Quotes about middle
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“Such is the nature of crowds: either they are humble and servile or arrogant and dominating. They are incapable of making moderate use of freedom, which is the middle course, or of keeping it.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book XXIV, sec. 25
History of Rome

Nature, Freedom

“Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 24. The Coming Revolt of the Guards, Ch. 24

Failure

“At first she dreamed of sheep, of going to school, of cats drinking milk. Little by little she dreamed of blue sheep, of going to school in the middle of the woods, of cats drinking milk from golden saucers. And her dreams became increasingly dense and acquired colours that were difficult to dilute into words.”

Clarice Lispector book Near to the Wild Heart

Near to the Wild Heart (1943), p. 43

School, Dreams, Cats, Drink

“Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 27

Life, Age

“And now to explain colours. I suppose that as bodies excite sounds of various tones and consequently vibrations, in the air of various bignesses, so when rays of light by impinging on the stiff refracting superficies excite vibrations in the ether, these rays excite vibrations of various bignesses… therefore, the ends of the capillamenta of the optic nerve which front or face the retina being such refracting superficies, when the rays impinge on them they must there excite these vibrations, which vibrations (like those of sound in a trumpet) will run along the pores or crystalline pith of the capillamenta through the optic nerves into the sensorium (which light itself cannot do), and there, I suppose, affect the sense with various colours, according to their bigness and mixture—the biggest with the strongest colours, reds and yellows; the least with the weakest, blues and violets; middle with green; and a confusion of all with white, much after the manner, that in the sense of hearing, nature makes use of aereal vibrations of several bignesses to generate sounds of divers tones; for the analogy of nature is to be observed.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

"Hypothesis explaining the Properties of Light" (1675)

Nature, Sense, Light

“He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn't belong there. And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn't he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years as a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or— My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their thirties. His business, my father's business, our home, our freedom and we're supposed to call that dignified? Marched out of our homes at gun point. I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment.”

George Takei (1937) American actor and author

He is a disgrace to America. Fox 10 News (Phoenix) interview https://www.facebook.com/FOX10Phoenix/videos/868880156493866/, regarding Clarence Thomas writing "Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them." in his Obergefell v. Hodges dissent,

Home, Business, Parent, Freedom

“Mrs. Phillis: Your favour of the 26th of October did not reach my hands 'till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1770s, Letter to Phyllis Wheatley (1776)

Hope, Time

“There's not a stupidest thing--I've dressed in women's clothes, I've dressed as a Nazi. I've gone onstage naked. I've gone on so drunk I didn't even know I did a show. I've done so many stupid things, but it's all part of Ozzy. I never pre-planned 99.9% of the things I've done. Some were drastically wrong, some were drastically right. I don't know if you saw the VH1 thing [VH1's Behind The Music Ozzy documentary] recently. In one hour, it's impossible to write my life down. I come from a rather large family, three older sisters and two younger brothers. On the documentary, they interviewed my sister and it was the first time I'd seen her in years. I've had a very, very unique life. I often sit back and remember when I had no money--when you're in the middle of it, you get depressed thinking it's going to last forever. All of a sudden, out of nowhere--a bolt of lightning--here I am! I'm very well-off; I've got property all over the place, I've had a very fruitful career. But I've never had a No.1 album in America. But I've lasted several generations and somebody says to me, "Do you notice any difference in the audience?"”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I've been doing it now for 30 years. Some of the fans are older, but I've picked up new fans along the way.

Launch.com, October 30, 1998

Life, Women, Money, Stupidity

“It seems to me, that if the matter of our sun and planets and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole of space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite, the matter on [toward] the outside of this space would, by its gravity, tend towards all the matter on the inside, and, by consequence, fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space it could never convene into one mass; but some of it would convene into one mass and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one another throughout all that infinite space.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Four Letters to Bentley (1692) first letter

Universe, Sun

“Man, the period of whose life is one hundred years, should practice Dharma, Artha, and Kama at different times and in such a manner that they may harmonize, and not clash in any way. He should acquire learning in his childhood; in his youth and middle age he should attend to Artha and Kama, and in his old age he should perform Dharma, and thus seek to gain Moksha, that is, release from further transmigration.”

