Quotes about meaning
page 58

“If the States may tax one instrument, employed by the Government in the execution of its powers, they may tax any and every other instrument. They may tax the mail; they may tax the mint; they may tax patent rights; they may tax the papers of the custom house; they may tax judicial process; they may tax all the means employed by the Government to an excess which would defeat all the ends of Government. This was not intended by the American people. They did not design to make their Government dependent on the States. […] If the controlling power of the States be established, if their supremacy as to taxation be acknowledged, what is to restrain their exercising control in any shape they may please to give it? Their sovereignty is not confined to taxation; that is not the only mode in which it might be displayed. The question is, in truth, a question of supremacy, and if the right of the States to tax the means employed by the General Government be conceded, the declaration that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land is empty and unmeaning declamation.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 432-433
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

People, Truth, Law, Exercises

“I see the Internet as society’s approach to graduation into the ultimate meaning of Conscience, i. e., "with knowing.””

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

“Eternity, not as a static “now,” nor as a sequence of “nows” rolling off into the infinite, but as the “now” that bends back into itself. … Thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy means thinking being as time.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 20

Thinking, Time

“Dharma is the repository of the nation’s soul. If Dharma is destroyed, the Nation perishes. Any one who abandons Dharma, betrays the nation…… Since Dharma is supreme, our ideal of the State has been Dharma Rajya…… What constitutes the good of the people, Dharma alone can decide. Therefore a democratic government Jana Rajya must also be rooted in Dharma i. e. a Dharma Rajya… Since in the West injustice and atrocities were perpetrated, bitter conflicts and battles were fought in the name of religion, all these were en bloc listed on the debit side of Dharma also. We feel that in the name of Dharma also battles were fought. However battles of religion and battles of Dharma are two different things. Religion means a creed or a sect, it does not mean Dharma. Dharma is very wide concept. It is concerned with all aspects of life. It sustains the society. Even further, it sustains the whole world. That which sustains is Dharma.”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Life, People, World, Religion

“Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself”

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

Source: 1950s, Principles of economic policy, 1958, p. 400

“… life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

from Alan Alda's graduation speech, 1980 http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0020-alda1.htm.

Life

“The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 35

“Much of the material is controversial, but if controversy means the stimulation of thought and ideas, so much the better. It is only thus that the citizens of a republic may protect themselves from the evils threatening them from within their borders as well as those which threaten from beyond.”

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956) American author and conservationist

"Author's Note" (1953) in A New Pattern for a Tired World (1954), p. xxv

Idea, Evil

“The company is a living system. Employees are its lifeblood. Strategy is the brain and measurement and communication the central nervous system. Culture is the DNA. Leadership and continued entrepreneurial energy are its soul and spirit. Governance and accountability are its rhythms and disciplines, like exercise, a means of keeping this living organism fit and lean. Leadership gives a company energy. Governance assures its honesty.”

Mark Goyder (1953) British author

Living Tomorrow's Company, (1995)

Exercises, Soul, Communication

“Not only am I scared of big, strong men, I'm scared of mean little women. It's just little skinny men and nice big women that I get along with.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 40

Women, Men, Strong

“People are terrified of changing their minds. Changing your mind is a door you don’t want to open because you don’t know what’s behind it. Changing your mind means losing all your friends. Changing your mind means a complete revolution in your life. Changing your mind means publicly admitting you’ve been wrong. […] People don’t want to change their minds.”

Peter Hitchens book The Rage Against God

2016
Peter Hitchens: The Rage Against God
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEJ_dtN0QO8
On Changing One's Mind

Life, People, Change

“Change life! 'Change society!' These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space. … new social relationships call for a new space, and vice versa.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

Henri Lefebvre (1991; original French edition, 1974), as quoted in Fainstein The City Builders (2001), p. 272
Other quotes

Life, Change

“The Zionists have no right to the land of Palestine. There is no place for them on the land of Palestine. What they took before 1947-8 constitutes plunder, and what they are doing now is a continuation of this plundering. By no means do we recognize their Green Line. The land of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not to the Zionists.”

Mohamed Morsi (1951–2019) 5th President of Egypt

Morsi in 2010, as quoted by Rod Freidman in Egypt’s Morsi, in 2010 interviews posted online, called Zionists ‘bloodsuckers’ and descendants of pigs, urged to sever all ties with Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/egypts-morsi-in-2010-statements-posted-online-called-zionists-bloodsuckers-and-descendants-of-pigs-urged-to-sever-all-ties-with-israel/, Times of Israel (4 January, 2013)

“With careless joy we thread the woodland ways
And reach her broad domain.
Thro' sense of strength and beauty, free as air.
We feel our savage kin,
And thus alone with conscious meaning wear
The Indian's moccasin!”

Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) American novelist, poet

Moccasin Flower, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 519.

Beauty, Way, Feeling, Sense

“[about public transport] It's unbelievable. People are so desperate to get home. The trains come very regularly, you see them, one minute, two minutes, three minutes… this means nothing to people. As soon as you get on the platform it's a level playing field. I don't care when you arrived, I'm getting on this train.”

