Quotes about might
page 51

“The Constitution forbids the passing of a bill of attainder: that is, a law entailing upon the child the disabilities and hardships imposed upon the parent. Every slave law in America might be repealed on this very ground. The slave is made a slave because his mother is a slave. But to all this it is said that the practice of the American people is against my view. I admit it. They have given the Constitution a slaveholding interpretation. I admit it. Thy have committed innumerable wrongs against the Negro in the name of the Constitution. Yes, I admit it all; and I go with him who goes farthest in denouncing these wrongs. But it does not follow that the Constitution is in favor of these wrongs because the slaveholders have given it that interpretation. To be consistent in his logic, the City Hall speaker must follow the example of some of his brothers in America — he must not only fling away the Constitution, but the Bible. The Bible must follow the Constitution, for that, too, has been interpreted for slavery by American divines. Nay, more, he must not stop with the Constitution of America, but make war with the British Constitution, for, if I mistake not, the gentleman is opposed to the union of Church and State. In America he called himself a Republican. Yet he does not go for breaking down the British Constitution, although you have a Queen on the throne, and bishops in the House of Lords.”

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

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

War, People, Law, Parent

“We all observe that the reality of sexual intercourse is far from perfect; yet this does not convince us that sex is a greatly overrated occupation. Every time a man glimpses a pretty girl pulling up her stocking, he catches a glimpse of what might be called the "primal sexual vision." It is unfortunate that there seems to be a certain disparity between this primal vision and most ordinary sexual experience. But it dances in front of us like a will-o'-the-wisp, luring us into tormented effort. It can lead novelists to write novels, poets to write poems, and musicians to write symphonies.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 39

Sex, Girl, Reality, Effort

“They call me nuts, they call me stupid, they call me ugly. They might be right about ugly. …All that I've done is to say what's on other peoples' mind.”

Alan Grayson (1958) American politician

"Grayson Has No Plans to Pull His Verbal Punches", Orlando Sentinet, October 30, 2009, http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2009/10/grayson-no-plans-to-tone-down-the-verbal-strikes.html. 2009, Regarding himself

People, Stupidity

“A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: First Things, Last Things (1971), Ch. 8 "Thoughts on the Present"

Strong

“Once there ruled in the distant city of Wirani a king who was both mighty and wise. And he was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now, in the heart of that city was a well, whose water was cool and crystalline, from which all the inhabitants drank, even the king and his courtiers; for there was no other well. One night when all were asleep, a witch entered the city, and poured seven drops of strange liquid into the well, and said, “From this hour he who drinks this water shall become mad.” Next morning all the inhabitants, save the king and his lord chamberlain, drank from the well and became mad, even as the witch had foretold. And during that day the people in the narrow streets and in the market places did naught but whisper to one another, “The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Surely we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him.” That evening the king ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the well. And when it was brought to him he drank deeply, and gave it to his lord chamberlain to drink. And there was great rejoicing in that distant city of Wirani, because its king and its lord chamberlain had regained their reason.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Madman (1918)

Love, Wisdom, People, Fear

“There never is any diminution of the vast majority, indifferent to what they are, whence they came, and whither they go, who rush from business to pastime, and from pastime back to business, leaving no vacancy into which the unknown might slip a little experimental greatness.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 57

Business, Indifference

“At a certain age children are greatly intrigued by the possibility of locating themselves on a map. It appears strange that one's familiar life should actually have all occurred in an area delineated by a set of quite impersonal (and hitherto unfamiliar) coordinates on the surface of the map. The child's exclamations of "I was there" and "I am here right now" betray the astonishment that the place of last summer's vacation, a place marked in memory by such sharply personal events as the ownership of one's first dog or the secret assembling of a collection of worms, should have specific latitudes and longitudes devised by strangers to one's dog, one's worms, and oneself. This locating of oneself in configurations conceived by strangers is one of the important aspects of what, perhaps euphemistically, is called "growing up". One participates in the real world of grown-ups by having an address. The child who only recently might have mailed a letter addressed "To my Granddaddy" now informs a fellow worm-collector of his exact address – street, town, state and all – and finds his tentative allegiance to the grown-up world view dramatically legitimated by the arrival of the letter.”

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) Austrian-born American sociologist

Source: Invitation to Sociology (1963), p. 81

Life, Children, Secret, Age

“She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship—in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VI (p. 307)
Earth (1990)

Fear, Way, Solitude, Silence

“Thus already, at ten years old, the boy found himself standing face to face with a dilemma that might have puzzled an early Christian. What was he? — where was he going? Even then he felt that something was wrong, but he concluded that it must be Boston.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Boy

“The strong environmental position should not be and cannot be to do nothing, and to put our heads in the sand and pretend that the problem does not exist. It would be nice if Texas had no low-level radioactive waste, or Vermont or Maine or any other State. That would be great. That is not the reality. The environmental challenge now is, given the reality that low-level radioactive waste exists, what is the safest way of disposing of that waste. Leaving the radioactive waste at the site where it was produced, despite the fact that that site may be extremely unsafe in terms of long-term isolation of the waste and was never intended to be a long- term depository of low-level waste, is horrendous environmental policy. What sense is it to say that you have to keep the waste where it is now, even though that might be very environmentally damaging? That does not make any sense at all. No reputable scientist or environmentalist believes that the geology of Vermont or Maine would be a good place for this waste. In the humid climate of Vermont and Maine, it is more likely that groundwater will come in contact with that waste and carry off radioactive elements to the accessible environment. There is widespread scientific evidence to suggest, on the other hand, that locations in Texas, some of which receive less than 12 inches of rainfall a year, a region where the groundwater table is more than 700 feet below the surface, is a far better location for this waste. This is not a political assertion, it is a geological and environmental reality. … From an environmental point of view, I urge strong support for this legislation.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking at the House of Representatives on the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, in 7 October 1997. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/1997/10/7/house-section/article/h8512-1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22all+that+Texas+and+Maine+and+Vermont+are+asking+for+today%5C%22%22%5D%7D&r=1 1990s

