Quotes about might
page 48

“Did [Franz von] Papen really see nothing in National Socialism but its nationalism, could he have overlooked its revolutionary ‘dynamism,’ its restless and boundless revolutionary energy? That is exactly what happened… the monarchist elements imagine that they would easily put those attractive young men in their place. But there was another motive, the fear of the masses and of a revolution of the Left, the fear that the National Socialist masses might go over to the extreme Left.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 9

Men, Fear, Imagination, Motivation

“Personally, having lived through all these European disturbances and studied carefully their causes, I am of the opinion that if the Allies at the peace table at Versailles had not imagined that the sweeping away of long-established dynasties was a form of progress, and if they had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach, and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler. To Germany, a symbolic point on which the loyalties of the military classes could centre would have been found, and a democratic basis of society might have been preserved by a crowned Weimar in contact with the victorious Allies.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Telegram (26 April 1945) to Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, British Ambassador to Turkey, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 1314
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Peace, Imagination, Study, Victory

“Powell described British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) as "if there be a conflict between the call of country and that of party, the call of country must come first" and went on to say: Curiously, it so happens that the question 'Who governs Britain?' which at the moment is being frivolously posed, might be taken, in real earnest, as the title of what I have to say. This is the first and last election at which the British people will be given the opportunity to decide whether their country is to remain a democratic nation, governed by the will of its own electorate expressed in its own Parliament, or whether it will become one province in a new European superstate under institutions which know nothing of the political rights and liberties that we have so long taken for granted.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to an audience of around 1,500 people on 23 February 1974 about British membership of the EEC. (Collings, Rex, ed. (1991), Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell, P. 454).
1970s

People, Communication, Question, Country

“The modern poet is above all things honest. He does not write for fame nor for money. He merely writes to vent his own spleen, his own bitterness. His own sense of disparity between the ugliness of the world that is and the beauty of the world that might be.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Phases in English Poetry (1928)

Money, World, Beauty, Sense

“There exists also another type of galaxy agglomeration. These have diameters between roughly one and ten times those of large clusters, but have much smaller densitities; they are usually irregular, with patchy density variations and no central concentration. The larger and most conspicuous of these agglomerations may contain several clusters, which explains why they have been given the name "superclusters." In their longer dimensions, crossing times exceed the age of the Universe. They are thus unrelaxed. Unrelaxed apperance, together with large size, might be taken as a definition of superclusters.”

Jan Oort (1900–1992) Dutch astronomer

(quote from p. 373)

Age, Universe, Time

“But taking note of these things, at the last
The mariner beneath the gateway passed.
And there a lovely cloistered court he found,
A fountain in the mist o'erthrown and dry,
And in the cloister briers twining round
The slender shafts; the wondrous imagery
Outworn by more than many years gone by;
Because the country people, in their fear
Of wizardry, had wrought destruction here,
And piteously these fair things had been maimed;
There stood great Jove, lacking his head of might;
Here was the archer, swift Apollo, lamed;
The shapely limbs of Venus hid from sight
By weeds and shards; Diana's ankles light
Bound with the cable of some coasting ship;
And rusty nails through Helen's maddening lip.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Love, People, Fear, Light

“Repealing drug laws would remove the risks involved with producing and distributing drugs, bringing 'street prices' crashing down (it's estimated that a 'spoon' of heroin would cost about a quarter in the free market), thereby eradicating any incentive that criminals might have to compete with legitimate businesses, and greatly reducing — if not eliminating altogether — any economic reason to 'push' drugs on children.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs".

Children, Law, Business

“If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Osnos, Evan. “ It’s Not Beautiful: An Artist Takes On the System http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/24/100524fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all.” New Yorker, May 24, 2010, 54–63. 2010-, 2010

“States care about relative wealth, because economic might is the foundation of military might.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 5, Strategies for Survival, p. 143

Wealth

“Slow but sure moves the might of the gods.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Bacchæ l. 882
Variant translation: Slowly but surely withal moveth the might of the gods.

God

“In any case, the thought of a catastrophe or holocaust unleashed by accidental (i. e. nonhistorical) causes might be very unsettling to any Marxists who had a passionate belief in a deterministic theory of history. Instead of saying "It is inevitable that we will take over the world in fifty years", this Marxist would have to add, "Always assuming some capitalist fool doesn't press the button."”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

World, Fools, History, Passion

“Thus Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in liveliest gaudeamus, and sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe crowns of honour, and solemnly thank the gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shewn himself. As indeed they well might; for what usefuller, I say not nobler and heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any Tribe or Nation, in any time or circumstances?”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

God, Singing, Time

““I think you should know that I’m a devout Christian.” I took that to mean that my new servant wholeheartedly disapproved of almost everything I might say or do.”

George Alec Effinger book A Fire in the Sun

Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 30).

Thinking

“If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.The outrage in Ferguson is understandable—though there is never an excuse for rioting or looting. There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action.”

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

2010s

War, Peace, Understanding

“In the administration of justice, whether by a recognised legal Court or by persons who, although not a legal public Court, are acting in a similar capacity, public policy requires that, in order that there should be no doubt about the purity of the administration, any person who is to take part in it should not be in such a position that he might be suspected of being biassed.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

Allinson v. General Council of Medical Education and Registration (1894), L. R. [1894], 1 Q. B. p. 758.

Justice, Parting, Personality

“The tabloids are like animals, with their own behavioural patterns. There’s no point in complaining about them, any more than complaining that lions might eat you.”

David Mellor (1949) former British politician, non-practising barrister, broadcaster, journalist and businessman

Quoted in The Independent (1992-11-03) following his resignation in September of that year.

Animals

“The unremitting division of labour resulted in admirable levels of productivity. The company’s success appeared to bear out the principles of efficiency laid down at the turn of the twentieth century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorized that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields. In an ideal Paretan economy, jobs would be ever more finely subdivided to allow for the accumulation of complex skills, which would then be traded among workers. … But however great the economic advantages of segmenting the elements of an afternoon’s work into a range of forty-year-long careers, there was reason to wonder about the unintended side effects of doing so. In particular, one felt tempted to ask … how meaningful the lives might feel as a result.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009)

Feeling, Knowledge, Appearance, Success

“And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!”

