Quotes about might
page 30

“It has, alas, for centuries been taught that the intellect and the emotions were two separate and antagonistic things. This teaching has been firmly believed, cruelly lived up to.
How depressing it is to realize that it might have been taught that they are two beautifully congenial and harmonious phases of that single and integral essence that we call the soul. That no nature in which the development of either is wanting can be called a completely rounded nature.”

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect

Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)

Soul, Nature

““She cost you more”
“I know,” said the trick. “How much?”
“You tell me,” she said, thinking he might be a cop setting her up. That kind of thing still happened whenever the religious authorities ran out of infidels to persecute.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 17).

Thinking

“I might like to be an actor, but there are loads of other things I'm interested in as well, like music and writing and sports. I want to keep my options open.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

about acting http://www.danradcliffe.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=28

Music, Sport

“To defend painting: One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is pure idiocy.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993), p. 78

Passion, Change, Painting

“Alchian: Perhaps it might have been more appropriate for the Nobel Prize to have gone to you and Hicks together, and [Kenneth] Arrow and [Gunnar] Myrdal together.
Hayek: Oh, surely.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

laughter
Interviewing Friedrich Hayek, 1978

Laughter

“Said Periander, "Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, 14
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
.........
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Mother Hubberds Tale, line 895; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Fear, Hope, Soul

“There has been a great deal of disinformation spread around the world about me, both from inside the orgs and outside; there has been a great deal of rumor and generally a great deal of it is untrue (some of it is true) and I thought that you might like to hear about some things from me and look me over and then you make up your own mind.”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

Taped Message (1984)

World

“It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) English composer

Quoted in Michael Kennedy The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams ([1964] 1992) p. 302. He reportedly said this to Roy Douglas regarding whether his Symphony No.6 was meant to be programmatic.

People, Music

“In accordance with an old but not outworn tradition, it might now be wise for all to conclude that crime, or even misbehavior, is the act of an individual, not the predisposition of a class.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section VI, p 165 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior, Anton Antonich Syetochkin. He was the the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I even wonder at the fact myself now. But I even went to see him only when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential to embrace my fellows and all mankind immediately. And for that purpose I needed at least one human being at hand who actually existed. I had to call on Anton Antonich, however, on Tuesday — his at-home day; so I always had to adjust my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 2, Chapter 2 (page 56)
Notes from Underground (1864)

Life, Dreams, Feeling, Home

“You get to the point in your life where everything isn't black and white and good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. Now, you might not like that. You might think me very cynical about that. Well f--- it; I don’t care what you think.”

Roy McDonald (politician) (1947) American politician

Reported in Lucian McCarty, "Sen. Roy McDonald Comes to his decision on the same-sex marriage measure after careful consideration, remains firm in his support despite criticism", The Saratogian (June 2011).
This was on Senator McDonald's change of vote from a "no" in 2009 to a "yes" in 2011.

Life, Thinking

“He was wrong, as all are who rouse the passive resistance of a woman's nature. The indignity and violence with which she was treated only made her turn more fondly to the shelter of the loving heart she believed was so truly her own. Kindness might have brought her to her father's feet, ready to give up her dearest hopes for his sake; but his harsh anger only made her tremble at the hopeless future.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Hope, Nature, Future

“With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas might now be written thus:—

By the term God, is meant a Prime Mover which supplies all energy to the universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all other creatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do; but man, being specially provided with an organism more complex than the organisms of other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflex action,— a power of reflexion,— which enables him within certain limits to choose between paths; and this singular capacity is called free choice or free-will. Of course, the reflexion is not choice, and though a man's mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of a lighthouse lantern, it would never reach a choice without an energy which impels it to act. [...]

The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system of dynamics as modern as the dynamo.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God, Universe

“You might think the word “homemade” is just a word we use as a marketing ploy. But what you don’t realize is that the staff sleeps here at night. If your tablecloth is wrinkled, that’s why.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Restaurant menus Source: "Menus: Stacey’s Homemade Soup Of The Day", Stacey's at Waterford, 2008-01-14 http://www.eatatstaceys.com/staceys-waterford/menus-lunch.php, Atttributed to Adams by "About Us", Stacey's at Waterford, 2008-01-14 http://www.eatatstaceys.com/staceys-waterford/about-us.php,

Thinking, Sleep, Night

“Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the half-articulate professions, and does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by all rules be,—the profession of the Human Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too become in good part beaverish,—yielding a money-result alone. And what of it is not beaverish,—does not that too go mainly to ingenious talking, publishing of yourself, ingratiating of yourself; a partly human exercise or waste of intellect, and, alas, a partly vulpine ditto;—making the once sacred… Human Healer, more impossible for us than ever!”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Men, Money, Exercises, Soul

“I besought Him to give me some work for Him, as an outlet for love and gratitude; some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or however trivial”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book One: Barbarians at the Gates. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1981, 354).

Love, Gratitude

“The danger that hung over Moscow in the winter of 1941 struck [Hitler] as similar to his present predicament. In a brief access of confidence, he might remark with a jesting tone of voice that it would be best, after victory over Russia, to entrust the administration of the country to Stalin, under German hegemony, of course, since he was the best imaginable man to handle the Russians. In general he regarded Stalin as a kind of colleague. When Stalin's son was taken prisoner it was out of this respect, perhaps, that Hitler ordered him to be given especially good treatment.”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 306

Confidence, Imagination, Winter, Victory

“The world is a harum-scarum place."
"Harum?" Sunny asked.
It's complicated and confusing," Olivia explained. They say that long ago it was simple and quiet, but that might be a legend.”

Daniel Handler book The Carnivorous Carnival

The Carnivorous Carnival (2002)

World

“My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting — these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.”