Michael McIntyre (1976) British comedian

Live at the Apollo (November 26, 2007)

People, Home, Training

“I think that natural sciences and capitalism are different aspects of the same thing. (…) Science is orientated against scientists, capitalism is oriented against businesses. These are processes that are in a relation of subjecting the elements within their domain to aggressive destructive criticism with some kind of selective criteria, which means they push things in a particular self-propelling direction.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"‘The Only Thing I Would Impose is Fragmentation’ Interview with Nick Land" https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-impose-is-fragmentation-an-interview-with-nick-land/ (2017)

Business, Nature, Thinking, Science

“Introspection with inference and meaning left out as much as possible becomes a dull taxonomic account of sensory events which, since they suggest almost no functional value for the organism, are peculiarly uninteresting to the American scientific temper.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: "A history of introspection." 1953, p. 174; As cited in: Danziger (1980;257)

“To see a man as beautiful – means to make him really beautiful. There is no cunning, no deceit; this happens every time, everyone knows that.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Book 2 part 3, ch. 10
Pedagogika dlya vseh (Parenting For Everyone) (1977–1986)

Beauty, Time

“Every day I make more progress in technique: understanding of color, the material and the line. [I] can even give better theoretical explanations. And moreover, gradually I live more and more connected with the matter of the profession. What I mean is that my thinking and feeling are more directly, more fundamentally connected with painting itself. No longer so much thinking and feeling get lost.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

Steeds ga ik vooruit wat betreft tecniek: begrip van kleur, matérie, lijnen. Kan zelfs beter téoretisch uitleggingen geven. En wat meer is ik leef langs om meer méé met de materie van de stiel. Ik wil zeggen dat mijn denken en voelen directer, en wezenlijker in kontakt staat met schilderen. Er gaat niet meer zoveel denken en voelen verloren.
Quote of Raveel, in a letter to his friend Hugo Claus, from Machelen aan de Leie, 5 March 1950; as cited in Hugo Claus, Roger Raveel; Brieven 1947 – 1962, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Ludion; Gent Belgium, 2007 - ISBN 978-90-5544-665-0, p. 118 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1945 - 1960

Color, Feeling, Understanding, Thinking

“The meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my past, where I'm going as well as where I've been.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Past, Future

“Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of fuel. Sentimental people call it inspiration, but what they really mean is fuel. I have always needed fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

People, Music, Cars, Question

“Let us look at the history of Ireland, the history of this chronic government by coercion. What does it mean? It was the naked government of another Kingdom by irresponsible force—irresponsible, that is to say, as regards those whom this system was to affect. Coercion Laws were passed, and were smoothly, described as being for the protection of life and property, of respect for ordinary law, and so on. All those methods proved an ugly failure.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/dec/14/address-in-reply-to-his-majestys-most#column_7 in the House of Lords (14 December 1921).

Life, Law, History, Failure

“The most sensational surprise was the sudden discovery, one day, that my pictures, for the first time in history, had become walls. By means of what strange process had I arrived at such precise images? And why did they make me, their first viewer, quake with emotion?”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

History, Time

“You shouldn't kiss me like this
Unless you mean it like that
Cause I'll just close my eyes
And I won't know where I'm at.
We'll get lost on this dance floor,
Spinnin' around
And around
And around
And around.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This.
Song lyrics, How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)

Kiss, Dance

“There are certain basic, known principles about how people's minds go about the business of understanding, and communicating understanding by means of language, which have been known and used for many centuries. No matter how these principles are addressed, they always end up with hierarchic decomposition as being the heart of good storytelling. Perhaps the most relevant formulation is the familiar: "Tell 'em whatcha gonna tell'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em whatcha told 'em."”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

This is a pattern of communication almost as universal and well-entrenched as Newton's laws of motion.
Source: Structured analysis (SA): A language for communicating ideas (1977), p. 17.

People, Law, Communication, Understanding

“The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“What has caused confusion and misunderstanding about his Hinduism is the concept of sarva-dharma-samabhAva (equal regard for all religions) which he had developed after deep reflection. Christian and Muslim missionaries have interpreted it to mean that a Hindu can go aver to Christianity or Islam without suffering any spiritual loss. They are also using it as a shield against every critique of their closed and aggressive creeds. The new rulers of India, on the other hand, cite it in order to prop up the Nehruvian version of Secularism which is only a euphemism for anti-Hindu animus shared in common by Christians, Muslims, Marxists and those who are Hindus only by accident of birth. For Gandhiji, however, sarva-dharma-samabhAva was only a restatement of the age-old Hindu tradition of tolerance in matters of belief. Hinduism has always adjudged a man’s faith in terms of his AdhAra (receptivity) and adhikAra (aptitude). It has never prescribed a uniform system of belief or behavior for everyone because, according to it, different persons are in different stages of spiritual development and need different prescriptions for further progress. Everyone, says Hinduism, should be left alone to work out one’s own salvation through one’s own inner seeking and evolution. Any imposition of belief or behaviour from the outside is, therefore, a mechanical exercise which can only do injury to one’s spiritual growth. Preaching to those who have not invited it is nothing short of aggression born out of self-righteousness. That is why Gandhiji took a firm and uncompromising stand against proselytisation by preaching and gave no quarters to the Christian mission’s mercenary methods of spreading the gospel.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Age, Faith, Religion, Behavior

“I am Hindu, and my activism is very much framed within that context, of karma as meaning action.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: 1980s, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987), p. 30

