Quotes about might
page 38

“Well, I don't play heroes obviously. I never played the guy who gets the girl. It might be interesting to do a part where I was a father in a functional family.”

Christopher Walken (1943) American actor

Hap Erstein (October 29, 2004) "Walken Doesn't Mind Playing Creepy Type - As Long As He's Cast", The Palm Beach Post, p. 9.

Family, Guy, Girl, Parting

“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to 'a war against' whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Afterword to the 2012 edition.
Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Life, War, World

“I was so thankful that my parents trusted me enough and had enough faith in my abilities to let me follow my passion and try to do something great, even if I might fail.”

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

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 93

Faith, Parent, Passion

“Aaron had learned… from Mr. Fairlow's two-hour sermons on "The Jealousy of an Angry Jehovah Who Hath Weighed Sinners in the Balance and Found Them Wanting",… that God was a torturer who punished small boys for sins they might commit later.”

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

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 3

God, Jealousy, Boy, Learning

“Samuelson's textbook has delivered a great deal of economic wisdom. For many economists, the positive side of the balance sheet has outweighed the negative. Indeed, his defenders might ask: Might the United States and the West have suffered another Great Depression if Samuelson had not emphasized the need for "automatic stabilizers"? Did not Samuelson's heralding of the "mixed" economy curb the appetite of third world countries for national socialism?
We will never know, of course, but it is humbling to speculate on whether alterations in principles textbooks might have led to a different U. S. economy.”

Mark Skousen (1947) American economist, investment analyst, newsletter editor, college professor and author

Mark Skousen, "The Perseverance of Paul Samuelson's Economics", The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1997)

Wisdom, World, Suffering, Country

“The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

“After being the CM for two consecutive terms, I had two desires. One was to unearth my childhood friends with whom I had completely lost touch. One day, I sat up and listed all the names I could remember. I remembered them all but had lost track of their whereabouts. Some 35 names popped up. I wanted to invite them to the Chief Minister's residence and share my childhood with them and also because I wanted to remind myself about the real Modi lest I lose sight of him. So, I spent time with my friends getting down-to-earth. They too felt that if I remembered and spent time with them after having reached where I have then I must be fine. So, that was my test. The other desire was to get together all the teachers in my lifetime and honour them. One of them was 93-years-old. I invited them here and organised a big function to honour them. It gave me immense happiness that I was able to honour and say thanks to those who have contributed their might in shaping me. So, I fulfilled both my desires and I am happy about it.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2011, Interview with C. S. S. Latha, 2011

Happiness, Teachers, Time, Childhood

“Reconstruction aspired to restore the foundations of freedom to a wayward South and it expected to triumph as effortlessly as 19th-century liberal notions of progress had promised. Instead, the same Romantic feudalism that had created the old Southern order reasserted its hegemony, and postwar Southern aristocrats appealed to a set of cultural and racial biases which safely defused the importance of property, and sharply restricted access to it. This might have been averted had the victorious Union been willing to pour the resources into Reconstruction it had devoted to winning the war. But Reconstruction became a symbol of how quickly political fatigue afflicts liberal democracies. Moreover, understanding Reconstruction as a bourgeois revolution which was strangled in its cradle by vengeful cotton nabobs offers some larger parallels to the optimistic era that prevailed between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Islamic state terrorism.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

War, Democracy, Understanding, Freedom

“Nietzsche … did not settle for a demure civic conversation in the style of Richard Rorty's ironist, or saunter off with the smug nod that registers a deconstructive job neatly done. He was aware that his own criticisms and exposures owed both their motivation and their effect to the spirit of truthfulness. His aim was to see how far the values of truth could be revalued, how they might be understood in a perspective quite different from the Platonic and Christian metaphysics which had provided their principal source in the West up to now.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 18

