Quotes about most
page 64

“Back in the mid-1990s I was researching strategy in the global electronics industry. I interviewed 20 to 30 executives, CEOs, and division managers and asked fairly simple questions. Which company was the leader in their market? How did that company become the leader? What’s their own company’s strategy?
I saw an interesting pattern. Most executives easily explained how companies became market leaders: Some sort of window of opportunity opened, and the leader was the company that was the first to successfully jump through that window. Not exactly the first mover but the first to get it right.
But when I asked these same executives about their own strategies, I heard a lot about doorknob polishing. They were doing 360-degree feedback, forming alliances, outsourcing, cutting costs, and so on. None of them even mentioned taking a good position quickly when the industry changes.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

About strategy starts with identifying changes, and companies taking position (1)
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

Question, Change

“Goodness has no opposite. Most of us consider goodness as the opposite of the bad or evil and so throughout history in any culture goodness has been considered the other face of that which is brutal. So man has always struggled against evil in order to be good; but goodness can never come into being if there is any form of violence or struggle.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. I, p. 12
1980s, Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985)

History, Evil

“For 't is a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it come to light,
In every cranny but the right.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The Retired Cat.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Truth, Light

““Today we have a very important case for the choice between obedience and disobedience because the nuclear arms race could lead to the most terrible war there has ever been, reducing Europe to complete destruction. Perhaps never as today to ‘disobey’ is to obey the universal conscience; to disobey the written laws is to obey the unwritten law, which tells us to be united with all being; to disobey the cult of the present empires in the name of the community, which will tomorrow be really of everybody.
Conscientious objection is today evolving from being a personal stand in front of the terrible law to have to * “kill” human beings, to becoming a warning to everybody of the terrible danger of atomic destruction. This is a precise example of a disobedience, which would seem individual, and instead becomes a precious good for everyone.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

War, Law, Communication, Universe

“The problem of dealing with the armed forces of the Crown is the most difficult one we will have to face when we do get into power. The Labour Party will have to face the fact that it is a class Party…It has to be prepared to take steps more forceful than even the steps taken at the time of the Ulster Rebellion.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

The Manchester Guardian (28 May 1934), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 150.

Problem, Time

“Every man knows there are evils in this world which need setting right. Every man has pretty definite ideas as what these evils are. But to most men one in particular stands out vividly. To some, in fact, this stands out with such startling vividness that they lose sight of other evils, or look upon them as the natural consequence of their own particular evil-in-chief.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Henry Hazlitt, Thinking As A Science (1916).

Men, World, Idea, Nature

“…remember that the antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize clear ideas. Or as Emerson insisted, the development of consciousness, consciousness, consciousness. And with consciousness a more refined conscientiousness, and most of all, that tolerance which takes the form of humor, for when Americans can no longer laugh at each other, they have to fight one another.”

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

"Address to the Harvard College Alumni, Class of 1949" (1974), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 429.

Idea, Fight

“My mother, as much as I can remember from my early boyhood, and from what I heard of her after her death, was of a most lively temper, and possessed of a good and noble heart, but a little inclined to sensibility; her greatest pleasure was to see everyone happy about her. She loved me dearly and spoilt me. I adored her. Alas, I lost her when only a little boy, and never shall I efface from my memory the day of her death and funeral.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Death, Happiness, Pleasure

“Hippocrates himself is an example of the concurrent study of the two departments. On the one hand, he was the first of the Greeks who is known to have compiled a book of Elements. This book, we may be sure, contained in particular the most important propositions about the circle included in Euclid, Book III. But a much more important proposition is attributed to Hippocrates; he is said to have been the first to prove that circles are to one another as the squares on their diameters (= Eucl. XII., 2) with the deduction that similar segments of circles are to one another as the squares on their bases. These propositions were used by him in his tract on the squaring of lunes, which was intended to lead up to the squaring of the circle. The latter problem is one which must have exercised practical geometers from time immemorial. Anaxagoras for instance is said to have worked at the problem while in prison.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
Achimedes (1920)

Books, Exercises, Problem, Study

“There are certain things that are just impressive, aren’t there? One stone can be impressive and the stones around it aren’t. It’s the same with animals. Some, for some reason, are strangely impressive. They just get into you in a strange way. Certain birds obviously have this extra quality that fascinates your attention. Obviously hawks have always done that for me, as a great many others have — not only impressive in themselves but also in that they’ve accumulated an enormous literature making them even more impressive. And crows too. Crows are the central bird in many mythologies. The crow is at every extreme, lives on every piece of land on earth, the most intelligent bird.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview

Way, Intelligence, Literature, Bird

“It behooves all of us to have everyone experience their deepest, most beautiful, most profound and powerful self, because those people are more apt to give their gift to everyone else rather than shudder in fear.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview, H Monthly (10 February 2009) http://www.hmonthly.com/2009/02/10/jennifer-beals-final-season-word/.