Life

“I was sorry for Gabriel that all the efforts you have employed so diligently were in vain to help him to sell one of his paintings in [the exposition in Amsterdam, in] 'Arti'. Is there not any chance to order from him a small presentable painting (backed up by me, if it will help) for one or the other? He really deserves it and hundred guilders can mean so much at some moments.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek (original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Het speet mij voor Gabriel alle door U zoo ijverig aangewende moeite te vergeefsch is geweest, om hem van een der schilderijen in 'Arti' [in Amsterdam] af te helpen. Zou er geen kans bestaan om voor hem eens een klein gesoigneerd (door mij, als het helpen kan, gerugsteund) schilderij te bestellen voor den een of ander? Hij verdient het zoo dubbel en een honderd guldens kunnen op sommige oogenblikken zoo véél doen. Quote from Roelof's letter to Mr. P. verloren van Themaat , from Brussels, 4 Sept 1862; as cited in an excerpt in the R.K.D. Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/291, The Hague 1860's

Effort, Chance, Help, Painting

“If I ever became president, I'd push with every ounce of power I had for Congress to pass something else into law: Every elected federal official must predesignate an individual in their immediate family who has to begin military service—the moment that official casts an affirmative vote toward going to war. This could be a grandchild, a niece or nephew, but someone. It doesn't mean they necessarily go to the war zone. What it does mean is that they and their family experience some personal discomfort because of this decision. Going to war should bring difficulty, especially to those who are the orchestrators or the authorizers. Right now, it's far too easy for them to go on TV with their bleeding hearts and give standing ovations to our service personnel. War should not be laissez-faire. If you're not willing to send someone from your family, how can you be so willing to send someone else's?”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 14 (p. 270)

War, Family, Law, Decision

“Socialism is offered as a remedy. It is pretty to look at, but it does not mean liberty. It means just the other thing, because it brings us face to face with the same old equation. We know what the socialist leaders would do, for human nature does not change.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From "George H. Earle, Jr., Doctor to Ailing Corporations". Munsey's Magazine (February 1910:683-691)

Nature, Change

“Land, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Law, Parting

“I consider my selfbeing … that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

“I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

The Trouble With Testosterone (1997) ISBN 068483409X

Love, Pain, Art, Feeling

“A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin. It is unenlightened and ill-informed to promote discrimination against individuals based on the color of their skin. It is likewise unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Letter to the editor, Bowling Green Daily News, 2002-05-30
Rand Paul in '02: I may not like it, but 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin'
Right Now
Washington Post
2010-05-20
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/rand_paul_in_2002_i_may_not_li.html

Hate, People, Color, Forgetting

“the reality beyond language is not completely reality, a reality that does not speak or say is not reality;
and the moment I say that, the moment I write, letter by letter, that a reality stripped of names is not reality, the names evaporate, they are air, they are a sound encased in another sound and in another and another, a murmur, a faint cascade of meanings that fade away to nothingness:
the tree that I say is not the tree that I see, tree does not say tree, the tree is beyond its name, a leafy, woody reality: impenetrable, untouchable, a reality beyond signs, immersed in itself, firmly planted in its own reality: I can touch it but I cannot name it, I can set fire to it but if I name it I dissolve it:
the tree that is there among the trees is not the tree that I name but a reality that is beyond names, beyond the word reality, it is simply reality just as it is, the abolition of differences and also the abolition of similarities;
the tree that I name is not the tree, and the other one, the one that I do not name and that is there, on the other side of my window, its trunk now black and its foliage still inflamed by the setting sun, is not the tree either, but, rather, the inaccessible reality in which it is planted:
between the one and the other there appears the single tree of sensation which is the perception of the sensation of tree that is vanishing, but
who perceives, who senses, who vanishes as sensations and perceptions vanish?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Reality, Sense, Tree, Appearance

“The revolution which Black Theology advocates … [means] confronting white racists and saying: 'If it's a fight you want, I am prepared to oblige you.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

This is what the black revolution means.
Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 136

Fight

“The health of the white people requires that the negro cabin be kept clean; and the maintenance of chastity there is necessary for the protection of woman throughout the land. The need of making the black man more intelligent and conscientious has already been so far recognized by the South, that she has remodelled her entire school system for his benefit; and her desire to make him more valuable as a member of the community, cannot long permit him to be lynched or otherwise maltreated. Her memory of the misrule of the carpet-baggers will grow fainter; and she will finally be able to see that even the illiterate voter is not so dangerous a citizen in a republic as the man who has not this reason to interest himself in its welfare. The South may be much slower than we could wish in reaching these conclusions; but no others will be found permanently satisfactory to her; and it is by no means certain that her pace will be quickened by a display of federal bayonets.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

People, Health, School, Intelligence

“Today, after six years, there are… still many respectable people associated with German ‘dynamism’ who have not yet realized that their imagined national and racial rebirth amounts to nothing more than the adoption of the revolutionary system of ‘direct action’ as the fundamental principle of the carrying of the ‘mass revolt’ to completion. Direct action is defined as ‘direct integration by means of corporativism, militarism and myth;’ this is to replace democracy and parliamentarism.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 27

People, Democracy, Imagination

“How can anyone believe that you can "learn" how to feel and learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else's time with that idiocy? But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public, he doesn't sit, he slouches - which is supposed to mean that his behavior is "natural." He or she scratches his or her head then picks his or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no complexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what New York talk shows look like.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On method acting. p. 313
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Love, Pain, Hate, People

“Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3

Death, Hope, Suicide, Strong

“A vicious teacher is just a vicious teacher, as a vicious neighbor may happen to be. But a vicious mother - means that the whole world is vicious.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Book 1, part 2, ch. 20
Pedagogika dlya vseh (Parenting For Everyone) (1977–1986)

World, Teachers

“I always have been [a fan of the Universal horror movies]. Nowadays you tell someone to watch one of the movies and they haven't seen them, or haven't since they were a kid. To me, it's like, most of the acting if great, given the crazy situations. Frankenstein's in a block of ice and the Wolf Man is in another country and he's alive and it's Lon Chaney. I mean, it gets crazy, but I still love it because I'm a sucker for it.”

Kevin J. O'Connor (actor) (1963) American actor

The Van Helsing Interviews: Igor https://web.archive.org/web/20040409181916/horror.com/php/article-434-1.html (March 28, 2004)

Love, Universe, Wolf, Country

“To be honest, I wasn't really a huge follower of Doctor Who before I got this part. I mean I knew it was huge, but … I was nothing like my mum, who's a proper diehard Whovian. She's got a Tardis money-bag, and Dalek bubble-bath. But having read the first episode I was utterly smitten, and with the character. Amy's a sassy lady, funny and passionate, and her relationship with the doctor has a really interesting dynamic.”

Karen Gillan (1987) Scottish actress and former model

As quoted in "Karen Gillan: Meet Doctor Who's new assistant" in The Guardian (14 March 2010)

Money, Passion, Reading, Parting

“We’d like to think that the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, but in reality, in the practical and for your daily life, the Bill of Rights means what judges tell you it means and judges in our country are a byproduct of the electoral process. Forget about 1791, the Second Amendment is on the ballot, this time, next time, every time.”

Alan Gura (1971) American lawyer

On the need for Second Amendment supporters to remain vigilant about gun rights in the United States, from his recorded speech http://www.guns.com/2012/11/10/attorney-alan-gura-gun-rights-policy-conference/ to attendees of the 2012 Gun Rights Policy Conference.

Life, Thinking, Reality, Time

“The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 34

History, Failure, Success

“The Greek world cherished no such national religious hope as the prophets had ingrained in Jewish thought; on the other hand it was intensely interested in the future life for the individual, and in the ascetic triumph over flesh and matter. Thus the idea which had been the centre of Christ's thought was not at all the centre of the Church's thought, and even the comprehension of his meaning was lost and overlaid.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 55

Life, World, Hope, Idea

“Shortly after the ignominious expulsion of the Texas invaders, General J. H. Carleton was appointed to the command of this Department, and with the greatest promptitude he turned his attention to the freeing of the Territory from these lawless savages. To this great work he brought many years' experience and a perfect knowledge of the means to effect that end. He saw that the thirty (30) millions of dollars expended and the many lives lost in the former attempts at the subjugation, would not have been profitless, had not there been something radically wrong in the policy pursued. He was not long in ascertaining that treaties were as promises written in sand. nor in discovering that they had no recognized 'Head' authority to represent them; that each chief's influence and authority was immediately confined to his own followers or people; that any treaty signed by one or more of these chiefs had no binding effect on the remainder, and that there were a large number of the worst characters who acknowledged no chief at all. Hence it was that on all occasions when treaties were made, one party were continuing their depredations, whilst the other were making peace. And hence it was apparent that treaties were absolutely powerless for good. He adopted a new policy, i. e., placing them on a reservation (the wisdom of which is already manifest); a new era dawned on New Mexico, and the dying hope of the people was again revived; never more I trust, to meet with disappointment. He first organized a force against the Mescalero Apaches, which I had the honor to command. After a short and inexpensive campaign, the Mescaleros were placed on their present reservation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864)

Wisdom, People, Peace, Hope

“By the basis of power we mean the relationship between O and P which is the source of that power. It is rare that we can say with certainty that a given empirical case of power is limited to one source. Normally, the relation between O and P will be characterized by several qualitatively different variables which are bases of power (30). Although there are undoubtedly many possible bases of power which may be distinguished, we shall here define five which seem especially common and important. These five bases of O's power are:
(a) reward power, based on P's perception that O has the ability to mediate rewards for him;
(b) coercive power, based on P's perception that O has the ability to mediate punishments for him;
(c) legitimate power, based on the perception by P that O has a legitimate right to prescribe behavior for him;
(d) referent power, based on P's identification with O;
(e) expert power, based on the perception that O has some special knowledge or expertness.”

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Source: "The bases of social power." 1959, p. 155-6

Behavior, Knowledge

“Socialism, wherever it actually had the means to plan a society, to pursue efficaciously its vision of the abolition of private property, economic inequality, and the allocation of capital and goods by free markets, culminated in the crushing of individual, economic, religious, associational, and political liberty. Its collectivization of agriculture alone led to untold suffering, scarcity, and contempt for property as the fruit of labor.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Suffering

“The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Justice, Thinking

“In Chinese, honesty is the figure of a man standing, physically standing, beside his work. That means honesty: a man stands by his work. Two things: figure / ground.”

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

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 314

“The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.”

