Quotes about meaning
page 45

Gerard Bilders photo

“Many paintings are on their way, several half finished, others almost varnished and signed at the bottom. An important point is how a painting succeeds at last; an equally important point is when, how and to whom it is sold. Of these three points, the 'when', at least at this moment, is the most important for me. Then the 'how', in the sense of 'how much' [money]. To 'whom', is a question of wealth or wanton, as someone who had nothing to eat for a long time and then start to think, at whose costs am I going to fill my stomach... How mean! Painters are inferior people. Harsh!”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Veel schilderijen staan op stapel, verscheidene half gereed, de andere bijna vernist, met de naam eronder. Een voornaam punt is hoe een schilderij uitvalt, een even voornaam punt wanneer, hoe en aan wie het verkocht wordt. Van deze drie punten is het 'wanneer', op dit ogenblik tenminste, voor mij weer het voornaamste. Vervolgens het 'hoe', in de zin van 'hoeveel'. Aan 'wie', is weelde of brooddronkenheid, als van iemand die lange tijd niets te eten heeft gehad en er dan nog over gaat denken, bij wie hij het liefst zijn buik gaat vullen.. ..Hoe gemeen! Schilders zijn geringe lui. Hard!
Source: 1860's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 36 - quote from Bilders' diary, 5 March 1860, (Amsterdam)

Zoran Đinđić photo
Clive Barker photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“All of us know the true meaning of freedom. Some of us appreciate it more than those who have been here for many generations.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.orlandosentinel.com (July 5, 2007)
2007, 2008

Fritjof Capra photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Henry Taylor photo

“The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Money.
Notes from Life (1853)

Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia photo
Joseph Kosuth photo
Alfred North Whitehead photo
Karen Armstrong photo
George Biddell Airy photo

“In the hands of Science and indomitable energy, results the most gigantic and absorbing may be wrought out by skilful combinations of acknowledged data and the simplest means.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

[Sir George Biddell Airy, Lecture on the pendulum-experiments at Harton Pit: delivered in the Central Hall, South Shields, October 24, 1854, Longman and Co, 1855, iv]

Hilary Duff photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Thomas Hardy photo

“A star looks down at me,
And says: "Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do,—
Mean to do?"”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

" Waiting Both http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Thomas_Hardy/9302, lines 1-5, from Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)

Harry Truman photo

“Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Attributed without citation in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1992) by Angela Partington, disputed in The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 224, as something Truman is not known to have said, nor was likely to have said.
Disputed

Chris Cornell photo

“No, I thing that's the worst f**king thing. I mean, can you imagine having to get up at 4am and sit in a trailer while someone puts makeup on you? Then stand in front of a camera and say the same lines 60 times. I feel sorry for actors and I never want to do it. I stood in front of a camera in Singles and that's about it.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if he ever considered acting as a career ** Kerrang! Magazine, March 1, 1997 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/kerr_3-1-97.shtml,
Soundgarden Era

Gerard Bilders photo

“I am searching for a tone, which we call 'colored grey'. I mean that all colors, even the strongest, can be brought together in such a way as to give the impression of a warm, vital grey. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Ik zoek naar een toon, die wij gekleurd-grijs noemen; dat is alle kleuren, hoé sterk ook, zoodanig tot één geheel gebragt, dat ze de indruk geven van een geurig, warm grijs.
Quote from Gerard Bilders' letter (July 1860) to his maecenas , as cited by Victorine Hefting, in Jongkinds's Universe; Henri Scrépel, Paris, 1976, p. 18-19
1860's

Dorothy Thompson photo

“Unity, in Fascist terms, means uniformity; freedom of conscience means insubordination; co-ordination means coercion.”

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

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, p. 20 (newspaper column: “Political Dictionary,” March 19, 1936)

Philip Warren Anderson photo
George Ballard Mathews photo
Edmund Hillary photo
W. Richard Scott photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Walter Dornberger photo