Way, Support, Problem, Reality

“This unasked-for jollity in the middle of an English afternoon left Sir Henry shivering with a red passion, his face a crumpled tissue on which a lobster might well have wiped its bottom.”

Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995) English musician, artist and author

Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1978)

Passion

“I think I am easy to make fun of. I try not to pay too much attention. You can't let critics dictate what you do… The thing that fascinates me, is the emotion in music, the way it can make me cry or laugh or be angry. I'm not trying to be hip or cool, and I'm not scared to put everything I have into songs. Passion is the greatest thing that music can evoke. We live in a society where I think people often find it hard to express themselves, but sometimes a song can do that for you. It might not be groundbreaking, but there is something about the simplicity of presenting songs where it's all about the lyric and the melody. People don't need to get through a whole lot of production to get to the root of the song. It's just music doing what music does best… A lot of things in the mainstream are repetitive and soulless and have been churned out without any real conviction. It is really unfair to call Coldplay insufferable, when they obviously care about what they do. James [Blunt] too. Too much of the music industry is controlled by lawyers and businessmen, making music like it's a product on the factory line. That's what I call insufferable.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

[Neil McCormick, Who is right? Critics or the public?, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/09/29/bmneil29.xml, The Telegraph, 2005-09-29]

People, Music, Way, Thinking

“If we could all rephrase the question from "What was your most embarrassing moment?" to "What was your most embarrassing year?" Then I might be able to give you an honest answer.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Thin Ice
Poetry

Question

“Mrs. Krantz, having dined at Mark's Club, insists that it is exclusive. There would not have been much point to her dining there if she did not think that. A bigger snob than she might point out that the best reason for not dining at Mark’s Club is the chance of finding Mrs Krantz there. It takes only common sense, though, to tell you that on those terms exclusiveness in not just chimerical but plain tedious. You would keep better company eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in a launderette.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

Thinking, Sense, Chance

“The world knows that last Monday a meeting assembled to discuss the question: "How Shall Slavery Be Abolished?" The world also knows that that meeting was invaded, insulted, captured by a mob of gentlemen, and thereafter broken up and dispersed by the order of the mayor, who refused to protect it, though called upon to do so. If this had been a mere outbreak of passion and prejudice among the baser sort, maddened by rum and hounded on by some wily politician to serve some immediate purpose, - a mere exceptional affair, - it might be allowed to rest with what has already been said. But the leaders of the mob were gentlemen. They were men who pride themselves upon their respect for law and order. These gentlemen brought their respect for the law with them and proclaimed it loudly while in the very act of breaking the law. Theirs was the law of slavery. The law of free speech and the law for the protection of public meetings they trampled under foot, while they greatly magnified the law of slavery. The scene was an instructive one. Men seldom see such a blending of the gentleman with the rowdy, as was shown on that occasion. It proved that human nature is very much the same, whether in tarpaulin or broadcloth. Nevertheless, when gentlemen approach us in the character of lawless and abandoned loafers, - assuming for the moment their manners and tempers, - they have themselves to blame if they are estimated below their quality.”

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

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Men, World, Law, Question

“I have such faith in Linton's love that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn't wish to retaliate.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. X).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Love, Faith

“The two greatest blinders of the intellectual who today might fight against the main drift are new and fascinating career chances, which often involve opportunities to practice his skill rather freely, and the ideology of liberalism, which tends to expropriate his chance to think straight. The two go together, for the liberal ideology, as now used by intellectuals, acts as a device whereby he can take advantage of the new career chances but retain the illusion that his soul remains his own.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

The New Men of Power (1948), p. 281.
1940s

Soul, Thinking, Chance, Fight

““It’s all in the fine print. You should read it sometime.”
“When I’m gripped by existential boredom,” Khouri said, “I might try it.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 2 (p. 51).

Reading

“No matter how hard and wearisome an age this might be, it was certainly a very exciting one with regard to manifestations of the supernatural.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 5 (p. 54)

Age

“Answer me, sycophant, ought you not to have instructed me on one point at least, so essential to be known by a king; namely on the reciprocal duties between the sovereign and his subjects? Ought you not also to have foreseen that I might, at some future period, be compelled to contend with my brothers, sword in hand, for the crown, and for my very existence. Such, as you must well know, has been the fate of the children of almost every king of Hindustan. Did you ever instruct me in the art of war, how to besiege a town, or draw up an army in battle array? Happy for me that I consulted wiser heads than thine on these subjects! Go, withdraw to the village. Henceforth let no person know either who thou art, or what is become of thee.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