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

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Education, School, Knowledge, Learning

“It was an earnest, extreme, and irreverent book, a book that, in its mockery of authority, its relentless logic, its relentless hewing to the line of Reason, letting the sacred cows fall where they might, followed the old familiar script: CAMPUS REBEL FLAYS FACULTY. But the script was all balled up, for the author was more reactionary than any of the dignitaries in their black robes, and his book damned Yale as a hotbed of atheism and collectivism.”

Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist

Review of God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr., quoted in Grace Elizabeth Hale, A Nation of Outsiders:How the White Middle Class Fell in Love With Rebellion in Postwar America. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Books

“Odds that you will die at some point in your life: 1 in 1. Thus, you might say the greatest, most significant, and universal risk factor in death is being born. This implies that it really isn't very helpful to approach the subject of risk by focusing on how we might die; rather, it's far wise to consider how we should live and what risk we will live with.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 67

Life, Death, Universe, Help

“Your overall aim must be to try to live a stress-free life. This can involve making some difficult choices such as spending less time and energy with certain people or in particular situations. It might involve resigning from a very stress-filled job or walking away from an abusive relationship.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life, People, Time

“And I can't believe that we would lie in our graves,
Dreaming of things that we might have been.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Lie in Our Graves
Crash (1996)

Lie, Dreams

“When Bonaparte was to be dethroned, the Sovereigns of Europe called up their people to their aid; they invoked them in the sacred names of Freedom and National Independence; the cry went forth throughout Europe: and those, whom Subsidies had no power to buy, and Conscriptions no force to compel, roused by the magic sound of Constitutional Rights, started spontaneously into arms. The long-suffering Nations of Europe rose up as one man, and by an effort tremendous and wide spreading, like a great convulsion of nature, they hurled the conqueror from his throne. But promises made in days of distress, were forgotten in the hour of triumph…The rulers of mankind…had set free a gigantic spirit from its iron prison, but when that spirit had done their bidding, they shrunk back with alarm, from the vastness of that power, which they themselves had set into action, and modestly requested, it would go down again into its former dungeon. Hence, that gloomy discontent, that restless disquiet, that murmuring sullenness, which pervaded Europe after the overthrow of Bonaparte; and which were so unlike that joyful gladness, which might have been looked for, among men, who had just been released from the galling yoke of a foreign and a military tyrant. In 1820 the long brooding fire burst out into open flame; in Germany it was still kept down and smothered, but in Italy, in Spain, and in Portugal, it overpowered every resistance.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1830/mar/10/affairs-of-portugal in the House of Commons (10 March 1830). 1830s

Men, People, Nature, Effort

“The Saviour would have passed through the agony of Calvary that one might be saved in His kingdom. He will never abandon one for whom He has died.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The Desire of Ages http://egwdatabase.whiteestate.org/nxt/gateway.dll/egw-comp/section00000.htm/book01247.htm/chapter01301.htm, Ch. 52, p. 480) Conflict of the Ages series

“The most painful sight I saw in New Orleans was the selling of slaves. Every day in the streets at appointed places, negroes and negresses in holiday attire are exposed for this shameful traffic, like the meanest animals at our fairs. This spectacle oppressed my heart. Lo! I said to myself, these Americans, so proud of their liberty, thus make game of the liberty of others. Poor negroes! I would have wished to buy them all that I might say to them, "Go! Bless Providence. You are free!"”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Pain, Game, Holiday, Heart

“It is conceivable that we might be able to provide good medical care for everyone needing it, in a new system designed to assure equity, provided we can restrain ourselves, or our computers, from designing a system in which all 200 million of us are assumed to be in constant peril of failed health every day of our lives. In the same sense that our judicial system presumes us to be innocent until proven guilty, a medical care system may work best if it starts with the presumption that most people are healthy. Left to themselves, computers may try to do it in the opposite way, taking it as given that some sort of direct, continual, professional intervention is required all the time, in order to maintain the health of each citizen, and we will end up spending all our money on nothing but this.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

Source: Aspects of Biomedical Science Policy (1972), p. 4

Money, People, Health, Way

“If the kind of controversy which so often springs up between modernism and traditionalism in religion were applied to more commonplace affairs of life we might see some strange results. …It arises, let us say, from a passage in an obituary notice which mentions that the deceased had loved to watch the sunsets from his peaceful country home.. …it is forgotten that what the deceased man looked out for each evening was an experience and not a creed.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Love, Life, Peace, Religion

“Why China suddenly is a question? Of course, there has been the concern that they may not be giving loans that are concessional, and the danger is that these countries might go back into the debt, some of the countries that they have been forgiven their debts. This I found to be a valid point, maybe not with Tanzania, because we don’t have much in terms of this huge Chinese development assistance.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On China's loans to Africa. Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Question, Country

“To explore the countercurrents of consciousness in a given circumstance—uncertain promises of other futures; to trace the struggle between spirit and structure in every domain of social and cultural life; to show how vision becomes embodied in institutions and practices and, in being embodied, is both undermined and corrected, but in any event transformed; to reveal how we forfeit our freedom to imagine and reconstruct, and then regain it, even against our will; to commandeer alien wisdom the better to criticize the established order and present experience; to give voice to what has lost a voice or not yet gained one; to display in every department of our experience, from the micro to the macro and from passion to calculation, the revolt of the infinite within us against the finite around us—all this is the work of the humanities when they recognize us for what we are and might become.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

124
The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

Life, Wisdom, Imagination, Freedom

“Australia's distance from Europe was probably only tolerable because it had strategic commodities which England, threatened by changing European alliances, might some day be unable to produce in the northern hemisphere. Flax was the first conqueror - a hollow conqueror - of the distance which so often shaped Australia's destiny.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