People, Fear, Beauty

“The way for a person to develop a [writing] style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

As quoted in part 2 of Sherwood Eliot Wirt in "The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis" (1963) http://www1.cbn.com/narnia/the-final-interview-of-c.-s.-lewis

Way, Thinking, Personality

“One tool that is used most and has the greatest misuse of power is looks, and another tool that is used least and has the least desire for power is wisdom.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Wisdom

“The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 360

Love, Reading

“In the case of a beginner the practice of Yoga is often deliberate and requires great determination. But those who are practicing sincerely for many years are intent on self-realization all the time, whether conscious of it or not. Unconscious sadhana is most effective, because it is spontaneous and steady.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Sadhana - spiritual practice
Source: "I am That." P.74.

Time, Sincerity

“If a top management team cannot clearly articulate the five or six fundamental industry trends that most threaten its firm's continued success, it is not in control of the firm's destiny.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Source: Competing for the Future, 1996, p. 73

Success

“The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. I: The Naked and the Nude

Life, Death, Men, God

“The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Scatterbrain (2003), p. 26

Time

““Machines!” the Clerk said scornfully. “We have many of them, some exquisitely complex. But event the best of them are much like idiot savants. They do adequately on tedious straightforward tasks like building stars or destroying planets. But give them something tough, like solacing a widow, and they simply go to pieces. Would you believe it, the largest computer in our section can landscape an entire planet; but it cannot fry an egg or carry a tune, and it knows less about ethics than a newborn wolf cub. Would you want something like that to run your life?”
“Of course not,” Carmody said. “But couldn’t someone build a machine with creativity and judgment?”
“Someone has,” the Clerk said. “It has been designed to learn from experience, which means that it must make errors in order to arrive at truths. It comes in many shapes and sizes, most of them quite portable. Its flaws are readily apparent, but seem to exist as necessary counterweights to it virtues. No one has yet improved on the basic design, though many have tried. This ingenious device is called ‘intelligent life.’””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 3 (pp. 25-26)

Life, Truth, Error, Star

“I think that is Amanda’s whole stance; to feel most empowered as a woman is to have the choice to whether or not you dress up or dress down and to feel good about yourself either way. And that is truly the most empowering stance for a woman to take is to not have to comply either way because of a mans expectations of her.”

Brian Viglione (1979) American musician

March 26, 2006 - PunkTv Interview

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“I want to do kiddie movies now. I'm fed up with adult movies — most of them stink. At a certain point with movies it becomes all about mathematics: this has to lead up to this, this has to lead up to that — you're always bound by some kind of formula. But since having kids and watching lots of animated cartoons and all those great old Disney films, I think they're better, they're much better. They're more fun and they take more risks.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Jessamy Calkin, "One That Got Away," http://www.johnnydeppfan.com/interviews/telegraphmag.htm The Daily Telegraph Magazine (2002-08-03)

Mathematics, Thinking, Animals

“Egmont:
The Egmont of yon city — he is proud,
And cold, and stern, and sorrowful. He keeps
His counsel to himself. He wears a brow
That is a smiling shadow to his heart :
Perplexed with seeming mirth, that shroudeth care.
Exalted by a giddy populace,
That know not what they laud, or what they seek.
Moving 'mid those who understand him not;
Whom he has naught in common with : and worn
By furious guarding 'gainst familiar friends
Who seem, yet are not. Watched, suspected, feared;
Wearied with labour, which hath neither end
Nor yet reward; but only distant hope.
Such is the Egmont of the field and state.
But thine beloved : he is happy, frank,
Open, and known to that most dear of hearts —
Which he knows, too, and trusts it as his own.
Calm, deeply joyful; such is Egmont now.”

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

The London Literary Gazette (28th February 1835)
Translations, From the German

Happiness, Fear, Smile, Hope

“What human motivation is responsible for getting the most wonderful things done? I would say greed. When I use the term greed, I do not mean cheating, stealing, fraud and other acts of dishonesty, I mean people seeking to get the most for themselves. One might be tempted to use “enlightened self interest” but I like greed better. Unfortunately, many people are naive enough to believe that it is compassion, concern, and "feeling another's pain" that's the superior human motivation. As such we fall easy prey to charlatans, quacks and hustlers.”

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

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Pain, People, Feeling, Motivation

“Be aware that the most detested person in the presence of God, is the one who accepts an Imam as a leader, but doesn't follow him in action.”

