Quotes about meaning (10000 quotes, page 57)

“When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

Death , Women , Time

“I'm actually kind of impressed by Iraq's patience right now… I mean, look at it objectively. They've opened their doors to un inspectors, they're being bombed by british and american troops, american forces are massing at their borders, american diplomats are actively looking to assinate [sic] Saddam Hussein, etc. It almost seems like Bush is doing everything he can to taunt Saddam Hussein. Not just if you step over this line I will hit you, but if you step over this line while I put rats on your back and put butter on the floor and make fun of your mom and move the line then I will hit you, in fact I'll hit you even if you just stand there and do nothing. It's painfully clear that iraq should not be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction. But it also seems painfully clear that the bush administration have no intention of finding a peaceful resolution to the situation in Iraq.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"troubled times", journal entry (4 January 2003) at moby.com http://www.moby.com/journal/2003-01-04/troubled_times.html

Peace , Moms , Patience

“[The theory of the firm] is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a ‘firm’ whose product is ‘utility’.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, The theory of the firm in the last ten Years, 1942, p. 799

Indifference

“Trade unions up to a certain point have been recognised now as organs for good. They are the only means by which workmen can protect themselves from the tyranny of those who employ them. But the moment that trade unions become tyrants in their turn, they are engines for evil: they have no right to prevent people from working on any terms that they choose.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Lyons & Sons v. Wilkins (1896), 74 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 364. Compare Mogul Steamship Co. v. MacGregor, Gow, & Co., 66 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 1; Temperton v. Russell and others, 69 L. T. Rep. (N. S.) 78.

People , Evil

“Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.”

G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens

Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"

“When an idealist is 20 he thinks he can make a real difference in the world. At 30 he still thinks so but realizes that a great many people stand in the way. At 40 he realizes that they will never get out of the way. Part of maturity is to accept the fact that we cannot change the world; the world is hell-bent in another direction and not interested in what we have to say or offer. Maturity does not mean giving up your ideals or giving up the fight, but it does mean giving up your illusions--being "dis-illusioned", seeing things as they really are, not "if only."”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

"On Spiritual Matters", American Record Guide, Jul/Aug2004

People , World , Way , Hell

“I observe, that of late Chymistry begins, as indeed it deserves, to be cultivated by Learned Men who before despis’d it; and to be pretended to by many who never cultivated it, that they may be thought not to ignore it: Whence it is come to passe, that divers Chymical Notions about Matters Philosophical are taken for granted and employ’d, and so adopted by very eminent Writers both Naturalists and Physitians. Now this I fear may prove somewhat prejudicial to the Advancement of solid Philosophy: For though I am a great Lover of Chymical Experiments, and though I have no mean esteem of divers Chymical Remedies, yet I distinguish these from their Notions about the causes of things, and their manner of Generation.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Source: The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Preface Introductory to the Following Treatise

Men , Fear , Lovers , Learning

“When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.”

G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens

Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch. 10 "The Great Dickens Characters"

Appearance

“It is NOT that God WANTS His children to suffer! It is that He WANTS the heathen to hear the gospel and be saved! If that means letting the heathen be mean to us for a short time (for which He will GREATLY REWARD US) and a few more of the lost get saved and miss the Lake of Fire FOREVER… Well, God thinks it's a good trade off. Just trust Him!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 127

God , Children , Thinking , Suffering

“But when I talk to people who are Darwinists or evolutionists and say, 'Well, how did life begin' -- they're…they don't have an answer. I mean, they have an answer, but it's a BS answer. It's an answer that wouldn't make sense to a small child.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Youtube: Ben Stein on Glenn Beck's show about Intelligent Design, Ben Stein on Glenn Beck's show about Intelligent Design, 13 November 2007, 2008-04-18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHbdMbSLfb4,

Life , People , Sense

“I believe in non-violent methods of struggle as most effective in the long run for building up successful working class power. Where they cannot be followed or where they are not even permitted by the ruling class, obviously only violent tactics remain. I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.”

Roger Nash Baldwin (1884–1981) American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) co-founder

Article from Soviet Russia Today

World , Success , Help , Fight

“While Kim Jong Un has already long had the tools to destroy South Korea effectively, he also believes it is necessary to drive American forces out of the peninsula. And this can be done, he believes, by being able to credibly threaten the continental United States with nuclear weapons. On top of the thousands of artillery pieces and short-range missile capabilities long held on the North Korean side, the potential deployment of battle-ready nuclear ICBMs means the threat is not only towards South Korea, but also towards America.”