Truth, Motivation

“My first serious programming work was done in the very early 1960s, in Assembler languages on IBM and Honeywell machines. Although I was a careful designer — drawing meticulous flowcharts before coding — and a conscientious tester, I realised that program design was hard and the results likely to be erroneous. Into the Honeywell programs, which formed a little system for an extremely complex payroll, I wrote some assertions, with run-time tests that halted program execution during production runs. Time constraints didn't allow restarting a run from the beginning of the tape. So for the first few weeks I had the frightening task on several payroll runs of repairing an erroneous program at the operator’s keyboard ¾ correcting an error in the suspended program text, adjusting the local state of the program, and sometimes modifying the current and previous tape records before resuming execution. On the Honeywell 400, all this could be done directly from the console typewriter. After several weeks without halts, there seemed to be no more errors. Before leaving the organisation, I replaced the run-time halts by brief diagnostic messages: not because I was sure all the errors had been found, but simply because there would be no-one to handle a halt if one occurred. An uncorrected error might be repaired by clerical adjustments; a halt in a production run would certainly be disastrous.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Michael A. Jackson (2000), "The Origins of JSP and JSD: a Personal Recollection", in: IEEE Annals of Software Engineering, Volume 22 Number 2, pages 61-63, 66, April-June 2000.

Error, Time, Drawing

“Forty-one years ago that couple from Haiti could have made the choice to abort, but they didn’t. They chose life. They didn’t choose what might have been; they chose what is to come. They went and followed and fostered that life, and the future and the dreams that baby would bring”

Mia Love (1975) American politician

[ Mia Love Delivers Heartfelt Speech at March for Life http://freebeacon.com/issues/mia-love-heartfelt-speech-march-for-life/ (January 27, 2017)

Life, Dreams, Future, Baby

“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that I when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I lived, the breath I breathed.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5, “Rejoining” (p. 286)

Love, Life, World, Thinking

“The painful truth is that while we might have the illusion, none of us are free.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 304

Pain, Truth

“When we are struggling against overwhelming odds, when we are pitting ourselves against the combined might of state apparatus and military power, we are sometimes subject to doubts — usually the doubts of those whose belief in the permanence of an existing order is absolute. It is amazing how many people still remain convinced that it is wise to accept the status quo.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Please Use Your Liberty to Promote Ours (1997)

People

“Now, fornication has come to mean premarital sex almost exclusively in modern English, but this is not its meaning in the Greek, nor the meaning of uncleanness or nakedness of a thing in the Hebrew. Now, since every act of extramarital sex by a husband or wife with a person of the opposite sex is adultery, even though it might be also perversion or it might be incest, it is still adultery. To use a word other than adultery means something else than merely sexual offenses. It refers to this fact of lasciviousness and rebelliousness, and unbelief.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Sex, Personality

“Particularly if the Republicans nominate a more moderate candidate such as Mitt Romney, Obama will not be able to rely on partisan animosity to succeed where job approval has failed. And, given all that, he might not even run.”

Dick Morris (1947) American political commentator and consultant

2011-09-20
Obama might pull out
The Hill
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/182765-obama-might-pull-out
President Barack Obama won the presidential election against Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

“I have always thought it highly injurious to the public that different rules should prevail in the different Courts on the same mercantile case. My opinion has been uniform on that subject. It sometimes indeed happens that in questions of real property Courts of law find themselves fettered with rules, from which they cannot depart, because they are fixed and established rules1; though equity may interpose, not to contradict, but to correct, the strict and rigid rules of law. But in mercantile questions no distinction ought to prevail. The mercantile law of this country is founded on principles of equity; and when once a rule is established in that Court as a rule of property, it ought to be adopted in a Court of law. For this reason Courts of law of late years have said that, even where the action is founded on a tort, they would discover some mode of defeating the plaintiff, unless his action were also founded on equity; and that though the property might on legal grounds be with the plaintiff, if there were any claim or charge by the defendant, they would not consider the retaining of the goods as a conversion.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Tooke v. Hollingworth (1793), 5 T. R. 229.

Law, Question, Country

“In the large sense the primary cause of the Great Depression was the war of 1914-1918. Without the war there would have been no depression of such dimensions. There might have been a normal cyclical recession; but, with the usual timing, even that readjustment probably would not have taken place at that particular period, nor would it have been a "Great Depression."”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Source: The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929-1941 (1952), p. 2: Lead paragraph Chapter 1 : The origins of the Depression.