François Bernier quoting https://books.google.com/books?id=1SNVqzrDJmIC&pg=PA179 Aurangzeb's statement to his tutor. Also in The Moghul Saint of Insanity https://books.google.com/books?id=_o_WCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA15 by Farzana Moon, p. 15 Also in European travel accounts during the reigns of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb by Meera Nanda, p.132 Also in History of Education in India by Suresh Chandra Ghosh, p. 200. Also inEncyclopaedia Indica: Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal Emperor by Shyam Singh Shashi, p. 75 Quotes from late medieval histories

Fate, War, Happiness, Children

“I'll be philosophical. Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn't have any life — fish or anything. Gradually, about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet—and probably in the entire system—reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin… Now when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible… Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it… I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. Have I given you an answer to your question?”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

On the hazards of nuclear power. Testimony to Congress (28 January 1982); published in Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982)

Life, Question, Nature, Thinking

“I am so tired of rearranging my life around what the stupidest people might do.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

The Golden Goose Special (1997)

Life, People

“The Social System School: Closely related to the human behavior school and often confused or intertwined with it is one which might be labeled the social system school. This includes those researchers who look upon management as a social system, that is, a system of cultural interrelationships. Sometimes, as in the case of March and Simon, the system is limited to formal organizations, using the term "organization" as equivalent to enterprise, rather than the authority-activity concept used most often in management. In other cases, the approach is not to distinguish the formal organization, but rather to encompass any kind of system of human relationships.”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

Source: "The Management Theory Jungle," 1961, p. 179

School, Behavior

“The government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Edward Snowden accuses US of illegal, aggressive campaign in his first appearance in the airport http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden-accuses-us-illegal-campaign, published by The Guardian 12 July 2013. Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 2

Intelligence

“The idea that different aspects of visual perception might be handled in separate areas of the brain was predicted by Freud at the end of the nineteenth century. …a cortical defect that affected [the] ability to combine aspects of vision into a meaningful pattern. …defects, which Freud called agnosias (loss of knowledge)…”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Idea, Knowledge, Loss

“Clement Greenberg talked about the ideas or possibilities of painting in his - I think -, 'After Abstract Expressionism' article, and he allows a blank canvas to be an idea for a painting. It might not be a good idea, but it's certainly valid. Yves Klein did the empty gallery. He sold 'air', and that was a conceptualized art, I guess.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 122

Art, Idea, Thinking, Painting

“This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in it—and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows of those corpses. For the dead trees and the fence posts and the bridges and the buildings on the hill all would classify as shadows. There was no life here; the life was up ahead. Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life moved with it. And so was gone, thought Blaine, any dream that Man might have ever held of visiting the past and living in the action and the thought and the viewpoint of men who’d long been dust. For the living past did not exist, nor did the human past except in the records of the past. The present was the only valid point for life—life kept moving on, keeping pace with the present, and once it had passed, all traces of it or its existences were carefully erased.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

Life, Men, Dreams, Tree

“I made myself a little boat
And launched it on the sea;
And into the wide world went forth
To see what there might be.”

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

(30th April 1825) Realities
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

World, Sea

“[W]hen it came to the iWatch, also a name that Apple didn't own, Apple walked away from it and instead launched the Apple Watch. Certainly, no risk of litigation, but the product's sales are a fraction of what they otherwise might have been with the proper name and branding.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Putting Legal in Its Place: Why Companies Shouldn't Be Run by Execs with 'No' as Their Middle Names http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/putting-legal-in-its-place-why-companies-shouldnt-be-run-by-execs-with-no-as-their-middle-names.html in IT Business Edge (18 May 2017)

“Swept up in a grand illusion that I might be able to eat, have a roof over my head, own some pretty dresses and realize, in a vastly heady way, that I could make a living doing my art, which was the only dream I ever had, what could I say but "Yes, where do I sign?"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS

Dreams, Art, Way

“And he said grow some funk of your own amigo,
Grow some funk of your own.
We no like to with the gringo fight,
But there might be a death in Mexico tonight
If you can't grow some funk of your own amigo.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Grow Some Funk of Your Own, written by Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Davey Johnstone
Song lyrics, Rock of the Westies (1975)

Death, Fight

“If you fight you might lose, if you don’t you have already lost.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Disputed

Fight

“[Gladstone] gave me a long memorandum, historical in character, on the past Irish story, which seemed to be somewhat one-sided, leaving out of view the important minority and the views and feelings of the Protestant and loyal portion of the people. He explained much of his policy as to a Dublin Parliament, and as to Land purchase. I objected to the Land policy as unnecessary—the Act of 1881 had done all that was reasonable for the tenants—why adopt the policy of the rebel party, and get rid of landholders, and thus evict the English garrison as the rebels call them? I denied the value of the security for repayment. Mr G. argued that his finance arrangements would be better than present system of purchase, and that we were bound in honour to succour the landlords, which I contested. Why not go to the help of other interests in Belfast and Dublin? As to Dublin Parliament, I argued that he was making a surrender all along the line—a Dublin Parliament would work with constant friction, and would press against any barrier he might create to keep up the unity of the three Kingdoms. What of a volunteer force, and what of import duties and protection as against British goods? … I thought he placed far too much confidence in the leaders of the rebel party. I could place none in them, and the general feeling was and is that any terms made with them would not be kept, and that through them I could not hope for reconciliation with discontented and disloyal Ireland.”