Thae Yong-ho (1961) former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea

Remarks to the U.S. Congress (November 2017)

“Education means an assimilation of white American culture. It decreases the dissimilarity of the Negroes from other Americans.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 879

Education

“Jaspers sees the historical meaning of existential philosophy as a struggle to awaken in the individual the possibilities of an authentic and genuine life, in the face of the great modern drift toward a standardized mass society.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Two, The Encounter With Nothingness, p. 28

Life

“The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness. For where there is no consciousness there is no finality, finality presupposing a purpose. And… faith in God is based simply upon the vital need of giving finality to existence, of making it answer to a purpose. We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the Universe.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity

God , World , Faith , Way

“For some disputes, trials will be the only means, but for many claims, trial by adversarial contest must go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. Our trials are too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people.”

Warren E. Burger (1907–1995) Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986

Annual address to the America Bar Association winter convention, Los Vegas (February 12, 1984).

Pain , People , Way

“Pyrrhus: Mercy often means giving death, not life.”
Pyrrhus: Mortem misericors saepe pro vita dabit.

Seneca the Younger Troades

Troades (The Trojan Women), line 329; Translation by Emily Wilson
Tragedies

Life , Death

“The present stage redefines the possibilities of man and nature in accordance with the new means available for their realization.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 65

Nature

“Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and used it. Degas liked it not only because it provided an accurate record, but because the snapshot showed him a means of escape from the classical rules of design. Through it he learnt to make a composition without the use of formal symmetry.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 13: Degas

“I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you paint a painting with brush strokes. It's all right, but it's already done and I want to do something new. I didn't want to get into something which is played out and narrow. I want to do as I like, invent my own interests. Of course, that doesn't mean that people who, like Newman, still paint are worn out. But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment. I think what I'm trying to deal with is something more long range than that in a way, more obscure perhaps, more involved with things that happen over a longer time perhaps. At least it's another area of experience.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Quoted in: Donald Jud http://www.theartstory.org/artist-judd-donald.htm at theartstory.org, 2014
1960s, "Oral history interview with Donald Judd," 1965

People , Way , Thinking , Time

“If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question or the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object. But the historian would be deceived if he came to this pass: by the very act of considering the structuralist invasion as an object he would forget its meaning and would forget that what is at stake, first of all,, is an adventure of vision, a conversion of the way of putting questions to any object posed before us, to historical objects-his own- in particular. And, unexpectedly among these, the literary objects.”

Jacques Derrida book Writing and Difference

Force and Signification
Writing and Difference (1978)

Way , Idea , Question , Forgetting

“A while ago there was an article in the New York Times about some women in Tennessee who wanted the middle grade text books removed from the school curriculum, not because they were inadequate educationally, but because these women were afraid that they might stimulate the childrens' imaginations.
What!?!
It was a good while later that I realized that the word, imagination, is always a bad word in the King James translation of the Bible. I checked it out in my concordance, and it is always bad.
Put them down in the imagination of their hearts. Their imagination is only to do evil.
Language changes. What meant one thing three hundred years ago means something quite different now. So the people who are afraid of the word imagination are thinking about it as it was defined three centuries ago, and not as it is understood today, a wonderful word denoting creativity and wideness of vision.
Another example of our changing language is the word, prevent. Take it apart into its Latin origin, and it is prevenire. Go before. So in the language of the King James translation if we read, "May God prevent us," we should understand the meaning to be, "God go before us," or "God lead us."
And the verb, to let, used to mean, stop. Do not let me, meant do not stop me. And now it is completely reversed into a positive, permissive word.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)

Women , God , Children , People

“More dreams have been assassinated by guilt than ever were ended by waking up. The dream of freedom is a yearning towards growth, a need for self-knowledge, not an escape from some half seen, half felt bogeyman. We all have a need, mostly unsatisfied and rarely spoken, to measure ourselves against nature as we were meant to do. To see how far our muscles and our breath and our unaided minds can take us. In a culture that lets us do little for ourselves we have this curious and hidden need to make our way to paradise on our own two feet. Being carried to paradise on a palanquin was, I am sure, as unsatisfying as being carried there on a jet. To sleep away your passage in silk draped sloth, or to murder space in a turbine’s roar, gives us no measure of ourselves and the measure of self is the meaning of life.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

“Unlikely Passages” 1984

Life , Dreams , Way , Nature

“Erwin with his psi can do
Calculations quite a few.
But one thing has not been seen:
Just what does psi really mean?”

Erich Hückel (1896–1980) German physical chemist known for the Debye-Hückel Theory and the Hückel method

As translated by Felix Bloch, and quoted in Traditions et tendances nouvelles des études romanes au Danemark (1988) by Ebbe Spang-Hanssen and Michael Herslund, p. 207; also in The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine : The Story of MRI‎ (1996) by James Mattson and Merrill Simon, p. 278

“Tolstoy … believed that property claims were based on robbery and maintained by violence. More radical than second-century radical Christians and than most monks, he turned even against the subdivision of labor in economic society. It seemed to him to be the means by which privileged persons such as artists, intellectuals, and their kind, absorbed the labor of others, justifying themselves by the belief that they were beings of a higher order than workingmen, or that their contribution to society was so great that it compensated for their claims.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 62

Personality

“For example, how great the difference was between our days. While my days were jam-packed with meaning, when each step opened a new opportunity, and when every opportunity filled me to the brim, in a way which now is actually incomprehensible, the meaning of his days was not concentrated in individual events but spread over such large areas that it was not possible to comprehend them in anything other than abstract terms.”

