Quotes about most (10000 quotes, page 43)

“Everything is so arranged that the blind logic of mathematics executes the will of the most enlightened and free Mind.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Mathematics

“In his references to my own work, Gould includes at least nine citations that involve more than just an expression of Gould's opinion; in these citations Gould purportedly paraphrases my views. Yet in eight of the nine cases, Gould's representation of these views is false, misleading, or grossly caricatured. Nonspecialists could have no way of knowing any of this without reading the cited sources. While an author can occasionally make an inadvertent mistake in paraphrasing another, it appears Gould's paraphrases are consistently slanted to serve his own message…
Of all the book's references, a full 27 percent precede 1900. Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than 1950. From the total literature spanning more than a century, the few "bad apples" have been hand-picked most aptly to serve Gould's purpose.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Arthur Jensen, "The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons" http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/jensen-gould-fossils Contemporary Education Review 1:2, 1982

Books , Way , Literature , Appearance

“Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Failure , Thinking , Success

“A white spot is on the horizon. There it is. A terrible storm is brewing. But no one sees the write spot or has any inkling of what it might mean. But no (this would not be the most terrible situation either), no, there is one person who sees it and knows what it means-but he is a passenger. He has no authority on the ship, can take no action. … The fact that in Christendom there is visible on the horizon a white speck which means that a storm is threatening-this I knew; but, alas, I was an am only a passenger.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers XI3 B 109 p 178ff (quoted in Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth by Gergor Malantschuk 1963 Augsburg Publishing House
1850s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1850s

Personality

“At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An Unprejudiced Mind,” pp. 319-320
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Life , Youth , Age , Soul

“Chanel, General De Gaulle and Picasso are the three most important figures of our time.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

As quoted in Paris, Paris : Journey Into the City of Light‎ (2005) by David Downie, p. 87

Time

“I thank your Excellency for your generous and obliging offer. Most certain, my inclination leads me to a resignation. My reputation I value more than any advantages of gain; and I consider it in great danger. I wrote your Excellency lengthy upon this subject yesterday, and therefore shall say but little upon it to-day. I intend to write to Congress to day, upon the subject of my apprehensions and determination; and, if they do not give me those kinds of assurances, which are necessary to guard my reputation from malice and detraction. I shall insist upon leaving the business. The politics of Congress are really alarming, and the state of the finances astonishing; where they will end, time only can unfold.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Business , Time

“Now if you do have a perception that any conceivable consideration may be utterly invalidated by some other consideration which you do not know, and if you are reminded of this perception constantly by the fact that things exist, certain modifications take place in the way you feel about things. These modifications have not taken place in the psychology of most people.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

People , Way , Feeling

“Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

As quoted in Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005) by James Lee Christian, p. 556

God , People , Fear

“The guts of honey bee workers contain a distinctive community of bacterial species. They are microaerophilic or anaerobic, and were not clearly deliniated by earlier studies relying on laboratory culture of isolates under atmospheric oxygen levels. Recently, a more complete picture of the potential metabolism and functions of these bacteria have been possible, using genomic approaches based on metagenomic samples, as well as cultured isolates. Of these, most are host-restricted and are generally absent outside adult guts.”

Nancy A. Moran (1954) American biologist

[Current Opinion in Insect Science, 10, August 2015, 22–28, Genomics of the honey bee microbiome, 10.1016/j.cois.2015.04.003]

Communication , Study , Bee

“Posito I assume and when I say posito, I have the right to assume the unlikely; therefore posito, I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. Posito, I assume, and when I say posito, I have the right to assume what is more unreasonable than the most unreasonable; therefore; posito, I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it-then what? Let us linger for a moment on this thought, with which, of course, we have all been familiar for several years: the thought of the prospect for the hope of the system. Therefore, in order to be very brief, posito, I assume that the system appeared here in Copenhagen, then what? Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view; then we would again be saved by the promise. If this does not happen, then of course one would have to read it. How troublesome, and who would finally benefit from that?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Prefaces, Nichol, 1997 p. 39-40
1840s, Prefaces (1844)