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

Bright's diary entry (20 March 1886), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 447.
1880s

People, Hope, Feeling, Confidence

“The earliest achievement of this (of equality and the restriction on the powers of the constitutionally mandated magistrates), the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy… Not only in Rome (but all over the Italian peninsula) … we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In this light the reasons which led to the substitution of the consuls for kings in Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity through its own action and by a sort of natural necessity produced the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual, term… Simple, however, as was the cause of the change, it might be brought about in various ways, resolution (of the community),.. or the rule might voluntarily abdicate; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him. It was in this latter way that the monarchy was terminated in Rome. For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquinius, "the proud", may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors(sic); that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labours and task-work beyond what was due… we are (in light of the ignorance of historical facts around the abolition of the monarchy) fortunately in possession of a clearer light as to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution (after the expulsion of the monarchy). The royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the fact that, when a vacancy occurred, a "temporary king" (Interrex) was nominated as before. The one life-king was simply replaced by two [one year] kings, who called themselves generals (praetores), or judges…, or merely colleagues (Consuls) [literally, "Those who leap or dance together"]. The collegiate principle, from which this last - and subsequently most current - name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king; and, although a partition of functions doubtless took place from the first - the one consul for instance undertaking the command of the army, and the other the administration of justice - that partition was by no means binding, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time in the province of the other.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1, Book II , Chapter 1. "Change of the Constitution" Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Life, People, Justice, Way

“When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 13
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

Loyalty

“Aaron was uncomfortable and a little afraid. This, he thought, is how God might pray to his God.”

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

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 1

God

“I saw the cause of Christ's government, and of the bishops' antichristian dealing, to be hidden. The most part of men could not be gotten to read anything written in the defence of the one and against the other. I bethought me therefore of a way whereby men might be drawn to do both, perceiving the humors of men in these times (especially of those that are in any place) to be given to mirth. I took that course.”

Martin Marprelate (1588–1589)

"Hay any Work for Cooper" (March 1589), p. 115.

Men, Way, Time, Reading

“The rise of the modern corporation has brought a concentration of economic power which can compete on equal terms with the modern state - economic power versus political power, each strong in its own field. The state seeks in some aspects to regulate the corporation, while the corporation, steadily becoming more powerful, makes every effort to avoid such regulation… The future may see the economic organism, now typified by the corporation, not only on an equal plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as the dominant form of social organization. The law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered as a potential constitutional law for the new economic state, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of economic statesmanship.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 357 (1967, p. 313)

Law, Business, Effort, Strong

“You might not, not think so now,
But just you wait and see — someone will come to help you.”

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

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

Thinking, Waiting, Help

“The assertion that “What is everybody’s business is nobody’s,” is true enough; but the assertion that “What is nobody’s business is everybody’s,” is still truer. Now, a love affair, for example, is, of all others, a thing apart--an enchanted dream, where “common griefs and cares come not.” It is like a matrimonial quarrel--never to be benefited by the interference of others: it is a sweet and subtle language, “that none understand but the speakers;” and yet this fine and delicate spirit is most especially the object of public curiosity. It is often supposed before it exists: it is taken for granted, commented upon, continued and ended, without the consent of the parties themselves; though a casual observer might suppose that they were the most interested in the business.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Dreams, Understanding, Business

“As a vulgar lounge entertainer, my business relies on ridiculous stereotypes! If these people start using deodorant, I might as well just go home!”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

On French people
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

People, Home, Business

“Find the best in everybody. … you might have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

People, Evil, Time, Waiting

“First of all I was like, ‘I’m the most hated celebrity?’ More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do? All I can do is be my authentic self, but I think there are things about me that make people draw conclusions. For example, there is the perception that I grew up very wealthy and that I was given, you know, that I was sort of raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, which inspires a lot of resentment. He [my father] said, ‘You are completely on your own. So he never gave me anything. I never had any supplementation, he never helped me with my rent, I never had a trust fund. So the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn’t work for what I have, that’s just not accurate. But I can see how somebody might have that perception.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Hate, People, Idea, Thinking

“To you, of right, these pages must be inscribed, the fountain of their best thoughts, not as mere praise, but for the instruction of others, to record the charm of perfect companionship, proved by your example; the instinctive homage even of brutes before the magic of an amiable and generous heart, without a selfish trace… Were all hearts tuned like yours, an appeal to human justice would not be needed: — Then to your name a fitter title might be inscribed — the Wrongs of Animals ceased for ever, the dubious vestiges of Eden might become the certain foot-prints of our dialy practice; and cruelty and suffering known no more.”

David Mushet (1772–1847) Scottish metallurgist

The Wrongs of the Animal World, to Which is Subjoined the Speech of Lord Erskine on the Same Subject http://books.google.com/books?id=KVwPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR5, London, 1839. p. vi-v; As cited in: animalrightshistory.org http://animalrightshistory.org/animal-rights-c1837-1901/victorian-m/mus-david-muschet/1839-wrongs-animal-world.htm, 2014

Justice, Suffering, Heart, Animals

“For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passeth creature’s reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man’s soul, as to my sight. Then meaneth He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for thy love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for thy love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?”