Karl Ove Knausgård (1968) Norwegian author

My Struggle -- Book 1 (2009)

Way

“You know, the relationships we 'ave, everything sort of bubbles under the surface. No one ever says what they actually mean, do they? It's all a bit pappy and rubbish.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Episode 1 - Dad Fight
RE:Brand (2002)

“The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in "Socialism is So Hot Right Now" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/socialism-hot-right-now/ (17 September 2018), by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary
1990s

Communication , Wealth

“The problem with Christian belief--I mean real Christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell--is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God , Fashion , Hell , Problem

“Americanization having its roots in political ideals cannot be achieved so long as these ideals, as interpreted by the sources of authority in America, mean one thing for the native-born and another thing for the foreign-born; one thing for men and another for women; one thing for employers and another for employees; one thing for the rich and another for the poor; one thing in one State and another thing in an adjoining State. No American who hopes for national unity can spend too much time insisting upon the most painstaking interpretation of the guarantees of American law, even though it takes him into such technical matters as interpreter service, cost of appeals, discriminatory laws, and race prejudices. Every support of a sound Americanism is strong or weak according as justice is done or not done.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Women , Men , Justice , Law

“For that river of red could be the death of me.
God, give me strength and keep reminding me
That blood is thicker than water.
Oh, but love is thicker than blood.And if blood is thicker than water,
Then what are we fighting for?
We're all sons and daughters
Of something that means so much more.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Thicker Than Blood, written by Jenny Yates and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Scarecrow (2001)

Love , Death , God , Water

“Delegation means that he will concern himself with the results of their activities and not with the details of their day-to-day performance. This requires a degree of confidence in them which enables him to accept certain risks. Unless he takes these risks there will be no delegation.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 220 (in 2006 edition)

Confidence

“Ultimately, in its collapse, Laos was important because it proved the validity of the so-called domino theory, which preached that communism--once victorious in South Vietnam--would metastasize throughout the region. Laos, like Cambodia, proved the domino theorists correct. On August 23, 1975, just four months after Saigon's fall, communist Pathet Lao (meaning "Land of Lao") guerrillas entered the Laotian capital of Vientiane and seized control of the nation. It was an event that, while clearly destructive to American interests in Asia, served as something of a wake-up call to those American isolationists who had downplayed the regional threat of communism. It also ushered in a horrid era for this nation's 4.8 million people.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Let's Not Forget Laos," The World and I, September 1995, by Michael Johns: The 'Domino Theory' Proved Right

People , Communication , Victory

“What a social welfare system does is enable people to live with dignity if they don’t have the means on their own. It enables households that are relatively low-income to have a place for their children to get a quality education. It allows everybody to have a dignity of work by having some vacation time or paid leave or maternity leave or father’s leave. And this is decency. This is what it means. We’re rich countries now. We should have the decency to provide dignity for everybody. I happen to live in a country that doesn’t believe it. We soaked up the libertarian ideas. I can tell you what it’s like. We have a large part of our population living in duress, in extreme poverty in the United States. It’s horrible. Because we have this philosophy, “You’re on your own.” Well, “you’re on your own” in this world means living in misery, dying many years earlier, children having no chance in the educational system. People working round the clock, no time off, no paid leave, no opportunities. It’s horrible.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

Climate, Welfare..., Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 October, 2018 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4892252.htm

Children , People , World , Education

“What should be most significant to us are not physical artifacts, but the meaning they embody. …whenever we create paintings, songs, poems, books, computer programs—or ideas in the minds of children—we do something of this sort.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Children , Books , Idea , Painting

“[The 1964 General Election] was a decision that not only our industrial system but every aspect of our national life that has been corrupted by the doctrine of a self-perpetuating establishment should give way to an open society where knowing your job would mean more than knowing the right people. It was a decision that national purpose should override sectional interest, that earning money took precedence over making money. It was a decision for change: not change for its own sake, but change, radical and dynamic, for economic and social purpose. It was a decision, in short, that Britain should have a government and that the government should govern.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.
Prime Minister

Life , Money , People , Way

“The one affectation I have forced on the publisher … are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Reading

“We say we are a community first and a company second. That doesn't mean we don't care about profit, but that's a means, not the end.”

