dough and the big house and the high life meant more than the aura you spun for those around you to see?
Hayden's wild," they said. "He's kind of nuts — but you've got to hand it to him. He doesn't give a damn about the loot or the stardom or things like that — something to do with his seafaring, or maybe what he went through in the war..."
Sure you liked it, part of it at least. The latitude this life gave you, the opportunity to pose perhaps; the chance to indulge in talk about “convictions — values — basic principles.” Maybe what kept you from writing was the fact that you knew it was tough. Maybe what held you to to acting was the fact that you couldn't lose — not really lose, because you could not be considered a failure if you had not set out to succeed... and you made it quite plain that you didn't give a damn.
And yet, you did hate it. Perhaps you were weak, that's all. You hated it because you knew you were capable of far more. You hated the role of an actor because, in the final analysis. an actor is only a pawn — brilliant sometimes, rare and talented, capable of bringing pleasure and even inspiration to others, but no less a pawn for that: a man who at best expresses the yearnings and actions of others. Could it be that you thought too much of yourself — that you could not accept sublimating yourself to a mold conceived by others, anyone else on earth?
Pointed to a sign on the wall: a spider with a line through it. "Oh, fair enough."
He said "I can offer you an upgrade, fifty quid, and we can include in it policies set in place by the Marquis de Laplace, the French scientist who declared that all things in the universe are predetermined, so you would be covered even if time-travel was invented during the period of rental.”
I said, "Nah, probably leave it."
Part Troll (2004)
This is the Truth! (1949)
Context: I have read now and then that I am one of the most tragic figures in baseball. Well, maybe that's the way some people look at it, but I don't quite see it that way myself. I guess one of the reasons I never fought my suspension any harder than I did was that I thought I had spent a pretty full life in the big leagues. I was 32 years old at the time, and I had been in the majors 13 years; I had a life time batting average of.356; I held the all-time throwing record for distance; and I had made pretty good salaries for those days. There wasn't much left for me in the big leagues.
The Honolulu Advertiser (20 June 1959) https://www.newspapers.com/image/259239643/?terms=Pogo, cited in "Pogo on intelligent life in the universe" by Garson O'Toole, in Archive of the American Dialect Society listserver (16 February 2017) http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2017-February/146520.html, and in 'Pogo Comic on Extraterrestrials: Either Way, It’s a Mighty Soberin’ Thought", The Quote Investigator (18 February 2017) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/02/18/space/. This has often been paraphrased as: "Thar’s only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we’re the most intelligent life in the universe. Either way, it’s a mighty sobering thought."
Pogo comic strip (1948 - 1975), Porky Pine
"The Tucson Zoo", p. 9
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)
Context: We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well. We are stamped with stereotyped, unalterable patterns of response, ready to be released. And the behavior released in us, by such confrontations, is, essentially, a surprised affection. It is compulsory behavior and we can avoid it only by straining with the full power of our conscious minds, making up conscious excuses all the way. Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.
Bat out of Hell (1977), Bat out of Hell (song)
Context: Nothing ever grows in this rotten old hole
And everything is stunted and lost
And nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls
And nothing's ever worth the cost. And I know that I'm damned if I never get out
And maybe I'm damned if I do
But with every other beat I got left in my heart
You know I'd rather be damned with you.
“Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed.”
Liquidation (2003)
Context: The régime was overthrown, and I'm not going to pretend it was me who overthrew it. A general liquidation is in full swing, and I'm not going to join in. I've become a spectator. And I'm not even spectating from the front rows in the stalls but from somewhere up in the gods. Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed. That would be the unseemlier alternative, because then they would have smashed my ear in for no reason at all. That is the assumption I'm inclining to these days. (He breaks off and ponders, book in hand.) I did time for no reason, dragged the millstone of a police record around for no reason, was on probation for years for no reason, and I'm no hero, I merely botched up my life.
A River Runs Through It (1976)
Context: Everything that was to happen had happened and everything that was to be seen had gone. It was now one of those moments when nothing remains but an opening in the sky and a story — and maybe something of a poem. Anyway, as you possibly remember, there are these lines in front of the story:
"They are hostile nations" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177292
Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1976)
"Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities" (1932); also in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 99 - 100.
Extra-judicial writings
Context: When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome; they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game.
Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (1944)
Context: Human beings are not born identical. There are many different temperaments and constitutions; and within each psycho-physical class one can find people at very different stages of spiritual development. Forms of worship and spiritual discipline which may be valuable for one individual maybe useless or even positively harmful for another belonging to a different class and standing, within that class, at a lower or higher level of development.
“Maybe I've got another job to do.”
On getting back into producing new music, interviewed on "Yusuf Islam's New Album" at CBS News (12 August 2007) http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2226452n&tag=related;photovideo
Context: A big turning point happened when my son brought back a guitar into the house — You know, 'cause I'd given all those guitars away to charity — way back in 1979 and hadn't really touched the instrument, you know, for like two decades. … So then one day … when everybody's asleep and nobody's watching, I pick it up — and lo and behold, I still know where to put my fingers and out comes this music. I said, "Maybe I've got another job to do." And in this time and period it's probably the best thing I can do because lecturing, politics, God, I've got nothing to do with that. I want to just get heart-to-heart, make sure people understand some of the real subtle beauties of what I've discovered.