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

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Love, God, Pain, Soul

“There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Man on Bridge” p. 92
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Time

“I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane (Ch. 12)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Life, World, Business

“The Talisman could be operated only by certain beings with certain types of minds and something else besides (could it be, he wondered, with certain kinds of souls?). "Sensitives" was the word he had used in his mental translation of the term for these kinds of people, but once again, he could not be sure if the word came close to fitting. The Talisman was placed in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. And on each planet the people came to make personal and individual contact with the spiritual force through the intervention and the agency of the Talisman and its custodian.
He found that he was shivering at the thought of it — the pure ecstasy of reaching out and touching the spirituality that flooded through the galaxy and, undoubtedly, through the universe. The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 12

Life, People, Soul, Star

“Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed — but never the husband).”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

The New Yorker (2 August 1930), discussing cartooning
From other writings

“… The answer to this problem is: as implied by Hume, we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative result a second result, equally negative, may be added: we are justified in reasoning from a counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law (that is, of any law of which it is a counterinstance). Or in other words, from a purely logical point of view, the acceptance of one counterinstance to 'All swans are white' implies the falsity of the law 'All swans are white' - that law, that is, whose counterinstance we accepted. Induction is logically invalid; but refutation or falsification is a logically valid way of arguing from a single counterinstance to - or, rather, against - the corresponding law. This shows that I continue to agree with Hume's negative logical result; but I extend it. This logical situation is completely independent of any question of whether we would, in practice, accept a single counterinstance - for example, a solitary black swan - in refutation of a so far highly successful law. I do not suggest that we would necessarily be so easily satisfied; we might well suspect that the black specimen before us was not a swan.”

Karl Popper book The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction http://dieoff.org/page126.htm p. 27

Truth, Law, Way, Question

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Death, Women, Men, Money

“As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn't also happen to have the Qur'an.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos" (29 March 2006) http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/2863 — in Free Inquiry, Vol. 26, issue 3 2000s

Books

“.. Recently I was at the home of Thomas Hess and he had a painting hanging there and I said to my wife: 'Is that one of my paintings?'. And she said: 'Well, it looks like one of yours from around 1942'. But then we realized that it wasn't one of my but one of Baziote's paintings…. at that time, 1942, the differences in our paintings may have seemed very great, but now [1960] the difference is not so great apparently…. For example; in the early forties Rothko and I decided to paint a certain subject matter. Perhaps if we saw some of those paintings now…. they might not seem so different as they did at the time. However, at no point was there ever any sort of a doctrine or a programma or anything that would make a school. I think it was simply a situation in which all of the painters were at that time; they were trying to break away from certain things.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', June 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, pp. 27-28
1960s

School, Home, Thinking, Time

“In my own household, for example, an electric refrigerator has been in service for nineteen years, with only a single minor repair: an admirable job. Both automatic refrigerators for daily use and deepfreeze preservation are inventions of permanent value. Though one cannot bestow any such unqualified commendation upon the design of the contemporary motor car, one can hardly doubt that if biotechnic criteria were heeded, rather than those of market analysts and fashion experts, an equally good product might come forth from Detroit, with an equally long prospect of continued use.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Megatechnic Costs and Benefits
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Cars, Fashion

“The primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution, there were no limits (save for the effect of trail by jury) to what the legislature might do.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 182.

“I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly... I believe in treating children as rational creatures with whom it is possible to discuss even the most serious matters. This makes a very profound impression on them, it strengthens their character and above all it avoids leaving their development at the mercy of random environmental pressures and casual, impersonal encounters. It really is very strange how grown-ups forget they were children themselves, and make no use of their own experiences. For my part, I recall vividly how offended I was at every discovery of a subterfuge, even if it was meant to keep painful facts from me, and how this shut me up within myself and made me withdraw.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci cited in Fiori, 1970, pp. 22-23.

Pain, Children, Truth, Education

“When Marinetti founded Futurism in 1909, he called for ‘incendiary violence’ that might drive Italy and Italians out of the ‘fetid somnolence’ of dolce far niente. He incited Futurists and their allies to the destruction of museums, monuments, and universities—to decimate everything that ‘stank of the past’… All of this was suffused with aggression and violence, with an appeal to slaps and blows, to culminate in an invocation to what he called the ‘beauty of battle,’ and the ‘hygiene of war.”

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

Source: Mussolini’s Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought (2005), pp. 250-51

War, Beauty, Universe, Past

“Cato instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying that they that did not prevent crimes when they might, encouraged them. Of young men, he liked them that blushed better than those who looked pale.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

Men

“I am now more convinced than ever that the United States — better than any other nation — can meet successfully whatever the future might bring.
These last four years have made me more certain than ever of the inner strength of our country — the unchanging value of our principles and ideals, the stability of our political system, the ingenuity and the decency of our people.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)

People, Future, Country

“Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 401
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own. I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes' hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Pain, World, Error, Feeling

“Strange as it sounds, although Man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, Man was in action much the superior of God, whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that Man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; he was pure Act, and as such he could not change. Man alone was, in act, allowed to change direction. What was more curious still, Man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life, he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant his continuous action. If Man had the singular fancy of making himself absurd,— a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence exceedingly strong,— he could be as absurd as he liked; but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures. While Man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be wicked,— a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterlly complained and still complain, he has outrageously abused,— God was Goodness and could be nothing else. […] In one respect, at least, Man's freedom seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was his act and will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think, he is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as Abélard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,— the Valois and Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis of an enlightened Europe.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Life, God, Pleasure, Idea

“They could care less about the public. The public comes in third. Number one is keeping their power. Number two are the special interests, the people footing the bill. Finally, the public good might be third — if they can profit from it. If there's no profit, they could care less.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

On Democrats and Republicans
Harvard interview (February 2004)