Vātsyāyana book Kama Sutra

Source: Kama Sutra, p. 13

Life, Youth, Age, Way

“The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President and the Vice President at Town Hall Meeting in Tampa, Florida https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-and-vice-president-town-hall-meeting-tampa-florida (28 January 2010) 2010

“Until now science has not sought to investigate this passive animal magnetism (by no means an isolated phenomenon), although the doctor, the anthropologist and physiologist, the jurist, the psychologist, and the moralist could cultivate an entirely new field. In fact they have made not the slightest effort to investigate its nature: rather (misled by poorly understood Bible passages and by laws based on such Bible passages—laws whose moral value stands on the same level as those against witchcraft and heresy in the Middle Ages) they have believed they should ignore or disdain it with hatred and scorn, examples of which are in scientific books.”

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) German jurist, writer and pioneer of LGBT human rights

Ulrichs in autobiographical manuscript of 1861, cited in Hubert Kennedy (1988), Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement. Boston: Alyson. p. 44; As cited in: Kennedy (1997, 4)

Books, Age, Law, Nature

“Suddenly I am pushed by a movement of the horse on which I am lying. I see that he has turned his great head aside; he is mournfully eating grass. I saw this horse but lately in the middle of the regiment — I know him by the white in his mane — rearing and whinnying like the true battle-chargers; and now, broken somewhere, he is silent as the truly unhappy are.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIV - The Ruins

Lying, Grass, Horse

“I agree, our trade should be fair and not just free. But the next wave of economic dislocations won't come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

“If every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades are going to be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

Fight

“Stronger families. Stronger communities. A stronger America. It is this kind of prosperity — broad, shared, built on a thriving middle class — that has always been the source of our progress at home. It’s also the foundation of our power and influence throughout the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Fifth State of the Union Address (February 2013)

World, Family, Home, Communication

“I been through the ringer, but they could do little to the middle finger.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Not Afraid"
2010s, Recovery (2010)

“The 'American Dream' of the middle class has all but disappeared, substituted with people struggling just to buy next week's groceries. Heaven forbid the car breaks down!”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

People, Dreams, Cars

“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”

Golda Meir (1898–1978) former prime minister of Israel

At a dinner honoring West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, as reported in The New York Times (10 June 1973)
Unsourced variants: Moses dragged us for 40 years through the desert to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil.
Moses dragged us through the desert for 40 years to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil.

“America, I believe we can build on the progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try. I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America. And together with your help and God's grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Re-election Speech (November 2012)

Love, God, World, Idea

“Throughout its history, Israel has been anxious to make peace with its Arab neighbors. If successful, the current peace process is a potential opportunity for Israel to increase its security, normalize relations with its neighbors, and create a more stable and prosperous Middle East. Resolution of the conflict depends on direct negotiations between the parties based on mutual respect and recognition. The United States’ commitment to Israel must continue so Israel can negotiate with its former and current adversaries from a position of strength… Israel can take risks for peace only because of unwavering American support.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

CityPAC Questionnaire, 2000 Congressional Primary http://www.democrats.org/page/speakout/unfit 2000-03

Peace, History, Support, Success

“A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue", p. 185
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

People, World, Imagination, Reading

“The economic history of the last half century offers two cases of serious international depressions in countries with an essential orientation towards a market economy: In the first half of the 1930ies and in the middle of the 1970ies. With some simplification one can say that in the former case recovery started after a few years without the aid of much conscious expansionist policy.”

Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Swedish economist and politician

Ohlin, Bertil. " 1933 and 1977: Some Expansion Policy Problems in Cases of Unbalanced Domestic and International Economic Relations http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1977/ohlin-lecture.pdf." Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 8, 1977; Published in: The Scandinavian Journal of Economics (1978): 360-374. 1970s

History, Country

“These voices blame the Middle East's only democracy for the region's extremism. They offer the false promise that abandoning a stalwart ally is somehow the path to strength. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech at AIPAC Policy Conference (4 June 2008) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432&ft=1&f=1102 2008

Democracy, Falseness

“[Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife] is for me a secretly deep history of a generation of middle-class American males, my own, which was taught by parents and athletic coaches and scoutmasters and military chaplains and quack doctors and so on to be deeply ashamed of masturbation and wet dreams.
And the hidden plea in the book is one which first appeared in my eyes when I was fourteen, say, and which has not vanished entirely to this day. It is part of the mystery of me. The plea is addressed by old-fashioned males forever full of jism to any pretty human female, on the street, in a magazine, in a movie — anywhere. The plea is this: "Please, pretty lady, don't make me play with my private parts again."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

"The Sexual Revolution" (ndg)
Palm Sunday (1981)

Books, Dreams, History, Fashion

“Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes… Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!… And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?… Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 11
Dead Souls (1842)

Dreams, Way, Home, Dance

“An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 37.