Hope , Appearance , Reading

“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
1790s

Law , Nature , Change

“The daily expenditures by consumers for new consumers' goods, upon which business stability largely depends, are determined in part by the total volume of money in circulation, in part by other factors including the frequency with which that money is returned to consumers. The flow of money, therefore, from use in consumption to another use in consumption should not be overlooked in studies of the causes and conditions of business fluctuations. It is the purpose of this paper to describe certain aspects of this circuit flow of money, to raise the question whether it does not deserve more attention that it has yet received in our analyses of business cycles, and to suggest pertinent lines of investigation. Unfortunately, the statistics upon which the most important conclusions concerning this subject must be based are not at hand and are not likely to be for a long time to come. The following discussion will have served its purpose if it stimulates further inquiry in profitable directions and helps to hasten the day when the necessary statistics are available.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: The circuit flow of money, 1922, p. 460; Early descriptions of the circular flow of income

Money , Question , Business , Study

“The development of Christianity in all the sects of the Western world during the past two centuries has been the progressive elimination from all of them of the elements of our natively Aryan morality that were superimposed on the doctrine before and during the Middle Ages to make it acceptable to our race and so a religion that could not be exported as a whole to other races. With the progressive weakening of our racial instincts, all the cults have been restored to conformity with the "primitive" Christianity of the holy book, i. e., to the undiluted poison of the Jewish originals. I should, perhaps, have made it more explicit in my little book that the effective power of the alien cult is by no means confined to sects that affirm a belief in supernatural beings. As I have stressed in other writings, when the Christian myths became unbelievable, they left in the minds of even intelligent and educated men a residue, the detritus of the rejected mythology, in the form of superstitions about "all mankind," "human rights," and similar figments of the imagination that had gained currency only on the assumption that they had been decreed by an omnipotent deity, so that in practical terms we must regard as basically Christian and religious such irrational cults as Communism and the tangle of fancies that is called "Liberalism" and is the most widely accepted faith among our people today.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men , People , Books , Age

“Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 19 (unnamed student)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

School , Study

“INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being "happy as a clam!"”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"Sonnet to a Clam".

Life , Men , Confidence , Happiness

“When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Art is not logic, and if you want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004

Education , Art , Soul , History

“The Roman god, Lucifer, was the bearer of light, the spirit of the air, the personification of enlightenment. […] It has been said "the truth will make men free". The truth alone has never set anyone free. It is only DOUBT which will bring mental emancipation. Without the wonderful element of doubt, the doorway through which truth passes would be tightly shut, impervious to the most strenuous poundings of a thousand Lucifers.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Men , God , Truth , Light

“The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art.”

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

"Meditations on Basic Baroque," IV (1966), p. 432
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Art , Parting

“Philip was born a Greek of the most aristocratic, indeed of divine, descent… Philip was both a Greek and a Macedonian, even as Demosthenes was a Greek and an Athenian…The Macedonians over whom Philip was to rule were an outlying family member of the Greek-speaking peoples.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998

People , Family

“The gospel and the first church were never hostile to women nor treated them as minors. … When Christianity became a power or authority, this worked against women. A strange perversion, yet fully understandable when we allow that women represent precisely the most innovative elements in Christianity: grace, love, charity, a concern for living creatures, nonviolence, an interest in little things, the hope of new beginnings—the very elements that Christianity was setting aside in favor of glory and success.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 33-34

Love , Women , Hostility , Hope

“If someone were to discover, for instance, that under hitherto unobserved circumstances stones were able to speak, it would take only a few pages to describe and explain so earth-shattering a phenomenon. On the other hand, one can always write yet another book about positive thinking, and this is far from being of only academic interest, since it involves a method that makes it impossible ever to arrive at a clear resolution of life's most important questions. Human activities might be graded by the quantity of words required: the more words, the worse their character. All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. The thought suggests itself that we carry on our human business in a most irrational manner when we do not use those methods by which the exact sciences have forged ahead in such exemplary fashion.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Life , People , Books , Fashion

“I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

Life , Men , Art , History

“But with the passing of the day of lands so cheap as to be well-nigh free, we are coming to confront a new set of conditions. It has been found necessary to inquire whether under these new conditions we can be sure of finding employment for the diverse elements and enormous numbers of new immigrants that are offered to us. We are all agreed, whether we be Americans of the first or of the seventh generation on this soil, that it is not desirable to receive more immigrants than can reasonably be assured of bettering their condition by coming here. For the sake both of those who would come and more especially of those already here, it has been thought wise to avoid the danger of increasing our numbers too fast. It is not a reflection on any race or creed. We might not be able to support them if their numbers were too great. In such event, the first sufferers would be the most recent immigrants, unaccustomed to our life and language and industrial methods. We want to keep wages and living conditions good for everyone who is now here or who may come here.”