People

“What a scandal to hear nature deprecated in comparison to Greek statues by one who knows neither one nor the other without acknowledging that the smallest part of Nature confounds and amazes those who know most. What statue or cast of it might there be that is not copied from divine nature?”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

In a report in 1792 - Goya wrote to the Academy of San Fernando, on 'teaching art'; as quoted in Francisco Goya y Licientis, Janis Tomlinson, Phaodon 1999, p. 70
1790s

Nature, Parting

“When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair!
Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age?
We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”. pp. 16–17; opening
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People, Books, Age, World

“The very idea of philosopher as art curator deeply interests me. One swiftly dreams of what Gilles Deleuze might have done with the opportunity to curate an art exhibition at MoMA: Art and Alloverness perhaps? Or Michel Foucault: the New Panopticons at the Centre Georges Pompidou? What would Susan Sontag or Roland Barthes have done at the International Center of Photography or at the Tate? What could Friedrich Nietzsche have done at the Louvre Museum? What indeed could Georges Bataille have haughtily done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?”

Joseph Nechvatal (1951) American artist

Joseph Nechvatal. " Painting and Philosophy: An Assessment http://hyperallergic.com/90646/painting-and-philosophy-an-assessment/," at hyperallergic.com, October 28, 2013

Dreams, Art, Idea

“…Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had aquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it.”

Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) American general and politician

Mission with LeMay: My Story (1965), p. 560-561.

Future

“Here today we huddle tight
As the darkest heathens might
The snow falls chilly on our skin
The snow is forcing its way in.
Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell:
We were thrown out by Heaven as well.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Christmas legend" [Weinachtslegende] (1923), Berliner Börsen-Courier (25 December 1924); trans. in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 99
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Way

“One should be firm on the Truth, and to bow down to (worldly) might is not the actual truth. The actual truth is Allah, and to Allah we all return. Life and death are true. Man should live with honor. These people wanted me to bow down to them.”

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

Life, Death, People, Truth

“On media consideration to be a reluctant rock star: I'm not a reluctant rock star, I am not one at all. I haven't an ounce of rock star in me. […] What I despise about the rock star lifestyle is the lack of music in it. The average day is spent travelling to hotels, giving interviews, being nice to people you're told to be nice to, and maybe if you're lucky you might squeeze a bit of music in. The musician's day is music. […] I am in that unique little club, where I went into music because I love music, not because I wanted to be rich and famous. I've always knocked on the door of the musicians' room, not the rock stars' room. The British press refuses to see the difference between them, mainly because of the capers of people like Phil Collins, a musician who behaves like a rock star. But there are people who love music and have no interest in being a rock star at all.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

John Henry Walsh (1997 May 2) " The reluctant rocker https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-reluctant-rocker-1259348.html" by The Independent 1997

Love, People, Music, Travel

“Oh, I loved Mr. Moffet! He was WONDERFUL! He’d given me hope! I felt fearless once again, and I could clearly see it had always been fear that had kept me dammed up all these years. Fear of sin, fear of hell, fear of what people might think of me, fear of … of … I didn’t quite know how to say or even think all these thoughts I was having, and yet… it was like I was now so excited with all these thoughts racing around inside my brain that I was on fire. Maybe I wasn’t really stupid after all. Maybe I’d just been misled all these years from the very beginning. OH, A FIRE FOR WANTING TO LEARN ALL I COULD LEARN WAS NOW BURNING INSIDE ME!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Love, People, Stupidity, Fear

“So whereabouts in my body might there be a black hole?”

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

The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)

“The reality is that you're entitled to believe what you want as long as you're not imposing your beliefs on other people. …I don't think [atheists] need to shut up. The reason why I don't think they need to shut up is because there's a whole bunch of people in this world that we can look at and say they need to shut up and they certainly don't. You got everybody fighting for their own individual cause. This is their cause. We might not like it. I don't agree with it at all, but they do have a right.”

Stephen A. Smith (1967) sports journalist

Interview on Paula Zahn Now http://atheism.about.com/b/a/258728.htm (January 31, 2007).

People, World, Thinking, Reality

“Khamenei is not the first ruler of Iran with whom poets have run into trouble. For some 12 centuries poetry has been the Iranian people’s principal medium of expression. Iran may be the only country where not a single home is found without at least one book of poems. Initially, Persian poets had a hard time to define their place in society. The newly converted Islamic rulers suspected the poets of trying to revive the Zoroastrian faith to undermine the new religion. Clerics saw poets as people who wished to keep the Persian language alive and thus sabotage the ascent of Arabic as the new lingua franca. Without the early Persian poets, Iranians might have ended up like so many other nations in the Middle East who lost their native languages and became Arabic speakers. Early on, Persian poets developed a strategy to check the ardor of the rulers and the mullahs. They started every qasida with praise to God and Prophet followed by panegyric for the ruler of the day. Once those “obligations” were out of the way they would move on to the real themes of the poems they wished to compose. Everyone knew that there was some trick involved but everyone accepted the result because it was good. Despite that modus vivendi some poets did end up in prison or in exile while many others spent their lives in hardship if not poverty. However, poets were never put to the sword. The Khomeinist regime is the first in Iran’s history to have executed so many poets. Implicitly or explicitly, some rulers made it clear what the poet couldn’t write. But none ever dreamt of telling the poet what he should write. Khamenei is the first to try to dictate to poets, accusing them of “crime” and” betrayal” if they ignored his injunctions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