War, Sense, Time

“When I won the competition, I had just been offered a job as a designer in Düsseldorf, so that’s probably what I’d be doing now. It can be fascinating to consider how your life might have turned out, like in the movie Sliding Doors, but I’m too busy to look back.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Discussing what she would have done if she didn't win a modeling contest at age 19. Quoted by Elisabeth Braw, Metro World News, Canada http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/entertainment/article/446299--talking-healthy-hearts-with-heidi-klum.

Life, Business

“If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe.”

Susan Blackmore (1951) British writer and academic

Life lessons http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5164417-111414,00.html, Guardian, 04/07/2005

Way, Universe

“For a moment, sitting there in above the city, I imagined life outside narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasures and attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself.”

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

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, Pleasure, Peace, Beauty

“People who have taken the [writing] course write eagerly, "Last week I hit "The Country Gentleman"; this week I hit "Mademoiselle"; next week I hope to hit the "American Mother"! Frankly, I don't think this course would suit me; I don't want to hit any of those people, though I might toss a pie at the American Mother, just for fun…”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

People, Hope, Thinking, Country

“You have something that might be more use to me than either gold or power—something that in fact brings both in its train.”
“And what is that?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

The count leaned forward. “Knowledge.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 21, “The Frightened Ones” (p. 491).

Knowledge, Training

“After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

I, 1
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)

Life, Happiness, Fear, Communication

“One thing's for sure, if there's a blackout here in London, you'll find Warren with those boots… you might not see the rest of him!”

Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot

At the 2012 Summer Olympics joking about the colour of a black boxer's luminous footwear. herald.ie http://www.herald.ie/news/irelands-other-big-games-winner-jimmy-magee-3196108.html, JOE.ie http://www.joe.ie/london-2012/olympics-news/jimmy-magees-unfortunate-remark-0027407-1 Olympic Games

“You know, if I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That's a good-looking mummy.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Looking at "Juanita," a newly discovered Incan mummy on display at the National Geographic museum
2000s

“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Donald Davidson. "Radical interpretation." Dialectica 27.3‐4 (1973): p. 324; as cited in; Herman Parret, ‎Jacques Bouveresse (1981) Meaning and Understanding, p. 186

Way, Intelligence, Optimism, Falseness

“Perhaps he'd want me to conjure up an illusion. That might be fun: there was bound to be a way of misinterpreting his request and upsetting him†.
†One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)

Love, Life, Way

“Don't bother answering back. Anything said to me at this point might as well be written on a decomposing squash. The brain goes first, you know -- except the portions dedicated to pain, which are apparently immune.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

Pouf Positive
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Pain

“And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Third Part, Chapter 36, p. 226 (See also: Glossolalia)
Leviathan (1651)

Men, Sense, Time, Madness

“In terms of the 'S' word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done. In terms of An Attempt. Because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain.”

Richey James Edwards (1967–2008) Welsh musician

"Manic's Depressive", NME, 1 October 1994

Pain, Personality

“p>Time's right-hand man, the sea
Laughs as in joy
From his millions of wrinkles:
Laughs that his destiny,
Great with the greatness
Of triumphing order,
Shows as a dwarf
By the strength of his heart
And the might of his hands.Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message: —
'Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XIV

Life, Death, Time, Heart

“How does a person separate true, personal religion from a religion of conformity? Christianity is not really as white and wealthy and judgmental as we might want it to be.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Religion, Personality

“The traditional “cosmological” Multiverse considers that there might be physical realms inaccessible to us due to their separation in space-time. The quantum Multiverse arises from entities that occupy the same space-time, but are distant in Hilbert space – or in the jargon, decoherent.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

"Multiversality" (2013)

Distant, Time

“Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Eighteenth Week.
My Summer in a Garden (1870)

History

“As a right-winger and UKIP member, I believe in immigration. That sentence might sound slightly surprising coming from the General Secretary of a Party which is perceived by the media as anti-immigration. So let me explain. I reject uncontrolled immigration. I reject immigration beyond the ability of our country’s infrastructure to cope. Recently, I’ve been listening to the Bruce Springsteen song ‘American Land’. It starts off well enough, talking about people relocating to America as it grew and helping to build the country. That’s the kind of immigration that I believe in. Those who believe that they can have a better life (in this case in the UK), who come over and are determined to see themselves as part of British culture and will put their heart and soul into improving this country for all of us. I’m talking about the kind of person who is proud to come to the United Kingdom and shows that pride at every opportunity. Such people are a real asset to the country. That’s why I’m so angry at the ‘left-wing’ in British politics, which has consistently pursued an effective open-door immigration policy. Uncontrolled mass immigration doesn’t provide any of those benefits, but instead creates huge cultural problems for us. Worse still, it creates resentment. In Sheffield, I see workers losing their jobs to immigrant workers. All that does is create resentment and fuels the kind of racism that we’ve painstakingly worked to get rid of from our nation.”