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

Statement (5 February 1921), p. 40
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Soul, Time

“If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Women, Men, Time, Country

“The reason I'm so bitter and, as I said, in anguish, nowadays, or one of the reasons, is that everybody's begun to lie and because they lie they assume that I lie too: they overlook the fact that I remember very well many things (of course I've forgotten some), but I do believe that lying is a sin, unless it's an innocent lie based on lack of memory, certainly the giving of false evidence and being a false witness is a mortal sin, but what I mean is, insofar as lying has become so prevalent in the world today (thanks to Marxian Dialectal propaganda and Comintern techniques among other causes) that, when a man tells the truth, everybody, looking in the mirror and seeing a liar, assumes that the truth-teller is lying too.”

Jack Kerouac book Vanity of Duluoz

Vanity of Duluoz (1968)

Truth, Lie, World, Lying

“What we used to think of as exotic can now only be found in countries that cannot afford Americanization. Meaning no home comforts, peppers, unleavened bread. It is a kind thing to take one’s bit of tourist money there, to the deserving, and not put it in the hands of the disdainful Nicois or Cannois. If you can get into a country which is politically oppressed, that too is a good thing for the natives, for you are bringing a breath of freedom. Increasingly, perhaps, one ought to be travelling for the benefit of those who cannot afford or are not permitted to travel. We all belong to one another now, and no foreign country ought to be merely a sideshow….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

"Thoughts on Travel".
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Money, Travel, Home, Thinking

“The "meaning" in the title of the book acknowledges the close and familiar connection between intentionality and meaning. The connection holds between the meaning of the sentence Smith utters when he utters "Bigmouth has struck again" and his belief that Bigmouth has struck again. The idea of this close relation is not intended to convey the obvious falsehood that the meanings of the sentences which an agent utters always express the contents of his beliefs. Utterances which are lies or metaphors, for instance, spoil the generality of that relation. Rather, the relation is conveyed by the fact that a sincere, non-self-deceived, utterance of (or assent to) a sentence by an agent is an utterance of something whose literal meaning gives the content of the belief that is expressed by that utterance. The fact that sentences are often not uttered this way does not spoil the connection between belief and meaning, though it obviously makes it necessary to produce an appropriately nuanced formulation of the connection for those utterances. The underlying effect of acknowledging the connection, of course, is to make the study of an agent's mind integral to the study of his meanings, and vice versa.”

Akeel Bilgrami (1950) Indian philosopher

Source: Belief and Meaning (1992), Ch. 1 : Belief, Meaning, and the External World

Books, Way, Idea, Study

“Pippa' Passworthy: This little upset across the water doesn’t mean anything. Threatened men live long and threatened wars never occur.”

H. G. Wells book The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

Men, War, Water

“Reflexion is careful and laborious thought, and watchful attention directed to the agreeable effect of one's plan. Invention, on the other hand, is the solving of intricate problems and the discovery of new principles by means of brilliancy and versatility.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter II, Sec. 2

Problem

“Market capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the common man. The rich have always had access to entertainment, often in the comfort of their palaces and mansions. The rich have never had to experience the drudgery of having to beat out carpets, iron their clothing or slave over a hot stove all day in order to have a decent dinner. They could afford to hire people. Capitalism's mass production and marketing have made radios and televisions, vacuum cleaners, wash-and-wear clothing and microwave ovens available and well within the means of the common man; thus, sparing him of the boredom and drudgery of the past. Today, the common man has the power to enjoy much (and more) of what only the rich could afford yesteryear.”

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

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

People, Past, Clothes

“The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy, so as to pursue the course of the Mean. He cherishes his old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety. Thus, when occupying a high situation he is not proud, and in a low situation he is not insubordinate. When the kingdom is well governed, he is sure by his words to rise; and when it is ill governed, he is sure by his silence to command forbearance to himself.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Nature, Knowledge, Study, Silence

“The Buddha Fa” is an insight into all mysteries. It encompasses everything and leaves out nothing—from particles and molecules to the universe, from the even smaller to the even greater. It is an exposition of the characteristic of the universe, “Zhen-Shan-Ren,” (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance) expressed at different levels with different layers of meaning. It is also what the Tao School calls the “Tao,” or what the Buddha School calls the “Fa.””

Li Hongzhi (1951) Chinese religious leader and dissident

Truth, School, Universe

“Faith is the bond of union, the instrument of justification, the spring of spiritual peace and joy, the means of spiritual peace and subsistence.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 228.

Peace, Faith, Spring, Joy

“As used today, the word realism means in the first place the opposite to idealism when it claims that it is possible to pass from the subject to the object.”

Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) French historian and philosopher

Methodical Realism

“And Israel is not only our ally; it is a beacon of what democracy can and should mean… If the people of the Middle East are not sure what democracy means, let them look to Israel.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Hanukkah dinner speech http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0550,lombardi,70903,2.html at Yeshiva University (December 2005) Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

People, Democracy

“The U. S. does not torture; in fact, what holds up the release from Guantanamo is getting a guarantee from their governments that they won't be tortured. Guantanamo and prisons in Afghanistan are completely consistent with international obligations. Just because the Geneva Convention might not technically apply does not mean that America does not treat people with the spirit of the convention.... While we are doing things militarily in the war on terror, we are also spreading hope and opportunity so that the young people do not become recruits for the terrorists.”