Change

“Last week, i… i extended a hand to the WWE Universe in a much needed intervention. You know, i don't know if you people know this or not, but i'm not the only one who knows that pills and cigarettes and alcohol are harmful. Medical science has proven this, so there's a surgeon general put in place to put warning labels on all of these products. I guess he's just there to warn the smart people that already know, huh? This is my crusade, and i will continue my crusade for as long as there are people who need help, as long as there are people out there who need change in their lives. One person in particular i've been helping for quite some time now, i'd like to introduce him to the world. Ladies and gentlemen, i give you… Luke Gallows. (Gallows raises his fist) That's right, some of you may recognize him as "Festus", but that was a lifetime ago. And it's a lifetime that he'd just as soon regret. It's a lifetime of torturous drug abuse and neglect, you see, it started just like it started for all of you people, one, one little pill. Just one little pill to take the edge off, one painkiller. And then one turns to two, two turns to four, four turns to eight, so on and so forth. And sure, his friends, his family were there, but they enabled him. They didn't help him, they thought they were but they were slowly rotting him from the inside out. But then i helped him, just like i could help all of you. Trust me, this is just the start, this doesn't end here, it begins here and now. I will continue to reach out and help those who can't help themselves. Holds up brown paper bag On December 1st, this is scary, people, pay attention. On December 1st, a very dangerous addictive new drug hits the streets. Now this scares me because it's a socially accepted over-the-counter drug and it's gonna be widely available all over the world. And it's scary because it's more dangerous than any prescribed medication, it's more harmful than chain smoking an entire carton of unfiltered cigarettes, it is more dangerous than corroding your liver with a fifth of gin or vodka and then chasing it with your Daddy's favorite beer. (Punk pulls a Jeff Hardy DVD out of the bag) "Jeff Hardy, My Life, My Rules" And what an appropriate title, for a loser who destroyed his life and his career living by his rules. And what makes me sick to my stomach is Jeff didn't just ruin his life, he didn't just end his career. (Crowd chants Hardy) He ruined the lives of all his fans because he's planted seeds of destruction in all of the people, all of the drug addicts like yourself who actually looked up to the Charismatic Enabler like he was some sort of a prophet. Well, if you people have any brain-cells left, if there's anything left of your memory that's not burnt out, all you need to know is that the last chapter of this DVD is the most important one you need to watch because it tells the whole story. It's a cage match between myself and Jeff Hardy, where i ended Jeff's career in the WWE… FOREVER! I'm the reason he's not here! And I know how hard it is to deprogram your weak little brains from all the lies you've been fed all over the years, but you owe it to yourselves. Look yourself in the mirror, search inside yourself for that shred of self-respect that might be left, and when it comes to this, when it comes to this garbage, (Holds up DVD) just say no.”

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

November 27, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, World

“Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Lady Chatterly's Trial (The Old Bailey, 20 October - 2 November 1960)", p. 409
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Marriage, Home, Literature

“We had found an accursed country. On the fringe of an unspanned continent along whose gelid coast our comrades had made their home—we knew not where—we dwelt where the chill breath of a vast, Polar wilderness, quickening to the rushing might of eternal blizzards, surged to the northern seas.”

Douglas Mawson (1882–1958) Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer and academic

The Home of the Blizzard (1915)

Home, Sea, Country

“What I liked was Thatcherism's Bolshevik aspect, which was to shake up the whole of Britain quite fundamentally, and if you read what I wrote in those years I think you might agree that in taking the view that I did then — that this was necessary and desirable — I never subscribed to the main delusion of the Thatcherites, which was that you could change everything and everything would remain the same. If what you wanted was a very anarchic, globalised, polyglot, mixed-up society in which most of the structures which had somehow been renewed from the Edwardian period to the Sixties were destroyed, then Thatcherism was what would do the job.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Quoted in Will Self, "John Gray: Forget everything you know," The Independent (2002-09-03)

Thinking, Change, Reading

“Lots of us SF-types like the idea of traveling to the Future (although, having now done so once myself -- the hard way -- I’m less sure), but why do we imagine the Future would want us? Oh, a few 21st-century Icemen, perhaps, as historical curiosities, but in our hundreds of millions? It would be like the greatest wave of immigration ever, but from the past into other people’s Now. It might seem to them like sacrificing resources needed for their children to their great-great-great-grandparents. Counter-evolutionary, among other things.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Geek Speak Magazine Interview (2010)

Children, People, Way, Travel

“Reason teaches us that we must be united in will, united in thought, and that we might have strength to search out the reigning evil in our Nation. This is the time for the light of truth to surface; this is the time for us to show that we have our own sentiments, have honour, have shame, and have solidarity.”

Andrés Bonifacio (1863–1897) Filipino nationalist and revolutionary

Quoted in: " Talumpati ni Pangulong Aquino sa pagdiriwang ng anibersaryo ng Araw ng Kalayaan, ika-12 ng Hunyo 2013 http://www.gov.ph/2013/06/12/talumpati-ni-pangulong-aquino-sa-pagdiriwang-ng-anibersaryo-ng-araw-ng-kalayaan-ika-12-ng-hunyo-2013/." on gov.ph. June 12, 2013.