Kent Thiry (1956) Business; CEO of DaVita

Insights by Stanford Business: Kent Thiry: Developing Successful Leaders Takes a Village https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/kent-thiry-developing-successful-leaders-takes-village (18 November 2011)

Communication

“Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

I–II, q. 27, art. 1, 3
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Beauty

“I don't know what to write Feneon about the theory of 'passages'. I will write him what seems to me to be the truth of the matter, that I am at this moment looking for some substitute for the dot [which was the 'heart of [w:Neo-Impressionism|Neo-Impressionist]] painting]; so far I have not found what I want, the actual execution does not seem to me to be rapid enough and does not follow sensation with enough inevitability, but it would be best not to speak of this. The fact is I would be hard put to express my meaning clearly, although I am completely aware of what I lack.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Paris, 20 February 1889, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 134-135
Rewald: 'This data was doubtless for an article in preparation. While the question of the 'passage', which was going to separate Camille Pissarro from pointillism and thus from Divisionism, was then the main preoccupation of the artist, Pissarro was still unable to express himself with precision on it.'
1880's

Truth , Heart , Painting

“I don't celebrate Halloween because of what it means. Because it is a Satanic holiday, it is a pagan holiday, and while people are going around getting free candy, people are falling victims to human sacrifices and things like that. That's the reality of what's going on on Halloween.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

1999-10-29
Television series
Politically Incorrect
ABC
2010-09-20
Profile: Christine O'Donnell, Delaware Senate candidate
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11378369
2010-10-20
TV appearances

People , Reality , Holiday

“Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 4; vol. 1, p. 94.
Discourses on Art

“We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned…But it is a lie.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Another Brick in the Wall http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-040406231246.htm, April 4, 2006
2006

Lie , Dreams

“Feeling that the world is wrong does not necessarily mean that we have a picture of a utopia to put in its place. Nor does is necessarily mean a romantic, some-day-my-prince-will-come idea that, although things are wrong now, one day we shall come to a true world, a promised land, a happy ending. We need no promise of a happy ending to justify our rejection of a world we feel to be wrong.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

World , Feeling , Idea , Happiness

“It happens that all those who have something of mine, painting, mobile, or static statue, say that it makes them very happy. For example, children adore mobile statues and understand their meaning immediately. I have seen children, here in France, in America or in Great Britain, run and shout with joy in my exhibitions. They like it instinctively.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Calder, quoted in Calder: Gravity and Grace, eds. Giménez, Carmen, and Alexander S.C. Rower; Phaidon Press, New York 2004, p. 54
1950s - 1960s

Children , Understanding , Joy , Painting

“The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Family

“Although the "ruling class"disagrees with the populists' moral agenda it tolerates the "moral war"as a means of keeping the lower classes in check, that is, it enables the latter to articulate their fury without disturbing the economic status quo.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Source: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009), Chapter One, The Structure of Enemy Propaganda

War

“Disappearances, assassinations, and extended prison sentences for opposition political figures and journalists, and the banning of opposition parties, have been regular features of a 20-year-long Kagame-RPF “regime consolidation” and the ascendancy of Kagame Power. Were U. S. targets such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin or Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez or any number of successive Iranian presidents ever to have been awarded 93 or 95 percent of the reported votes in an election, the establishment U. S. media would have devoted huge, angry, and sarcastic denunciations to such a display of electoral corruption, and rejected and delegitimized the outcomes. But Kagame’s flagrantly corrupt victories and brutal means his RPF has employed to guarantee them have hardly caused a dent in his recognition as a respectable and legitimate leader.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman and Peterson (2014), Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide and the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later, p. 13.
2010s

Success , Victory

“…suddenly certain that what he was doing now was the sole reason he'd been placed on this earth. To love another. To care for someone else, to help another person, to carry her worries until she was strong enough to carry them on her own. To care for someone unconditionally, for in the end that was what gave life meaning.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Jeremy Marsh, Chapter 20, p. 263
2000s, At First Sight (2005)

Love , Life , Strong , Help

“The preceding criticism … justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of “unmotivated” celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxii

Life , Laughter , Dance

“Those who marry God can become domesticated too—it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves—it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.”

Graham Greene book A Burnt-Out Case

Pt. 1, ch. 1, sct. 2
A Burnt-Out Case (1960)

Love , God , Marriage , World

“The maximum of motive power resulting from the employment of steam is also the maximum of motive power realizable by any means whatever.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Motivation

“Ninety years from now I have no doubt that Vanderbilt University will still be fulfilling this mission. It will still uphold learning, encourage public service, and teach respect for the law. It will neither turn its back on proven wisdom or turn its face from newborn challenge. It will still pass on to the youth of our land the full meaning of their rights and their responsibilities. And it will still be teaching the truth — the truth that makes us free and will keep us free.”