Jonathan Arnott (1981) British politician

I believe….in immigration? http://www.jonathanarnott.co.uk/2013/06/i-believe-in-immigration/ (June 23, 2013)

Life, People, Soul, Problem

“I, marry? Oh, I could never bring myself to do it. I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"Methods of Work" (p. 64)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Life, Fear

“No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us who have a moneyed capital and who prefer employing it in loans rather than otherwise, set up banks and give cash or national bills for the notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of their lending for short periods only.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:277
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Money, Nature

“One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti-smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers”

Robert N. Proctor (1954) American historian

Robert N. Proctor, " The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-45 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2352989/pdf/bmj00571-0040.pdf." BMJ: British Medical Journal 313.7070 (1996): 1450.

World, Support

“Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

Tench Coxe (1755–1824) American economist

"Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789, p. 2 col. 1. As quoted in the Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789, A friend of James Madison, writing in support of the Madison's first draft of the Bill of Rights.

People, Country

“In the face of a world where economic hardships often ground the best of the human spirit into the worst, love provided a pathway into hidden chambers of the spirit where nobility and compassion might be salvaged, resurrected, and made stronger.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Love, Art, and Culture, p. 24).
Book Sources, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003)

Love, World

“In this place they knew him and were aware of how hard he had to strain. He would rather be among strangers who might possibly be more like himself. There had to be such people—perhaps far, far away. And there he would be able to learn more easily how to be fast.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

People, Learning

“I might have preferred iron, but bronze will do. It won't rust. And, this time I hope, the head will stay on.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

" Statue of Margaret Thatcher unveiled at British Parliament http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/world/20070221-1456-britain-thatcher-statue.html", Associated Press, 21 February 2007. On the unveiling of a statue of her in the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons. Baroness Thatcher referred to a previous marble statue which was decapitated http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2091200.stm in 2002. Post-Prime Ministerial

Hope, Time

“Our most provident and glorious Creator so furnished countries with severall commodities that amongst all there might be sociable conversation; and, one standing in need of the other, all might be combined in a common league, and exhibite mutuall succours. This abundance of all countries in everything, and defect of every country in most things, maintaineth in all regions and every province a most strict combination. So that, as in the body of the little world, the head cannot say to the foot, nor the foot to the head, 'I stand in no need of thee:' so, in the body of the great world, Europe cannot say to Asia, nor Asia to Africke, 'I want not your commodities, nor am defective in that of which thou boastest of abundance.”

Peter Heylin (1599–1662) English ecclesiastic and author of polemical, historical, political and theological tracts

Microcosmos: a Little Description of the Great World (1621)

World, Country

“News of the atrocities, which have recently been perpetrated by the Turkish king in Constantinople and have now been divulged, has so inflamed a man [Cusa himself] who once saw that region, with zeal for God, that amongst many sighs he asked the Creator of all things if in His kindness He might moderate the persecution, which raged more than usual on account of diverse religious rites. Then it occurred that after several days—indeed on account of lengthy, continuous meditation—a vision was manifested to the zealous man, from which he concluded that it would be possible, through the experience of a few wise men who are well acquainted with all the diverse practices which are observed in religions across the world, to find a unique and propitious concordance, and through this to constitute a perpetual peace in religion upon the appropriate and true course.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Men, God, World, Peace

“I’ll sing you a song of the long ago -
Seven shine the shiners, oh!
What did the Seven do way back when?
Why, they wove the Charter then!
Five for the warp, from beginning to end.
Two for the woof, to make and mend.
That’s the Seven, but what of the Nine-
What of the two who chose not to shine?
The Eighth did hide, hide all away,
But the Seven caught him and made him pay.
The Ninth was strong and fought with might,
But lone Orannis was put out of the light,
Broken in two and buried under hill,
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 525-526.