Statement after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, in "An Incredible Soul": Larry Lessig Remembers Aaron Swartz After Cyberactivist’s Suicide Before Trial; Parents Blame Prosecutor" at Democracy NOW! (14 January 2013) http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/an_incredible_soul_lawrence_lessig_remembers
Context: I received an email from JSTOR four days before Aaron died, from the president of JSTOR, announcing, celebrating that JSTOR was going to release all of these journal articles to anybody around the world who wanted access — exactly what Aaron was fighting for. And I didn’t have time to send it to Aaron; I was on — I was traveling. But I looked forward to seeing him again — I had just seen him the week before — and celebrating that this is what had happened. So, all of us think there are a thousand things we could have done, a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do, because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal. He is what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives. … Every time you saw Aaron, he was surrounded by five or 10 different people who loved and respected and worked with him. He was depressed because he was increasingly recognizing that the idealism he brought to this fight maybe wasn’t enough. When he saw all of his wealth gone, and he recognized his parents were going to have to mortgage their house so he could afford a lawyer to fight a government that treated him as if he were a 9/11 terrorist, as if what he was doing was threatening the infrastructure of the United States, when he saw that and he recognized how — how incredibly difficult that fight was going to be, of course he was depressed.
Now, you know, I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know whether there was something wrong with him because of — you know, beyond the rational reason he had to be depressed, but I don’t — I don’t — I don’t have patience for people who want to say, "Oh, this was just a crazy person; this was just a person with a psychological problem who killed himself." No. This was somebody — this was somebody who was pushed to the edge by what I think of as a kind of bullying by our government. A bullying by our government.
“Maybe nothing is completely true, and not even that.”
Multatuli, Ideeën
O interview (2003)
Context: Yes, I'm beautiful … I am beautiful and famous — and yet the things I like about myself have nothing to do with that, because I don't use wealth and beauty to define myself. People think I'm more beautiful than I am because they see me on magazine covers — but go to nearly any town, and you'd find prettier women. And though I'm well known now, I might not be famous one day —but I'd still be happy. I do have money, but I could be richer. I just don't want to pay the price some are willing to pay to have more money. I live in a small house. I'm not the glamour girl who wears makeup every day. I live a wonderful life, and I lack for nothing. Maybe that does make it easier for me to say, "Be who you are" — but I always tell people they shouldn't be too impressed with wealth and fame. They shouldn't worship it. I am in this machine, but I haven't completely given my soul to it.
interview by Charles M. Young in Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19920528.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994
Context: If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.
“Maybe she hadn’t saved the world but she had made a major improvement.”
Post Office (1971)
Context: I squeezed Fay’s hand, kissed her on the forehead. She closed her eyes and seemed to sleep then. She was not a young woman. Maybe she hadn’t saved the world but she had made a major improvement. Ring one up for Fay.
Bill Moyers interview (2002)
Context: I understood really the power of art to transform. I think transformation became the main word in my life.
Transformation because you don't want to just put a mirror in front of people and say, here, look at yourself. What do you see? You want to have a skewed mirror. You want a mirror that says you didn't know you could see the back of your head. You didn't know that you could amount cubistic see almost all the same aspects at the same time. It allows human beings to step out of their lives and to revisit it and maybe find something different about it.
Bowdoin Academic Spotlight interview (2011)
Context: You have to take advantage of the opportunities that life gives you, particularly the moments in time when you have time, when you're between jobs or you retire. Get out and go. I think most of us are way too intense. We need to take a deep breath and do things that maybe don't fit the normal picture of what we're supposed to do at that stage of life. In some ways, this book is one big argument for just plain loosening up.
“Women have the 'basket of maybes' on their arm, men just have the 'stick of now'.”
Carlo Mazzone
Source: Roberto Baggio: il più grande del calcio italiano, calciopro.com, Italian, 9 October 2014 http://www.calciopro.com/calcio-italiano/roberto-baggio-il-piu-grande-del-calcio-italiano/,
Source: Workers Councils (1947), Chapter One, The Task, Section 1.2
On A Kestrel for a Knave
Barry Hines Interview: Homecoming Hero
AI Podcast, December 30, 2019, Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and The Art of Computer Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8,
Sanders takes aim at Biden, Buttigieg in heated debate, in VTDigger (Dec 19, 2019)
2010s, 2019, December 2019
As quoted in an interview with The Guardian (17 August 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/17/mikhail-gorbachev-on-boris-yeltsin
2000s
The Bear section 3 (p. 229)
Go Down, Moses (1942)
On how her upbringing in California affected her writing “Maurene Goo on Writing Relatable Characters and her Enduring Love of K Dramas” http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2018/02/goo/ (Public Libraries Online; 2018 Feb 28)