Country

“The movement of the middle classes for the abolition of slavery was virtuous, but it was not wise. It was an ignorant movement. It showed a want of knowledge both of the laws of commerce and the stipulations of treaties; and it has alike ruined the colonies and aggravated the slave trade…The history of the abolition of slavery by the English and its consequences, would be a narrative of ignorance, injustice, blundering, waste, and havoc, not easily paralleled in the history of mankind.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), pp. 324-325.
1850s

Law, History, Knowledge

“Probably I am an ordinary middle-class
believer in individual rights, the word
"freedom" is simple to me, it doesn't mean
the freedom of any class in particular.”

Adam Zagajewski (1945) Poet

Fire.

Freedom

“All portions of this confederacy should act in harmony and with careful deliberation. The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Home, Nature, Thinking, Cry

“The centre of gravity of any parallelogram lies on the straight line joining the middle points of opposite sides.”

Archimedes book On the Equilibrium of Planes

Book 1, Proposition 9.
On the Equilibrium of Planes

“No, I happen to be one of those people whose memory shuts down under pressure. The answers would come to me in the middle of the night in my sleep! Besides, I am a millionaire.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Response to a question asking if he would appear on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. ALCS News http://www.alcs.co.uk/News%20Events/ALCS%20News/News%20Stories/TerryPratchettInterview.aspx?template=/printerfriendly/alcs-newspf.aspx (May 2006) General sources

People, Sleep, Memory, Night

“When, in youth, I learned what was called "philosophy" … no one ever mentioned to me the question of "meaning." Later, I became acquainted with Lady Welby's work on the subject, but failed to take it seriously. I imagined that logic could be pursued by taking it for granted that symbols were always, so to speak, transparent, and in no way distorted the objects they were supposed to "mean." Purely logical problems have gradually led me further and further from this point of view. Beginning with the question whether the class of all those classes which are not members of themselves is, or is not, a member of itself; continuing with the problem whether the man who says "I am lying" is lying or speaking the truth; passing through the riddle "is the present King of France bald or not bald, or is the law of excluded middle false?" I have now come to believe that the order of words in time or space is an ineradicable part of much of their significance – in fact, that the reason they can express space-time occurrences is that they are space-time occurrences, so that a logic independent of the accidental nature of spacetime becomes an idle dream. These conclusions are unpleasant to my vanity, but pleasant to my love of philosophical activity: until vitality fails, there is no reason to be wedded to one's past theories.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Review of The Meaning of Meaning (1926), p. 114

Love, Truth, Youth, Law

“Life was cheap in the Middle Ages. It has become cheaper since. It is only in specific battles for specific lives that our culture is put to the test, and with it our humanity.”

Peter Ustinov book Dear Me

p, 125
Dear Me (1977)

Life, Age

“When you see someone who is great without God’s character, don’t admire him – pray for him because the beginner is not the owner but the finisher… The beginning and middle are off-record; the end is what will put the record straight.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

God

“That which transcends country, which is greater than country, can only reveal itself through one’s country. God has manifested his one eternal nature in just such a variety of forms… I can assure you that through the open sky of India you will be able to see the sun therefore there is no need to cross the ocean and sit at the window of a Christian church. … “I have nothing more to say,” answered Gora, “only this much I would add. You must understand that the Hindu religion takes in its lap, like a mother, people of different ideas and opinions, in other words, the Hindu religion looks upon man as man and does not count him as belonging to a particular party. It honours not only the wise but the foolish also and it shows respect not merely to one form of wisdom but to wisdom in all its aspects. Christians do not want to acknowledge diversity; they say that on one side is Christian religion and on the other eternal destruction, and between these two there is no middle path. And because we have studied under these Christians we have become ashamed of the variety that is there in Hinduism. We fail to see that through this diversity Hinduism is coming to realise the oneness of all. Unless we can free ourselves from this whirlpool of Christian teaching we shall not become fit for the glorious truths of Hindu religion.””

