Quotes about meaning
page 33

“People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are. I mean, do you actually realize how much adult conversation is spent on this fuckin business? Facts treated like they were opinions just for the simple purpose of talking about it longer? Some people might think that's interesting, bub, but I'll tell you. It's romanticizing a goddamn rock by calling it a mountain range to me. People waste a helluva lot of time they could be putting to useful purposes. This is a game. See it and forget about it.”

Richard Ford The Sportswriter

Source: The Sportswriter (1986), p. 104

People, Stupidity, Mountain, Game

“I don’t know what it means to live.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Source: I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader

Love

“Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

Feeling

“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Art

“Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2000s, There Is No God (2005)

God, People, Memory, Time

“But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows, that all arises out of experience.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

Introduction I. Of the Difference Between Pure and Empirical Knowledge
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
Variant: That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.
Context: That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of them selves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it. But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows, that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion)... It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and is not to be answered at first sight,—whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called à priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge which has its sources à posteriori, that is, in experience.

Knowledge

“I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.”

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

People

“Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Source: The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Women, Men, God, Children

“Without community, there is no liberation… but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Communication

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Fear, Thinking

“For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.”

LeVar Burton (1957) actor, director

Freedom

“It’s not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing.
there’s no release, just gurus and self-
appointed gods and hucksters.
the more people say, the less there is to say.
even the best books are dry sawdust.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

God, People, Books

“Sometimes it's the tiniest things that can mean the difference between life and death.”

Anthony Horowitz book Ark Angel

Source: Ark Angel

Life, Death

“True love is rare, and it's the only thing that gives life real meaning.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

love, Romantic, For Her, For Him

“That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Truth, Faith, Error

“Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate interests and work in areas of deepest personal meaning.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Life, Study, Passion, Chance

“i wish means: would it be nice if..
i want means: if i want it enough i will get it.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Source: Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

“great writers are indecent people
they live unfairly
saving the best part for paper.

good human beings save the world
so that bastards like me can keep creating art,
become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead
it means I made it.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

People, World, Art, Reading

“Claire, did I invite you to my barbeque?" Massie asked, her neck tilting to the right and her arms tightly crossed.
"Huh? No. I mean, I don't know," Claire said.
"Then why are you all up in my" Massie said through her teeth.”

Lisi Harrison book The Clique

Source: The Clique

“We each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

Source: A Tidewater Morning

“A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.”

N. Scott Momaday book The Way to Rainy Mountain

Source: The Way to Rainy Mountain

“That's what being eccentric means--being natural.”

Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) playwright and writer

Nature

“Ian sighed wanly. "I once had the means to be gaga over art–before I found myself in a country where the standard of beauty is toaster waffles shaped like cartoon characters.”

Gordon Korman book The Medusa Plot

Source: The Medusa Plot

Beauty, Art, Country

“Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Time, Heart

“I would do anything for you. Anything."

With that, he pushed his way out… and as the door eased shut, she realized that I love you could indeed be said without actually uttering the phrase.

Actions did mean more than words.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Love, Way

“Then he almost but didn't say the two sentence he'd been meaning to say for years: part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you”

Nicole Krauss (1974) American novelist

Love, Parting

“As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Life, God, People, Way

“The end cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Nature

“This is not to say that I wasn't completely repulsed. I mean, I wasn't exactly proud that my stepbrother
was in there tongue wrestling with the second stupidest person in our class, after himself.”

Meg Cabot book Ninth Key

Source: Ninth Key

Personality

“To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.”

Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) Japanese film maker

“every seven miles, in America, there is at least one McDonald's. Not a hospital, mind you, or a police station, but a McDonald's, every seven miles. I mean, that's sort of scary, if you think about it.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Code Name Cassandra

Thinking

“Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Christmas, Family, Christmas

“But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Learning, Loss, Parting, Happiness

“So he has no head'
'Thats usually what headless means'
'No head at all?'
'Your really not getting the whole headless thing are you?'
'Its just kind of silly even for us…”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Mortal Coil

“It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Source: The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present

Children, Thinking, Time, Reading

“Because I want you to know that your're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. And I thought I should introduce myself. I mean, we should get to know each other. Since you're the girl I intend to marry.
~Mark Gianni”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: As Long as We Both Shall Live