George Gordon Byron book Hebrew Melodies

The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 6.
Hebrew Melodies (1815)

“The presently existing global financial and monetary system will disintegrate during the near term. The collapse might occur this spring, or summer, or next autumn; it could come next year; it will almost certainly occur during President William Clinton's first term in office; it will occur soon. That collapse into disintegration is inevitable, because it could not be stopped now by anything but the politically improbable decision by leading governments to put the relevant financial and monetary institutions into bankruptcy reorganization.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

"The Coming Disintegration of Financial Markets" (June 1994) http://spanish.larouchepac.com/static/about-larouche.html.

Spring, Autumn, Decision, Summer

“We might even predict annually how many individuals will stain their hands with the blood of their fellow-men, how many will be forgers, how many will deal in poison, pretty nearly in the same way as we may foretell annual births and deaths.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Death, Men, Way, Birth

“Our descendants will learn much more about nature, and they will invent gadgets even cooler than smart phones. But their scientific version of reality will resemble ours, for two reasons: First, ours… is in many respects true; most new knowledge will merely extend and fill in our current maps of reality rather than forcing radical revisions. Second, some major remaining mysteries—Where did the universe come from? How did life begin? How, exactly, does a chunk of meat make a mind?—might be unsolvable.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Life, Nature, Knowledge, Reality

“There's a little group of isles beyond the wave,
So tiny you might almost wonder where it is—
That nation is the bravest of the brave,
And cowards are the rarest of all rarities.
The proudest nations kneel at her command,
She terrifies all foreign-born rap-scallions;
And holds the peace of Europe in her hand
With half a score invincible battalions.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Final chorus.
Utopia Limited (1893)

Peace

“The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 36-37.

Age, Soul

“Really! This might be Roumania!”

Mary of Teck (1867–1953) Queen consort of the United Kingdom Empress of India

Of the Abdication Crisis, 1936.
James Pope-Hennessy, Life of Queen Mary (1959), ch.7., ii.

“By the time of its disappearance at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, it was no longer plausible to argue that the Soviet Union offered a clear alternative to the ‘right-wing extremism’ of fascism. In fact, it was no longer clear what ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ might be taken to mean in terms of the major revolutions of the twentieth century.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 6

Time

“I became interested in writing this book approximately ten years ago when, having become established as a psychiatrist, I became increasingly impressed by the vague, capricious and generally unsatisfactory character of the widely used concept of mental illness and its corollaries, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.
Although (mental illness) might have been a useful concept in the nineteenth century, today it is scientifically worthless and socially harmful.
In non-psychiatric circles mental illness all too often is considered to be whatever psychiatrists say it is. The answer to the question, Who is mentally ill? thus becomes: Those who are confined in mental hospitals or who consult psychiatrists in their private offices.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Preface to the First Edition.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961)

Books, Question

“Most poetry involves rhythmically structured or patterned language, avoiding what might be called 'a singing line.”

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

The Details interview with Jay Ruzesky (Winter 2008)

Singing

“Might a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings — nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Pall Mall Gazette (1924) on HG Wells' suggestion of an atomic bomb, in "BBC Article" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33365776 Early career years (1898–1929)

Secret

“The present volume to this point might be regarded as a gloss on a single text of Harold Innis: "The effect of the discovery of printing was evident in the savage religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Application of power to communication industries hastened the consolidation of vernaculars, the rise of nationalism, revolution, and new outbreaks of savagery in the twentieth century."”

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

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 216; McLuhan here quotes "Minerva's Owl" (1947), by Innis, an address to the Royal Society of Canada, published in The Bias of Communication (1951)

War, Communication

“This is such a big deal, and my life is so simple. There are very few things — there's love, and work, and family. And I'd like to thank all my families, all the tribes that I come from and, most importantly, my mother Brandy who taught me that all my finger paintings were Picasso's and that I didn't have to be afraid. And, mostly, that cruelty might be very human, and it might be very cultural, but it's not acceptable.”

Jodie Foster (1962) American actor, film director and producer

Oscar Acceptance Speech, 1989 Academy Awards, Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Accused.

Love, Life, Family, Painting

“One is left with the uneasy feeling that even if supersymmetry is actually false, as a feature of nature, and that accordingly no supersymmetry partners are ever found by the LHC or by any later more powerful accelerator, then the conclusion that some supersymmetry proponents might come to would not be that supersymmetry is false for the actual particles of nature, but merely that the level of supersymmetry breaking must be greater even that the level reached at that moment, and that a new even more powerful machine would be required to observe it!”

Roger Penrose book Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe

Source: Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (2016), Ch. 1, Mathematical Elegance as a Driving Force, pp. 102–103

Feeling, Nature, Falseness

“There is no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"”

Kate DiCamillo book Flora & Ulysses

Source: Flora & Ulysses (2013), Chapter One: A Natural-Born Cynic, p. 7

Thinking

“I have to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Ministers are like fraudsters in the fairy tale, telling gullible Liberal Democrat MPs about the beautiful progressive clothes that the emperor is wearing, if only they are clever enough and loyal enough to see them. And desperately, we have Liberal Democrats clinging to shreds of invisible cloth, reaching deep into their Liberal and Conservative history to pretend that they can be progressive now. They are claiming that Keynes might have backed the Budget. They are calling on Beveridge for support, kidding themselves that they can call on their history and that they are following in the footsteps of great liberal Conservatives like Winston Churchill, who supported the minimum wage, but the truth is that the emperor has no clothes.
The truth is that if you look at the detail, the Budget is nastier than any brought in by Margaret Thatcher. Instead of Churchill, Keynes or the founders of the welfare state, the Liberal Democrats have signed up, with the Right Honourable Member for Chingford and his Chancellor, to cut support for the poor. It is perhaps apt that in this week of World Cup disappointments, it was actually a footballer who got it right. In 2002, after England were defeated in the World Cup by Brazil, Gareth Southgate reflected ruefully on England's performance and said:
"We were expecting Winston Churchill and instead got Iain Duncan Smith."
That is the reality for the Liberal Democrats now. With all their high hopes, they have betrayed the poor and the vulnerable, whom they stood up to defend.
[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb) rose]
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I know he has a history of supporting people on low incomes and I do not know why he is betraying it now.”

Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician

During a budget response debate http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100628/debtext/100628-0012.htm, 28 July, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtORBuxY0MU.

People, Truth, World, Beauty

“My grandfather, P Morton Shand, […] declared that ‘A woman who cannot make soup should not be allowed to marry’. You might not agree with his rants, but there was no doubting his passion for proper food”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

The Duchess of Cornwall during a speech for the launch of British Food Fortnight in London A speech by HRH The Duchess of Cornwall to mark the launch of British Food Fortnight, Westminster Cathedral, London 22 April 2010 http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/media/speeches/speech-hrh-the-duchess-of-cornwall-mark-the-launch-of-british-food-fortnight

Food, Passion

“And I am very happy to have the boat motif because, when I grew up, in summer with my parents we were always in Massachusetts, and I was always by the sea. You know, sometimes little boys love cars, but I had a particular passion for boats, and now I live by the sea. For sure, it is a passage, but it's also very fascinating for lots of things. When you get interested in something you can find out a lot about things. You might meet people who are interested in one subject or another, like they collect palms. I've found people from all over the world who were fanatical about palms, which you wouldn't know unless you were interested in palms. And the sea: because, if you've noticed, the sea is white three quarters of the time, just white – early morning. Only in the fall does it get blue, because the haze is gone. The Mediterranean [where Twombly is living later in his life], at least – the Atlantic is brown – is just always white, white, white. And then, even when the sun comes up, it becomes a lighter white... Not because I paint it white; I'd have painted it white even if it wasn't, but I am always happy that I might have. It's something that has other consciousness behind it.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), pp. 174-175

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“On the positive side, at least we know now what to stock up with in case of a nuclear war. Also filmstars might consider injecting liquidized McD into their faces to halt the ageing process.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

Supporting the claims that fast food is slow to decompose, as quoted in "Real foods spoil very quickly, fast foods not" http://www.bihartimes.in/Maneka/Real_foods_spoil_very_quicklY,_fast_foods_not.html, The Bihar Times (27 October 2010) 2001-2010

War, Age

“We don’t realize that in the sizzle of our steaks there is the suffering of animals, the mining of our topsoil, the slashing of our forests, the harming of our economy, and the eroding of our health. We don’t hear in the sizzle the cry of the hungry millions who might otherwise be fed. We don’t see the toxic poisons accumulating in the food chains, poisoning our children and our earth for generations to come. But once we become aware of the impact of our food choices, we can never really forget… All things are deeply connected, and so the choices we make in our daily lives have enormous influence, not only on our own health and vitality, but also on the lives of other beings, and indeed on the destiny of life on earth. Thankfully, we have cause to be grateful—what’s best for us personally is also best for other forms of life, and for the life support systems on which we all depend.”

John Robbins book Diet for a New America

Source: Diet for a New America (1987), Ch. 12: All Things Are Connected

Life, Children, Health, Food

“I have no Politics. I am for the Party that is out of Power, no matter which one it is. But I will give you my word that, in case of my appointment, I will not be a Republican; I will do my best to pull with you, and not embarrass you. In fact, my views on European affairs are so in accord with you, Mr. President, that I might almost be suspected of being a Democrat.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Humorous letter to Republican US President Warren Harding, facetiously offering to replace the American ambassador to the Court of St. James in England.
The Illiterate Digest (1924)

“Though fancy and the might of rhyme,
That turneth like the tide,
Have borne me many a musing time,
Beloved, from thy side

Ah yet, I pray thee, deem not Sweet,
Those hours were given in vain;
Within these covers to thy feet
I bring them back again”

Archibald Lampman (1861–1899) Canadian poet

Dedication to His Wife, Among the Millet and Other Poems (J. Duire & Son Ottawa 1888).

Time

“This is sad. I just think it’s a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It’s a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I’m so proud to be one of you and I don’t care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it’s up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN!”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

Hayley on her Tumblr talking about Nikki Simmons (lead singer of the rock/metal upcoming band Morningside http://www.facebook.com/themorningside) who was being cyber-bullied because she looks like Hayley. http://yelyahwilliams.tumblr.com/post/8459667145

People, Sadness, Music, Thinking

“‘When I say “mind,”’ said the blood relation, ‘I refer to the quarter-teaspoonful of brain which you might possibly find in her head if you sank an artesian well.’”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves in the Offing

Jeeves in the Offing (1960)

“Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 1207.
Criticism

“The artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Future

“We might have a chance now to rebuild it all with what we have left. We might have learned that we can exist only as a part of nature, not apart from nature.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Rebellers (1963), p. 155

Nature, Learning, Chance, Parting

“The might which kills outright is an elementary and coarse form of might. How much more varied in its devices; how much more astonishing in its effects is that other which does not kill; or which delays killing.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

La force qui tue est une forme sommaire, grossière de la force. Combien plus variée en ses procédés, combien plus surprenante en ses effets, est l'autre force, celle qui ne tue pas; c'est-à-dire celle qui ne tue pas encore.
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 155
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941)

“Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1.

Life, Death, Law, Beauty

“We're all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he's grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. What is he likely to know about what goes into the processing of the natural gas that fuels his oven? For that matter, what does he know about oven manufacture? Then, there are all the ingredients he uses -- flour, sugar, yeast, vanilla and milk. Is he likely to know how to grow wheat and sugar and how to protect the crop from diseases and pests? What is he likely to know about vanilla extraction and yeast production? Just as important is the question of how all the people who produce and deliver all these items know what he needs and when he needs them. There are literally millions of people cooperating with one another to ensure that the baker has all the necessary inputs. It's the miracle of the market and prices that gets the job done so efficiently. What's called the market is simply a collection of millions upon millions of independent decision makers not only in America but around the world. Who or what coordinates the activities all of these people? Rest assuredly it's not a bakery czar.”