Ali Zayn al-Abidin (659–713) Great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 287.
Religious wisdom

God, Personality

“The most fundamental liberal failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"For America's Sake" speech (12 December 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 21

Faith, Failure, Freedom, Country

“The Pharisees were orthodox Jews, deeply concerned with the affairs of the Church and conscientious observers of all its ceremonies. They held its chief offices, occupied the chief places at the feasts, and sat in the chief seats in the synagogues…. Who then could have been more astonished than they when, like a thunderbolt from the sky, came the simplest, clearest, most concise and yet complete statement of fundamental religious truth that has ever been uttered? In twenty-eight words Jesus stated for all time and in a manner that may be understood by everybody, the fundamental basis of Christianity—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all mind… And Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 92-93

Love, God, Truth, Soul

“Like many people unfamiliar with the history of America's wild, free-roaming horses, I had always thought that the wild horse was a "mustang", that is, a unique breed of horse. In reality, wild horses are feral horses, the offspings of domestic horses that have been turned loose, or escaped, into the wild. By wild, I mean the animals are not owned privately, and they basically fend from themselves without any care or supervision. Moreover, they live in some of America's most remote and sparsely populated high desert country.”

Jaime Jackson (1947) Horse hoof care professional

"Incipit"
The Natural Horse (1997)

People, History, Reality, Animals

“People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 11, Writing About Places: The Travel Article, p. 80.

People

“What we are seeing is the rise of new oligarchies. It is almost as if the 19th century is returning to the 21st century where we are going to live in a world where most of us are disempowered, most of us permanently struggle, most of us can't make ends meet, all the while a very small elite at the top is reaping vast rewards.”

Phillip Blond (1966) British philosopher

World

“Composing a score is like getting in one of those mini-submarines that take you to the bottom of the ocean. You crawl into this little bubble, seal yourself away from the outside world and dive deep into uncharted territory. Sometimes the places you explore are dark, sometimes they’re light. If you have the right tools and knowledge you can explore wherever you like and have a great experience. It’s a crude analogy to genre hopping, but it’s accurate. I was lucky as a kid to be exposed to so much different material. I watched cartoons and read all kinds of comics as much as I buried my head in scary stuff. It makes going from talking animals one day to shape-shifters the next pretty easy. Truth is, most composers are pinballs. They can bounce around from style to style and adapt really well.”

Michael Wandmacher (1967) composer

Michael Wandmacher (‘The Last Exorcism II’) On Composing Horror http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3233495/interview-michael-wandmacher-the-last-exorcism-ii-on-composing-horror/ (May 17, 2013)

Truth, World, Knowledge, Light

“I have learned that love is the most powerful force available to us. When we have real love we have the strength to perform miracles.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love, Learning

“Nowadays, all students have access to and indeed most own computers and are comfortable with the software used to compose music. There are probably too many musical options for them now and the trick is to limit the number of musical ideas so as to develop structure and continuity in their work.”

Jon Appleton (1939) American composer

"The Decline of Academic Freedom at Dartmouth College", 20 October 2005.
Letter published in "Appleton Leaves Dartmouth", 2005

Music, Idea

“The problem may be briefly stated: What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular? I suspect that most people, without training in statistics, would read such a statement as "I will probably be dead in eight months" - the very conclusion that must be avoided, since it isn't so, and since attitude matters so much.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

The Median Isn't the Message (1985)

People, Problem, Reading, Training

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 17, p. 64

Men, Happiness, Suffering, Parting

“Our treatment of animals is the last moral frontier, the ultimate test of our humanity, the mirror by which we can see most deeply into our own souls.”

Bernard E. Rollin (1943) American philosopher

"The Legal and Moral Bases of Animal Rights", in Ethics and Animals, edited by Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983), p. 118 https://books.google.it/books?id=JBPlBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA118.

Soul, Animals

“The peculiar (or own) value that such and such activity can have for a man rather really depends ("dépend bien plutôt", Fr.) on the spirit in which it was deployed (or displayed, - "déployée", Fr.) than its importance or its scope. Thus the most humble work (or task, - "besogne", Fr.) can be accomplished by a great genius, whereas the highest functions (or offices), such as to rule over a whole people, can be practised in a petty”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

or mean or stingy) spirit of personal glorification, as it is frequently seen.", Fr.
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 49.

People, Dependency, Personality

“What do I say to them in the dressing-room? Nothing really. Most of the time I don't even know what they are going to do myself.”