Lie, Way, Light, Strong

“The great stoic Seneca repeatedly urged his fellow Romans to retire in order to “find themselves,” as we might put it. In the Renaissance, as in ancient Rome, it was part of the well-managed life. You had your period of civic business, then you withdrew to discover what life was really about and to being the long process of preparing for death. Montaigne developed reservations about the second part of this, but there is no doubt about his interest in contemplating life. He wrote: “Let us cut loose from all the ties that bind us to others; let us win from ourselves the power to live really alone and to live that way at our ease.””

Sarah Bakewell book How to Live

Source: How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010), p. 29.

Life, Death, Way, Business

“You might recognize me, I'm the fourth guy from the left on evolutionary chart.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Guy

“the color of the sky as far as I can see is coal gray
lift my head from the pillow and then fall again
with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
a quiver in my lips as if I might cry”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), Like The Weather

Color, Thinking, Cry, Weather

“I thought I might die. But then I thought, 'Other people have made it through these things before'. I kept my eyes on the lights on shore and kept swimming.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

On surviving a plane crash in 1951
Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. p. 16. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. .

People, Light

“Because of the consensus on full employment, certain observations rarely break in to the public political dialogue. These include: … that even if full employment were possible, it might not be desirable in the new kind of society we are entering; and that even today, most of the useful work we do is not structured into paying "jobs."”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: New Options for America (1991), Chapter 6, "Should We Protect Jobs – or Redefine Work?," p. 46.

“But you cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall. I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Full transcripts of Trump's calls with Mexico and Australia By Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya and Reuben Fischer-Baum; Aug. 3, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.95d2f93766d6 (Friday, January 27, 2017) 2010s, 2016, January

“A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."”

John Greenleaf Whittier Maud Muller

Maud Muller (1856)

Love, Life, Law, Joy

“Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress—one might say, the only lever of progress.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

Page 438 https://books.google.com/books?id=-F8wAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA438. Quote republished in " Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1965), p. 22 http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/#p22. "Youth" (1912), II

Youth, Hope, Future

“If I am dead I would like to be buried in a wood coffin (no lead lined casket!) So that my remains can return to where they came from. I understand that this might not be possible though, laws and what not, so don't sweat it.”

Eric Frein (1983) American fugitive

Letter to parents (December 2013)

Law, Understanding, Dead

“Nature might be a great experimentalist, but one who would never pass muster with an ethics review board – contravening the Helsinki Declaration and every norm of moral decency, left, right, and center.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 12

Nature

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons (4 June 1940).
The Second World War (1939–1945)

God, World, Confidence, Time

“What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported—and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores—these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

June “CRITICAL”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Life, People, World, Way

“Music is never wrong. You might not like it, but it’s never wrong. It's such a great way of explaining stuff.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " MUSIC IS NEVER WRONG: A visit with Josh Homme & John Paul Jones of Them Crooked Vultures http://www.arthurmag.com/2009/10/15/them-crooked-vultures/", Arthur Magazine (October 15, 2009).

Music, Way

“One might think that through ecstasy we would have access to a world as far from reality as that of the dream. – The repugnant can become desirable, affection cruelty, the ugly beautiful, faults qualities, qualities black miseries.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote in 'Le phénomene de l'extase', in 'Minotaure' 1933; as quoted in Dali and Me, Catherine Millet, - translation Trista Selous -, Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 8001 Zurich Switzerland, p. 133
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940

World, Beauty, Dreams, Thinking

“It was a real book—onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 14 (p. 150)

Books, Idea

“[Another significant aspect of the concept of growth is the distinction that Mesarovic and Pestel draw between "undifferentiated" and "organic" growth. The former type of growth, according to these authors, consists of mere replication of cells by cellular division, usually expotentially, with an increase in quantity alone. The latter type of growth] involves a process of differentiation, which means that various groups of cells begin to differ in structure and function… During and after differentiation the number of cells can still increase, and the organs grow in size, but while some organs grow, others might celine.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