Truth, Search, Light, Evil

“It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects. [Footnote: ] If this axiom be denied for all temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or in reality, from the whole material world.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWMSAAAAIAAJ p. 179 (1882) "On the Dynamical Theory of Heat with Numerical Results Deduced from Mr Joule's Equivalent of a Thermal Unit and M. Regnault's Observations on Steam" originally from Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, March, 1851 and Philosophical Magazine iv, 1852 Thermodynamics quotes

World, Reality, Loss, Sea

“It has been well said that: "An enslaved press is doubly fatal; it not only takes away the true light; for in that case we might stand still, but it sets up a false light that decoys us to our destruction."”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)

Light, Falseness

“Perhaps a better title for The Da Vinci Code might be Much Ado About Nothing. When you boil away the hype and hysteria, all that remains is a pedestrian murder mystery that isn't sufficiently challenging or scandalous to raise anyone's hackles. It's preposterous, overlong, and saddled with a sloppy denouement that defines the term "anti-climax." The film's two big "surprises" are telegraphed early, and the ease with which they can be guessed (using the "conservation of characters" process) leeches the movie of a large measure of its suspense. Individual scenes are entertaining in their own right, but the production as a whole is a lumbering mess.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1014 of The Da Vinci Code (2006). Two-and-a-half star reviews

“You see by what has happened that we are superior to you in intelligence, in size of army, and in number of supporters. Surely you were easily trapped, captured without a struggle. It is in my power to do with you what I wish when I wish. Helpless and prostrate, you lie before us now, victims of our might. But if one looks for a punishment equal to the crimes you have committed, it is impossible to find a suitable one. You murdered your revered and benevolent old emperor, the man whom it was your sworn duty to protect. The empire of the Roman people, eternally respected, which our forefathers obtained by their valiant courage or inherited because of their noble birth, this empire you shamefully and disgracefully sold for silver as if it were your personal property. But you were unable to defend the man whom you yourselves had chosen as emperor. No, you betrayed him like the cowards you are. For these monstrous acts and crimes you deserve a thousand deaths, if one wished to do to you what you have earned. You see clearly what it is right you should suffer. But I will be merciful. I will not butcher you. My hands shall not do what your hands did. But I say that it is in no way fit or proper for you to continue to serve as the emperor's bodyguard, you who have violated your oath and stained your hands with the blood of your emperor and fellow Roman, betraying the trust placed in you and the security offered by your protection. Still, compassion leads me to spare your lives and your persons. But I order the soldiers who have you surrounded to cashier you, to strip off any military uniform or equipment you are wearing, and drive you off naked. 9. And I order you to get yourselves as far from the city of Rome as is humanly possible, and I promise you and I swear it on solemn oath and I proclaim it publicly that if any one of you is found within a hundred miles of Rome, he shall pay for it with his head.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book II.

Death, People, Lie, Way

“Upper middle-class upbringing has rooted out any element of what might appear to be self-assertion or egoism; good manners is to be like everyone else. So the male of the species becomes accustomed to suppress any stirring of impatience or originality. Shaw once said you can't learn to skate without making a fool of yourself; the British middle-class attitude seems to be that, in that case, you hadn't better skate at all. The result seems to be considerably more oppressive than being brought up in a Jewish ghetto or a west side slum.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Bicameral Critic (1985), p. 112, An integrity born of hope: Notes on Christopher Isherwood (1976)

Fools, Learning, Appearance

“We don’t have to be convincing—not in the sense of getting converts. Real converts might prove to be a nuisance. We just have to be convincing enough to look like a legitimate religion to our overlords. And that doesn’t have to be very convincing. All religions look equally silly from the outside.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 6 (p. 70)

Religion, Sense

“The American Revolution began with certain latent hopes that it might turn into a genuine break with the State ideal. The Declaration of Independence announced doctrines that were utterly incompatible not only with the century-old conception of the Divine Right of Kings, but also with the Divine Right of the State. … If revolution is justifiable a State may even be criminal sometimes in resisting its own extinction.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶9. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 30–31. "The State" (1918), II

Hope

“I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine — small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind — which was also his mother's — I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972, p. 54-55

Women, Children, Sex, Girl

“All told, thanks to these various forms of freedom from the old-fashioned logistical dependence on one’s parents, children in Nordic countries have an easier time successfully managing the transition to adulthood. What a disaster, an American might think, that young people could end up on welfare straight out of school.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Source: The Nordic Theory of Everything, Chapter 3

Children, People, School, Fashion

“There is another meaning that might be attached to this admonition to be oneself; that one should not try to disguise himself. I suspect this comes nearer to what psychologists mean when they urge people to be themselves. It is presumed that the person who faces the world barefaced is more spontaneous, that he expresses himself more fully, and that he has a better chance of developing all his resources if he assumes no disguises.
But this doctrine of psychological nakedness in human affairs, so much talked about today and which allows the self neither make-up nor costume, leaves very little to the imagination. Not does it invite one to be venturesome. I suspect, for example, that in the Garden of Eden it might have occurred to Adam to take a chance much sooner than he did if Eve had been paying a little more attention to her wardrobe. As it was I hear she had to bribe him with an apple. Later on they say she contrived a saucy little something out of fig leaves.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 157-8

People, World, Imagination, Chance

“On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

2 page advertisement sponsored by Dresser Industries in the Wall Street Journal (31 July 1979)

People, Health, Suffering, Heart

“The chairman of the board of RTC is David Miscavige. His position might be considered to be the most important and most powerful in Scientology.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

[James R., Lewis, Jesper Aagaard Petersen, 2004, Controversial New Religions, Oxford University Press, 019515682X, 247].
About

“God beareth Me witness, I was not a man of learning, for I was trained as a merchant. In the year sixty God graciously infused my soul with the conclusive evidences and weighty knowledge which characterize Him Who is the Testimony of God — may peace be upon Him — until finally in that year I proclaimed God’s hidden Cause and unveiled its well-guarded Pillar, in such wise that no one could refute it. ‘That he who should perish might perish with a clear proof before him and he who should live might live by clear proof.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Epistle to Muhammad Sháh

God, Peace, Soul, Knowledge

“I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there’s a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that’s all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there’s no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn’t eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn’t produce anything.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, p. 193-194

Way, Feeling, Mathematics, Idea

“Can you understand the soul of a man who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking people, who would use every trick of the markets to mislead, and who was at the same time scrupulous never to utter a direct lie on the most insignificant matter? Manderson was like that, and he was not the only one. I suppose you might compare the state of mind to that of a soldier who is personally a truthful man, but who will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy. The rules of the game allow it; and the same may be said of business as many business men regard it. Only with them it is always wartime.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter XV: "Double Cunning"

Men, People, Truth, Lie

“First, all hands gave their best and their utmost, day and night, in good weather and bad, in order that the work might progress with all practicable dispatch. Second, the divers encountered the hazards of their work with unfailing readiness, with the greatest skill and frequently the greatest intrepidity and daring; it is trite to say that the job could not have been done without them; it is true to say that none could have done more than they did. Third, the commanding officer of the Falcon, Lieutenant Henry Hartley, whose seamanship was of the highest order, whose advice in all matters was invaluable, whose judgement was eminently sound, displayed a devotion to duty which was unceasing and a constant example to all hands.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

p. 183-184. Detailing the salvaging of U.S.S. S-51, an operation which King commanded.