Rabindranath Tagore book Gora

Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, translated into English, Calcutta, 1961. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13 ISBN 9788185990354 https://web.archive.org/web/20120501043412/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/

Wisdom, God, People, Truth

“Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive; having no opposite, there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. The all illuminating light shines and is beyond the movement of the opposites.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 23

Light

“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Return to Tipasa (1954)
Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As translated in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116

Fate, Light, Winter, Summer

“Nowadays, nobody talks about bureaucracy. But in the middle of the last century, particularly in the late sixties and early seventies, the word was everywhere.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules (2015)

“The democracy of America must not be confounded with the democracies of old Europe. It is not the scum of turbulent cities, nor is it a mere section of an excited middle class speculating in shares and calling it progress. It is a territorial democracy, if I may use that epithet without offending hon. Gentlemen opposite. Aristotle, who has taught us most of the wise things we know, never said a wiser thing than that the cultivators of the soil are the class least inclined to sedition and to violent courses.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1865/mar/13/defences-of-canada-colonel-jervois#column_1572 in the House of Commons (13 March 1865).

Democracy

“JG: Can I ask what your feelings are about God?
EV: Sure. I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet -- [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me… (sic) Funny strange. Funny bad. Funny frown. Not good. That laws are made and wars occur because of this story that was written, again, in this small part of time.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

March 23, 1998, Janeane Garofalo interviewing Eddie Vedder for CMJ New Music Report at Brendan's, on the Lower East Side.

God, War, People, Law

“They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle-class and tame
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"You Want It Darker"
You Want It Darker (2016)

“Jail is big business, believe me. I'm in jail, I see the big business. You can feed a whole town off one jail. This jail is in the middle of a town that feeds everybody. Everybody works here, this is the main income. So if there were no criminals, nobody would work.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Business

“It is true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate that they paid under Bill Clinton. John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn't in good conscience support tax cuts where the benefit went to the wealthy at the expense of middle class Americans who most need the tax relief. That's his quote. Well, he was right then, and I am right now.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Comments at a campaign rally in Tampa; Florida (20 October 2008) http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/10/20/394027.html 2008

Quotes, Support, Forgetting

“They would have preferred for me, instead of Bloch, companions who would have given me no more than it is proper to give according to the laws of middle-class morality, who would not unexpectedly send me a basket of fruit because they happened, that morning, to have thought of me with affection, but who, being incapable of inclining in my favour, by a simple impulse of imagination and sensibility, the exact balance of the duties and claims of friendship, would be equally incapable of loading the scales to my detriment. Even our faults will not easily divert from the path of their duty towards us those conventional natures of which the model was my great-aunt who, estranged for years from a niece to whom she never spoke, yet made no change in the will in which she left that niece the whole of her fortune, because she was her next-of-kin and it was the 'proper thing to do.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

"Combray"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Friendship, Law, Imagination, Nature

“To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Imagination, Passion

“Today, as the Church seeks to experience a profound missionary renewal, there is a kind of preaching which falls to each of us as a daily responsibility. It has to do with bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbours or complete strangers. This is the informal preaching which takes place in the middle of a conversation, something along the lines of what a missionary does when visiting a home. Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 127
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, People, Home

“There is no escape from the dilemma. There is no middle term in the school for the disinherited class alone; you have either a systematic insistence, by means of false teaching, on error and ignorance, or hatred of those who domineer and exploit.”

Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia (1859–1909) Spanish anarchist

The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School (1908)

School, Error, Falseness

“We also know that centuries of racial discrimination -- of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow -- they didn’t simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation. They didn’t just stop when Dr. King made a speech, or the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act were signed. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress. But we know -- but, America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. […] Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And so when African Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment; when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you’re black you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime; when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have “the talk” about how to respond if stopped by a police officer -- “yes, sir,” “no, sir” -- but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy -- when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members again and again and again -- it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Life, Death, Children, People

“I often stop when I'm doing something, in the middle of rehearsals or some other job, and I try to take a minute to think "Okay, this might be as good as it gets, so drink it in, appreciate it now". So far, I've been lucky because another job has always come along to equal the last.”