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

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Life , Support , Suffering

“If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me… The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Life , Children , Way , Communication

“The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose visual modeling language that is used to specify, visualize, construct, and document the artifacts of a software system. It captures decisions and understanding about systems that must be constructed. It is used to understand, design, browse, conﬁgure, maintain, and control information about such systems. It is intended for use with all development methods, lifecycle stages, application domains, and media. The modeling language is intended to unify past experience about modeling techniques and to incorporate current software best practices into a standard approach. UML includes semantic concepts, notation, and guidelines. It has static, dynamic, environmental, and organizational parts. It is intended to be supported by interactive visual modeling tools that have code generators and report writers. The UML speciﬁcation does not deﬁne a standard process but is intended to be useful with an iterative development process. It is intended to support most existing object-oriented development processes.”

James Rumbaugh (1947) Computer scientist, software engineer

James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson & Grady Booch (1998) The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. p. 1

Understanding , Support , Decision , Past

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Wisdom , Men , Hostility

“Objectively speaking, the history of North Korean state has been one of an ambitious social if brutal experiment that ended in a very ugly disaster. Essentially, the 70 years of the Kim Family's rule have been the wasted years. The Kim family did not merely build one of the world’s most “perfect” Stalinist dictatorships, but also managed to transform into a basket case what once, in the 1940s, was the most advanced industrial economy of East Asia outside Japan. However, one should not expect that such a pessimistic, if honest, view of North Korea’s past, is going to be enthusiastically embraced by those North Koreans who bother to care about such matters.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Get Ready For Selective Amnesia (November 2015)

World , Family , History , Past

“We Conservatives…are realists. We know that the British are one of the most creative and gifted peoples on earth. But we also know that the British are individualists, who do not respond to state direction and control. We like leadership—yes. But, above all, we like freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Article for the News of the World (29 April 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104052
Leader of the Opposition

People , Freedom

“I owe my view of the world to the Bible. To my mind, the Bible's approach is the only valid one. Most philosophies usually go out of date within 20 years.”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

The world we live in p. 131
Jesus Our Destiny

World

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

Life , Wisdom , Women , Law

“Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section I, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Men , World , Home , Sense

“I object to several popular ideas. I don't think anyone's work is reductive. The most the term can mean is that new work doesn't have what the old work had. Its not so definitive that a certain kind of form is missing; a description and discussion of the kind present is pretty definitive.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd, ‎William C. Agee (1968) Don Judd, p. 15
1960s

Idea , Thinking

“The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book The Old Regime and the Revolution

Variant translation: The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
Old Regime (1856), p. 214 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA214&vq=%22most+critical+moment+for+bad+governments%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later

“I predict that, if anarcho-capitalist institutions appeared in this country tomorrow, heroin would be legal in New York and illegal in most other places.”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.128

Appearance , Country

“In retrospect, the reason for the assassination is hardly a mystery. It is now abundantly clear … why the C. I. A.'s covert operations element wanted John Kennedy out of the Oval Office and Lyndon Johnson in it. The new President elevated by rifle fire to control of our foreign policy had been one of the most enthusiastic American cold warriors…. Johnson had originally risen to power on the crest of the fulminating anti-communist crusade which marked American politics after World War II. Shortly after the end of that war, he declaimed that atomic power had become 'ours to use, either to Christianize the world or pulverize it' -- a Christian benediction if ever there was one. Johnson's demonstrated enthusiasm for American military intervention abroad … earned him the sobriquet 'the senator from the Pentagon….”

Jim Garrison (1921–1992) American judge

[On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988)]

War , World

“If we find, when we read again one of our classics—say Virgil for instance—that we like it better than ever, the experience may suggest an even more pleasing conjecture. Psychologists tell us that fullness of life is the goal of everything that lives, that the impulse towards completeness, towards ripeness and self-realization, is the most compelling of all motives. These discoveries in old books of new beauties and aspects of interest may persuade us, therefore, that we are not only still ourselves, but more ourselves than ever: that our spirit has not only persisted in its being, but has become more lucid in the process.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 2
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Life , Books , Beauty , Motivation

“When learning something new, you must never be critical at the beginning. Always do your thinking after trial and error. Most people make up their mind one way or the other before they even get started. The most important step is to remove your coloured glasses and get a clear view.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

48
Ki Sayings (2003)

People , Way , Error , Thinking

“concerning this selfstyled world's greatest and most generous literary figure: who had just arrived in our nation's capitol, attired in half a GI uniform and ready to be hanged as a traitor by the only country which ever made even a pretense of fighting for freedom of speech
Re Ezra Pound — poetry happens to be an art; and artists happen to be human beings.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Re Ezra Pound (p. 69)
i : six nonlectures (1953)