As cited in: Joel Jay Kassiola (1990) The Death of Industrial Civilization. p. 48
Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974)

Drawing

“Miss Tillings: Stand up, Nigel Barton! Well, Nigel, do you know anything about this? I can't believe it was you!
Nigel Barton: No, Miss!
Miss Tillings: Then what do you know about it?
Nigel Barton: I think - I think I might have had the daffodil, Miss—
Miss Tillings: You might have had it? What do you mean, boy? Speak up!
Nigel Barton: The stem was all broke and somebody gave it to me, Miss.
Miss Tillings: Who gave it to you?
Nigel Barton: Ooh, I don't like to say, Miss.
Miss Tillings: You better had, Barton, and quick about it.
Nigel Barton: Georgie Pringle, Miss.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Barton incriminates Pringle, who has bullied him, in the crime of destroying the class's daffodil; the daffodil was actually destroyed by Barton himself.
Stand up, Nigel Barton (1965)

Boy, Thinking

“When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched.
And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

This last line has often been paraphrased: "You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them."
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer (1966)

Happiness, Dogs, Dreams, Sense

“If the sewing societies, the avails of whose industry are now expended in supporting and educating young men for the ministry, were to withdraw their contributions to these objects, and give them where they are more needed, to their advancement of their own sex in useful learning, the next generation might furnish sufficient proof, that in intelligence and ability to master the whole circle of sciences, woman is not inferior to man.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 15 (October 20, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Men, Education, Sex, Intelligence

“Take a moment to remember the times on your own spiritual quest when you felt most enthusiastic. We want to pinpoint the times in which we felt more God conscious and devotional than ever before. Conversely, look at the times when you felt unenthused and do a similar analysis. These questions might help stimulate your thought process: Are you enthusiastic about your existence as a servant of the Lord? Are you enthusiastic to follow the basic principles that will help elevate your consciousness? Are you enthusiastic in the association of saintly people? Are you enthusiastic about what you can experience in your purest state? We must examine our spiritual life on a daily, weekly, and even yearly basis. This examination will help us recognize how various activities and thoughts affect us. We should note how the quality of our experiences varies according to our absorption in the process of bhakti.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior V: Making the Mind Your Best Friend (Hari-Nama Press, 2003), Chapter 4 - The Necessity of Enthusiasm

Life, God, People, Question

“The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists—and all those who abuse public credulity—is founded on errors in this type of calculation.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (Imprimerie royale, 1784), trans. Stephen Jay Gould, "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 195

People, Art, Error, Thinking

“Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, Truth, Democracy, Freedom

“Roecker sure is a romantic about certain things, like art and music, though you might not know it from watching Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, his claymation musical retelling of the Helter Skelter Charlie Manson saga.”

John Roecker (1966) American film director

[LA Weekly, http://www.laweekly.com/2006-03-02/news/punk-puppet-apocalypse/, LA Weekly LP, Lina, Lecaro, Punk Puppet Apocalypse: Starring members of Green Day, Rancid, X and more, Live Freaky! Die Freaky! is guaranteed to offend, February 28, 2006]
About

Art, Music

“"It might interest you to know that our state is tired of being used as a chemical toilet so that people in Utah can have plastic lawn furniture."
"I can't believe an assistant attorney general came right out and said that."
"Well, I wouldn't say it in public."”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

"Cohen," the assistant attorney general of an unnamed East Coast state meeting covertly with Sangamon Taylor near the Jersey Shore. Chapter 11
Zodiac (1988)

People

“A rolling stone gathers no moss.'
Try as I might I could not remember the meaning. At last I hazarded, 'Well, it means a person who's always active and never pauses to reflect — ' No, that didn't sound right. I tried again. 'That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral stature won't grow stale.' He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, 'I mean, a man who's active and doesn't let grass grow under his feet, he'll get ahead in life.'
Doctor Nisea said, 'I see.' And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.
'What does it mean?' I asked. 'Did I get it backward?'
'Yes, I'm afraid so. The generally-accepted meaning of the proverb is the opposite of what you've given; it is generally taken to mean that a person who — '
'You don't have to tell me,' I broke in. 'I remember — I really knew it. A person who's unstable will never acquire anything of value.”