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

1963, Address at Vanderbilt University

Wisdom , Truth , Youth , Law

“For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture I, The Present Dilemma in Philosophy
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

Life , Books , Way , Feeling

“Don't lose sight of the essential objectives of painting, which are expression, emotion, delectation; to understand the means, to paint decoratively, to exalt form and color.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote from Denis' Journal, 1930; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [43]
1921 and later

Color , Understanding , Painting

“The Senate general provision also states that savings may result from non-commencement of the P/A/P or the inability of the agency to obligate its released allotment and implement it within the period when the appropriation is valid, whereas the House version qualifies that savings also result from non-commencement of a P/A/P, meaning the inability of the agency to obligate an allotment only within the first semester of the year. In the same manner, the Senate provision demands more fiscal responsibility from agencies by adding the proviso in Sec. 68 that “Programmed appropriations which have not been released or allotments not obligated due to the fault of the agency concerned shall not be considered as savings and shall revert to the General Fund.””

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Housing

“I don't want to get so lost in thinking about me and talking about me all the time in interviews. It's so nice to unwind and just look at other things and get out of yourself. It's hard to detach myself from myself without neglecting myself. You know what I mean? I don't want to get in to the habit of thinking about my career because when it comes down to it, it's not really that important. I could die tomorrow and the world would go on.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Sky Magazine (1988)

World , Thinking , Time

“So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact.”

Erving Goffman (1922–1982) Sociologist, writer, academic

Erving Goffman (1981, p. 1); As cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 34).
1970s-1980s

Exercises

“This was a secret meeting on a secret tour which nobody is supposed to know about. It means that there are men, and perhaps women, in this country walking around with eggs in their pockets, just on the off-chance of seeing the Prime Minister.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Remarks to the press after Harold Wilson was hit by eggs thrown by demonstrators on two successive days (1 June 1970), quoted in Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), p. 305.
Leader of the Opposition

Women , Men , Secret , Chance

“I never felt magic crazy as this,
Never saw moons, knew the meaning of the sea,
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand,
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree,
But now you're here.
Brighten my northern sky.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Northern Sky
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Tree , Sea

“Palestinians! This is an unacceptable reference. Jews are also Palestinians. He must mean 'Palestinian Arabs'.
Conquered territory! Gaza was also conquered by Egypt
Sinai settlements! There is a national consensus in Israel that the settlements must stay!”

Menachem Begin (1913–1992) Israeli politician and Prime Minister

"Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President" page 355 https://books.google.ca/books?id=c-hncyLhPjoC&pg=PA355 by Jimmy Carter

“Since it cannot be overlooked by the Doctrine of Knowledge that Actual Knowledge does by no means present itself as a Unity, such as is assumed above but as a multiplicity, there is consequently a second task imposed upon it, — that of setting forth the ground of this apparent Multiplicity. It is of course understood that this ground is not to be derived from any outward source, but must be shown to be contained in the essential Nature of Knowledge itself as such; — and that therefore this problem, although apparently two-fold, is yet but one and the same, — namely, to set forth the essential Nature of Knowledge.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

II.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)

Nature , Knowledge , Problem

“We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior. …Actually the fabulous effects ascribed to propaganda have no greater foundation in fact than the fall of the walls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua's trumpets.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 83
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

Behavior

“I thought fit to… explain in detail in the same book the peculiarity of a certain method, by which it will be possible… to investigate some of the problems in mathematics by means of mechanics. This procedure is… no less useful even for the proof of the theorems themselves; for certain things first became clear to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by geometry afterwards… But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Books , Mathematics , Question , Knowledge

“And the traditional religions worry me. Their long history proves that they have not understood the meaning of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill. If we want to save this world from unimaginable destruction we should concentrate not on the faraway God, but on the heart of the individual. We live now in an international anarchy in which a Third World War with nuclear weapons lies before our door. We must make the individual man aware of his conscience so that he understands what it means that only a few will survive the next war.”

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

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 98

God , War , World , Religion

“There's a perpetual duel going on between the world of the spirit and the world of things. Although the one only has meaning in relation to the other.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

World

“For you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary ‘obviousness’ (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc.). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the ‘transparency’ of language), the ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 116

Problem , Appearance

“I mean, if I had a piccolo in front of me I would probably figure out how to play ‘Hot Cross Buns’ or something.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

Apple Pro Profiles

“The validity of g is most conspicuous in scholastic performance, not because g-loaded tests measure specifically what is taught in school, but because g is intrinsic to learning novel material, grasping concepts, distinctions, and meanings… The most critical tool for scholastic learning beyond the primary grades— reading comprehension—is probably the most highly g-loaded attainment in the course of elementary education.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Source: The g factor: The science of mental ability (1998), p. 270; As cited in: Melissa A. Bray, Thomas J. Kehle (2011) The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology. p. 65