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

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

People, World, Disease, Question

“Gentlemen, ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. [Great applause. ] But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet tonight as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. [Loud and prolonged cheers. ] And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war. ["Good," "good," and loud cheers. ] Many convictions have sunk so deep into our hearts that we can never forget them. Think of the elevating spirit of the war itself. We gathered the boys from all our farms and shops and stores and schools and homes, from all over the Republic. They went forth unknown to fame, but returned enrolled on the roster of immortal heroes. [Great applause. ] They went in the spirit of the soldiers of Henry at Agincourt, of whom he said. 'For he today that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile. This day shall gentle his condition.'”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

Life, Men, War, Truth

“I believe that the intelligence of the people in Scotland is superior to the intelligence of the people in England. I take it from these facts. Before going to the meetings, we often asked the committee or the people with whom we came in contact, "Are there any fallacies which the working people hold on this question? Have they any crotchets about machinery, or wages, or anything else?" And the universal reply was, "No; you may make a speech about what you like; they understand the question thoroughly; and it is no use confining yourself to machinery or wages, for there are few men, probably no man here, who would be taken in by such raw jests as those." …I told them that they were the people who should have repeal of the Union; for that, if they are separate from England, they might have a government wholly popular and intelligent, to a degree which I believe does not exist in any other country on the face of the earth. However, I believe they will be disposed to press us on, and make us become more and more intelligent; and we may receive benefits from our contact with them, even though, for some ages to come, our connexion with them may be productive of evil to themselves.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Manchester (January 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 84-85.
1840s

Men, People, Age, Intelligence

“In the dark, I like to read his mind
But I'm frightened of the things I might find.”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Voices Carry" · Official video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uejh-bHa4To · Live 1985 performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCO-dzitHIE Song lyrics, Voices Carry (1985)

Reading

“The place that the Lord sat on was simple, on the earth, barren and desert, alone in wilderness; his clothing was ample and full seemly, as falleth to a Lord; the colour of his cloth was blue as azure, most sad and fair. his cheer was merciful; the colour of his face was fair-brown, — with full seemly features; his eyes were black, most fair and seemly, shewing full of lovely pity, and, within him, an high Regard, long and broad, all full of endless heavens. And the lovely looking wherewith He looked upon His Servant continually, — and especially in his falling, — methought it might melt our hearts for love and burst them in two for joy. The fair looking shewed of a seemly mingledness which was marvellous to behold: the one was Ruth and Pity, the other was Joy and Bliss. The Joy and Bliss passeth as far Ruth and Pity as Heaven is above earth: the Pity was earthly and the Bliss was heavenly.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Love, Sadness, Heart, Joy

“If you are looking for a story about cheerful youngsters spending a jolly time at boarding school, look elsewhere. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent and resourceful children, and you might expect that they would do very well at school. Don't. For the Baudelaires, school turns out to be another miserable episode in their unlucky lives.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

Children, School, Intelligence, Time

“I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples — faraway peoples — so that Americans might better understand themselves.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Cited in: Justin Wintle (2002) Makers of Modern Culture. Vol. 1, p. 350
1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972

Life, People, Understanding, Study

“In our imaginations the adults of our childhood remain extreme, essential — we might say radical since they are the roots that fed luxuriant later systems. Those first bohemians, for instance, stay operatic in memory even though were we to meet them today — well, what would we think, we who've elaborated our eccentricities with a patience, a professionalism they never knew?”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Four (p. 92).

Imagination, Thinking, Memory, Childhood

“America is my home — I believe in her promise and I will do what I can to secure that promise for future generations of our children. America is great — not because of our military might or our economic strength — but because of the greatness of Americans, and I welcome the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder, side by side with all of you to preserve our heritage rich in "liberty and justice for all."”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Remarks at his installation as Attorney General.

Children, Justice, Home, Future

“I cheerfully admit that we are indebted to Christianity for some learning, and that the human mind has been developed by the discussion of the absurdities of superstition. Certainly millions and millions have had what might be called mental exercise, and their minds may have been somewhat broadened by the examination, even, of these absurdities, contradictions, and impossibilities.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Exercises, Learning

“Thomas Friedman dismissed the protesters in Quebec City as members of the "Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor." …The Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor might as well disband; its apparent goal is being accomplished in spades by pro-market forces. If the prospects of the world's poor improving their lot is one that supposedly upsets anti-capitalist protestors, they can confidently put their gas masks and get back to the shopping mall - global capitalism can be trusted to keep the poor in check without any help.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

People, World, Confidence, Help

“And how often do we meet the man who prefaces his remarks with: "I was reading a book last night…" in the too loud, overenunciated fashion of one who might be saying: "I keep a hippogryph in my basement."”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

Reading confers status.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books, Fashion, Reading, Night

“To take another simile [that the brain is like a machine], if we imagine a great library containing books which have a vast number of cross references one to another, then should one whole shelf be burned, it might be possible to reconstruct the lost books -- but somewhat less perfectly than at first.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), On Cognition and Recognition, p. 302

Books, Imagination

“The sheer decibel level of unreason surrounding the issue of abortion in academic writing about animal rights tells us something interesting. It suggests that, contrary to what the utilitarians and feminists working this terrain wish, the dots between sympathy for animals and sympathy for unborn humans are in fact quite easy to connect—so easy, you might say, that a child could do it. … Since ethical vegetarianism as a practice appears commonly rooted in an a priori aversion to violence against living creatures, so does it often appear to begin in the young. … A sudden insight, igniting empathy on a scale that did not exist before and perhaps even a life-transforming realization—this reaction should indeed be thought through with care. It is not only the most commonly cited feature of the decision to become a vegetarian. It is also the most commonly cited denominator of what brings people to their convictions about the desperate need to protect unborn, innocent human life. … Despite those who act and write in their name, actual vegetarians and vegans are far more likely to be motivated by positive feelings for animals than by negative feelings for human beings. As a matter of theory, the line connecting the dots between “we should respect animal life” and “we should respect human life” is far straighter than the line connecting vegetarianism to antilife feminism or antihumanist utilitarianism.”