World , Art , Freedom , Fight

“Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101848.html (June 1, 2007)

People , Music , History , Universe

“Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1950s, People and Places (1959), p. 198

Problem

“When dealing with the press the most important thing to remember is that you have the right to remain silent, because everything you say can and will be used against you.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

[Woodhull Freedom Foundation mourns death of one of its founders, Jeffrey Montgomery, Levy, Ricci J., Woodhull Freedom Foundation, July 19, 2016, 2016-07-20, http://www.woodhullfoundation.org/2016/sex-and-politics/woodhull-freedom-foundation-mourns-death-of-one-of-its-founders-jeffrey-montgomery-a-leader-activist-a-mentor-and-sexual-freedom-movement-hero/]

“It is the historic glory of the intellectual class of the West in modern times that, of all the classes which could be called in any sense privileged, it has shown the largest and most consistent concern for the well-being of the classes which lie below it in the social scale.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 29

Lie , Sense , Time

“But in the judgments they exercise they are most accurate and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court that is fewer than a hundred. And as to what is once determined by that number, it is unalterable. What they most of all honor, after God himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses], whom if any one blaspheme he is punished capitally. They also think it a good thing to obey their elders, and the major part. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them will speak while the other nine are against it. They also avoid spitting in the midst of them, or on the right side. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Jews in resting from their labors on the seventh day; for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not remove any vessel out of its place, nor go to stool thereon. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they are first admitted among them); and covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the Divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit; and even this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a defilement to them.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

God , Food , Exercises , Nature

“The most important things about the individual are what he cannot or will not say.”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Projective methods for the study of personality (1939), p. 395

“In the twenty-four years since its birth in 1921, the Communist Party of China has gone through three great struggles--the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the War of Resistance Against Japan which is still going on. From its very beginning our Party has based itself on the theory of Marxism-Leninism, for Marxism-Leninism is the crystallization of the most correct and most revolutionary scientific thought of the world proletariat. When the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism began to be integrated with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, the Chinese revolution took on an entirely new complexion and the entire historical stage of New Democracy emerged. Armed with Marxist-Leninist theory, the Communist Party of China has brought a new style of work to the Chinese people, a style of work which essentially entails integrating theory with practice, forging close links with the masses and practicing self-criticism.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

War , People , Truth , World

“Anton Chekhov wrote that “one must not put a loaded rifle on stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” Good drama requires spare and purposive action, sensible linking of potential causes with realized effects. Life is much messier; nothing happens most of the time. Millions of Americans (many hotheaded) own rifles (many loaded), but the great majority, thank God, do not go off most of the time. We spend most of real life waiting for Godot, not charging once more unto the breach.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Speaking of Snails and Scales", p. 345
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Life , God , Thinking , Time

“For so many who had been driven from their office buildings, these five weeks were only the prelude to spending months cloistered in cramped and inadequate office space while they advised senators on some of the toughest calls they would ever have to make … As the gap widened between perceptions of fear or danger in Washington and in much of the rest of the country, I believe it had a significant influence on why representatives reacted to terrorism concerns in a way that was fundamentally different from most of their constituents.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

On the effects of the 2001 anthrax attacks, from While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, as quoted in [Moyer, Justin, The speed read: ‘While America Sleeps,’ by Russ Feingold, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-read-so-you-dont-have-to-while-america-sleeps-by-russ-feingold/2012/02/28/gIQATdIszR_story.html?utm_term=.8231b88d08d1, 20 August 2018, The Washington Post, March 8, 2012]
2012

Fear , Way , Country

“I’m acquainted with a, uh, gentleman who claims that the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn’t be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down. He claims that martyrs like you just perpetuate human misery by catering to it. He believes individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

Support , Problem

“A pencil is a simple and predictable piece of technology. There's only one way of it working (it will function when it is sharp), and an obvious failure model(too short, too blunt, no lead). With a car, especially the kind of limp-along rust bucket most of us got for our first ride, it's more complex. There's coaxing involved, especially on cold mornings. There's that noise that never amounts to anything but never goes away, random stalls you begin to put down to the cast of the moon. None of it means it's broken, just that it requires friendly attention, that it has needs. Gradually you acquire a ritualized relationship to it, a bond forged by its unpredictability, by the fact it has to be dealt with. Which is how you come to know people, after all: not by things they have in common with everyone else, but through learning your way around their eccentricities, their hard edges and unpredictable softnesses, the things that make them different from everybody else.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 11