Philip K. Dick book We Can Build You

Source: We Can Build You (1972), chapter 17, page 224.

Life, Way, Thinking, Grass

“You get tired of dealing with how other people think of what you're doing. It finally gets to the point where you realize that if you're going to do it the way you want, you have to do it yourself. That might mean putting up the money to do it yourself.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Source: As quoted in "Voicing With a Heart"

Money, People, Way, Thinking

“Of what value is the study of management?
The study of management has been omitted from the student's training until comparatively recently, for a very different reason than was psychology. It was never doubted that a knowledge of management would be of great value to anyone and everyone, and many were the queer schemes for obtaining that knowledge after graduation. It was doubted that management could be studied otherwise than by observation and practice. Few teachers, if any, believed in the existence, or possibility, of a teaching science of management. Management was assumed by many to be an art, by even more it was thought to be a divinely bestowed gift or talent, rather than an acquired accomplishment. It was common belief that one could learn to manage only by going out on the work and watching other managers, or by trying to manage, and not by studying about management in a class room or in a text book; that watching a good manager might help one, but no one could hope really to succeed who had not " the knack born in him."”

Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) American psychologist and industrial engineer

Source: Psychology of management, 1914, p. 2-3

Books, Hope, Art, Knowledge

“Given the profits he and Pharaoh must have made, one might call Joseph the first international arbitrageur.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

Source: The (Mis)Behavior of Markets (2004, 2008), Ch. 10, p. 201 (A reference to Genesis 41:48–49, 54–57.)

“It was for the purpose of guarding against another outlet of expenditure that he exhorted the Committee to pause before they recognised the principle of extending their possessions in tropical climates. He said tropical climates, because there was a great difference between acquiring territory where the race might become indigenous, so as to extend commerce and to spread the principle of self-government over the world, and taking possession of tropical territory, where their own race was not indigenous, where Government must be upheld by force, and where there was no prospect of being able to disembarrass themselves of the responsibility of governing the people.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1850/jul/19/supply-western-coast-of-africa-and in the House of Commons (19 July 1850). 1850s

People, World

“Animated the face might have been beautiful — any set of features can support beauty — but even a superb makeup job could not have made her pretty.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

God Is An Iron (1977)

Beauty, Support, Animals

“Fretting about a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up its last reserves of ignorance.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 2, Random Resources, p. 23

“We are testing popular government's capacity for self-defense. We are resolved to liberate the soul of American life and prove ourselves an American people in fact, spirit, and purpose, and consecrate ourselves anew and everlastingly to human freedom and humanity's justice. Realizing our new relationship with the world, we want to make it fit to live in, and with might and fright and wrathfulness and barbarity crushed by the conscience of a real civilization. Ours is a small concern about the kind of government any people may choose, but we do mean to outlaw the nation which violates the sacred compacts of international relationships. The decision is to be final.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1910s, The Republic Must Awaken (1917)

Life, People, World, Justice

““I’m a man of my word,” Jeevan said. At that point in his directionless life he wasn’t sure if this was true or not, but it was nice to think that it might be.”

Emily St. John Mandel book Station Eleven

Source: Station Eleven (2014), Chapter 27 (p. 171)

Life, Thinking

“Ptolemy… against the champions of this or that cosmology of the heavens… had dared to claim that it is legitimate to interpret the facts of astronomy by the simplest geometrical scheme which will 'save the phenomena,' no matter whose metaphysics might be upset. His conception of the physical structure of the earth, however, prevented him from carrying through in earnest this principle of relativity, as his objections to the hypothesis that the earth moves amply show.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 35

“Trust yourselves, my brethren, to the immortal love and perfect work of the Divine Saviour, and by His dear might your days will advance by peaceful stages, whereof each gathers up and carries forward the blessings of all that went before, to a death which shall be a birth.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 590.