Beauty, Girl

“"Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said.
"Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Three: Words Misunderstood

Love

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Wise, Happy, Life, Happiness

“Not true,” said Adrian. “All guys mean the same thing when they want to ‘get to know a girl better.’ You’re a wellbred young lady, so I understand why you’d be too innocent to understand. Good thing you’ve got me here to interpret.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Guy, Girl, Understanding

“Mom says it's because she has PMS.
Do you even know what that means?
"I'm not a little kid anymore. It means pissed-at- men syndrome”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Men, Moms

“Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Queen

Source: The Other Queen

Wealth

“I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Kiss, Baby

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Feeling, Suffering, Passion, Patience

“If you could just be nice, then you wouldn't have to worry about arguments at all. but being nice wasn't as easy as it seemed, especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

World

“We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”

Sarah Vowell book Take the Cannoli

Source: Take the Cannoli

Thinking

“Because even though the truth can set you free, that doesn't mean it won't be painful.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Pain, Truth

“Is dere anysing special about you? Anysing vorth saving?"

Besides my fashion sense? I play a mean harmonica.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Fashion, Sense

“Just because you don't know everything don't mean you know nothing.”

Karen Cushman book The Midwife's Apprentice

Source: The Midwife's Apprentice

“Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Source: La Nouvelle Vague

Silence

“I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Relationship, Time

“Compromise means to go just a little bit below what you know is right. It's just a little bit, but it's the little foxes that spoil the vine.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.”

E.M. Forster book The Longest Journey

Source: The Longest Journey

People, Hurt

“Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age.”

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

"The Common Language of Science", a broadcast for Science, Conference, London, 28 September 1941. Published in Advancement of Science, London, Vol. 2, No. 5. Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions (1954), the quote appearing on this page http://books.google.com/books?id=OeUoXHoAJMsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT357#v=onepage&q&f=false. 1940s

Age, Perfection

“People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

People, Happiness

“Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding… that's where things get sticky.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Understanding

“Sure,” she said, and hugged the laptop bag closer. “What could go wrong?”
Michael’s eyes flashed to meet hers in the rearview mirror.
Besides everything, I mean,” she said.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Fade Out

“I don't mean to get all religious here, but I'm pretty sure key lime martinis (with a graham cracker & sugar rim) are proof that Jesus loves us.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Love

“Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

“He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual war against the happiness of mankind, and sets his engines of destruction at work against every object that presents itself.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Men, War, Intelligence, Happiness

“In those three years, (from fourteen to seventeen years old)… I came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animais. I remember that a companion of those days,' of whom I hâve since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I long deplored being constrained to do so, but I hâve since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 2-3

Life, Secret, School, Beauty

“The Chinese system must be classified as a syllabic system of writing. More specifically, it belongs to the subcategory that I have labeled meaning-plus-sound syllabic systems or morphosyllabic systems. I use the term morphosyllabic in two senses. The first applies to the Chinese characters taken as individual units. Individual characters are morphosyllabic in the sense that they represent at once a single syllable and a single morpheme (except for the 11 percent or so of meaningless characters that represent sound only). In this usage the term is intended to replace the more widely used expressions logographic, word-syllabic, and morphemic, all of which are applied to individual characters taken as a unit. The second sense of the term refers to the structure of Chinese characters and is intended to draw attention to the fact that, in most cases, a character is composed of two elements, a phonetic grapheme which suggests the syllabic pronunciation of the full character, and a semantic element which hints at its meaning.”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989, pp. 115-116) http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/index.html Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989)

Sense, Drawing

“Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scientists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life, People, Age, Art

“In the political domain, deprived of any collective politcal landmark, stripped of any notion of the 'meaning of History; and no longer able to hope for or expect a social revolution, many intellectuals, along with much of public opinion, have been won over to the logic of a capitalist economy and a parliamentary democracy.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Ethics, Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?"

Hope, Democracy, History

“There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn't lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We're responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

War, World, Peace, Understanding

“Some word that teems with hidden meaning, like "Basingstoke". It might recall me to my saner self. For, after all, I am only Mad Margaret! Daft Meg! Poor Meg! He! he! he!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Ruddigore (1887)

Madness

“Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 100

“Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Paedagogus 2 (circa 210).