Kenny Dalglish (1951) Scottish association football player and manager

On managing Liverpool FC ( Source http://imdb.com/name/nm0197910/bio)

Time

“Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory that are due to his name, and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. Usually, the most praying souls are the most assured souls.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Quotes from secondary sources, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 1860

God, Soul

“This theme of mismeasurement interacts with the designation of the one hundred years between 1870 and 1970 as the “special century.” Measurement errors are greatest in the early years, both in the scope of the standard of living and in the extent of price index bias. Clearly the welfare benefits to consumers in the categories of life entirely omitted from GDP were greatest long ago: the transition from the scrub board to the automatic washing machine was a more important contributor to consumer welfare than the shift from manual to electronic washing machine controls or from a twelve-pound tub to an eighteen pound tub. The most important unmeasured benefit of all, the extension of life expectancy, occurred much more rapidly from 1890 to 1950 than afterward.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 13

Life, Error

“That all men are created equal does not mean that human beings are the same, or equal, in size, strength, beauty, virtue, or intelligence. There are obviously great differences in individual aptitudes and talents in sports, music, mathematics, speaking, and writing. They are also unequal in the virtues, among them courage, temperance, and justice. But as Jefferson once said, the fact that Sir Isaac Newton may be the most intelligent of living human beings does not give him any right whatever to my person or my property.”

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

2000s, God Bless America (2008), The American Proposition

Men, Justice, Beauty, Music

“It is a tough act to follow, for sure. As I’m hearing him talk through some of the things I’m realizing why our partnership works, because we both think the world of one another. Scott is the most disciplined, driven athlete I’ve ever met. There’s a fierce competitor deep within and the passion and the raw talent that is there — the ability to move and hear music and interpret it — is unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen on the ice. And I think because he wears his heart on his sleeve people feel so drawn in and captivated by his performances. He’s generous, thoughtful and extremely insightful. He’s able to understand the glide of the blade differently.”

Scott Moir (1987) Canadian figure skater

Tessa Virtue, Interview for Sportsnet.ca (January 2018)
Partnership with Tessa Virtue, Tessa Virtue about Moir

People, World, Music, Feeling

“A happy childhood means - or ought to mean - that one's first experience of the world is a true experience - not yet comprehensive, of course, yet comprehending the prime reality, so that it becomes an experience of an essential order which thenceforward will serve as a basis of comparison, in whose light all future falsification, all disorder, will be recognised as wrong and invalid. A happy childhood means above all a loved child. Because Thérèse was a happy child, her beginnings could contain perfection. Because she was a loved child, she received from the beginning the knowledge that others must struggle towards so consciously, with such difficulty, by painfully strenuous detours: the simple truth that to so many of us seems the most incredible and amazing lesson of religion: that we can be loved without having deserved it: that grace comes first.. It is bliss simply to be someone's child, a child of a father, of a mother, living, moving and having its being in a love which is unmerited, unmeritable, anticipatory, unconditional and immutable. On this basic mystery and reality Thérèse's childhood was built. This was the source of her subsequent doctrine of the way of spiritual childhood.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

The Hidden Face p. 48-49.

Love, Happiness, Truth, World

“The Islanders have had two penalty shots in Stanley Cup playoff history, here is number 3. Bates against Joseph…… Bates in on goal…. he shoots, He scores! Consider that for a franchise loaded with memorable postseason moments, you have just witnessed one of the most memorable. A penalty shot goal by Shawn Bates to give the Islanders a 4–3 lead with 2 minutes and 30 seconds left in regulation time.”

Howie Rose (1954) American sports announcer

Calling Shawn Bates penalty shot in Game 4 of the 2002 Stanley Cup playoffs)
2002

Penalty, History, Time

“Harry Dresden: Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.
But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002)

People, Way, Travel, History

“I would be prepared to submit to the Congress of the United States, and with every expectation of approval, any such plan that would, first, encourage world-wide investigation into the most effective peacetime uses of fissionable material, and with the certainty that the investigators had all the material needed for the conducting of all experiments that were appropriate; second, begin to diminish the potential destructive power of the world's atomic stockpiles; third, allow all peoples of all nations to see that, in this enlightened age, the great Powers of the earth, both of the East and of the West, are interested in human aspirations first rather than in building up the armaments of war; fourth, open up a new channel for peaceful discussion and initiative at least a new approach to the many difficult problems that must be solved in both private and public conversations if the world is to shake off the inertia imposed by fear and is to make positive progress towards peace.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, Atoms for Peace (1953)

War, People, Age, World

“Turner is my great favourite of all the painters here. He combines the highest poetical imagination with an exquisite feeling for all the truth and individuality of nature; and he has shown that the ideal, as it is called, is not the improving of Nature, but the selecting and combining objects that are most in harmony and character with each other.”

Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859) British painter (1794-1859)

Autobiographical Recollections of C. R. Leslie with Selections from his correspondence

Truth, Feeling, Imagination, Nature

“That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1831)

Love, Books

“I think that photography has a lot to do with sculpture – because it is three-dimensional and because it depicts reality. For example, I have always been able to relate to photography more than to painting. When I was photographing the hi-fi adverts ['Hi-Fi-Serie' (1979)] I thought to myself, everyone has one of these towers at home. It's the latest thing, the most modern equipment available. So a sculpture must be at least as modern and must stand up to it. Then I hung the pictures on the wall and put an ellipsoid on the floor and thought, the ellipsoid must be at least as good as this advert. At least as good. That's how good a modern sculpture has to be. Do you see what I mean? That was the dialogue…”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Home, Thinking, Reality, Painting

“To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 153-154.

People, Way, Soul, Sense

“One of the most important elements of Christian religion is the idea that justice is an essential quality of God. Since God is the absolute, his justice must be absolute justice, that is to say, eternal and unchangeable. Only a religion whose deity is supposed to be just can play a role in social life. To attribute justice to the deity in order to make religion applicable to human relations implies a certain tendency of rationalizing something which, by its very nature, is irrational-the transcendental being, the religious authority, and its absolute qualities.”

Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) Austrian lawyer

"The Idea of Justice in the Holy Scriptures", Rivista Juridicade la Universidadde Puerto Rico, Sept., 1952-April, 1953., published in What is Justice? (1957)

Life, God, Religion, Justice

“He Titian is the least mannered and consequently the most varied of artists. Mannered talents have but one bias, one usage only. They are more apt to follow the impulse of the hand than to control it. Those that are less mannered must be more varied, for they continually respond to genuine emotion.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

5 January 1857 (p. 326)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“Of all evil-doers, the American is most to be feared. He uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects and will take greater risks in carrying them out than any other malefactor on earth.”

Robert Barr (writer) (1849–1912) Scottish-Canadian novelist

"The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds," from The Triumphs of Euguene Valmont (1906)

Fear, Evil

“Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Universe

“I no longer recommend dairy products after the age of two years. … Of course, there was a time when cow's milk was considered very desirable. But research, along with clinical experience, has forced doctors and nutritionists to rethink this recommendation. It is an area where there are still disagreements among scientists, but there are several points that most everyone agrees on. First of all, other calcium sources offer many advantages that dairy products do not have. Most green leafy vegetables and beans have a form of calcium that is absorbed as well as or even a bit better than that in milk. Along with this calcium come vitamins, iron, complex carbohydrates, and fiber. Calcium-enriched soy or rice drinks are just as tasty on cereal as cow's milk (once you get used to them), and they are free of animal proteins and cholesterol. These beverages, as well as calcium-enriched orange and other juices, provide as much calcium, ounce per ounce, as cow's milk. Vegetables and legumes can provide a healthy source of calcium, along with many other nutritional advantages.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), pp. 331-332

Age, Drink, Time, Animals

“In the dark ages before the invention of the electronic vacuum tube there were many legends of living statues and magic pictures. One of the commonest devices of sorcerers and witches was the model of an enemy which somehow embodied his soul, so that injury to the model would be reflected by suffering or death of the original… Idolatry, witchcraft and other superstitions are so deeply rooted and widespread that it is possible that even the most detached scientific activity may be psychologically equivalent to them; such activity may help to satisfy the desire for power, to assuage the fear of the unknown or to compensate for the flatness of everyday existence.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.

Death, Age, Fear, Soul

“…I had learnt that the most effective way to spread a story was to tell it to one or two Arabs under a pledge of secrecy.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 255.

Way

“The one who contributed most to break down the barrier between physical method and metaphysical method, and to confound their domains, so clearly distinguished in the Aristotelian philosophy, was surely Descartes.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

“Another side of the same strategy has been worked out to neutralise, paralyse and blacken or pamper different sections of Hindu society so that the road is cleared for the forward march of Islamism. Some salient features of this secondary strategy can be outlined as follows: 1. The concept of Secularism which is enshrined in the Constitution of India and which has become the most sacred slogan for all our political parties should be distorted, misinterpreted and misused to the maximum to block out the least little expression of Hindu culture in the state apparatus and public life of India; 2. The terms “communal” and “communalism” which have become terms of abuse in India’s political parlance, should be carefully cultivated and more and more mystified to malign all those organisations, institutions and parties which do not serve Islamism, directly and/or indirectly; (…)”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992)

Life, Communication

“Gradually it dawned on me how much people in America depended on their employers for all sorts of things that were unimaginable to me: medical care, health savings accounts, and pension contributions, to name the most obvious. The result was that employers ended up having far more power in the relationship than the employee. In America jeopardizing your relationship with your employer carried personal risks that extend far beyond the workplace, to a degree unthinkable where I came from.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Source: The Nordic Theory of Everything, Chapter 1