Weather, Night

“If a big wave came at the wrong moment, it would sweep me off into forty-eight-degree water, where I might last twenty minutes. Drowning quickly might be better.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 124

Water

“Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Age, Art, Sense, Help

“Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.”

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

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/07/clinton-concession-speech_n_105842.html, Washington D.C., June 7, 2008 Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Life, Time

“Diversity in the service of freedom might be a very good thing. Diversity in the service of slavery might be a very bad thing.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)

Freedom

“If a marker were to be erected today, it might read, in homage to his scientific courage: “He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.””

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

On the character of Johannes Kepler, p. 67
Cosmos (1980)

Truth, Courage, Reading

“The present government of Quebec is the most financially and intellectually corrupt in the history of the province. There are the shady deals, brazenly conducted, and the broken promises, most conspicuously that of last October to retain Bill 63… The government dragged out the ancient and totally fictitious spectre of assimilation to justify Bill 22 and its rejection of the right of free choice in education, its its reduction of English education to the lowest echelon of ministerial whim, its assault upon freedom of expression through the regulation of the internal and external language of businesses and other organizations, and its creation of a fatuous new linguistic bureaucracy that will conduct a system of organized denunciation, harassment, and patronage… There is a paralytic social sickness in Quebec. In all this debate, not a single French Quebecker has objected to Bill 22 on the grounds that it was undemocratic or a reduction of liberties exercised in the province. The Quebec Civil Liberties Union, founded by Pierre Trudeau, from which one might have expected such sentiments, has instead demanded the abolition of English education, and this through the spokemanship of Jean-Louis Roy, who derives his income from McGill University…. It is clear that Mr. Bourassa… is now going to try to eliminate the Parti Quebecois by a policy of gradual scapegoatism directed against the non-French elements in the province… The English community here, still deluding itself with the illusion of Montreal as an incomparably fine place to live, is leaderless and irrelevant, except as the hostage of a dishonest government. Last month one of the most moderate ministers, Guy St-Pierre, told an English businessman's group, 'If you don't like Quebec, you can leave it.”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

With sadness but with certitude, I accept that choice.
radio broadcast on 26 July 1974, the day Black left Quebec for good
The Establishment Man by Peter Newman

Education, Sadness, Guy, Exercises

“Man is a rational animal, and if human affairs are hard to regulate, his twofold nature is usually the cause. Reason is something ultimate; it would be the same in another planet, or in another universe, as it is here. Animal nature is something contingent; it might have been different. Our life is a compromise, a blend between the animal and the rational.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Source: The Economic Problem (1925), Chapter I, "The Problem Profounded", p. 1

Life, Nature, Universe, Animals

“If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Dalemark Quartet, Cart and Cwidder (1975), p. 212.

Truth, Way

“Before Christianity suicide was not in any way troubling. Our lives were our own, and when we tired of them we were at liberty to end them. One might think that as Christianity has declined, this freedom would be reclaimed. Instead secular creeds have sprung up, in which each person’s life belongs to everyone else. To hand back the gift of life because it does not please is still condemned as a kind of blasphemy, though the offended deity is now humanity instead of God.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 231-2)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Life, God, Way, Thinking

“I have no hesitation in applying a law regardless of what I might think about it, I think any good judge recognizes his or her place in our constitutional government, and that place is not to upset the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives. So, I do not have any compunction about following the law as written by Congress.”

Thomas Hardiman (1965) American judge

Judicial and Executive Nominations (November 14, 2006)

People, Law, Thinking

“My father once told me that the art of receiving a compliment is, of all things, the sign of a civilized man. He died soon afterwards, leaving my education in this important matter sadly incomplete; I'm only glad that, on this, the occasion of the rarest compliment he ever could have dreamed of, that he isn't here to see his son so publicly at a loss. In receiving a compliment, or in trying to, the words are all worn out by now. They're polluted by ham and corn. And, when you try to scratch around for some new ones, it's just an exercise in empty cleverness. What I feel this evening, is not very clever. it's the very opposite of emptiness. The corny old phrase is the only one I know to say it: my heart is full; with a full heart, with all of it, I thank you. This is Samuel Johnson, on the subject of what he calls contrarieties: "there are goods, so opposed that we cannot seize both, and, in trying, fail to seize either. Flatter not yourself, he says, with contrarieties. Of the blessings set before you, make your choice. No man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source, and from the mouth of the nile." For this business of contrarieties has to do with us. With you, who are paying me this compliment, and for me, who has strayed so far from this hometown of ours. Not that I am alone in this, or unique, I am never that; but there are a few of us left in this conglomerated world of us who still trudge stubbornly along this lonely rocky road; and this is in fact our contrariety. We don't move nearly as fast as our cousins on the freeway; we don't even get as much accomplished just as the family sized farm can't possibly raise as many crops or get as much profit as the agricultural factory of today. What we do come up with has no special right to call itself better it's just.. different. No if there's any excuse for us it all, it's that we're simply following the old American tradition of the maverick, and we are a vanishing breed. This honor I can only accept in the name of all the mavericks. And also, as a tribute to the generosity of all the rest of you; to the givers, to the ones with fixed addresses. A maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think that it's the only way, or ever claim that it's the best one, except maybe for himself. And don't imagine that this raggle-taggle gypsy-o is claiming to be free. It's just that some of the necessities to which I am a slave are different from yours. As a director, for instance, I pay myself out of my acting jobs. I use my own work to subsidize my work (in other words I'm crazy). But not crazy enough to pretend to be free. But it's a fact that many of the films you've seen tonight could never have been made otherwise. Or, if otherwise, well, they might have been better, but certainly they wouldn't have been mine. The truth is I don't believe that this great evening would ever have brightened my life if it wasn't for this: my own, particular, contrariety. Let us raise our cups, then, standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river, to what really matters to us all: to our crazy, beloved profession, to the movies — to good movies, to every possible kind.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given upon his acceptance of the AFI Lifetime Achievement award. Viewable http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJnxClGamA&list=HL1349840607&feature=mh_lolz