God, People, Books, Faith

“Our intention in this Disme is to worke all by whole numbers: for seing that in any affayres, men reckon not of the thousandth part of a mite, grayne, &c. as the like is also used of the principall Geometricians, and Astronomers, in computacions of great consequence, as Ptolome & Johannes Monta-regio have not described their Tables of Arches, Chords, or Sines, in extreme perfection (as possibly they might have done by Multinomiall numbers,) because that imperfection (considering the scope and end of those Tables) is more convenient then such perfection.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

Men, Parting, Perfection

“For me, a line has to sing before it does anything else. The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That's what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Thinking, Singing

“It was the great multiplicity of the hadrons that led to the formulation of the quark model. Without some organizing principle such a large collecton of particles seemed unwieldy, and the possibility that they might all be elementary offended those who hold the conviction, or at leas the fond wish, that nature should be simple.”

Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015) American physicist

"The confinement of quarks." https://www.jstor.org/stable/24950482?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Scientific American 235, no. 5 (1976): 48–63.

Nature

“These experiences are not 'religious' in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not 'ineffable' in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. 'One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people'. The peak experience tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. 'For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience…”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972), p. 17

Love, Happiness, Children, People

“Thus civil disobedience seemed necessary, but the ‘disobedience’ was aimed directly against seemingly unjust and unconstitutional acts. This is the best tradition of radicalism in the United States. But the illegal activities of the Communists are not directed at any tests of the Constitution or of the ‘laws’ themselves. In fact, the Communists are opposed to the guarantees of the Constitution, no matter how many crocodile tears they might shed while using it amendments to try to overthrow the government.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 43

Law, Tear

“Mr. Gibbon has much to learn concerning the gospel before he can be properly qualified to write against it. Hitherto he seems to have been acquainted with nothing but the corrupt establishments of what is very improperly called Christianity; whereas it is incumbent upon him to read and study the New Testament for himself. There he will find nothing like Platonism, but doctrines in every respect the reverse of that system of philosophy, which weak and undistinguishing christians afterwards incorporated with it.
Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the same reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Angels, Study, Learning, Reading

“The claim set up was nothing less than the right of a general superintendence of the states of Europe, and of the suppression of all changes in their internal government, if those changes should be hostile to what the Holy Alliance called the legitimate principles of government…Every reform of abuses, every improvement in government, which did not originate with a sovereign, of his own free will, was to be prevented. Were this principle to be successfully maintained, the triumph of tyranny would be complete, and the chains of mankind would be riveted for ever…He was one of those old-fashioned politicians who thought that every great political change might be traced to previous misgovernment…Let their lordships look to the revolution of 1688, and then he would ask them, if it could have been carried into effect without the combinations of those great men, who restored and secured our religion, our laws, and our liberties, and without such mutual communications among them as would bring them under the description of a sect or party?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (19 February 1821) on the debate on Naples. After the revolution in Naples in July 1820 the protocol which affirmed the right of the European Alliance to interfere to crush dangerous internal revolutions had been issued at the Congress of Troppau, October 1820. Parliamentary Debates, N.S. iv, pp. 744-59, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 13-16.
1820s

Men, Hostility, Religion, Law

“The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

Pain, People, World, Feeling

“Matter of fact, the first three or four chapters are all some of you might want to bother with. That gets you to page 123 or so, which is a nice length, a nice novella sort of length.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“Modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have made it possible to avoid the Marxist apocalypse but have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality—or in any case not as much as one might have imagined in the optimistic decades following World War II.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 1.

War, World, Imagination, Knowledge

“The possibility of peace, on whose behalf many are working, might perhaps become actual because the technical advances in offensive weapons make the prospect of a European war so disastrous, and because, if the nations were at grips again, even the victorious aggressor would be ruined. But there still remains open the possibility of a new war which, more dreadful than any that have preceded it would make an end of contemporary Europeans.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)

War, Peace, Victory

“It had become an indisputable dogma that every expression in the same language must bear the same meaning in all peoples. And this was really the greatest affliction of the Select of that epoch, that they had to converse in the same tongue as the rabble, which had so often been desecrated in Parliaments, and assemblies, and lectures, and railway carriages; all of them, like Stendhal, would have given a great deal to have a langue sacre, comprehensible only by the few. All of them, like Goethe, allegorized meanings into their best works, in order to give the slip to prying snouts, and endeavoured to make themselves, as did Nietzsche, inaccessible, in order that “the swine might not break into the gardens.””

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 44.

People, Swine, Affliction

“The point of one of [Rawls’] main constructions—the introduction of the “veil of ignorance”—is precisely to exclude from consideration empirical information that might prejudice the overriding normative force of the outcome. It is, then, extremely striking, not to say astounding, to the lay reader that the complex theoretical apparatus of Theory of Justice, operating through over 500 pages of densely argued text, eventuates in a constitutional structure that is a virtual replica (with some extremely minor deviations) of the arrangements that exist in the United States.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” p. 22.
Outside Ethics (2005)

Justice

“For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,
And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,
Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto vi, stanza 33
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book VII

Fate

“A child blind from birth doesn't even know he's blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thing. Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but. If the condition had been new, or more localized, he might have understood, but loneliness both encompassed his life and overreached it.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Life, Idea, Birth, Sense

“My perfect Sunday would be a chilled, calming day, nothing too taxing. I try to watch films at the cinema whenever I can, or I go for a walk down by the river. … Richard and I might then try out a new restaurant we’ve heard about. I’m vegetarian and I love it that there are so many places in London with great veggie food. … I’ve got my own little fan group who call themselves the Sprouts, because of my obsession with Brussels sprouts, and they’re a fantastic group of girls that I chat to all the time. … Otherwise – this is embarrassing to admit – Richard and I will play Call of Duty. It’s a side of me that not a lot of people know about but I was a big games girl when I was a teenager and computer games are my guilty pleasure.”