People , Cars , Way , Failure

“I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 2: Fire Over England, p. 34

Nature

“Trade is the oldest and most important economic nexus among nations. Indeed, trade along with war ha been central to the evolution of international relations.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Five, The Politics Of International Trade, p. 171

War

“For the Spanish Armada to have conquered England in 1588 would not have been easy. King Philip's fleet would have needed several pieces of good fortune it did not get: a friendlier wind at Calais, perhaps, one that might have kept the English from launching their fireships against the Armada; and a falling-out between the Dutch and English that could have let the Duke of Parma put to sea from Dunkirk and join his army to the Duke of Medina Sidonia's fleet for the invasion of England. Getting Spanish soldiers across the Channel would have been the hard part. Had it been accomplished, the Spanish infantry, the best in the world at the time and commanded by a most able officer, very probably could have beaten Elizabeth's forces on land.”

Harry Turtledove book Ruled Britannia

Historical Note, p. 457
Ruled Britannia (2002)

World , Time , Parting , Sea

“But perhaps the most significant factor in the turn to a Greek ethnicism, which resisted both the Turkish turban and the Latin mitre in the years before the fall of Constantinople, was the opposition of the urban populace, led by the Orthodox party, monks, and priests, to the wealthy urban classes and the Byzantine court. After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, recognition by the Turks of the Greek millet under its Patriarch and Church helped to ensure the persistence of a separate ethnic identity, which, even if it did not produce a ‘precocious nationalism’ among the Greeks, provided the later Greek enlighteners and nationalists with a cultural constituency fed by political dreams and apocalyptic prophecies of the recapture of Constantinople and the restoration of Greek Byzantium and its Orthodox emperor in all his glory.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Chosen Peoples (2003)

Dreams , Help

“Throughout all the years and in everything we do, we have focused most of all on the development of human capacity, beginning with our own professional staff, and leveraging their expertise to enrich the Arab community. We have embraced the concept of the ‘knowledge worker’ and have sought to empower our people and the Arab world’s people to dream, to imagine, and to create.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

People , World , Dreams , Imagination

“Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neo-conservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Statement on the Iraq War Resolution http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr021407.htm (February 14, 2007).
2000s, 2006-2009

War , History , Nature , Loyalty

“Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.
He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.
He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Saturday Pioneer (20 December 1890)
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (1890 and 1891)

People , History , Revenge , Nature

“So the idea that there is nothing essential, in the sense that there are no human universals, is dogma. Ask most anyone who is going to be shot at dawn.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"Postmodernism and Human Rights" (2000), p. 53
Are Women Human?: and Other International Dialogues (2006)

Idea , Sense , Universe

“Compare Holland with Russia; you see only marshy and sterile islands in the former, which rise from the center of the ocean: a small republic which is only 48 miles length by 40 wide. But this small body is the very nerve-center of the region: immense people live in it, and these industrious people are both powerful and rich. They shook the yoke of the Spanish domination, which was then the most formidable monarchy of Europe. The trade of this republic extends to the ends of the world; and new trade appears almost immediately; it can maintain in times of war an army fifty thousand men, without counting a many and well maintained fleet.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Ch. 5 : How It Is Necessary To Control The Cities, Or The Principalities, Which Are Controlled By Their Own Laws Before They Were Conquered

Men , War , People , World

“America is actually the country to which people came in the most of a hurry, to try and find if that life could really be lived as a society. Some of them came to practice their religion freely. Many came to escape from persecution by other religions. Some came to be free from religion altogether, and that's why the Constitution is godless and doesn't mention the word, but it was not written by atheists. It was written by democratic theists and secularists, and that's why the meeting at Philadelphia, which decided these matters and decides them still for us, was a godless one, if not an atheist one. And that's why I think modern America should be a lot more anti-religious than it is. It should pay less respect, and make much less reverence toward religion, than its mass media… presently do.”

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

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Life , People , Religion , Thinking

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Attributed

“A precondition for political change lies in the disjuncture between the existing social system and the redistribution of power toward those actors who would benefit most from a change in the system.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

p, 125
War and Change in World Politics (1981)

Change

“On the basis of the preliminary theory that resistance to change is a combination of an individual reaction to frustration with strong group-induced forces it seemed that the most appropríate methods for overcoming the resistance to change would be group methods”

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Source: "Overcoming resistance to change." 1948, p. 520

Strong , Change

“Most Muslims treat the Quran as a document to imitate rather than interpret, suffocating our capacity to think for ourselves.”