Life, Women, Law, Art

“Of course we may assume many general and non-historical meanings for secularism, but turning a subject that is in all its existence a historical matter into a non-historical matter is a blatant mistake.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

(Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, Nov 2005).
Attributed

“"Eh, Manuel, and will you re-model the world?"
"Who knows?" says Manuel, in the high pride of his youth. "At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered."”

James Branch Cabell book Figures of Earth

Naifer and Manuel, in Ch. II : Niafer
Figures of Earth (1921)

Youth, World

“The union of these four Presidents carved on the face of the everlasting hills of South Dakota will constitute a distinctly national monument. It will be decidedly American in conception, in its magnitude, in its meaning and altogether worthy of our Country. No one can look upon it understandingly without realizing that it is a picture of hope fulfilled. Its location will be significant. Here in the heart of the continent, on the side of a mountain which probably no white man had ever beheld in the days of Washington, in territory which was acquired by the action of Jefferson, which remained an unbroken wilderness beyond the days of Lincoln, which was especially beloved by Roosevelt, the people of the future will see history and art combined to portray the spirit of patriotism. They will know that the figure of these Presidents has been placed here because by following the truth they built for eternity. The fundamental principles which they represented have been wrought into the very being of our Country. They are steadfast as these ancient hills.”

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

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

People, Truth, Hope, Art

“As a means of expression, painting must deliver universally valid statements, make allegorical reflections on life, and create new mythologies.”

Stefan Szczesny (1951) German painter and sculptor

Mustique (2002)

Life, Universe, Painting

“To me it is enormously striking what political stability means for economic development when you look at the Chinese example.”

Göran Persson (1949) Swedish politician, Swedish Social Democratic Party, thirty-second Prime minister of Sweden

Said to reporters during a state visit to the People's Republic of China (November 4, 1996). http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/spelare/createRam.asp?namn=/p3/nyhetsverktyg/0328persson_kina_2003-03-31_140354.rm

“You mean guys don't get injured in spring training? Guys get hurt walking down the street. All the managers, pitching coaches [are] very sensitive. Look, you can always pick at something, but there's a broader picture, a grander picture.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

Guy, Spring, Hurt, Training

“The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

Life, World, Feeling, Reality

“This means you want to do sex in your house with your door open. And show to people the way you are doing sex.”

Pahlaj Nihalani

On kissing scenes in films, as quoted in " You want to do sex in your house with your door open http://www.punemirror.in/pune/cover-story/You-want-to-do-sex-in-your-house-with-your-door-open/articleshow/49875892.cms" Pune Mirror (22 November 2015)

People, Sex, Way, Housing

“Insurance companies nowadays apply the principle of so-called 'selection by insurance'; this means that they take into consideration the fact that persons who enter early into insurance contracts are on the average of a different type and have a different distribution of death ages from persons from persons admitted to the insurance at a more advanced age.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

First Lecture, The Definition of Probability, p. 18
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

Death, Age, Personality

“Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

Life, Communication

“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Spring, Thinking

“It is a curious thing that relatively little attention has been directed toward working out methods for keeping the peace in a disarmed world. The technological The technological developments of the last twenty years have made disarmament a major concern of most nations, for it has become apparent that war is no longer an effective means for settling disputes between the great powers.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

Alexander Rich and John R. Platt (1966) "How to Keep the Peace" in: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. April 1966. p. 14

War, World, Peace

“One who desired knowledge of man apart from the fruits of knowledge would seek it in the history of religious enthusiasm, of martyrdom, or of love; he would not seek it in the market-place. When we elect to watch the play of human motives that are ordinary — that are sometimes mean and dismal and ignoble — our impulse is not the philosopher's impulse, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but rather the physiologist's, knowledge for the healing that knowledge may help to bring.”

Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959) British economist

Source: The Economics of Welfare (1920), Ch. 1 : Welfare and Economic Welfare, § 1

Love, History, Motivation, Knowledge

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money, Way, Feeling, Drink

“There are times when it is inappropriate to feel wholly good. Now is one of them. As the saying goes, "If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention."
This doesn't mean that we need to be in a constant state of rage or irritability or guilt. It means we need to use our magical tools to face the stark and overwhelming realities that confront us, acknowledge our feelings, and transmute them into the energy we need for change.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)

Feeling, Reality, Rage, Change

“[In Ethiopia, ] Abeh enrolled all three of us in school, which was taught in Amharic. We spoke only Somali and Arabic, so everything was completely foreign again for a little while. It wasn't until I could communicate that I came to a startling realization: the little girls in school with me were not Muslims. They said they were Kiristaan, Christian, which in Saudi Arabia had been a hideous playground insult, meaning impure. I went bewildered to my mother, who confirmed it. Ethiopians were kufr, the very sound of the word was scornful. They drank alcohol and they didn't wash properly. They were despicable.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 4: Weeping Orphans and Widowed Wives

Alcohol, School, Girl, Communication

“The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 259.

God, World, Law, Feeling

“Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 72.

World, History, Knowledge, Learning

“All we are now concerned with is the search for “new and improved” version of whatever means are already available for attaining goals such means make possible. The value of the goals themselves is irrelevant … What counts is doing things better than before. Whether such things are worth doing in the first place is no longer a question.”

Alexander Nehamas (1946) Professor of philosophy

Foreword to Alain Renaut, The Era of the Individual (1999), p. xi.

Search, Question

“Only a book written by the God who knows the end from the beginning could predict the future with one hundred percent accuracy. The God of the Bible (unlike all other “gods”) is not limited by time, space, or matter. He created all of those on Day One and is “above” and “outside of” and “not limited by” His creation in any way. We are the ones who are limited by time, space, and matter, not God. The fact that He knows the future does not mean that He controls the future and we are robots acting out a pre-programmed set of instructions. He has complete knowledge, yet we have complete control at all times. He could step in and control everything, but then we would be robots and not humans. It is called Free Will. That’s a gift God gave to mankind.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), pp. 6-7

God, Books, Way, Knowledge

“Unfortunately, too many academics retreat into narrow specialisms, allow themselves to become adjuncts of the corporation, or align themselves with dominant interests that serve largely to consolidate authority rather than to critique its abuses. Refusing to take positions on controversial issues or to examine the role they might play in lessening human suffering, such academics become models of moral indifference and examples of what it means to disconnect learning from public life. This is a form of education, as Howard Zinn notes, where scholars “publish while others perish.” Even many leftist and liberal academics have retreated into arcane discourses that offer them the safe ground of the professional recluse.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

"Higher Education Under Siege: Implications for Public Intellectuals," Thought and Action (Fall 2006), p. 64

Life, Education, Suffering, Learning

“Poet: “Straton wanders among the Scythian nomads, but has no linen garment. He is sad at only wearing an animal's pelt and no tunic.” Do you get what I mean?
Pisthetaerus: I understand that you want me to offer you a tunic. Hi! you (To the acolyte.) take off yours; we must help the poet.”

Aristophanés The Birds

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Birds+941 Birds, line 941-947 (our emphasis on 947) Birds (414 BC)

Sadness, Understanding, Help, Animals

“The word " economy" has latterly been used in various senses; the Germans give it a very indefinite signification.
Judging from its etymology and original signification, the Greeks seem to have understood by it the establishment and direction of the menage, or domestic arrangements.
Xenophon, in his work on economy, treats of domestic management, the reciprocal duties of the members of a family and of those who compose the household; and only incidentally mentions agriculture as having relation to domestic affairs. This word is never applied to agriculture by Xenophon, nor, indeed, by any Greek author; they distinguish it by the terms, georgic geoponic.
The Romans give a very extensive and indefinite signification to the word "economy." They understand by it, the best method of attaining the aim and end of some particular thing; or the disposition, plan, and division of some particular work. Thus, Cicero speaks of oeconomia causae, oeconomia orationis; and by this he means the direction of a law process, the arrangement of an harangue. Several German authors use it in this sense when they speak of the oekonomie eines schauspiels, or eines gedichtes, the economy of a play or poem. Authors of other nations have adopted all the significations which the Romans have attached to this word, and understand by it the relation of the various parts of any particular thing to each other and to the whole—that which we are accustomed to term the organization. The word "economy" only acquires a real sense when applied to some particular subject: thus, we hear of "the economy of nature," "the animal economy," and " the economy of the state" spoken of. It is also applied to some particular branch of science or industry; but, in the latter case, the nature of the economy ought to be pointed out, if it is not indicated by the nature of the subject.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section II. The Economy, Organization and Direction of an Agricultural Enterprise, p. 54-55.