Samantha Barks (1990) Manx singer and actress

“Samantha Barks: I'm addicted to Call of Duty,” interview with The Telegraph (4 August 2014) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/11003183/.html.

Love, People, Pleasure, Food

“To-day's house makes to-morrow’s road;
I knew these heaps of stone
When they were walls of grace and might,
The country’s honour, art’s delight
That over fountain'd silence show'd
Fame's final bastion.”

Edmund Blunden (1896–1974) English poet, author and literary critic

The Survival http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-survival/ (1921)

Art, Silence, Housing, Country

“That religion in which I must know in advance that something is a divine command in order to recognize it as my duty, is the revealed religion (or the one standing in need of a revelation); in contrast, that religion in which I must first know that something is my duty before I can accept it as a divine injunction is the natural religion. … When religion is classified not with reference to its first origin and its inner possibility (here it is divided into natural and revealed religion) but with respect to its characteristics which make it capable of being shared widely with others, it can be of two kinds: either the natural religion, of which (once it has arisen) everyone can be convinced through his own reason, or a learned religion, of which one can convince others only through the agency of learning (in and through which they must be guided). … A religion, accordingly, can be natural, and at the same time revealed, when it is so constituted that men could and ought to have discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although they would not have come upon it so early, or over so wide an area, as is required. Hence a revelation thereof at a given time and in a given place might well be wise and very advantageous to the human race, in that, when once the religion thus introduced is here, and has been made known publicly, everyone can henceforth by himself and with his own reason convince himself of its truth. In this event the religion is objectively a natural religion, though subjectively one that has been revealed.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Men, Truth, Religion, Nature

“The collapse of the Ice Ages hypothesis does not, of course, settle the debate about whether there are racial differences in genes for intelligence. If universities had their way, the necessary research will never be done. They fund the most mundane research projects, but never seem to have funds to test for genetic differences between races. I tell US academics I can only assume that they believe that racial IQ differences have a genetic component, and fear what they might find. They never admit that the politics of race affects their research priorities. It is always just far more important to establish whether squirrels enjoy The Magic Flute.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century (2012), p. 36, Box 4

Age, Fear, Way, Intelligence

“It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

J. S. Mill, Dissertations and discussions: political, philosophical, and historical, Volume 2 http://books.google.gr/books?id=FyfPAAAAMAAJ&dq=, H. Holt, 1864, p. 11.

Past

“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbor).

Death, Fate, War, Thinking

“Everyone who came in contact with Xavier seems to have agreed that he was a saint. Men might disagree with him; but in all the extensive records there is not a single word that runs contrary to the general verdict as to his saintliness. There are many references to the long hours that he spent in prayer and in rapt contemplation of his Lord. He disclaimed anything in the way of miraculous powers; in his devotions there was nothing that could be called mystical in any strict sense of that term. He seems to have followed the broad lines of medieval devotional practice, profoundly influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of his master Ignatius. Xavier, like Ignatius, was in all things a medieval man, untouched by any of the new currents of thought in theology or in the daily affairs of life. It is probable that, in the ten years of his sojourn in the East, he never possessed a Bible or even a New Testament. Apart from his breviary and his missal, his sole companion seems to have been the work of Marcus Marulus, Opus de religiose vivendi institutione, a thick book of 680 pages, published at Cologne in 1531. He seems rarely to have based his discourses directly on the Bible…”

Francis Xavier (1506–1552) Navarrese Basque Roman Catholic saint and missionary

Neill, S. (2004). A history of Christianity in India: The beginning to AD 1707. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Life, Men, Books, Way

“I want to reach the state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture. Perhaps I might be satisfied momentarily with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind..”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

“The sweetest teaching did he introduce,
Concealing truth under untrue speech.
The place he spoke of as the gods' abode
Was that by which he might awe humans most, —
The place from which, he knew, terrors came to mortals
And things advantageous in their wearisome life —
The revolving heaven above, in which dwell
The lightnings, and awesome claps
Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven,
Beautiful and intricate by that wise craftsman Time, —
From which, too, the meteor's glowing mass speeds
And wet thunderstorm pours forth upon the earth.”

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

Sisyphus as translated by R. G. Bury, and revised by J. Garrett

Life, God, Truth, Beauty

“We might well call this short Mock-play of ours
A Posie made of Weeds instead of Flowers;
Yet such have been presented to your noses,
And there are such, I fear, who thought 'em Roses.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Prologue
The Rehearsal (1671)

Fear, Flowers

“The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages, may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude Lorraine's clothes and walk into the street, and the many who knew Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but I should at last meet with some one, more intimately acquainted with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited.It is thus in all the fine arts. A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's Lecture at the Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (25 July 1836), from notes, taken by C.R. Leslie
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Age, Art, Reality, Appearance

Quotes about might page 51

Quotes about might
page 51