“The history of technology will record that for the first time a machine of human construction, a five-and-a-half-ton missile, covered a distance of a hundred and twenty miles with a lateral deflection of only two and a half miles from the target. Your names, my friends and colleagues, are associated with this achievement. We did it with automatic control. From the artilleryman's point of view, the creation of the rocket as a weapon solves the problem of the weight of heavy guns. We are the first to have given a rocket built on the principles of aircraft construction a speed of thirty-three hundred miles per hour by means of rocket propulsion. Acceleration throughout the period of propulsion was no more than five times that of gravity, perfectly normal for maneuvering of aircraft. We have thus proved that it is quite possible to build piloted missiles or aircraft to fly at supersonic speed, given the right form and suitable propulsion. Our automatically controlled and stabilized rocket has reached heights never touched by any man-made machine. Since the tilt was not carried to completion our rocket today reached a height of nearly sixty miles. We have thus broken the world altitude record of twenty-five miles previously held by the shell fired from the now almost legendary Paris Gun.
The following points may be deemed of decisive significance in the history of technology: we have invaded space with our rocket and for the first time--mark this well--have used space as a bridge between two points on the earth; we have proved rocket propulsion practicable for space travel. To land, sea, and air may now be added infinite empty space as an area of future intercontinental traffic, thereby acquiring political importance. This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era in transportation, that of space travel....
So long as the war lasts, our most urgent task can only be the rapid perfection of the rocket as a weapon. The development of possibilities we cannot yet envisage will be a peacetime task. Then the first thing will be to find a safe means of landing after the journey through space…”

Walter Dornberger (1895–1980) German general

[Dornberger, Walter, Walter Dornberger, V2--Der Schuss ins Weltall, 1952 -- US translation V-2 Viking Press:New York, 1954, Bechtle Verlag, Esslingan, p17,236]

Erik Naggum photo
Stephen King photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Clay Shirky photo
Truman Capote photo
Steve Keen photo

“The term 'capital' has two quite different meanings in economics: a sum of money, and a collection of machinery.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 6, The Holy War Over Capital, p. 130

Louis-ferdinand Céline photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 178-179

George William Curtis photo
Bjarne Stroustrup photo

“If you do anything useful it will haunt you forever after, and if you have a major success you get decades of hard manual labor - meaning you have to work on the manual.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

C QA Community Event with Bjarne Stroustrup, 2014-08-27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDqQudbtuqo,

Ervin László photo
Paul Klee photo
Lewis Mumford photo
Joanne B. Freeman photo
Bellamy Young photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Tom Baker photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Alain de Botton photo
Edith Hamilton photo
Georges Braque photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax photo
Tony Blair photo
Leopoldo Galtieri photo

“Remember when the British were defeated at Dunkirk during the Second World War? Well, in 1945 they were in Berlin. In other words, the fall of Puerto Argentino will not mean the end of conflict or our defeat. I therefore have no regrets. Indeed, I am not alone in believing that what we did on April 2 was right. All the Argentine people believe this.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

Reportaje de Oriana Fallaci a Leopoldo F. Galtieri http://archivohistorico.educ.ar/content/reportaje-de-oriana-fallaci-leopoldo-f-galtieri#sthash.ZQrMQt2O.dpuf, Revista El porteño, August 1982

Kodo Sawaki photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo

“There is much that is lacking in the political education of American troops, for which army policy cannot be criticized in view of the similar apathy on the home front. Late in the struggle the army became aware of this weakness among our soldiers. The Information and Education Division was then organized to repair this gap in the psychological preparation for combat. Some progress in the face of considerable resistance has been made by this service, but at the time of writing the men still have only a dim comprehension of the meaning of the fascist political state and its menace to our liberal democratic government. The war is generally regarded as a struggle between national states for economic empires. The men are not fully convinced that our country was actually threatened, or, if so, only remotely, or because of the machinations of large financial interests. In such passive attitudes lie the seeds of disillusion, which could prove very dangerous in the postwar period. Certainly they stand in startling contrast with the strong political and national convictions of our Axis enemies, which can inspire their troops, when the occasion demands, with a fanatical and religious fervor. Fortunately, strong intellectual motivation has not proved to be of the first importance to good morale in combat. The danger of this lack seems to be less to the prospect of military success than to success in the peace and to stability in the postwar period.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 38-39 cited in: The Clare Spark Blog (2009) Strategic Regression in “the greatest generation” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/09/strategic-regression-in-the-greatest-generation/ December 9, 2009

Francis Bacon photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“We speak glibly of conservation education, but what do we mean by it? If we mean indoctrination, then let us be reminded that it is just as easy to indoctrinate with fallacies as with facts. If we mean to teach the capacity for independent judgement, then I am appalled by the magnitude of the task.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"The Ecological Conscience" [1947]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 343.
1940s

Robert Graves photo

“Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Advice To Lovers"
Country Sentiment (1920)