David Tennant (1971) Scottish actor

What's on Stage http://www.whatsonstage.com, 20 Questions with David Tennant (17 November 2003) http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8821069064615

Drink, Thinking

“Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata? … It is the Noble Eightfold Path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.piya.html, as translated by Piyadassi Maha Thera (1999) Unclassified

Life, Pain, People, Pleasure

“Tryin' to get control,
Pressure's takin' its toll.
Stuck in the middle zone,
I just want you alone.
My guessing game is strong,
Way too real to be wrong.
Caught up in your show,
Yeah, at least now I know.It wasn't love, it wasn't love,
It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion).
Mistaken for love, it wasn't love,
It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion).
You were a perfect illusion.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Perfect illusion, written by Kevin Parker, Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, and M. Tucker
Song lyrics, Joanne (2016)

Love, Way, Game, Strong

“At one or another college or university, usually in the informal gatherings after I had spoken, perhaps a dozen generally white-complexioned people would come up to me, identifying themselves as Arabian, Middle Eastern or North African Muslims who happened to be visiting, studying, or living in the United States. They had said to me that, my white-indicting statements notwithstanding, they felt I was sincere in considering myself a Muslim -- and they felt if I was exposed to what they always called "true Islam," I would "understand it, and embrace it." Automatically, as a follower of Elijah, I had bridled whenever this was said. But in the privacy of my own thoughts after several of these experiences, I did question myself: if one was sincere in professing a religion, why should he balk at broadening his knowledge of that religion?
Those orthodox Muslims whom I had met, one after another, had urged me to meet and talk with a Dr. Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi…. Then one day Dr. Shawarbi and I were introduced by a newspaperman. He was cordial. He said he had followed me in the press; I said I had been told of him, and we talked for fifteen or twenty minutes. We both had to leave to make appointments we had, when he dropped on me something whose logic never would get out of my head. He said, "No man has believed perfectly until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself."”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

As featured in The Autobiography of Malcolm X http://www.colostate.edu/Orgs/MSA/find_more/m_x.html as told to Alex Haley and cited in Malcolm X: Why I Embraced Islam by Yusuf Siddiqui. Text of a letter written following his Hajj (1964)

People, Religion, Understanding, Question

“The interdependence of word and idea shows clearly that languages are not actually means of representing a truth already known, but rather of discovering the previously unknown. Their diversity is not one of sounds and signs, but a diversity of world perspectives. … The sum of the knowable, as the field to be tilled by the human mind, lies among all languages, independent of them, in the middle. Man cannot approach this purely objective realm other than through his cognitive and sensory powers, that is, in a subjective manner.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

As quoted in The Linguistic Relativity Principle and Humboldtian Ethnolinguistics : A History And Appraisal (1963) by Robert Lee Miller, and The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (2002) by Cristina Lafont
Context: The interdependence of word and idea shows clearly that languages are not actually means of representing a truth already known, but rather of discovering the previously unknown. Their diversity is not one of sounds and signs, but a diversity of world perspectives [Weltansichten]. … The sum of the knowable, as the field to be tilled by the human mind, lies among all languages, independent of them, in the middle. Man cannot approach this purely objective realm other than through his cognitive and sensory powers, that is, in a subjective manner.

Truth, World, Idea

“Thus have we, in the Gospels of Matthew and John compared together, the history of Christ's actions in continual order during five Passovers. John is more distinct in the beginning and end; Matthew in the middle: what either omits, the other supplies.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 11: Of the Times of the Birth and Passion of Christ
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: Thus have we, in the Gospels of Matthew and John compared together, the history of Christ's actions in continual order during five Passovers. John is more distinct in the beginning and end; Matthew in the middle: what either omits, the other supplies. The first Passover was between the baptism of Christ and the imprisonment of John, John ii. 13. the second within four months after the imprisonment of John, and Christ's beginning to preach in Galilee, John iv. 35. and therefore it was either that feast to which Jesus went up, when the Scribe desired to follow him, Matth. viii. 19. Luke ix. 51, 57. or the feast before it. The third was the next feast after it, when the corn was eared and ripe, Matth, xii. 1. Luke vi. 1. The fourth was that which was nigh at hand when Christ wrought the miracle of the five loaves, Matth. xiv. 15. John vi. 4, 5. and the fifth was that in which Christ suffered, Matth. xx. 17. John xii. 1.