Life, Truth, World, Education

“I think there are three possible scenarios for the future of Chinese writing, in all of which the government plays a major role. In the first, and at present apparently the least likely scenario, the government abandons its hostility to an expanded role for Pinyin and instead fosters a climate of digraphia and biliteracy in which those who can do so become literate in both characters and Pinyin, and those who cannot are at least literate in Pinyin. This is essentially a reversion to the Latinization movement of the 1930s and 1940s, when Mao Zedong and other high Communist Party officials like Xu Teli, the commissioner of education in Yan'an, lent their prestigious support to the New Writing. Such a change within the governing bureaucracy would in all likelihood result in an explosion of activity that might end in Pinyin ascendancy in use over characters in less than a generation.
In the second scenario the government adopts a policy of benign indifference that involves abandoning its hostility toward Pinyin but without actively supporting it, leaving it up to the rival protagonists of the two systems to contest for supremacy among themselves. This is likely to result in a somewhat longer struggle.
In the third scenario the government continues its present policy of repression, resulting in a much more protracted struggle (though surely not as long as the fascinating parallel struggle between Latin and Italian in Italy, where it took 500 [! ] years after Dante’s start in 1292 for academics, the last holdouts, to finally abandon their long resistance and start using Italian in university lectures).47 In this long struggle, PCs and mobile phones and other innovations still to come will undoubtedly allow more and more advocates of writing reform to escape the stranglehold of officialdom, to the point where (in a century or so?) characters are finally relegated to the status of Latin in the West.
My own view is that this is actually the least likely scenario, the most probable one being that the Chinese pragmatism that has manifested itself so strongly in economics will extend further into writing, and that, perhaps sooner rather than later, given the success of the promotion of Mandarin, some influential Party bureaucrats will finally arrive at the conclusion that the "some day in the future" anticipated by Mao has arrived, and that wholehearted Party support should now be unleashed for his anticipated "basic reform."”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

In any case it is basically all a matter of time. And the decisive factor that will seal the ultimate fate of Chinese characters is the new reality, noted by a perceptive observer, that "the PC is mightier than the Pen." "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006, p. 20-21) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006)

Hostility, Fate, Education, Support

“Beneath the anger of Trump supporters lies something deeper – shame, the shame of no longer being able to get ahead, the bitterness that their children will be worse off than they are, the resentment of being told they are backward, and fearing that they might be. Like Russian nationalists who put their faith in Putin, and Chinese patriots who back Xi, Americans who support Trump are responding to their private or collective humiliation.”

Clive Hamilton (1953) Australian economsit

Trumpism as Whitelash (November 19, 2016)

Children, Fear, Faith, Support

“Diogenes the cynic, seeing one of the so-called freedmen pluming himself, while many heartily congratulated him, marveled at the absence of reason and discernment. “A man might as well,” he said, “proclaim that one of his servants became a grammarian, a geometrician, or musician, when he has no idea whatever of the art.” For as the proclamation cannot make them men of knowledge, so neither can it make them free.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Philo, Every Good Man is Free, F. Colson, trans. (1941), 157
Quoted by Philo

Men, Art, Idea, Knowledge

“You don't get something for nothing
You can't have freedom for free.
You won't get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dream might be.
-- Something for Nothing (1976)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Dreams, Sleep, Freedom

“Israel is the Middle East’s only legitimate democracy, surrounded by cadres, warlords and villains that do not respect democracy or human rights. These bellicose nations jealously regard Israel, envying its success, stability, and might. Israel faces an impossible calculus between defending itself and facing angry outcries or risking its own destruction.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Stephen Harper, as quoted in " We Must Support Democracy in the Middle East http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/2014/01/31/we-must-support-democracy-in-the-middle-east" (31 January 2014), The Barrie Examiner. 2014

Democracy, Success, Envy

“The sun, as we have already said, is placed in the middle of our system, as a source of light and heat, to illuminate and vivify all the planets subordinate to it. Without his benign influence the earth would be a mere block, which in hardness would surpass marble and the most compact substances with which we are acquainted; no vegetation, no motion would be possible: in a word, it would be the abode of darkness, inactivity and death. The first rank therefore among inanimate beings cannot be refused to the sun; and if the error of addressing to a created object that adoration which is due to the Creator atone could admit of excuse, we might be tempted to excuse the homage paid to the sun by the ancient Persians, as is still the ease among the Guebres, their successors, and some savage tribes in America.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Jacques Ozanam, Recreations in mathematics and natural philosophy : Volume 3 van Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Published 1803. p. 140

Death, Error, Light, Sun

“But what then is this confrontation below the language of reason? Where might this interrogation lead, following not reason in its horizontal becoming, but seeking to retrace in time this constant verticality, which, the length of Western culture, confronts it with what it is not, measuring it with its own extravagance?”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Preface to 1961 edition
History of Madness (1961)

Time

“To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe … not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it … except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life … if you're into it.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Quoted in a 1976 interview, published in Desert Plants by Walter Zimmermann.