People, Health, Dependency, Personality

“Why I do things? Because I get great happiness, and happiness is the thing which makes the love flow, which makes me love. I want to be happy. And that is why I consider myself as one of the most happiest men in the world, because I do these things. I give this Knowledge to people free of charge. And people when they get this Knowledge feel great happiness. That makes me happy, too.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Montrose, Colorado, July 27, 1972
1970s

Love, Men, Happiness, People

“Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.
There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long periods of time.
This was controversial, as it got into fraught topics of nature vs. nurture and whether gender identity was a social construct or a genetic program.
But if you bought into the idea that boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something that every parent who had ever raised a boy had to take seriously—then it was difficult to envision a lot of them spending their lives in tin cans.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Scouts"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Women, Men, People, Food

“Carnap, who has so far probably advanced the work of the Vienna Circle the most towards empiricism, made an attempt to create a constitutive constructive system; in this he distinguished two languages: a ‘monologizing’ (phenomenalist) one and an ‘intersubjective’ (physicalist) one. He tries to deduce the physical one from the phenomenalist.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1930s, "Physicalism" (1931), p. 54

“But the problem is that the boundaries of tax havens themselves can become very blurred. London is an international financial system that sees trillions of dollars from all over the world go through it each year, and that offers the most sought after financial services. This alone would be enough to make this city a desired anchorage for those looking to launder and reinvest unlawful funds. But there is more; besides this, the British capital is at the heart of the world’s most important offshore system.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

World, Problem, Heart

“The migration of peoples destroys Europe, but it also ruins the Third World. The shovelling of money that has lasted for half a century into a bottomless well called Africa has led to nothing but increasing misery. Half a century of cultural enrichment in Europe has led to nothing but ghettos and the unprecedented popularity of extreme right-wing parties — perhaps surprisingly, exactly where the culture has been most enriched. I believe that removing this misery is really not the objective, which would for example force the Africans to survive on their own and to strike back at their dictators, who live on “development cooperation”. The Western intellectual zeitgeist is dependent on the misery in Africa. An intellectual needs someone to pamper, because that’s what makes the intellectual necessary. The thought of an independent but truly different African is, to him, intolerable, because only a miserable, helpless and dependent (but of course, similar enough to be understandable and lovable) African offers him a chance to be “good.””

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

He can be “good” only if there is a rising mass of “evil” that is tired of the apathy and begging of the Third World. <br class="br">Jussi Halla-aho (2012), published in the blog Gates of Vienna Then the Darkness Will Begin http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.fr/2012/08/then-darkness-will-begin.html, August 16, 2012. (Note: J.H-A has never published anything in the G.o.V. Translations, publications and quotations have been made by other people) <br class="br">2010 -

Money, People, World, Understanding

“One of my favorites is Angela Merkel because I think she's been an extraordinary, strong leader during difficult times in Europe, which has obvious implications for the rest of the world and, most particularly, our country… her bravery in the face of the refugee crisis is something that I am impressed by.”

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

[In swipe at Trump, Clinton names Merkel as her favorite world leader, Nolan D., McCaskill, Politico, 29 Sept. 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-angela-merkel-228926]
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

World, Thinking, Strong, Time

“Diet for a New America let me in on the truth that I kind of knew but didn't want to think about—about how animals are processed for food for human consumption. … Some of the most disgusting things you'll see is when corporations feed people, because they're bottom-line-minded. In that situation I think that respect for life is forgotten. … Think for yourself, think about what you eat, and try a little compassion.”

John Campbell (bassist)

On vegetarianism. “Lamb of God interview,” by Peta2.com, on YouTube (19 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91k1aOy1tY.

Life, People, Truth, Food

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Age, Success

“One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these the millions and millions of people might be so far from being uplifted that they would sit down and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the three-hundred-odd letters that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that spoke kindly to me, and they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: "Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker," she wrote sternly; "it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?"”

Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) novelist, short story writer

Lecture (1960); printed in her collection, Come Along with Me (1968)

People, Books, Imagination, Thinking

“My career has evolved at its own peculiar pace, American careers are supposed to have a much more singular direction than I've been able to… stomach. Really. In most careers you find something you do well and you tie an increasingly larger bow on the package. My interests and obsessions have always been so wide-ranging that I keep popping my head out of different boxes as much as possible. That's far more interesting for me.”