History, Christ

“For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.”

Robert Frost book Mountain Interval

Mountain Interval (1920), 5. In the Home Stretch, Line 187-192
General sources
Context: “My dear,
It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.

“The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”

Peter S. Beagle book The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn (1968)
Context: The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. … Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

Happiness

“It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8
Context: Setting aside the fact that coercion and guidance can never succeed in producing virtue, they manifestly tend to weaken power; and what are tranquil order and outward morality without true moral strength and virtue? Moreover, however great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.

Wisdom, Men

“I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.
Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.
Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way. Because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States. Ultimately, it is that faith — those ideals — that are the true measure of American leadership.

People, Way, History, Support

“To me, the term ‘middle-class’ connotes a safe, comfortable, middle-of-the road policy. Above all, our language is ‘middle-class’ in the middle of our road. To drive it to one side or the other or even off the road, is the noblest task of the future.”

Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914) German author

Future

“He lived in a period of competitive patronage of the sciences, especially mathematics and astronomy, in the Middle East and Central Asia. He is said to have been a high administrative official in a small principality made up of Basra, in what is now Iraq, and the adjacent region of Ahwâz.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Abdelhamid I. Sabra, in “Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003)”

Mathematics, Science

“Marx may be wrong in some of his statements, or his theory of value; this I am not competent to judge. But he seems to me to have possessed quite an extraordinary degree of insight into social phenomena, and this insight was apparently due to the scientific method he adopted. This method, applied to past history as well as current events, helps us in understanding them far more than any other method of apporach, and it is because of this that the most revealing and keen analysis of the changes that are taking place in the world today come from Marxist writers. It is easy to point out that Marx ignored or underrated certain subsequent tendencies, like the rise of a revolutionary element in the middle class, which is so notable today. But the whole value of Marxism seems to me to lie in its absence of dogmatism, in its stress on a certain outlook and mode of approach, and in its attitude to action. That outlook helps us in understanding the social phenomena of our own times, and points out the way of action and escape.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

Lie, World, Way, History

“But, as I have told you, this Five Year Plan brought much suffering, and difficulties and dislocation. And people paid a terrible price willingly and accepted the sacrifices and sufferings for a few years in the hope of a better time afterwards; some paid the price unwillingly and only because of the compulsion of the Soviet Government. Among those who suffered most were the kulaks or richer peasants. With their great wealth and special influence, they did not fit into the new scheme of things. They were capitalistic elements which prevented the collective farms from developing on socialist lines. Often they opposed this collectivization, sometimes they entered the collectives to weaken them from inside or to make undue personal profit out of them. The Soviet Government came down heavily on them. The Government was also very hard on many middle-class people whom it suspected of espionage and sabotage on behalf of its enemies. Because of this, large numbers of engineers were punished and sent to gaol.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

People, Making love, Hope, Suffering

“But the privation, especially of the upper and middle-class peasantry, was very great, and often it seemed that the whole ambitious scheme would collapse, and perhaps carry the Soviet Government with it. It required immense courage to hold on. Many prominent Bolsheviks thought that the strain and suffering caused by the agricultural programme were too great and there should be a relaxation. But not so Stalin. Grin-fly and silently he held on. He was no talker, he hardly spoke in public. He seemed to be the iron image of an inevitable fate going ahead to the predestined goal. And something of his courage and determination spread among the members of the Communist Party and other workers in Russia.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Fate, Courage, Suffering, Flying

“These Central Asian republics have a special interest for us because of our age-old contact with Middle Asia. They are even more fascinating because of the remarkable progress they have made during the past few years. Under the Tsars they were very backward and superstitious countries with hardly any education and their women mostly behind the veil. Today they are ahead of India in many respects.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Women, Age, Education, Past

“Japan had come to terms with Russia because of her difficulties, but this did not mean approval of communism. Communism meant the end of emperor-worship, and feudalism and the exploitation of the masses by the ruling class, and indeed almost everything that the existing order stood for… But communism is the outcome of widespread misery due to social conditions, and unless these conditions are improved, mere repression can be no remedy. There is a terrible misery in Japan at present. The peasantry, as in China and India, are crushed under a tremendous burden of debt. Taxation, especially because of heavy military expenditure and war needs, is very heavy. Reports come of starving peasants trying to live on grass and roots, and of selling even their children. The middle classes are also in a bad way owing to unemployment and suicides have increased.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