Love, Death, Peace, Birth

“Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

" Poor Matthias http://www.flippyscatpage.com/frompoormatthias.html" (1867)

Cats

“Special pleading that the standards of science should be lessened to admit explanations with no falsifiable consequences, in order to keep alive a bold speculative idea, should be strongly resisted. …ultimately science is not interested in what might be true, it is interested only in what can be convincingly demonstrated by deductions from observational evidence.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"A perspective on the landscape problem" arXiv (Feb 15, 2012)

Idea, Science

“Argument is conclusive… but… it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may never rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment. For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns, his hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.”

Roger Bacon (1220–1292) medieval philosopher and theologian

Cited in: Carol A. Dingle (2000) Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization. p. 21

Truth, Knowledge, Learning

“All these riches, then, of her theology the Church has acquired, one might almost say, like the British Empire, in a fit of absence of mind. She was so busy scrapping with the heretics that she wasn't conscious of saying anything she hadn't always said; and yet, when she had time to sit down and look about her, she found it took ten minutes to sing the Credo instead of three.”

Ronald Knox (1888–1957) English priest and theologian

The Hidden Stream (1952). London: Burns Oates, p. 142.
Knox alludes to John Robert Seeley's much-quoted statement in The Expansion of England (1883) that "we seem, as it were, to have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind".

Business, Singing, Time

“I have learned a great deal from Marxism as I do not hesitate to admit… The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it… National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: Disputed, Hitler Speaks (1940), p. 186

Learning

“I used to do Grade Exams, but my mum will tell you I didn't over-practise for them at all. I never practised, just played. I loved to play. I loved to play a lot* If one mistake is made with young children, it is trying to make them practise rather than just letting them play.' She played hymns at church ('My parents were very religious when we were young') and 'all the Top of the Pops number ones next morning at school. Things like David Bowie's "Life On Mars". That's got a very good piano part. And ever since I was six or seven years old, I always liked Bach - that's why I recorded the Anna Magdalene Notebook, little 16-bar preludes that Bach wrote for children.' I was amazed at how serious the other kids were about the whole thing, much more disciplined than I was, and with this attitude of "Ooh, I can't play sports because I might hurt my fingers" or "I can't listen to pop music because that's really terrible.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Childhood

Love, Life, Children, School

“Science requires faith, the way religion does. Science requires acceptance of metaphor, just the way religion does. “Does science cause wars, the way religion does?” you might ask. I would say those conflicts are actually about territory, either ideological or physical, and that those ideas are materialistic in the same way science is—and the weapons with which those wars are fought, who creates those?”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

War, Faith, Religion, Way

“You might have noticed that I never complain about politicians. I leave that to others. And there's no shortage of volunteers; everyone complains about politicians. Everyone says they suck. But where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky; they don't pass through a membrane from a separate reality. They come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, and American businesses. And they're elected by American voters. This is what our system produces, folks. This is the best we can do. Let's face it, we have very little to work with. Garbage in, garbage out.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Napalm and Silly Putty (2001)

People, School, Family, Home

“When I first painted a number of canvases grey all over (about eight years ago), I did so because I did not know what to paint, or what there might be to paint: so wretched a start could lead to nothing meaningful. As time went on, however, I observed differences of quality among the grey surfaces – and also that these betrayed nothing of the destructive motivation that lay behind them. The pictures began to teach me. By generalizing a personal dilemma, they resolved it.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote of Richter on his 'Grey Paintings', in a letter to nl:Edy de Wilde, 23 February 1975; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Grey-paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/grey-paintings-9 1970's

Motivation, Time, Painting, Personality

“That combination, Hayek, Myrdal and Robinson, might have cast the contributions of each into sharper relief: three pioneers who, after important early contributions, gave up economics for political activism.”

David Warsh (1944) American journalist

"Ruizismus among the Austrians," 4 December 2011

“The universe must be law-abiding, and if Christ suspended law it would be a criticism of his Father as one whose laws were inadequate for certain possible situations which might arise. "We say," said St. Augustine profoundly, "that all portents (miracles) are contrary to nature, but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing?"”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.106 (Augustine: The City of God. 21:8)

God, Law, Nature, Universe

“Doing the opposite might make you feel uncomfortable. It can be scary and make you feel lonely and exposed. It is never easy to be seen as going against the grain and ignoring the advice of your colleagues, friends or family, but if you are prepared to explain what you are doing and why, they will come round.”

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

Family, Feeling