Mary Eberstadt American writer

"Pro-Animal, Pro-Life" https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/06/pro-animal-pro-life, in First Things (June 2009).

Life, People, Feeling, Motivation

“Why haven't they got cameras? The officials can speak to each other easily enough now. Why aren't we using laptops that are linked up and can give a decision in five seconds? A chimpanzee could do it - with not much training. We might as well go back to being cavemen, grab our girl by the hair, drag her into the cave whether she wants to come in or not because we may as well live in that age. We've come forward, haven't we?”

Ian Holloway (1963) English association football player and manager

Sport Quotes of the Week, Charles, Chris, 2009-10-14, BBC Sport, 2009-10-14, Quotez http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/8302454.stm, Sourced quotes

Age, Girl, Decision, Training

“There was no way, without full understanding, that one could have confidence that conditions the next time might not produce erosion three times more severe than the time before. Nevertheless, officials fooled themselves into thinking they had such understanding and confidence, in spite of the peculiar variations from case to case. A mathematical model was made to calculate erosion. This was a model based not on physical understanding but on empirical curve fitting.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Rogers Commission Report (1986)

Fools, Way, Confidence, Mathematics

“[Sultan Firoz Tughlaq] convened a meeting of the learned Ulama and renowned Mashaikh and suggested to them that an error had been committed: the Jiziyah had never been levied from Brahmans: they had been held excused, in former reigns. The Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry, and the infidels were dependent on them (kalid-i-hujra-i-kufr und va kafiran bar ishan muataqid und). They ought therefore to be taxed first. The learned lawyers gave it as their opinion that the Brahmans ought to be taxed. The Brahmans then assembled and went to the Sultan and represented that they had never before been called upon to pay the Jiziyah, and they wanted to know why they were now subjected to the indignity of having to pay it. They were determined to collect wood and to burn themselves under the walls of the palace rather than pay the tax. When these pleasant words (kalimat-i-pur naghmat) were reported to the Sultan, he replied that they might burn and destroy themselves at once for they would not escape from the payment. The Brahmans remained fasting for several days at the palace until they were on the point of death. The Hindus of the city then assembled and told the Brahmans that it was not right to kill themselves on account of the Jiziyah, and that they would undertake to pay it for them. In Delhi, the Jiziyah was of three kinds: Ist class, forty tankahs; 2nd class, twenty tankahs; 3rd class, ten tankahs. When the Brahmans found their case was hopeless, they went to the Sultan and begged him in his mercy to reduce the amount they would have to pay, and he accordingly assessed it at ten tankahs and fifty jitals for each individual.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n381/mode/2up

Death, Error, Learning, Dependency

“The old man made himself look hard at the Raven and saw that it was not a great bird from the sky but the work of men like himself. This first encounter turned out to be peaceful. The men of the La Pérouse expedition were under strict orders to treat with respect any people they might discover, an exceptional policy for its time and after.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

4 min 40 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

Men, People, Peace, Bird

“Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book A Vindication of Natural Diet

A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)

Knowledge

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Men, People, World, Way

“So, what's next? Will this debate subside or continue, as people look to other uses of Confederate icons and symbols? Is this simply about a flag that is as much a symbol of resistance to civil rights and equality as it was a symbol for soldiers whose performance on the battlefield might have secured the independence of a republic founded upon the cornerstone of white supremacy and inequality? One thing is clear: it has not been a good ten days for Confederate heritage advocates. Between licence plates, several SCV divisions rebuking other Confederate heritage groups for outrageous and childish behavior, and the fallout from Charleston, it may be that in 2015 people marked the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War by doing to Confederate heritage what Grant and Sherman did to the Confederacy itself in 1865.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, Down It Comes: No What? (June 2015)

War, People, Behavior

“What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of — I know a lot of these guys — reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

Fresh Air, June 3, 2004
"The next … months" in Iraq

People, Guy, Understanding

“I do not believe in private armies but if the Fascists started a private army it might be for the Socialist and Communist Parties to do the same. When the Labour Party come into power they must act rapidly, and it will be necessary to deal with the House of Lords and the influence of the City of London. There is no doubt that we shall have to overcome opposition from Buckingham Palace and other places as well…There must not be time to allow the forces outside to gather and to exercise their influence upon the Legislature before the key-points of capitalism have been transferred to the control of the State, and I look upon these two key-points myself as being the land and finance. If other people become revolutionary, then the Socialist Government, like any other Government, must take steps to stamp out the revolution. The Socialist Government must not be mealy-mouthed about saying what they mean. They must make it perfectly clear that it is their intention to carry out the mandate they have been given by the people.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech to the annual conference of the University Labour Federation in Nottingham (6 January 1934), quoted in The Times (8 January 1934), p. 14.

People, Exercises, Time, Housing

“Well, we haven’t learnt yet to live together peacefully… But I don’t know what progress really means. Anyway, I think we need to have faith in the fact that there is more out there to be explained. Even the paradigms that we now have, including subjective value theory, for example, are only provisional. Some physicist might believe that ultimately, we will be able to explain everything. To me, that is utterly stupid, just like saying that an atheist is equally dogmatic as a Texas Baptist. It seems to me that, if you accept evolution, you can still not expect your dog to get up and start talking German. And that’s because your dog is not genetically programmed to do that. We are human animals, and we are equally bound. There are whole realms of discourse out there that we cannot reach, by definition. There are always going to be limits beyond which we cannot go. Knowing that they are there, you can always hope to move a little closer – but that’s all.”