Tim Curry (1946) English actor, voice artist, comedian and singer

Tim Curry Has Another Outlandish Role In 'Shadow' http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1994-07-01/entertainment/9406300178_1_tim-curry-shiwan-khan-shadow (July 1, 1994)

Box

“Most of us saw our therapists every day. Cynthia didn’t; she had therapy twice a week and shock therapy once a week. And Lisa didn’t go to therapy. She had a therapist, but he used her hour to take a nap. If she was extremely bored, she’d demand to be taken to his office, where she’d find him snoozing in his chair. “Gotcha!” she’d say. Then she’d come back to the ward. The rest of us traipsed off day after day to exhume the past.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Past

“Moving a fortnight behind his vanguard, the AbdAli king himself came upon the scene. He had stormed Ballabhgarh on 3rd March and halted there for two days. On 15th March he arrived near MathurA, and wisely avoiding that reeking human shambles crossed over to the eastern bank of the Jamuna and encamped at MahAvan, six miles south-east of the city. Two miles to his west lay Gokul, the seat of the pontiff of the rich VallabhAcharya sect. The AbdAli’s policy of frightfulness had defeated his cupidity: dead men could not be held to ransom. The invader’s unsatisfied need of money was pressing him; he sought the help of ImAd’s local knowledge as to the most promising sources of booty. A detachment from his camp was sent to plunder Gokul. But here the monks were martial NAgA sannyAsis of upper India and RajputAna. Four thousand of these naked ash-smeared warriors stood outside Gokul and fought the AfghAns, till half of their own number was killed after slaying an equal force of the enemy. Then at the entreaty of the Bengal subahdAr’s envoy (Jugalkishor) and his assurance that a hermitage of faqirs could not contain any money, the AbdAli recalled the detachment. ‘All the vairAgis perished but Gokulnath [the deity of the city] was saved’, as a Marathi newsletter puts it.”

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

Rajwade, i. 63.
Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.70-71

Men, Money, Knowledge, Help

“As there are a very great variety of religious sects in the world (and which are probably adapted to different constitutions under different circumstances, seeing there are many good and conscientious characters in each), it is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

"Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants of New Lanark" (1800).

World, Family, Thinking, Time

“Children love their mothers. Especially with a boy child and his mother, there's a bond that's unbreakable. I love my mother to this day. One of the most painful things I ever had to do was bury her, realizing that even though I was her hero, I couldn't help her with this last thing. I couldn't help her get better. All I wanted was to give her everything she wanted. Everything my father didn't give her, everything she never had.”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

Interview with Oprah Winfrey

Love, Pain, Children, Boy

“We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a man's duty to understand his world rather than simply fight for it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)

World, Intelligence, Courage, Understanding

“Disinterestedness is as great a puzzle and paradox as ever. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is a species of irrationality, or insanity, as regards the individual’s self; a contradiction of the most essential nature of a sentient being, which is to move to pleasure and from pain”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Alexander Bain, On the Study of Character, including an estimate of phrenology http://books.google.com/books?id=xLhcAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA292, 1861, p. 292.

Pain, Pleasure, Nature

“…Witnesses in this case do have a habit of dying at the most inconvenient times. I understand a London insurance firm has prepared an actuarial chart on the likelihood of 20 of the people involved in this case dying within three years of the assassination -- and found the odds 30 trillion to one. But I'm sure NBC will shortly discover that one of my investigators bribed the computer.”

Jim Garrison (1921–1992) American judge

[Playboy interview, October 1967.]

People, Understanding, Time

“The Mysteries are the Mysteries, and ultimately personal—maybe the most personal thing in the universe. Evangelism, in my opinion, is a failure of the imagination. Beware of prophets: the best visions are the ones they leave in the desert.”

Robert Charles Wilson (1953) author

Afterword (p. 220)
The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)

Imagination, Failure, Universe, Personality

“We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. … We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. … It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.”

Naomi Klein book This Changes Everything

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014), p. 18
This Changes Everything

Communication, Decision, Chance

“Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

Women, Change, For women

“No doubt there is much immature talking and hasty writing and will always be where liberty of speech and press prevails. The political, religious, and social views of any age and even of the most radical members of society, were born, long before their time. Those who invented the alphabet and the printing press are indirectly responsible for much of the violence of a changing social state; but in the same way, they are responsible for the progress of the world, for the enlightenment, for the civilization, and for all that makes the present better than the past.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Age, World, Way, Change

“However long Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians struggle to find multiple meanings in this text, the dominant seems to be this: Abraham’s unquestioning willingness to heed gods command to sacrifice the thing he loved most is what qualified him to become the father of what are called still the Abrahamic faiths.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

Love, God, Faith

“If goods and services become more valuable as they become more plentiful, and if they become cheaper as they become valuable, then the natural extension of this logic says that the most valuable things of all should be those that are ubiquitous and free.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Nature