“The new vision of man and politics was never taken by its founders to be splendid. Naked man, gripped by fear or industriously laboring to provide the wherewithal for survival, is not an apt subject for poetry. They self-consciously chose low but solid ground. Civil societies dedicated to the end of self-preservation cannot be expected to provide fertile soil for the heroic and inspired. They do not require or encourage the noble. What rules and sets the standards of respectability and emulation is not virtue or wisdom. The recognition of the humdrum and prosaic character of life was intended to play a central role in the success of real politics. And the understanding of human nature which makes this whole project feasible, if believed in, clearly forms a world in which the higher motives have no place. One who holds the “economic” view of man cannot consistently believe in the dignity of man or in the special status of art and science. The success of the enterprise depends precisely on this simplification of man. And if there is a solution to the human problems, there is no tragedy. There was no expectation that, after the bodily needs are taken care of, man would have a spiritual renaissance—and this for two reasons: (1) men will always be mortal, which means that there can be no end to the desire for immortality and to the quest for means to achieve it; and (2) the premise of the whole undertaking is that man’s natural primary concern is preservation and prosperity; the regimes founded on nature take man as he is naturally and will make him ever more natural. If his motives were to change, the machinery that makes modern government work would collapse.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 284.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Svetlana Alliluyeva photo
Jonathan Sacks photo

“In Judaism faith means wrestling with God as Jacob once wrestled with an angel…”

Jonathan Sacks (1948) British rabbi

The Case for God, first broadcast on BBC1, 6 September 2010

Geert Wilders photo
Henry Ford photo
Joseph Franklin Rutherford photo
Jeremiah Denton photo
W. H. Auden photo

“Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?”

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

It's no use raising a shout (1929), first published in book form in Poems (1930)

Henri Matisse photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“It is my belief that those who live here and really want to help some other country, can best accomplish that result by making themselves truly and wholly American. I mean by that, giving their first allegiance to this country and always directing their actions in a course which will be first of all for the best interests of this country. They cannot help other nations by bringing old world race prejudices and race hatreds into action here. In fact, they can best help other countries by scrupulously avoiding any such motives.”

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

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)
Context: It is my belief that those who live here and really want to help some other country, can best accomplish that result by making themselves truly and wholly American. I mean by that, giving their first allegiance to this country and always directing their actions in a course which will be first of all for the best interests of this country. They cannot help other nations by bringing old world race prejudices and race hatreds into action here. In fact, they can best help other countries by scrupulously avoiding any such motives. It can be taken for granted that we all wish to help Europe. We cannot secure that result by proposing or taking any action that would injure America. Nor can we secure it by proposing or taking any action that would seriously injure some European country.

Margrethe II of Denmark photo
David Cross photo
Christopher Reeve photo

“I'm starting a new chapter in my life, and you have no idea how much that means.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

At the premiere of his first work as a director, after his injuries of 1995 (1997)

Arthur Rubinstein photo
Ervin László photo
Northrop Frye photo

“Failure to grasp centrifugal meaning is incomplete reading; failure to grasp centripetal meaning is incompetent reading.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Three, p. 58

Muhammad photo
Catharine A. MacKinnon photo

“To be a prisoner means to be defined as a member of a group for whom the rules of what can be done to you, of what is seen as abuse of you, are reduced as part of the definition of your status.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 170
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Alan Blinder photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo

“Words take their meaning from the original word.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Prem Rawat photo
Little Richard photo
Andy Warhol photo
Victoria Woodhull photo

“If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. Women have no government. Men have organized a government, and they maintain it to the utter exclusion of women…. [¶] Under such glaring inconsistencies, such unwarrantable tyranny, such unscrupulous despotism, what is there left [for] women to do but to become the mothers of the future government? [¶] There is one alternative left, and we have resolved on that. This convention is for the purpose of this declaration. As surely as one year passes from this day, and this right is not fully, frankly and unequivocally considered, we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government, complete in all its parts and to take measures to maintain it as effectually as men do theirs. [¶] We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the south. We are plotting revolution; we will overslough this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead, which shall not only profess to derive its power from consent of the governed, but shall do so in reality.”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

A Lecture on Constitutional Equality, also known as The Great Secession Speech, speech to Woman's Suffrage Convention, New York, May 11, 1871, excerpt quoted in Gabriel, Mary, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.Car.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1st ed. 1998 ISBN 1-56512-132-5, pp. 86–87 & n. [13] (ellipsis or suspension points in original & "[for]" so in original) (author Mary Gabriel journalist, Reuters News Service). Also excerpted, differently, in Underhill, Lois Beachy, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull (Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridge Works, 1st ed. 1995 ISBN 1-882593-10-3, pp. 125–126 & unnumbered n.

John Hennigan photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Words rich in meaning can be cheap in sound effects.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity
From the poems written in English

Leo Tolstoy photo
Glenn Beck photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“I learned the right way to live from my parents. I never heard any hate in my house. I never heard my father say a mean word to my mother, or my mother to my father, either. During the war, when food was hard to get, my parents fed their children first and they ate what was left. They always thought of us.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente, 32, Pays Tribute to Parents" by Les Biederman, in The Sporting News (September 3, 1966), p. 12
Other, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>