Irshad Manji book The Trouble with Islam Today

Source: The Trouble with Islam Today (2005), Ch. 2: Seventy Virgins?

Thinking

“There are many reasons why the religion of Islam impoverishes western society, but the main one, in my opinion, is that it degrades and debases women, except, of course, for left-wing women, who happily degrade and debase themselves defending Islam, like turkeys defending Christmas. A woman in Islam needs to be covered from head to toe because men are not expected to exhibit any kind of basic self-control. I get a lot of correspondence from angry Muslim males and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told that western women are asking to be raped because of the way they dress. No other religion teaches people to think like this. Recently here in Britain, we've had a rash of Muslim gangs pimping and raping young girls in northern England. I do mean Muslim gangs, and not Asians, as the media keep reporting. There are no Sikhs or Hindus involved in this, and to call them Asians to avoid naming the real problem is a slander on Hindus and Sikhs. These men do it because they regard non-Muslim women as subhuman trash. And this poison is coming directly from their religion, a religion whose values are dictated and imposed by some of the most narrow-minded, psychotic human beings on this planet. And, coming as I do from an Irish Catholic background, believe me, that's saying something.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Name the poison" (22 June 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=sEsWO4xep44
2011

Women , Men , People , Religion

“Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (2006)

God , World , Sense , Silence

“The most destructive habit [to relationships] is criticizing; next comes blaming, but any of the habits are more than capable of disconnecting you from a person you want to be close with.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Unhappy Teenagers A Way for Parents and Teachers to Reach Them (2002), p.14

Personality

“Assuming her most gracious manner, my Wife advanced towards the Stranger, "Permit me, Madam, to feel and be felt by— " then, suddenly recoiling, "Oh! it is not a Woman, and there are no angles either, not a trace of one. Can it be that I have so misbehaved to a perfect Circle?" "I am indeed, in a certain sense a Circle," replied the Voice, "and a more perfect Circle than any in Flatland; but to speak more accurately, I am many Circles in one."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

</p>
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 15. Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland

Feeling , Sense , Perfection

“[…] I don't know my future. I don't know about tomorrow. I can just control for today or present, right now. […] I don't want to think about future too much, because present is most important for me.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Interview with TalkAsia, November 2007

Thinking , Future

“Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men , Democracy , Nature

“… the single most important activist thing we could do is invent a good vegan cheese. If someone’s receptive to veganism, but they don’t feel like they can do it, it always is, “But I love how this or that tastes!” And it seems like as much as they’ll agree with you about the ethical arguments, their own taste preferences win out.”

Isa Chandra Moskowitz (1973) American food writer

" Isa Chandra Moskowitz: The vegan ambassador http://www.culinate.com/articles/the_culinate_interview/isa_chandra_moskowitz". Interview by Ben Grossblatt for Culinate, July 3, 2007

Love , Feeling

“There must be an authority, and we believe that the most qualified authority in a household is the man's.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928) French right-wing and nationalist politician

La droite aujourd'hui (1979)

“A responsive administration is tested most at the point of interface between the administration and the people.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

in February 1988, p. 28
Quote, Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi

People

“A dead man, Sir Moses,” Lord Darcy told him.
“Remember, young man, he isn’t dead until I say he’s dead,” Sir Moses said. He pushed Lord Darcy aside and stepped over to the throne. He stared down at Master Sorcerer Dandro Bittman.
“This man is dead,” Sir Moses said.
“Indeed he is, Sir Moses,” Master Sean said, coming up behind him. “And that’s something that neither you with your bone cutting nor I with my spells, nor the finest healer with the most sensitive hands in the kingdom, can do aught about.”

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 15 (p. 151)

Dead

“True courage…has so little to do with Anger, that there lies always the strongest Suspicion against it, where this Passion is highest. The true Courage is the cool and calm. The bravest of Men have the least of a brutal bullying Insolence; and in the very time of Danger are found the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a Coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in Fury, or Anger, can never be plac’d to the account of Courage.”

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) English politician and Earl

Vol. 1, p. 66; "Sensus Communis".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Men , Courage , Rage , Passion

“And let's not make any mistake, or gloss over that fact: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are at risk every day of their lives. Not only are we the group most at risk of violence, we are most at risk of job discrimination, losing our families; homophobia retains its title as the last socially acceptable form of bigotry.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

People , Family

“The delusion that one's sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

Lady Slings the Booze (1992)

Way , Reality

“Secularism is the most misused word in the country. Its misuse should come to an end. Because of the rampant misuse of the word, there have been instances of tension in the society.”