James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) American economist

Source: Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009)

Stupidity, Faith, Dogs, Hope

“It is no coincidence that the ABM Treaty was signed midway between the delinking of the U. S. dollar from the gold standard in 1971 and the first oil crisis in 1973. These were the years not only of monetary and economic crises but also of both the beginning of the destruction of the welfare state and the shift of the hegemony of economic production from the factory to more social and immaterial sectors. One might think of these various transformations as different faces of one common phenomenon, one grand social transformation.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

39
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Thinking

“I treat vegetarianism as a phase that might any second end without warning.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

“Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1953)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Way, Thinking, Waiting, Personality

“Please tell me you're just feeling tired
cause if it's more than that I feel that I might break”

Chris Carrabba (1975) American musician

Again I Go Unnoticed

Feeling

“The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Mina Harker
Dracula (1897)

Hate, Peace, Imagination, Mountain

“I think that the best judges are the ones that seek to apply precedent in good faith. I think most judges do that. But that is something that has to be done in good faith without skewing the precedent one way or the other. At the same time, there has to be a respect for the work of the district courts and not take an ivory tower approach to the review of what happens there. Those judges are the ones that see the people before them. They see the witnesses. The court of appeals just has a cold paper record. I think there has to be a reasonable level of deference given to the judgments of the Article III judge who has the trial before him. And with respect to all of one's colleagues in the judicial system, I think it is very important for a judge to have almost an irrebuttable presumption that every other judge who has looked at a particular issue was doing his or her best to discharge his or her oath just as well as I might be if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed.”

Raymond Kethledge (1966) a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Confirmation of Raymond Kethledge https://www.congress.gov/110/chrg/shrg48894/CHRG-110shrg48894.htm (May 7, 2008)

People, Faith, Way, Thinking

“You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony; but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage—you cannot conquer; it is impossible: you cannot conquer the Americans. You talk, my Lords, of your friends among them to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army: I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch! …If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you; you cannot make them wear your cloth: you will plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they can never respect you…”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (30 May 1777), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), p. 144.

Time, Clothes

“It's tempting to wonder how many of the inventions of the past century we might have been better off without. Take the aeroplane for instance. It has transformed warfare from an event in which trained soldiers kill each other on distant battlefields to occasions when death is rained down indiscriminately on innocent civilians, while the professional fighters fly at a great height in comparative safety.”

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

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 28 : Inventions and the Decline of Language

Death, Distant, Past, Flying

“Artistic expression might be seen as a Darwinian protection device for the psyche of fragile individuals, for whom sensuous contact with the outside world is too much to bear, and is repressed, and must be brought up and thrust out into the open from time to time at great effort in order for them to simply survive emotionally.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

World, Effort, Time

“In the whole world, there might have been as many as ten thousand people who were better than Sokolov at falling and rolling around on hard surfaces. Circus acrobats and aikido masters, mostly. Also included in that group would have been many of the younger Spetsnaz men. The remaining six billion or so living humans did not even enter the picture.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 4
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Men, People, World

“It might bear remembering that when, in 1989, Ceausescu did try to go to war with his own population, Secretary of State James Baker made the unprecedented public statement that the United States would not object to a Russian intervention to spare further chaos and misery in Romania. Are the Russians and the Chinese so wedded to the legal niceties, or so proud of their association with Qaddafi, that they would repudiate a speech from President Barack Obama in which he asked for reciprocation? We cannot know this if such a speech is never made or even contemplated…There are a number of other low-cost tactics that could affect the odds, such as jamming Qaddafi's airwaves. But what principally strikes the eye is not the absence of resources—or, indeed, options—but the absence of preparedness…If the other side in this argument is correct, or even to the extent that it is correct, then we are being warned that a maimed and traumatized Libya is in our future, no matter what. That being the case, a piecemeal and improvised policy is the least pragmatic one. Even if Qaddafi temporarily turns the tide, as seems thinkable, and covers us all with shame for doing so, we will still have it all to do again. Let us at least hope that certain excuses will not be available next time.”

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

2011-03-14
Don't Let Qaddafi Win
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/03/dont_let_qaddafi_win.html: On the 2011 Libyan civil war
2010s, 2011

War, Hope, Wedding, Time

“Though a crucified life or an agonized death,
Though long, or quick and sharp,
I am firmly wrought in the endless thread
Of Destiny's woof and warp.
And I do not shrink, though a wave of pain
Sobs over me now and then,
As I think of those "saddest of all sad words,"
The pitiful "might have been."”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

Life, Death, Pain, Sadness

“In all this I was greatly stirred in charity to mine even-Christians, that they might see and know the same that I saw: for I would it were comfort to them. For all this Sight was shewed general. Then said I to them that were about me: It is to-day Doomsday with me. And this I said for that I thought to have died.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 8

“If we go by verbal measures, Donald Trump is certainly the more divisive of the two if only because of his tongue-lashing of Latinos, Muslims and even Republican Party grandees. But if action is the measure, Hillary Clinton might be the more divisive. The reason is that, rightly or wrongly, she is seen as the continuator of Obama’s tenure; many Americans see her presidency as a third term for the incumbent. Another President Clinton might mean another four years of internecine feuds in the United States. And that would be bad for America and bad for the world, including the Middle East.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Clinton or Trump – Better or Less Bad? http://english.aawsat.com/2016/11/article55361471/opinion-clinton-trump-better-less-bad, Ashraq Al-Awsat (November 4, 2016)

World

“In [the early 1980s], making electronic music was a big job, particularly the way that I was doing it. To get the sounds I wanted, I might have 24 synthesizers playing one synth line, all programmed, all analogue and all drifting out of tune. It used to take hours and hours and hours. I don't know how we ever got through it.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

The Telegraph, Martin Rushent, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/technology-obituaries/8562220/Martin-Rushent.html, The Telegraph, 7 June 2011

Music, Way

“To go beyond reason we have to climb up the ladder of reason and go to the top of it. This will not upset reason as it is interested only in assembling the facts, whatever they might be. Reason is an ever-loyal tool; imagination an ever-failing fool.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Fools, Imagination

“I was very fond of strange stories when I was a child. In my village-school days, I used to buy stealthily the popular novels and historical recitals. Fearing that my father and my teacher might punish me for this and rob me of these treasures, I carefully hid them in secret places where I could enjoy them unmolested. As I grew older, my love for strange stories became even stronger, and I learned of things stranger than what I had read in my childhood. When I was in my thirties my memory was full of these stories accumulated through years of eager seeking. […] I have sometimes laughingly said to myself that it is not I who have found these ghosts and monsters, but they, the monstrosities themselves, which have found me!”