Elizabeth Cheney (1966) American lawyer

Maha Akeel, Arab News, "Correcting Perceptions About America is My Job: Liz Cheney," Nov. 16, 2005"

War, People, Hope

“If all the theories pertinent to systems engineering could be discussed within a common framework by means of a standard set of nomenclature and definitions, many separate courses might not be required.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Theory of Systems Engineering (1967), p. vi; cited in: Jack Murph Pollin (1969) Theoretical Foundations for Analysis of Teleological Systems. p. 63.

“That requires only one kind of defense policy, a policy summed up in a single word "first." I do not mean "first, if," I do not mean "first, but," I do not mean "first, when," but I mean "First, period."”

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

Speech at Civic Auditorium, Seattle, Washington (6 September 1960)
1960

“McDonald: Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are – well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good – not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort.Dawkins: There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting – it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)

Life, People, Family, Religion

“Question Period is not part of the legislative process, and has nothing to do with it. It is a means of monitoring the Executive that the Government cannot evade.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 9, The House of Commons Functions, p. 122

Question, Parting

“The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis. A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action.”

Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 116. This is also called the Church–Turing thesis.

Intelligence

“For Witold Doroszewski, at the root of semantic analysis lies the philosophical issue of the relationship between the general and the particular, the starting point being the analysis of the function of the copula "is". Doroszewski analyses the problem of meaning as closely linked with denotation. It is in that question that he sees the focal point of semantics.
According to Doroszewski, the history of meaning consists in the growth of a "gap" between the sign and its designatum. and the cause of changes in meanings lies in the conflict between the general character of the sign and the need for its being made to rise to the occasion whenever it is concretely embodied.
The attitude of Doroszewski, a representative of linguistic semantics, is of interest not only because he draws concrete conclusions from the general definition of semantics, but also because of his reflections on the relationship between semantics as pursued by linguists, and semantics as pursued by logicians. By touching here upon that issue, I anticipate further analysis. This does not advance the clarity of exposition, but is, unfortunately, often inevitable. In this case, it is justified in so far as it helps us to realize better the specific traits of linguistic semantics and its research objectives.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 6

History, Question, Problem, Change

“The fear that rules us comes NOT from the outside but from within. Mastering self-control also means stripping the rulers of a prized weapon.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Rules 2 Rule

Fear

“Actually, one of the real problems that always bothers me [in creating a painting] is sustaining a feeling. I mean, when I look at Poussin now, well, I think that's the most incredible thing to maintain the feeling for a year, however long it took Poussin, I'm telling you, to paint this vast structure. Bur perhaps that is not given to us now. I don't know…. Actually all all modern art puzzles me. I don't understand it. II really don't. I don't know whether it is fragmentary [as David Sylvester the interviewer suggested]. I have a sickening nostalgia for this other state of sustaining a feeling for months, being able to construct and build a picture. Well Mondrian, I think, did that, of course. He was almost one of the last artists to do that. I wish I could get there.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), pp. 91-92

Art, Feeling, Understanding, Problem

“I perceived that, in order to make the best use of steam, it was necessary—first, that the cylinder should be maintained always as hot as the steam which entered it; and, secondly, that when the steam was condensed, the water of which it was composed, and the injection itself, should be cooled down to 100°, or lower, where that was possible. The means of accomplishing these points did not immediately present themselves; but early in 1765 it occurred to me, that if a communication were opened between a cylinder containing steam, and another vessel which was exhausted of air and other fluids, the steam, as an elastic fluid, would immediately rush into the empty vessel, and continue so to do until it had established an equilibrium; and if that vessel were kept very cool by an injection, or otherwise, more steam would continue to enter until the whole was condensed.”

James Watt (1736–1819) British engineer

"Notes on Professor Robison's Dissertation on Steam-engines" (1769)

Communication, Water

“Although people cannot define existence and do use the term with some looseness, yet it is possible to give an extensive definition by pointing to the sorts of things that everyone believes to exist. It is still easier to point to the sort of entities that people agree in believing not to exist, and happily, this is really what concerns us most. People mean by saying that causation only applies to things that exist that it applies, if at all, to what can change; and they believe that, if anything can change, it is things like chairs and tables and minds, and not those like the propositions of Euclid and the multiplication table. What would be agreed then is that, if causal laws apply to anything it is to what can change in so far as it changes.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

Perception, Physics, and Reality : An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can Supply about the Real (1914), Ch. 2 : On Causation; and on the Arguments that have been used against Causal Laws

People, Law, Change

“Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. […] The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. […] By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) (Opinion of the Court).