War, Bad luck, Children, Way

“Aluminium, however, will not stop at downing copper. Before many years have passed it will be engaged in a fierce struggle with iron, and in the latter it will find an adversary not easy to conquer. The issue of the contest will largely depend on whether iron shall be indispensable in electric machinery. This the future alone can decide. The magnetism as exhibited in iron is an isolated phenomenon in nature. What it is that makes this metal behave so radically different from all other materials in this respect has not yet been ascertained, though many theories have been suggested. As regards magnetism, the molecules of the various bodies behave like hollow beams partly filled with a heavy fluid and balanced in the middle in the manner of a see-saw. Evidently some disturbing influence exists in nature which causes each molecule, like such a beam, to tilt either one or the other way. If the molecules are tilted one way, the body is magnetic; if they are tilted the other way, the body is non-magnetic; but both positions are stable, as they would be in the case of the hollow beam, owing to the rush of the fluid to the lower end. Now, the wonderful thing is that the molecules of all known bodies went one way, while those of iron went the other way. This metal, it would seem, has an origin entirely different from that of the rest of the globe. It is highly improbable that we shall discover some other and cheaper material which will equal or surpass iron in magnetic qualities.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Making love, Way, Nature, Future

“About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do. "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

God, War, Time, Parting

“The prison is overcrowded, the calendars full, the judges busy, the lawyers ambitious, and the cops zealous. What does it matter if someone gets trapped here for a year or two, gets ruined here, goes mad here, commits murder or suicide here? It's too bad, but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. I do not claim that everyone in prison here is innocent, but I do claim that the law, as it operates, is guilty, and that the prisoners, therefore, are all unjustly imprisoned. Is it conceivable, after all, that any middle-class white boy — or, indeed, almost any white boy — would have been arrested on so grave a charge as murder, with such flimsy substantiation, and forced to spend, as of this writing, three years in prison? What force, precisely, is operating when a prisoner is advised, requested, ordered, intimidated, or forced, to confess to a crime he has not committed, and promised a lighter sentence for so perjuring and debasing himself? Does the law exist for the purpose of furthering the ambitions of those who have sworn to uphold the law, or is it seriously to be considered as a moral, unifying force, the health and strength of a nation?”

James Baldwin book No Name in the Street

No Name in the Street (1972)

Bad luck, Health, Law, Way

“Radical Islam, by the grace of God, is not spreading across Russia. These and other radically-minded people pose a huge danger to Russia. This is why everything that happens in the Middle East, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, concerns us very closely.”

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (1946) primate of the Russian Orthodox Church

24 September 2015 http://www.pravmir.com/west-should-learn-from-russia-to-accept-muslim-refugees-patriarch-kirill/ at a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at his residence in Peredelkino, Moscow Region.

God, People

“The middle man brings conceptual integrity to the system.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The How and Why of Fitting Things Together

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Home, Nature, Thinking, Cry

“Where it’s propaganda, it’s war. Where there is freedom of expression, people do not let the authorities start a war, a war like the one we see in the middle of Europe now.”

Dmitry Muratov (1961) Russian journalist and television presenter

"Propaganda has won – VG" https://norway.postsen.com/world/8013/%E2%80%93-Propaganda-has-won-%E2%80%93-VG.html, Norway Posts English, from VG, 30 mai 2022

War, People, Freedom

“Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

“You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

People, World

“The look in Manny´s eye was the ocular equivalent of a middle finger…”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

“Cupcake, your middle name is trouble.”

Janet Evanovich Four to Score

Source: Four to Score

“But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.”

Elizabeth von Arnim book In the Mountains

Source: In the Mountains

Books, Reading

“Are you guys busy?" Juniper asked.
"Well," I said, "we're in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we're trying not to die."
"We're not busy," Annabeth said.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Variant: Juniper: Are you guys busy?
Percy: Well, we’re in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we’re trying not to die.
Annabeth: We’re not busy.
Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Guy, Game, Business