Wú Chéng'ēn (1500–1582) Chinese writer

Preface to a collection of short stories about monsters, now lost, as quoted in Arthur Waley's introduction to the American edition of Monkey (New York: Grove Press, 1943)

Love, Secret, Fear, School

“Before explaining these methods let us recall exactly the conditions of the problem which we are attempting to solve. Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. We should therefore, study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do either with his past history or with his future; consequently we shall neglect his etiology, and we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy; for a stronger reason we shall set aside all consideration of pathological anatomy which might explain his intellectual deficiency. So much for his past. As to that which concerns his future, we shall exercise the same abstinence; we do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The development of intelligence in children, 1916, p. 37 : lead paragraph of "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals"

Truth, Exercises, History, Question

“What happened in 1828 is also a very curious fact. 1828 was a crucial moment in the history of the tariff, because the national debt was just being paid off, and so the income from the tariff would produce a surplus in the treasury. And at that time, there was a great fear that a surplus in the federal treasury might be used to buy the freedom of slaves.”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Rebuttal

Fear, History, Freedom, Time

““It happened that Mahmud had long been planning an expedition into Bhardana, and Gujarat, to destroy the idol temple of Somnat, a place of great sanctity to all Hindus. So as soon as he had returned to Ghazni from his Khurasan business, he issued a farman to the General of the army, ordering him to leave a confidential officer in charge of the fort of Kabuliz, and himself to join the court with his son Salar Mas‘ud…
“It is related in the Tarikh-i Mahmudi that the Sultan shortly after reached Ghazni, and laid down the image of Somnat at the threshold of the Mosque of Ghazni, so that the Musulmans might tread upon the breast of the idol on their way to and from their devotions. As soon as the unbelievers heard of this, they sent an embassy to Khwaja Hasan Maimandi, stating that the idol was of stone and useless to the Musulmans, and offered to give twice its weight in gold as a ransom, if it might be returned to them. Khwaja Hasan Maimandi represented to the Sultan that the unbelievers had offered twice the weight of the idol in gold, and had agreed to be subject to him. He added, that the best policy would be to take the gold and restore the image, thereby attaching die people to his Government. The Sultan yielded to the advice of the Khwaja, and the unbelievers paid the gold into the treasury.
“One day, when the Sultan was seated on his throne, the ambassadors of the unbelievers came, and humbly petitioned thus: ‘Oh, Lord of the world! we have paid the gold to your Government in ransom, but have not yet received our purchase, the idol Somnat.’ The Sultan was wroth at their words, and, falling into reflection, broke up the assembly and retired, with his dear Salar Mas‘ud, into his private apartments. He then asked his opinion as to whether the image ought to be restored, or not? Salar Mas‘ud, who was perfect in goodness, said quickly, ‘In the day of the resurrection, when the Almighty shall call for Ãzar, the idol-destroyer, and Mahmud, the idol-seller, Sire! what will you say?’ This speech deeply affected the Sultan, he was full of grief, and answered, ‘I have given my word; it will be a breach of promise.’ Salar Mas‘ud begged him to make over the idol to him, and tell the unbelievers to get it from him. The Sultan agreed; and Salar Mas‘ud took it to his house, and, breaking off its nose and ears, ground them to powder.
“When Khwaja Hasan introduced the unbelievers, and asked the Sultan to give orders to restore the image to them, his majesty replied that Salar Mas‘ud had carried it off to his house, and that he might send them to get it from him. Khwaja Hasan, bowing his head, repeated these words in Arabic, ‘No easy matter is it to recover anything which has fallen into the hands of a lion.’ He then told the unbelievers that the idol was with Salar Mas‘ud, and that they were at liberty to go and fetch it. So they went to Mas‘ud’s door and demanded their god.
“That prince commanded Malik Nekbakht to treat them courteously, and make them be seated; then to mix the dust of the nose and ears of the idol with sandal and the lime eaten with betel-nut, and present it to them. The unbelievers were delighted, and smeared themselves with sandal, and ate the betel-leaf. After a while they asked for the idol, when Salar Mas‘ud said he had given it to them. They inquired, with astonishment, what he meant by saying that they had received the idol? And Malik Nekbakht explained that it was mixed with the sandal and betel-lime. Some began to vomit, while others went weeping and lamenting to Khwaja Hasan Maimandi and told him what had occurred…”
“Afterwards the image of Somnat was divided into four parts, as is described in the Tawarikh-i-Mahmudi. Mahmud’s first exploit is said to have been conquering the Hindu rebels, destroying the forts and the idol temples of the Rai Ajipal (Jaipal), and subduing the country of India. His second, the expedition into Harradawa and Guzerat, the carrying off the idol of Somnat, and dividing it into four pieces, one of which he is reported to have placed on the threshold of the Imperial Palace, while he sent two others to Mecca and Medina respectively. Both these exploits were performed at the suggestion, and by the advice, of the General and Salar Mas‘ud; but India was conquered by the efforts of Salar Mas‘ud alone, and the idol of Somnat was broken in pieces by his sold advice, as has been related. Salar Sahu was Sultan of the army and General of the forces in Iran…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Somnath (Gujarat), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

God, People, World, Way

“Such was the erosion of demography and prosperity that after the capture of Brahmanabad, "all people, the merchants, artisans and agriculturists were divided separately into their respective classes, and (only) ten thousand men, high and low, were counted. Muhammad Qasim then ordered twelve dirhams weight of silver (i. e., twelve silver coins or their equivalent) to be assigned to each man (for rehabilitation), because all their property had been plundered."15 The Brahmans, "the attendants of the temples were likewise in distress. For fear of the (Muslim) army, the alms and bread were not regularly given to them, and therefore they were reduced to poverty."16 From the destruction of Debal to the end of the campaign temples had been broken with the zeal of an iconoclast and their purohits and other dependents had no employment, no income. "It was ordained (by Qasim) that the Brahman should, like beggars, take a copper basin in their hands, go to the doors of the houses, and take whatever grain or other thing that might be offered to them, so that they might not remain unprovided for."”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, E.D. vol. I, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4