People, Democracy, Idea, Personality

“Kuhn cannot take seriously that “there is some one full, objective, true account of nature.” Does this mean that he does not take truth seriously? Not at all. […]
Kuhn did reject a simple “correspondence theory” which says true statements correspond to facts about the world. […]
In the wave of skepticism that swept American scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, many influential intellectuals took Kuhn as an ally in their denials of truth as a virtue. I mean the thinkers of the sort that cannot write down or utter the word true except by literally or figuratively putting quotation marks around it—to indicate how they shudder at the very thought of so harmful a notion. Many reflective scientists, who admire much of what Kuhn says about the sciences, believe he encouraged deniers.
It is true that Structure gave enormous impetus to sociological studies of science. Some of that work, with its emphasis on the idea that facts are “socially constructed” and apparent participation in the denial of “truth,” is exactly what conservative scientists protest against. Kuhn made plain that he himself detested that development of his work…”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (2012), Introductory Essay, in 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Truth, World, Idea, Nature

“As theories are the means by which we attempt to discourse of external existences that our senses cannot discover; and as the desire for such discourse originates a large portion of our theories; I will teach you the capacity of language for such an employment, and thereby enable you to judge more understandingly than you can at present, the utility of most theories, and the signification of all.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Lecture I. §4.
A Treatise on Language: Or, The Relation which Words Bear to Things, in Four Parts (1836)

Sense

“The ultimate meaning of the systems approach... lies in the creation of a theory of deception and in a fuller understanding of the ways in which the human being can be deceived about (her) his world, and in the interaction between these different viewpoints.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Variant: The ultimate meaning of the systems approach... lies in the creation of a theory of deception and in a fuller understanding of the ways in which the human being can be deceived about (her) his world, and in the interaction between these different viewpoints.
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 229; cited in Charles Smith (2007) "Deception Meets Enlightenment: From a Viable Theory of Deception to a Quirk About Humanity's Potential". In: World Futures Vol 63, p. 42

World, Way, Understanding

“Stability means we run it. There are countries that are very stable. Cuba is stable, but that’s not called stability.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Hugh Gusterson, November 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20051210055017/http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/2002----.pdf. Quotes 2000s, 2000

Country

“The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

1943, at his sons' confirmation at Potsdam Garrison Church. Michael Balfour, Withstanding Hitler, 1988, p. 130.

Idea, Freedom

“Theoretical knowledge is only a small and by no means the most important part of what passed for knowledge in a society… the primary knowledge about the institutional order is knowledge… is the sum total of ‘what everybody knows’ about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so forth.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 65

Wisdom, World, Knowledge, Parting

“You want to talk about rape? That's— that's media rape right there. You said you would not do that! Since when does your no mean yes? Do you know the definition of no, sir? You've just raped Bill Cosby. You said you wouldn't do it. You just did it. And then you blamed it on him. My gosh, maybe we should have a lesson on rape.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2014-11-20
Radio, quoted in [2014-11-20, Glenn Beck: AP reporter ‘just raped Bill Cosby’ by asking him about alleged rapes, David Edwards, The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/glenn-beck-ap-reporter-just-raped-bill-cosby-by-asking-him-about-alleged-rapes/, 2014-11-24]
Regarding clip from a interview where Bill Cosby refused to comment on the multiple rape allegations against him, and Cosby requesting that footage of AP reporter Brett Zongker asking him about it be "scuttled".
2010s, 2014

“You should only alienate folks when you mean and want to do it. […] It should never be an accident.”

Nancy Werlin (1961) author

Locked Inside, p. 28 (2000)

“All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Men, Fraud, Parting

“A doctrine which, because of its little-circumspect idealism, offends not just faith, but reason itself (KANT): it would be useful to show the dangerous errors, to Religion as much as to Moral, of that French psychologist, who seduced minds (COUSIN), by showing how his bold and audacious philosophy breaks the barrier of the holy Theology, placing his own authority before any other: he profanes the mysteries, declaring them partly devoid of meaning, and partly reducing them to vulgar allusions and pure metaphors; forces, as a learned Critic noted, the revelation to swap places with instinctive thought and assertion without reflection without and places reason outside man, declaring man a fragment of God, introducing a sort of spiritual pandeism, which is absurd to us and insulting to the Supreme Being, which gravely offends freedom itself, etc, etc.”

Luigi Ferrarese (1795–1855) Italian physician

Dottrina, che pel suo idealismo poco circospetto , non solo la fede, ma la stessa ragione offende (il sistema di KANT) : farebbe mestieri far aperto gli errori pericolosi, cosi alla Religione, come alla Morale, di quel psicologo franzese , il quale ha sedotte le menti (COUSIN), con far osservare come la di lui filosofia intraprendente ed audace sforza le barriere della sacra Teologia, ponendo innanzi ad ogn' altra autorità la propria : profana i misteri , dichiarandoli in parte vacui di senso, ed in parte riducendoli a volgari allusioni, ed a prette metafore ; costringe , come faceva osservare un dotto Critico, la rivelazione a cambiare il suo posto con quello del pensiero istintivo e dell' affermazione senza riflessione e colloca la ragione fuori della persona dell'uomo dichiarandolo un frammento di Dio, una spezie di pandeismo spirituale introducendo, assurdo per noi, ed al Supremo Ente ingiurioso, il quale reca onda grave alla libertà del medesimo, ec, ec.
Ferrarese describing pandeism in Memorie Risguardanti la Dottrina Frenologica ("Thoughts Regarding the Doctrine of Phrenology", 1838), p. 16.