Rajnath Singh (1951) Indian politician

On the word secularism as it is used in India, " Rajnath attacks Congress on secularism, says it’s the ‘most misused’ term http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/govt-attacks-congress-on-secularism-says-its-the-most-misused-term/" The Indian Express (26 November 2015)

Country

“In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine.”

Ted Sizer (1932–2009) American education reformer

Source: Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (1984), p. 95.

Education , School , History , Learning

“[Concerning an aurora, "vivid crimson … indescribably rich and deep":] The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 9: The Discovery of Glacier Bay
1910s

God , Mountain , Light

“This poet is now, most of the time, an elder statesman like Baruch or Smuts, full of complacent wisdom and cast-iron whimsy. But of course there was always a good deal of this in the official rôle that Frost created for himself; one imagines Yeats saying about Frost, as Sarah Bernhardt said about Nijinsky: “I fear, I greatly fear, that I have just seen the greatest actor in the world.”
Sometimes it is this public figure, this official rôle — the Only Genuine Robert Frost in Captivity — that writes the poems, and not the poet himself; and then one gets a self-made man’s political editorials, full of cracker-box philosophizing, almanac joke-cracking — of a snake-oil salesman’s mysticism; one gets the public figure’s relishing consciousness of himself, an astonishing constriction of imagination and sympathy; one gets sentimentality and whimsicality; an arch complacency, a complacent archness; and one gets Homely Wisdom till the cows come home.”

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

“The Other Frost”, pp. 30–31
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Wisdom , World , Fear , Home

“I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future, so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society, they have no time to preserve what is. Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Sarah Greenough, Washington: National Gallery of Art. 2000, pp. 26–53; as quoted on Wikipedia

People , Art , Business , Time

“The Palestinians living among us have, for the most part, earned a not unfounded reputation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another. The situation could not be otherwise, given a whole nation of merchants, as non-productive members of society”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

for example, the Jews in Poland

page 77 of 6 December 2012 publication by Springer Science & Business Media https://books.google.ca/books?id=nRArBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA77, translation by Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974)

page 238 of "Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4EmqLCWUFvEC&pg=PA238 in 1998, page 221 of "Acts of Religion" https://books.google.ca/books?id=c_kgAmFbvP0C&pg=PA221 in 2002, page 235 of "Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine" https://books.google.ca/books?id=CYcOfkrduWYC&pg=PA235 in 2004, page 44 of "Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism" https://books.google.ca/books?id=IYVDMuOFN20C&pg=PA44 in 2005, page 8 of "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot" https://books.google.ca/books?id=juCYcPWdqccC&pg=PA8 in 2010, page 155 of "Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture" https://books.google.ca/books?id=YMIsYMw0ES0C&pg=PA155 in 2012, page 75 of "Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4svsCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT75 in 2016 and page 39 of "Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews" https://books.google.ca/books?id=6kk_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA39 in 2017 also quote this.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

People , Thinking , Loss , Parting

“War breeds war. That is all it can do. War does nothing but devour valuable resources and destroy precious lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. As Randolph Bourne wrote, “War is the health of the State.” War is a mechanism used by the ruling elites of the State to coerce and control the people, so it becomes essential that whenever one war is complete, another is instigated elsewhere so that the mechanism keeps running.
On the other hand, peace breeds prosperity. If War is indeed the “health of the State,” then Peace can be nothing less than the “health of the People.” Being at peace means valuable natural resources can be preserved and used at home where we need them most. Being at peace means young fathers and mothers can live and enjoy free trade, not only among themselves but with the world, instead of dying capriciously and unnecessarily, for political gain or to line the pockets of those who profit from their sacrifice.
History teaches us that the key elements to prosperity are freedom and peace. You don’t go to war with people you like, or with people you know, or with people with whom you are trading and doing business. Even after our fledgling republic was nearly torn asunder in civil war which literally pitted brother against brother and nearly destroyed the South, our reunited nation and all its people advanced and prospered after peace was restored.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

" Why Peace? Why Not? http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7277," Liberty For All (11 February 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012).
Republished http://original.antiwar.com/lee-wrights/2012/02/15/why-peace-why-not/ by Antiwar.com (16 February 2012).
2012

War , People , Health , World

“Does it matter in the least to God whether you believe or not? Even the sage Suka Deva was to Him like a big ant at the most. Infinite is He. How much can you understand of Him?”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 327]