Men, People, Fear, Housing

“Had Japan been a tenth as wise as Abraham Lincoln, had Hitler been a hundredth part as sensible, we today, the United States and England, would not have a chance in this war. Had those two enemies of ours coveted the lands upon subject peoples dwell today and had they whispered the magic word freedom to those peoples, they might have set half the world against us in a moment. But they have lost because they attacked lands already free, and because they have enslaved peoples accustomed to freedom. By this one thing alone, if by no other, they are doomed. They have misread the hearts and minds of men. By their enslavement of the peoples whom they have made subject by force of arms, they have aroused against themselves a greater force than can be found in any army, in any weapon. It is this- the will of men everywhere to be free. Let us learn today from Abraham Lincoln, as we fight this war still so far from victory. He could not win that war until he lit the fire in the hearts of men and women enslaved. Nothing had been enough to make men rise up and shout aloud for victory until that moment. A few men like war and enjoy it as a game. But most men and all women hate war. They will not fight with their whole hearts unless they are set aflame. And the torch is always the same words. Whisper those words and men and women will shout them aloud and sing them as they march. The words are simple but they are the most potent in the universe- they are the spiritual dynamite of victory. The words? "All persons held as slaves… are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 195

Women, Men, Hate, War

“My beloved brothers and sisters. On the globe, several incidents have occurred that make it necessary for us to speak about them, and guide the Muslims in their regard… It's important for us to know that as Muslims, we don't understand what part of Islam these people [terrorists] are following. In fact, we don't even understand what Islam they are following, because Islam is a totally different religion from what these people are practicing… As frustrated as we might be because of what might be happening on Muslim lands, it does not give us the right to go out and hurt people who are not at all involved… If you have a problem with someone, you may report them to the authorities. And then it will handled by the courts. You will either get justice at the courts or sometimes maybe the courts may find someone that you believe is guilty, innocent. In that case, you leave it for the day of judgment, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be judge. But you do not take it into your own hands, to say now because the court has found this person innocent, and according to me the person is guilty, "Let me harm them, let me kill them, let me hurt them, let me rob from them". That is absolutely incorrect and it is un-Islamic… Two wrongs do not make a right, remember this… If someone has murdered someone else, Subhan Allah, it does not give us the right to murder a third party altogether. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us, and may Allah grant us guidance and ease. It's important we understand this. The world is bleeding today, and people are blaming the Muslims! Because from amongst us, some are being brainwashed. Brainwashed by what? They do not understand verses of the Quran. They don't understand the Asbab al-Nuzul, or reasons of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. They don't understand how to extract rules and regulations from verses of the Quran. They read something, someone shows them something and next thing they are prepared to give up their lives. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us an understanding. We should be giving up our lives striving to earn the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through obedience, through Salah. Look at Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam when he went to Ta'if, look at his example. They beat him up personally, physically, he was bleeding and the angels came to him to say "If you want, we can crush these people between the mountains". What did he say? He said "I am sent as a mercy. We don't want that to happen. If they don't accept, perhaps their children will accept."”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

Patience, Sabr... And we think that the non-Muslims are our enemies – the minute we think that, automatically we will not be able to call them towards Islam. And they will get the wrong image of Islam. My brothers and sisters, Islam, it means peace, it stands for peace, it promotes peace, it teaches peace, and everything that you will achieve is peace. In this world peace, in the next peace, in your grave peace, with your children peace, in your environment peace. That is Islam. Anything that destroys that in any way is not Islam. Remember this. "Islam Condemns Terrorism - Powerful Reminder - Mufti Ismail Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6O2anxz7CM, YouTube (2015) Lectures

Children, People, Pleasure, World

“"If you believe in a God, miss, pray now." "You don't?" "I believe in the Baker rifle and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don't slide off a Frog's ribs. If you you don't grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Richard Sharpe and Miss Sarah Fry, p. 205
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Death, God

“When he comes around. Do not tell him nothing. Do not make a sound. Cos if he knows we're there he might tear his heart out. And beat us to death with it.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

All At Once
Song lyrics

Death, Tear, Heart

“The Christ Spirit is really the aura of Christ Jesus extending to and including every portion of the earth. Whatever is Christ-like in essence, quality, mentality and conduct adds to the content of the ever-expanding Christ Spirit. We might also consider it as a tremendous reservoir of Light, which encircles the earth, whose function is to bless, to redeem, to spiritualize, to love and to heal all who make prayerful requests in the name of the Christ Spirit.”

Flower A. Newhouse (1909–1994) American mystic

Here Are Your Answers, Vol. II
Christ

Love, Light, Christ

“When we express a preference politically, we do so precisely because we intend to bind others to our will. Political voting is the legal method we have adopted and extolled for obtaining monopolies of power. Political voting is nothing more than the assumption that might makes right.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

As quoted in Bagatorials: A Book Full of Bags by John Roscoe and Ned Roscoe, Simon & Schuster, "Abstain from Beans" (1996) p. 17.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel). In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.”

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

Interview on ABC's Good Morning America, as quoted in "Clinton says U.S. could "totally obliterate" Iran" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-iran/clinton-says-u-s-could-totally-obliterate-iran-idUSN2224332720080422 by David Morgan, Reuters (22 April 2008) Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

People, Understanding

“Oh, Jesus Christ, he wasn't to know,
Like a chicken with a fox,
He couldn't win the war with ego.
Give the kid the pick of pips,
And give him all your stripes and ribbons.
Now he's sitting in his hole,
He might as well have buttons and bows.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

War, Christ

“Never till now, in the history of an Earth which to this hour nowhere refuses to grow corn if you will plough it, to yield shirts if you will spin and weave in it, did the mere manual two-handed worker (however it might fare with other workers) cry in vain for such "wages" as he means by "fair wages," namely food and warmth!”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Food, History, Cry

Quotes about might page 48

Quotes about might
page 48