“Grey was the very type of the old whig nobleman, punctiliously honourable and high-minded, and devoted to the constitution and to popular liberty as he understood them. At the same time his views were narrow, he was personally diffident and timorous in reform, and even less democratic than many of his opponents. (For his general opinions and comments on passing events see LE STRANGE'S Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, 1824–34, London, 1890, a collection of his letters to the wife of the Russian ambassador, with whom he maintained a most intimate friendship.) At the time when, after his long exclusion from office, he became prime minister, he had outlived the power of feeling or inspiring enthusiasm; but it was perhaps fortunate that at a moment of so much popular excitement the ministry was led by so cold a man. He was a great orator and a great debater, and, like all great orators, was very nervous just before rising to deliver his greatest speeches. He was exceedingly ready in apprehending complicated statements of fact, and in bringing them home to his hearers.”

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

J. A. Hamilton, 'Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey, Viscount Howick, and Baron Grey (1764–1845)', Dictionary of National Biography (1890).
About

Friendship, Feeling, Home, Time

“In business you wind up trying a lot of things, most of which won’t work. The way you become a good business person is to fail, fail, fail and fail.”

Bob Parsons (1950) United States Marine

Forbes: GoDaddy Billionaire Bob Parsons' 7 Tips for Entrepreneurs https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2015/10/18/godaddy-billionaire-bob-parsons-7-tips-for-entrepreneurs/ (18 October 2015)

Way, Business, Personality

“Adieu, LANDOGA, scene most dear,
Farewell we bade to ETHEL'S WIER;
Round many a point then bore away,
Till morn was chang'd to beauteous day:
And forward on the lowland shore,
Silent majestic ruins wore
The stamp of holiness; this strand
The steersman hail'd, and touch'd the land.”

Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823) British writer

Book II. <br class="br"> The Banks of the Wye http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/bkwye10.txt (1811)

“Vegas is gorgeous hyperreality, but most of the stuff people like here is not my cup of tea. I don't gamble, and I don't like Penn & Teller. I'd rather be locked into a basement full of Philip Glass recordings.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from documentary Traceroute

People, Tea

“It is too easy to see Crowley as an overgrown juvenile delinquent with a passion for self-advertisement. But there was another Crowley, the Crowley recognized and admired by Frank Bennett. Unless we understand this, we totally fail to grasp the extraordinary influence that Crowley could exert on women like Rose and Leah, and on men like Neuberg, Sullivan and Bennett. They came to believe that Crowley was exactly what he claimed to be: a great teacher, the messiah of a new age. And this was not the gullibility of born dupes; Sullivan, at least, was one of the most intelligent men of his age (as his book on Beethoven reveals). Crowley was, in part, a great teacher, a man of profound insights. Mencius says: 'Those who follow the part of themselves that is great become great men; those who follow the part of themselves that is small will become small men.' But Crowley was a strange mixture who devoted about equal time to following both parts of himself, and so became a curious combination of greatness and smallness. A summary of his life, and his extraordinary goings-on, makes us aware of the smallness; but it would be sheer short-sightedness to overlook the element of greatness that so impressed Bennett.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), p. 127-128

Life, Women, Men, Books

“Usually when someone says a thing is too simple they're saying that certain familiar things aren't there, and they're seeing a couple maybe that are left… But actually there may be… several new things to which they aren't paying attention. These may be quite complex… They may [also] be read all at once. This is important to most of the best work going on now. It has to have a wholeness to it that previous work didn't have, but still, within that, it's not all as simple as [people] say.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd (1965) in Artforum interview, as quoted in: Richard Shiff (2012) Doubt,
1960s

People, Reading

“Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

"Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite," The National Interest (November 2002), p. 16

People, World, Evil

“Constrained by habits and acculturalization, we have less choice than we imagine. Many apparently momentous decisions were actually determined within us long ago. In the long run, the most powerful choice we can make is where to focus our attention. Attention is healing. Attention is the bridge in relationship. And attention facilitates change and learning.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

Charles Eisenstein, Oral presentation in Baltimore, MD March 2012

Imagination, Decision, Learning, Change

“Though Govind Singh is considered as the founder of the Khalsa order (1699) who 'gave his Sikhs an outward form distinct from the Hindus', he too did things which Sikh separatists would dismiss as 'brahminical'. As Khushwant Singh notes, 'Gobind selected five of the most scholarly of his disciples and sent them to Benares to learn Sanskrit and the Hindu religious texts, to be better able to interpret the writings of the gurus, which were full of allusions to Hindu mythology and philosophy.”

Guru Govind Singh (1666–1708) The tenth and last human Guru of Sikhism

Khushwant Singh, K. Elst, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743

Learning