Family, Law, Understanding, Nature

“Aesthetics is the one fundamental means a person has of liking himself.”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness (1969)

Personality

“I pray now and I ask you to pray with me, as I prayed eight years ago, that I am doing, that we are doing, the right thing by our people; for the end of martial law does not mean the end of our efforts, of our needed reforms, of our struggles, of our sacrifices. The passing of martial law does not necessarily carry with it the passing of all the burdens especially the heavy ones. There will be more tests, for our capacity, for our resiliency, for our strength as a people. I say, we have just begun.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Speech proclaiming the termination of the state of Martial law, Heroes Hall, Malacañang (17 January 1981)
1965

People, Law, Effort

“As many of us know, women are particularly focused on the household budget and the repeal of the carbon tax means a $550 a year benefit for the average family.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

After being asked by host Lisa Wilkinson to nominate his top achievement in his capacity as Minister for Women, quoted in Sydney Morning Herald, "Tony Abbott names carbon tax repeal as his top achievement as Minister for Women'" http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-names-carbon-tax-repeal-as-his-top-achievement-as-minister-for-women-20141221-12bw42, December 22, 2014 2014

Women, Family

“Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas (2003), Chapter 34; observation of Odd Thomas

“What then is Liberty? Liberty, I would answer, so far as it is possible for it to exist in a Society of Beings whose interests are almost perpetually opposed to each other, consists in this, that, every Man, while he respects the persons of others, and allows them quietly to enjoy the produce of their industry, be certain himself likewise to enjoy the produce of his own industry, and that his person be also secure. But to contribute by one’s suffrage to procure these advantages to the Community,—to have a share in establishing that order, that general arrangement of things, by means of which an individual, lost as it were in the croud, is effectually protected,—to lay down the rules to be observed by those who, being invested with a considerable power, are charged with the defence of individuals, and provide that they should never transgress them,—these are functions, are acts of Government, but not constituent parts of Liberty.”

Jean-Louis de Lolme (1740–1806) Genevan and English political theorist and writer on constitutional matters

The Constitution of England (1784), Ch. 5 : In which an Inquiry is made, whether it would be an Advantage to public Liberty, that the Laws should be enacted by the Votes of the People at large.

Communication, Parting, Personality

“I think there is something in the genetic code that deals with the disposition towards gentleness or meanness, and I think in God's perfect law, if we would continually eliminate, execute people that do these certain crimes, we would gradually get a much better society that… not so many people have this "mean gene" in them.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

-Edited Version- Pastor Steve Anderson interviews Dr Kent Hovind (Re-upload) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y4J7o62-w8, Youtube (January 22, 2015)

God, People, Law, Thinking

“If one does not wish to be dissatisfied with one’s lot at home, one ought to go where the flies and the stinks are, which means the Middle East. This is also a good way of reconciling oneself to one’s laws and police force and the probity of one’s magistrates. The really great British travellers, like Charles M. Doughty for instance, to say nothing of ‘Eothen’ Kinglake, always went East, but not too far East. When you get to Southeast Asia you find no dirt or flies but the suspicion that you are in a tropical paradise, and then you go to pieces. It is essential, when travelling, to feel that you belong to a superior civilization, and the lands of the Arabs lavishly grant opportunities to nourish this conviction….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Law, Way, Travel, Feeling

“This is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche’s conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who “enjoy” and “experience” it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche’s teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): “Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman’s aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of ‘what is beautiful.’ In all philosophy to date the artist is missing.” Philosophy of art means “aesthetics” for Nietzsche too—but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 70

Beauty, Art, Question, Decision

“Brexit means Brexit. The campaign was fought, the vote was held, turnout was high, and the public gave their verdict. There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum. The country voted to leave the European Union, and it is the duty of the Government and of Parliament to make sure we do just that.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)

Country

Quotes about meaning page 33

Quotes about meaning
page 33