God , Understanding

“He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) British politician

Review of Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, in the Edinburgh Review (May 1811)

Beauty , Exercises , Imagination

“All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter X: A Vision of the Galaxy (p. 133)

Life , Effort , Passion

“Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 97

“I want so much for my work to grow forth out of the material, just as in nature the plants grow forth out of the earth, which corresponds to their character. In the print 'Lebensfreude' [Joy of living] I worked for the most part with my finger, and the effect I hoped for was achieved. There is hidden in the print a bit of wantonness, in the representation as well as in the boldness of the technique. If I were to make the "ragged and moving" contours "correctly" in the academic sense, this effect would not nearly be achieved.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

in a letter to his friend Gustav Schiefler, 1906, in 'Gustav Schiefler and Christel Mosel', Emil Nolde: Das graphische Werk, vol. 2.; M. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne, 1966-67, p. 8; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p.50
Nolde described how the exhilarating new sense of collaboration with the medium had freed him from the constraints of traditional etching techniques and encouraged a bolder, freer expression
1900 - 1920

Hope , Nature , Sense , Joy

“The brain's synapses are programmed to grow for a number of years, making new connections. After that time, there is a shift toward pruning, to get rid of unneeded connections. …Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself. …the amount of reorganization that can occur in most adults is vastly less than can occur in children and adolescents.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Children , Time

“The decisive gestures in life are almost always the simplest, the most ingenuous.”

Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French writer

A Virgin Heart (trans. 1922)

Life , Decision

“Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

The Way The Future Was, (autobiography, 1978)

People , Sadness , Parting

“It was the most portentous mission since Saul of Tarsus has suffered an epileptic seizure and called it Christianity.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 73)

Suffering

“Here the reason
no less than all separate acts
Must give way,
For our powers become simple in Love;
They are silent
And In the most secret part of the understanding, the simple eye is ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image. The sight of the simple eye is a living mirror bowed down in the Presence of the Father.
And this revelation of the Father
Lifts the soul above the reason
Into the Imageless Nudity.
There the soul is simple, pure, spotless,
Empty of all things;
And it is in this state of perfect emptiness
That the Father manifests His Divine radiance.
To this radiance neither reason nor sense,
Observation nor distinction,
Can attain.
All this must stay below;
For the measureless radiance
Blinds the eyes of the reason,
They cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light.
But above the reason,
In the most secret part of the understanding,
The simple eye is ever open.
It contemplates and gazes at the Light
With a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself:
Eye to eye,
Mirror to mirror,
Image to image.
This threefold act makes us like God,
And unites us to Him;
For the sight of the simple eye is a living mirror,
Which God has made for His image,
And whereon He has impressed it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness

Love , God , Secret , Way

“All across the continent of Europe, and more recently in the United States, we have seen acts of the most heinous depravity and barbarity committed in the name of this religion. All the while, the reformist and moderating voices are shut down by hard-line Sunnis and their useful idiot, fellow travellers. Groups like the Soros-funded Hope not Hate demonise even practising Muslims for daring to oppose Shariah law.”

Raheem Kassam (1986) British journalist and politician

Tommy Robinson vs. Quilliam Shows How the Establishment’s Grip on Political Narratives is Slipping http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/07/kassam-tommy-robinson-vs-quilliam-shows-how-the-establishments-grip-on-political-narratives-is-slipping/ (May 7, 2017)

Hate , Religion , Law , Hope

“I do think that the banking system is now in the most perilous state we’ve seen in over 70 years.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Segment from an article on the UKIP website, 31 May 2012. On the edge of social breakdown http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/2681-on-the-edge-of-social-breakdown
2012

Thinking

“I’ve always chosen the most competitive and most difficult careers — that’s kind of all I know. Being a dancer is the same thing. You’re auditioning. You’re working really hard to achieve that goal as an artist. With modeling, you’re auditioning. You’re putting yourself out there. So acting was just another venue, but the most difficult one to actually achieve and to actually work because it’s much more cutthroat. But I was used to it because I had already been auditioning through dance and modeling so I knew that aspect of it.”

Crystal Allen (1972) American actress

Interview: Crystal Allen on Lacrosse, Superman and Storms http://www.celebrityextraonline.com/2012/05/interview-crystal-allen-on-lacrosse.html (May 18, 2012)

Dance

“Landscape - the external surface of the earth beneath the atmosphere… is merely an outward manifestation of most of the factors at work in the area.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Source: The Nature of Geography (1939), p. 216-217