Education , School , Learning , Reading

“Dots are just one example of an element in Lascaux art, and in all cave art… This is a profusion of nonrepresentational, geometric patterns. In addition to dots, there are grids and chevrons, curves and zigzags, and more. …The coincidence of these geometric motifs with representational images is one of the most puzzling aspects of Upper Paleolithic art. …images, six different kinds in all, are shimmering, incandescent, mercurial—and powerful. Called entoptic images—which means "within vision"—these phenomena are products of the basic neural architecture of the human brain.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art

“For the people. And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body whomsoever. But I must tell you, That their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government; those Laws, by which their Life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share in government (Sir) that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things, and therefore until they do that, I mean, that you do put the people in that liberty as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves.
Sirs, It was for this that now I Have come here. If I would have given way to an Arbitrary way, for to have all Laws changed according to the power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here; and therefore, I tell you, (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) That I Am the Martyr of the People.”

Charles I of England (1600–1649) monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland

On the scaffold before his execution. ( 30 January, 1649 http://anglicanhistory.org/charles/charles1.html).

Life , God , People , Law

“Sen. Bob Smith has succeeded in amending an upcoming appropriations bill to beat back the latest wave of Clinton administration disrespect for two key elements of a free citizenry -- privacy and the right to keep and bear arms. Senator Smith is to be praised for keeping his eye on some balls that might have been lost in the smoke of scandal and misinformation that the Clinton Administration seems endlessly to emit. Actually, few things could make the need for vigorous defense of 2nd Amendment rights clearer than the ongoing spectacle of Clinton['s] contempt for the citizens he is supposed to serve. For the 2nd Amendment is really in the Constitution to give men like Bill Clinton something to think about when their ambition gets particularly over-inflated. The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

The reason for the Second Amendment, WorldNetDaily, Aug. 14, 1998. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18629
1998

Men , Nature , Thinking , Training

“John Clellon Holmes … and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent Existentialism and I said, 'You know, this is really a beat generation' and he leapt up and said 'That's it, that's right!”

Jack Kerouac book Beat Generation

"The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959), explaining the origins of the term the "Beat Generation".

Thinking

“If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 643
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

Sense , Reading

“There are those whose purpose in writing is, by means of the noble qualities of heart which their imagination invents or which they themselves may have, to seek the plaudits of other human beings. For my part, I use my genius to depict the delights of cruelty: delights which are not transitory or artificial; but which began with man and will end with him. Cannot genius be allied with cruelty in the secret resolutions of Providence? Or can one, being cruel, not have genius?”

Comte de Lautréamont book Les Chants de Maldoror

Les Chants de Maldoror

Secret , Imagination , Heart , Parting

“Luck can often mean simply taking advantage of a situation at the right moment. It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared.”

Michael Korda (1933) British writer

Source: Success! (1977), p. 40

“Magnets have an inherent quality that they can adhere to each other, so there are certain things you can do with magnets that you can't do with non-magnetic material. There are certain characteristic things you can do with very heavy things you can't do with very light things. By that, I mean it seems to me that very light things and very small things have a different characteristic way that they should be arranged, and big heavy things have a different characteristic way they should be arranged. That's subjective. I can't prove that to you. So my work is essentially combining particles – but again, combining particles according to the properties of individual particles, not imposing properties on the particles. These particles, of course, always work in a gravitational space and meet the plane of resistance that you always meet, as long as you aren't the center of the earth.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, pp. 29-30

Way , Light

“Punk: This is completely ridiculous on multiple, multiple levels. I mean there's so many things going through my head right now. This doesn't belong to you [holds Slammy award and looks at Ric Flair]. You haven't even been here in the past calender year. And the fact that anybody even voted for John Cena to be Superstar of the Year is absolutely atrocious. This is possibly the worst year of John Cena's life. He got beat by a guy that I'm gonna decimate at the Royal Rumble, I beat him at Summerslam…he lost last night, he's the first superstar to cash in his Money in the Bank contract and lose, he's a loser like everybody in Phildelphia, and he's a loser like you”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

points to Flair
December 17, 2012 (2012 Slammy Awards)
WWE Raw

Life , Money , Guy , Past

“Our result thus far is, that determinism and freedom, when justly thought out, are in idea entirely reconcilable. Determinism proves to need no fatalistic meaning, but to be, possibly enough, simply the definite order characteristic of intelligence; while so far from freedom's being indeterminism, chance, or caprice, these are seen to be incompatible with it, and freedom proves to be, like determinism, the spontaneous definiteness of active intelligence.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.324

Intelligence , Idea , Freedom , Chance

“Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Wisdom , Men , World , Intelligence

“We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Faith in America speech, 2007

Life , God , Religion , Country

“Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 17

Understanding , Chance

“Be an observer of providence; for God is showing you ever, by the way in which He leads you, whither He means to lead. Study your trials, your talents, the world's wants, and stand ready to serve God now, in whatever He brings to your hand.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 281.