Life, Music, Feeling, Idea

“It would be difficult for me to go back [permanently] to Cuba because Miami is my city... That's where we have made our life. That's were I feel at home... But I would love to be, you know, whatever help I can be [post-Castro] to the people who will be leading themselves. I do think Cuba does have to find its leadership from within. They have a very different society from what we are used to. They are going to need certain things that a democracy might not provide right away. And I don't think it's going to be as quick a change. I think [Castro's] death will bring change, needless to say. But I think his brother [Raul] will try to save the specter of the revolution for quite a while. And maybe start doing some opening [to improve U. S.-Cuba relations]. That is what I feel will happen.”

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

BBC radio interview (December 13, 2006)
2007, 2008

Love, Life, Death, People

“We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master. The governess is to have every one of God's gifts; she is to do that which the mother herself is incapable of doing; but our son must not degrade himself by marrying the governess, nor our daughter the tutor, though she might marry the medical man.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

God, School, Soul, Daughters

“By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Art of Fiction: An Interview" (The Paris Review, Spring 1955), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 218.

Communication, Sense

“…might possibly preserve her from suicide inasmuch as she remembered one of Amadeus's favorite utterances: Love, know thyself first in order to love thy neighbour. And then: one has to go into oneself - into one's childhood - to be able to go out of oneself. And he felt that the movie was the machine of modern man as a means of going out of oneself. And finally she recalled the famous couple embracing under a bathrobe, functioning as one person.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 5th ending, written page in brush, related to no. 4923r https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004923/part/character/theme/keyword/M004923JHM: (554) 'Life? or Theater..', p. 819 Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Love, Suicide, Childhood, Personality

“Be careful not to blame yourself if someone rejects Christ. If you do, you might be tempted to take credit when someone accepts him.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Christ

“Naturally, the next question was: “How accurate is the nuclear data you used in your calculation?” As only Edward Teller is capable of doing, he replied, with a smirk-smile going from ear to ear: “Well, it’s possible that the data might be off by a factor of ten.” Which way, he didn’t profess to know, but I suspect that much of the audience didn’t sleep too well that night. (If you’re beginning to worry that you might not be sleeping too well from now on, I have to tell you that as it turned out, after careful nuclear measurements and detailed calculations were made, we were safe by far more than a factor of ten. It simply couldn’t happen.)”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Smile, Way, Question, Nature

“The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIII: Vashi

Death, Hate, People, Feeling

“As you know, I do not believe that the Mahatma's principle [of non-cooperation] can be the true foundation or his programme the true means of bringing out the genuine freedom and greatness of India, her Swarajya and Samrajya. On the other hand … I hold that school [of Tilakite nationalism] to be out of date. My own policy, if I were in the field, would be radically different in principle and programme from both, however it might coincide in certain points. But the country is not yet ready to understand its principle or to execute its programme…. Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and forces, which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

December 1, 1922
India's Rebirth

School, Idea, Understanding, Freedom

“Observers in earlier epochs might have found it equally preposterous to suppose that the world economy would one day be doubling several times within a single lifespan. Yet that is the extraordinary condition we now take to be ordinary.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 1

World, Time

“… if you saw a baby tyrannosaur you would probably think it was a weird looking bird. A full grown one might have had feathers too, maybe not on its whole body though, maybe more of an ornamental display sort of feathers. So traits in the theropod dinosaurs were more birdlike than say, crocodiles.”

Mark Norell (1957) American paleontologist

As quoted in "How Dinosaurs Loved: An Interview with Dr. Mark Norell on Dino Relations" http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/t-rexxx-how-dinosaurs-lived-loved-and-tasted-q-a-with-dr-mark-norell-american-museum-of-natural-history, Vice (March 20, 2012)

Bird, Thinking, Baby

“Do parallel universes exist? We don't know, uhm parallel universes are losing favor to the multiverse we have some cogent theoretical expectations that our universe might be just one of many spawned from this, sort of, this hyper-dimensional medium which we'll call the multiverse there's no data to support it but we have good theoretical premise to think that it's there and we have philosophical precedent we used to think Earth was special and unique. It wasn't, we got 8.. 9.. 8 planet we thought the Sun was special it's one of a hundred billion suns, the galaxy's special, no there's a hundred billion galaxies we have one universe or do we? The track record said why should there only be one? be open to the possibility that you don't live in the majority [looking? ] universe that's out there Would a separate universe.. when you say "different universe" slightly different laws of physics which (that's what I'm asking) oh this is the fun part because if you find, if you manage to get a portal to another universe don't be the first one to volunteer to go through because your atoms are working in this universe if a slightly different law of physics.. you could implode, explode come out with three heads who knows?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Neil deGrasse Tyson Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy - 2010-Jan-29 http://transcriptvids.com/v/YXh9RQCvxmg.html 2010s

Law, Support, Thinking, Universe

“The notion that there might be any need for, or possibility of, profound changes in the institutions that shape American life work, family, technology, the primacy of the car and the single-family house — is foreign to the mainstream media that define our common sense. And so conflicts that cannot be addressed politically have expressed themselves by other means. From public psychodramas like the O. J. Simpson trial, the Lewinsky scandal and Columbine to disaster movies, talk shows and "reality TV," popular culture carries the burden of our emotions about race, feminism, sexual morality, youth culture, wealth, competition, exclusion, a physical and social environment that feels out of control.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Dreaming of War," The Nation (15 October 2001)

Life, Youth, Family, Cars

“Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him, — and, withall, he had so shrewd guess at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent, — that NATURE might have stood up and said, — "This man is eloquent."”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 19.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Nature, Passion