God, Faith, Religion, Error

“All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest

Sadness, Penalty, Time, Past

“I don't have to begin, as I would have if I were speaking for the Church, with any apologies. We don't have a lot to apologize for. It wasn't we who framed Galileo, it wasn't we who said that God wanted the Crusades, it wasn't we who mounted the Inquisition, it wasn't we who sponsored Pavoloch, Salazar, Mussolini, Dollfuss, Hitler, Vichy, Franco, and the rest of it; and it wasn't we who preached the Easter sermon saying who was responsible for the death of a mythical figure, and creating ludicrous pain to real people, in the real world. We don't have to begin by proving that our institutions and our beliefs are human, as all human institutions are; that we are only mammals, as his holiness the Pope is only a mammal. We don't make a mystery where none exists. We say that we face the heavens, and we find them empty; and that some of us, at any rate, are not alarmed to find this emptiness; and would be more alarmed to find the heavens full of permanent supervision and invigilation; and that an ethical life may be led by someone with no supernatural means of support, without the fear, if it is a fear, or the hope, if it is a hope, of celestial invigilation.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Life, Death, God, Pain

“What did the people mean when they voted for Tammany? What is representative government, anyhow? Is it all a fake that this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people? If it isn't a fake, then why isn't the people's voice obeyed and Tammany men put in all the offices? p. 12”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 3, The Curse of Civil Service Reform

Men, People

“It's either going to be something that everybody ignores, or I swear to you, and I mean this sincerely, there's a possibility a pillar of fire appears. I mean, I think this could be miraculous. Or y'know, something in between that option, there.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2011-08-01
Beck: Restoring Courage Will Be "A Planet Course-Altering Event" Where "There's A Possibility A Pillar Of Fire Appears"
Media Matters for America
2011-08-01
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201108010009
2011-08-08
about his "Restoring Courage" rally in Jerusalem
2010s, 2011

Thinking, Appearance, Sincerity

“What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries? Or when rich countries that pay farm subsidies of a billion dollars a day, try and force poor countries to drop their subsidies? What does peace mean to people in occupied Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Tibet and Chechnya? Or to the aboriginal people of Australia? Or the Ogoni of Nigeria? Or the Kurds in Turkey? Or the Dalits and Adivasis of India? What does peace mean to non-Muslims in Islamic countries, or to women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan? What does it mean to the millions who are being uprooted from their lands by dams and development projects? What does peace mean to the poor who are being actively robbed of their resources and for whom everyday life is a grim battle for water, shelter, survival and, above all, some semblance of dignity? For them, peace is war.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

A selection from a speech entitled "Peace given on November 7, 2004 while accepting the Sydney Peace Prize.
Speeches

Life, Women, War, People

“Just because people don't have money doesn't mean they don't desire the same thing. They should have it, and it should be good.”

Sarah Jessica Parker (1965) American actress

Interview for Allure magazine, February 2008

Money, People

“The staff function in organization means the service of advice or counsel, as distinguished from the function of authority or command. This service has three phases, which appear in a clearly integrated relationship. These phases ^ are the informative, the advisory, and the supervisory.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 60

Appearance

“It remains true that Michelangelo's intensely personal use of the nude greatly altered its character. He changed it from a means of embodying ideas to a means of expressing emotions; he transformed it from the world of living to the world of becoming. And he projected his world of the imagination with such unequaled artistic power that its shadow fell on every male nude in art for three hundred and fifty years. Painters either imitated his heroic poses and proportions or they reacted against them self-consciously and sought a new repertoire of attitudes in the art of fifth-century Greece. In the nineteenth century the ghost of Michelangelo was still posing the models in art schools.”

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

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. V: Energy

World, School, Art, Imagination

““You could rule the nation—and yet you don’t seem to go after that power.”
The mayor frowned. “Power, Mrs. O’Hare? You mean the chance to make laws and compel others to do what you want them to? Why, good heavens, Mrs. O’Hare, who in his right mind would want that?””

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

Servant of the People (p. 254)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Law, Chance

“The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Letter to Markus Fierz (12 August 1948), as quoted in The Innermost Kernel : Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics : Wolfgang Pauli's Dialogue with C. G. Jung (2005) by Suzanne Gieser.

Idea, Reality, Time

“In spite of all the foregoing, there is a science of economics, a true, and even exact, science, which reaches laws as universal as those of mathematics and mechanics. The greatest need for the development of economics as a growing body of thought and practice is an adequate appreciation of the meaning, and the limitations, of this body of accurate premises and rigorously established conclusions. It comes about in the same general way as all science, except perhaps in a higher degree, i. e., through abstraction. There are no laws regarding the content of economic behavior, but there are laws universally valid as to its form. There is an abstract rationale of all conduct which is rational at alt, and a rationale of all social relations arising through the organization of rational activity.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 127 (2009 edition)

Law, Way, Behavior, Mathematics

“THE subject I have been given for these lectures is The Psychological Foundations of Business Administration, but as it is obvious that we cannot in four papers consider all the contributions which contemporary psychology is making to business administration — to the methods of hiring, promoting and discharging, to the consideration of incentives, the relation of output to motive, to group organization, etc. — I have chosen certain subjects which seem to me to go to the heart of personnel relations in industry. I wish to consider in this paper the most fruitful way of dealing with conflict. At the outset I should like to ask you to agree for the moment to think of conflict as neither good nor bad; to consider it without ethical prejudgment; to think of it not as warfare, but as the appearance of difference, difference of opinions, of interests. For that is what conflict means — difference. We shall not consider merely the differences between employer and employee, but those between managers, between the directors at the Board meetings, or wherever difference appears.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. 1. Lead paragraph

Way, Motivation, Business, Thinking

Quotes about meaning page 58

Quotes about meaning
page 58