God , World , Way , Study

“In the progress of the work he founded a Collegium Biblieum, or Bible club, consisting of his colleagues Melanchthon, Bugenhagen (Pommer), Cruciger, Justus Jonas, and Aurogallus. They met once a week in his house, several hours before supper. Deacon Georg Rörer (Rorarius), the first clergyman ordained by Luther, and his proof-reader, was also present; occasionally foreign scholars were admitted; and Jewish rabbis were freely consulted. Each member of the company contributed to the work from his special knowledge and preparation. Melanchthon brought with him the Greek Bible, Cruciger the Hebrew and Chaldee, Bugenhagen the Vulgate, others the old commentators; Luther had always with him the Latin and the German versions besides the Hebrew. Sometimes they scarcely mastered three lines of the Book of Job in four days, and hunted two, three, and four weeks for a single word. No record exists of the discussions of this remarkable company, but Mathesius says that "wonderfully beautiful and instructive speeches were made."
At last the whole Bible, including the Apocrypha as "books not equal to the Holy Scriptures, yet useful and good to read," was completed in 1534, and printed with numerous woodcuts.
In the mean time the New Testament had appeared in sixteen or seventeen editions, and in over fifty reprints.
Luther complained of the many errors in these irresponsible editions.
He never ceased to amend his translation. Besides correcting errors, he improved the uncouth and confused orthography, fixed the inflections, purged the vocabulary of obscure and ignoble words, and made the whole more symmetrical and melodious.
He prepared five original editions, or recensions, of his whole Bible, the last in 1545, a year before his death.
The edition of 1546 was prepared by his friend Rörer, and contains a large number of alterations, which he traced to Luther himself. Some of them are real improvements, e. g., Die Liebe höret nimmer auf, for, Die Liebe wird nicht müde (1 Cor. 13:8). The charge that he made the changes in the interest of Philippism (Melanchthonianism), seems to be unfounded.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's Bible club

Death , Books , Beauty , Error

“There may come, or perhaps has come, a time when no further progress in truthful representation is possible. There are those who say that such a point has been reached, an attempt to substitute a more and more simplified and decorative calligraphy. This direction is sterile and without hope to those who wish to give painting a richer and more human meaning and a wider scope. No one can correctly forecast the direction that painting will take in the next few years, but to me at least there seems to be a revulsion against the invention of arbitrary and stylized design.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

Truth , Hope , Time , Painting

“No, I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 1 “A Parade in Ehrenrang” (p. 18)

Love , Hate , Fear

“.. a demand which will never be fulfilled as long as artists use individualistic means. 'Unity can only result from disciplining the means, for it is this discipline which produces more generalized means'. The objectification of the means will lead towards elementary, monumental plastic expression. It would be ridiculous to maintain that none of this relates to creative activity. If that were true, art would not be subject to logical discipline.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's text 'Towards elementary plastic expression', as cited in Material zur elementaren Gestaltung, G-1, July 1923; as quoted in 'Theo van Doesburg', Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 141
1920 – 1926

Art

“At the beginning of each semester, I tell students that my economic theory course will deal with positive, non-normative economic theory. I also tell them that if they hear me making a normative statement without first saying, "In my opinion," they are to raise their hands and say, "Professor Williams, we didn't take this class to be indoctrinated with your personal opinions passed off as economic theory; that's academic dishonesty." I also tell them that as soon as they hear me say, "In my opinion," they can stop taking notes because my opinion is irrelevant to the subject of the class -- economic theory. Another part of this particular lecture to my students is that by no means do I suggest that they purge their vocabulary of normative or subjective statements. Such statements are useful tools for tricking people into doing what you want them to do. You tell your father that you need a cell phone and he should buy you one. There's no evidence whatsoever that you need a cell phone. After all, George Washington managed to lead our nation to defeat Great Britain, the mightiest nation on Earth at the time, without owning a cell phone.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

People , Time , Parting , Personality

“What was that teacher trying to do?
That teacher was trying to break her spirit.
But why would school do that? So you could become someone like her parents and believe in the things they believe in. So you won’t believe in the things they don’t believe in. And believe you’re a happy person whose life has meaning. So you will go to your job and do whatever gross thing someone tells you to do and get drunk on Friday and Saturday nights and pay taxes and bills. That’s why.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 4 “Foxy Lady” (pp. 81-82)

Life , School , Parent , Teachers

“Every time people cite a principle of theoretical physics in support of a metaphysical doctrine or physical dogma, they commit a mistake, for they attribute to this principle a meaning not its own, an import not belonging to it.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