“…a few years back, in the 1980s, in our efforts to bring peace and democracy to the world we assisted the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and in our infinite wisdom we gave money, technology and training to Bin Laden, and now, this very year, we have declared that Bin Laden was responsible for the bombing in Africa. So what is our response, because we allow our President to pursue war too easily? What was the President's response? Some even say that it might have been for other reasons than for national security reasons. So he goes off and bombs Afghanistan, and he goes off and bombs Sudan, and now the record shows that very likely the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was precisely that, a pharmaceutical plant… As my colleagues know, at the end of this bill I think we get a hint as to why we do not go to Rwanda for humanitarian reasons… I think it has something to do with money, and I think it has something to do with oil… they are asking to set up and check into the funds that Saddam Hussein owes to the west. Who is owed? They do not owe me any money. But I will bet my colleagues there is a lot of banks in New York who are owed a lot of money, and this is one of the goals…
Dana Rohrabacher: This resolution is exactly the right formula… Support democracy. Oppose tyranny. Oppose aggression and repression… We should strengthen the victims so they can defend themselves. These things are totally consistent with America's philosophy, and it is a pragmatic approach as well… Our support for the Mujahedin collapsed the Soviet Union. Yes, there was a price to pay, because after the Soviet Union collapsed, we walked away, and we did not support those elements in the Mujahedin who were somewhat in favor of the freedom and western values. With those people who oppose this effort of pro democracy foreign policy, a pro freedom foreign policy rather than isolation foreign policy, they would have had us stay out of that war in Afghanistan. They would never have had us confronting Soviet aggression in different parts of the world… Mr. Speaker, the gentleman does not think it is proper for us to offer those people who are struggling for freedoms in Iraq against their dictatorship a helping hand?
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it would be absolutely proper to do that, as long as it came out of the gentleman's wallet and we did not extract it from somebody in this country, a taxpayer at the point of a gun and say, look, bin Laden is a great guy. I want more of your money. That is what we did in the 1980s. That is what the Congress did. They went to the taxpayers, they put a gun to their head, and said, you pay up, because we think bin Laden is a freedom fighter.
Dana Rohrabacher: Well, if the gentleman will further yield, it was just not handled correctly.
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, again reclaiming my time, the policy is flawed. The policy is flawed.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Debate on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 5, 1998 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec98/cr100598.htm 1990s

Wisdom, Money, War, People

“The three towering geniuses of European culture, Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci were not allowed to appear on the euro note as they might, in their separate ways, cause offense: Mozart because he was a "womanizer," Shakespeare because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play judged to be anti-Semitic, and Leonardo because he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 13 : Causing Offence

Way, Boy, Appearance

“Law, Legislation and Liberty was written and published during a different period from The Constitution of Liberty. The earlier work was a product of the late 1950s—a generally optimistic and socially cohesive time when Hayek himself was in his late fifties, at the University of Chicago. Law, Legislation and Liberty, on the other hand, was a product of the 1960s and 1970s, a far more turbulent time, as he became an old man, was somewhat intellectually isolated in Freiburg and Salzburg, and experienced depression. That the later work has a different feel from the former is hardly to be unexpected. The relationship between the two works might be considered to be something like that between Plato’s Republic, a product of his prime, and Plato’s Laws, a product of his old age.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Age, Law, Feeling, Universe

“We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 49
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Way, Feeling, Courage, Question

“For many purposes of organizational analysis technology might not be an independent variable but a dependent one.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow (1967), in: Industrial Relations Research Association, Proceedings of the ... Annual Winter Meeting, Vol. 19 (1967), p. 163
1960s

Dependency

“Fellows were encouraged to revisit their former industries and make a report on any new perceptions they might have. One of these Fellows, Ken Bamforth, returned with news of an innovation in work practice and organization which had occurred in a new seam in the colliery where he used to work in the South Yorkshire coalfield. The seam, the Haighmoor, had become possible to mine "shortwall" because of improved roof control.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 8

“I don’t think Father Hugo is any more mistaken than the most learned theologian and he might be closer to the truth. Jacob, I don’t think anyone knows Who’s in charge.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 26, p. 459

Truth, Thinking, Learning

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51 Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Books, Change, Time, Sun

“The British representative was an ambassador, and had a spacious, suitable, and well-furnished house in which he could entertain fitly and largely, and to which the highest Russian officials thought it an honor to be invited. The American representatives were simply ministers; from time immemorial had never had such a house; had generally no adequate place for entertaining; had to live in apartments such as they might happen to find vacant in various parts of the town—sometimes in very poor quarters, sometimes in better; were obliged to furnish them at their own expense; had, therefore, never been able to obtain a tithe of that social influence, so powerful in Russia, which was exercised by the British Embassy.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2 (1922), p. 19

Exercises, Time, Parting, Housing

“It is the only one in existence that might conceivably have been composed by God.”

Neville Cardus (1888–1975) English writer

Of Mozart's "The Magic Flute"; Manchester Guardian (1961)

God

“It would be not only useless, but dangerous, to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up; because it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurption; and it would be impossible to enumerate every one. Let any one make what collection or enumeration of rights he pleases, I will immediately mention twenty or thirty more rights not contained in it.”

James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

July 28, 1788, p. 150.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)

“Someone might object, "But you do not express yourself like Cicero". What of it? I am not Cicero. But I think I express my own self.”
Non exprimis, aliquis inquit, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero; me tamen, ut opinor, exprimo.

Poliziano (1454–1494) Italian writer

Epistolae 8, 16. Quoted in Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (1995) by Martin L. McLaughlin, p. 203.

Thinking

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

Men, Money, War, Health

“The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely.”

Alan Turing (1912–1954) British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist

Epigram to Robin Gandy (1954).

Quotes about might page 30

Quotes about might
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