People , Support , Time

“One time I was in the men's room of the bar and there was a guy at the urinal. He was kind of drunk, and said to me in a mean-sounding voice, "I don't like your face. I think I'll push it in."I was scared green. I replied in an equally mean voice, "Get out of my way, or I'll pee right through ya!"”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 4: "From Cornell to Caltech, With a Touch of Brazil", "Any Questions?", p. 177
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

Men , Way , Guy , Thinking

“Toni: Well… straight couples get respect when they marry. Maybe we need to make some kind of symbolic affirmation of our commitment to one another!
Clarice: You mean…
Toni: Yes! Let's open a joint checking account!
Clarice: Oh, darling! But this is so sudden!”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#7, "Getting Respectable" (1987), collected in More DTWOF (1988).
Dykes to Watch Out For

“When people are afraid of the truth they've got nowhere to turn. All they have at their disposal is censorship and denial. And Swedish politicians are so deep in denial you can only feel pity for them, because you know that in some dark chamber of their subconscious these wretched people know what a terrible thing they're doing, and they know that history is going to revile them and their entire generation for it. But they just can't face up to it. Psychologically, they are simply not big enough as people to acknowledge, let alone confront, the enormity of their mistake. They've backed themselves into an ideological corner where their only option now is to double down on the insanity and brazen it out until the bitter end, while criminalising anyone who draws attention to it. Whatever social upheaval it may cause, and whatever the cost to Sweden's women, mass Islamic immigration must continue. Any restriction would be an admission that there's a problem, and that would fatally undermine everything they're so desperately pretending to believe in… If you say there's a problem, you'll be treated as a criminal – which means that there are now two problems. One: the Swedish people have an aggressive social cancer growing in their midst; and two: they're not allowed to talk about it.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden Goes Insane" (19 May 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_znVnOizU8
2014

Women , People , Truth , Feeling

“There is no over-arching theory of complexity that allows us to ignore the contingent aspects of complex systems. If something really is complex, it cannot by adequately described by means of a simple theory. Engaging with complexity entails engaging with specific complex systems. Despite this we can, at a very basic level, make general remarks concerning the conditions for complex behaviour and the dynamics of complex systems. Furthermore, I suggest that complex systems can be modelled.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. ix

“I wanted a break. I had been on the road more or less since I was 18, you know? And I hadn't known any other life, other than, you know, hotel rooms and concerts and records and studios and press conferences. … and to me, here was a chance to jump off that kind of wagon and see life for real. You know, actually my last album was called Back to Earth. So that was the meaning of it. I wanted to join the human race again. I didn't want to be a star. I didn't want to continue with that thing, because so much illusion and non-reality is connected to it. I wanted to be real. And so I — I kind of — I found an opportunity. And the actual point about music was — the imam who I met and who I first embraced Islam with in London's Central Mosque, he actually told me to continue making records.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On the abandonment of his music career after converting to Islam, on Larry King Live (7 October 2004) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/07/lkl.01.html

Life , Music , Star , Reality

“!-- This is my most misunderstood book, and I have devoted some attention to trying to understand why. … --> I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences … This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Preface of 1950 edition of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. xxvi 
[Anthropology demands] the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
As quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012) by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither
1950s

Books , Sex , Understanding

“I wanted work that didn't involve incredible assumptions about everything. I couldn't begin to think about the order of the universe or, the nature of American society. I didn't want work that was general or universal in the usual sense. I didn't want it to claim too much. Obviously the means and the structure couldn't be separate and couldn't even be thought of as two things joined. Neither word meant anything. A shape, a volume, a color, a surface is something itself. It shouldn't be concealed as part of a fairly different whole. The shapes and materials shouldn't be altered by their context.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd (1967), in: Perspecta 11 (1967), p. 44; Quoted in: James Fitzsimmons (1979) Art International. Vol 23. p. 69
1960s

Color , Nature , Thinking , Sense

“GOVERNMENT SURPLUS: Employment figures and history books are 'cooked'. Young people are manipulated. The status quo is maintained by an insidious mafiosi piping drugs to the unsuspecting by means of an ever expanding cycloptic media.”

Roy Harper (singer) (1941) British musician

People , Books , History , Cooking

“I know some people say I can be funny. But there is always a deeper meaning to what I say. I am a socialist at heart and have the interests of the poor in mind. When people see how I manage to work my way out of tough situations, it gives them hope in their own life”

Lalu Prasad Yadav (1948) Indian politician

In an interview to Siddharth Srivastava ( India's man for all seasons, Asia Times, September 29, 2004, 2006-05-29 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FI29Df02.html,).

Life , People , Hope , Way

“We are the fed up grass roots movement of goose flesh, hell bent on living this one life by the way we feel our spines, saying what we mean, refusing to allow the few to preach to the many when it is the many who need to be hearing eachother.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Introduction (Some They Can't Contain)
On Spoken Word

Life , Way , Feeling , Hell

Quotes about meaning page 57

Quotes about meaning
page 57