Quotes about most (10000 quotes, page 67)

“What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress (1991) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c; this has sometimes been paraphrased "Computers are like a bicycle for our minds."
1990s

“I saw that an humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a little, and that where the heart was set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving; but that commonly with an increase of wealth the desire of wealth increased. There was a care on my mind so to pass my time that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the true Shepherd”

John Woolman (1720–1772) American Quaker preacher

Source: The Journal of John Woolman (1774), p. 14

Business , Time , Success , Heart

“Take ye my solemn farewell! O, my friends,
Already night is darkening on my eyes;—
But is not Heaven most beautiful by night?
Thousands of stars shine in the kindling sky,
Which is an azure desert during day.
Thus do the gathering of eternal shades
Reveal innumerable thoughts, half lost
In the full daylight of prosperity.”

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

Translations, From the French

Beauty , Star , Night

“Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows--it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

"The Philippines: A Century Hence"

World

“In the aftermath of the war, we find one of the most hidden eras of US history; and that is the period of radical reconstruction. It certainly remains the most radical era in the entire history of the United States of America. And this is an era that is rarely acknowledged in historical texts. … There were progressive laws passed challenging male supremacy. This is an era that is rarely acknowledged. During that era of course we had the creation of what we now call historically black colleges and universities and there was economic development. This period didn’t last very long. From the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, we might take 1865 as that day until 1877 when a radical reconstruction was overturned—and not only was it overturned but it was erased from the historical record—and so in the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s. One hundred years later.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)

War , Law , History , Universe

“Among its [Boresko's] curiosities is a high rock, which overhangs a fearful precipice, whose bottom is just as much below the surface of the surrounding country as the summit of the rock is above the surface. From its summit the rock presents the most enchanting views that the country affords… The atmosphere exerts, however, a medical influence. While inhaling it, each person possesses in imagination whatever he desires at the moment: riches, health, power, or even a lady's love. The place is appropriately termed the pinnacle of hope. …Hither come …all persons who wish to cheat the present moment of its anguish by pleasant anticipations of the future. Occasionally, however, a peculiar madness seizes the visiters, and they jump from the delightful pinnacle into the abyss below, whose noxious vapours prostrate all the energies of life, and reverse all the reveries of hope.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)

Love , Life , Health , Fear

“What attracted me the most of all to the detective story, was the protective covering offered to the author.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

The Oaken Heart

“You can't expect that what you've become a master in will keep you valuable throughout the whole of your career, and you want to add to that the fact that most people are now going to be working into their 70s. Being a generalist is, in my view, very unwise. Your major competitor is Wikipedia or Google.”

Lynda Gratton (1953) Business theorist

Lynda Gratton, cited in: Shalia Dewan, " Working Nonstop to Stay Relevant http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00EFDF1539F931A1575AC0A9649D8B63," New York Times, September 22, 2012.

People

“I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862), published in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons (1886), edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife, p. 12.

Age , Religion , Thinking , Decision

“But I'll tell you something sort of interesting. There's something, you know, there's something a little scary about funny women. Well, they're threatening. And there was a survey done one time where they asked women what they were most afraid of from men. And the -- their response was they were most afraid of being hit or beaten or hurt from men. And they asked men what they were most afraid of from women, and they said being laughed at.”

Ann Richards (1933–2006) American politician

Ann Richards Discusses Texas, Politics and Humor on Larry King Live http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0101/23/lkl.00.html, CNN, January 23 2001
2001

Women , Men , Time , Hurt

“Books remained as in the eighteenth century, the source of life, and as they came out — Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, Tennyson, Macaulay, Carlyle, and the rest — they were devoured; but as far as happiness went, the happiest hours of the boy's education were passed in summer lying on a musty heap of Congressional Documents in the old farmhouse at Quincy, reading "Quentin Durward," "Ivanhoe," and "The Talisman," and raiding the garden at intervals for peaches and pears. On the whole he learned most then.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life , Books , Education , Boy

“When you analyse it carefully, it is about a family’s ability to stay together and have time together. We all know, with our fractured lives in this place, how difficult it becomes when we as human beings cannot spend time with one another. However, the problem is that these industrial relations laws now set that disease in place right across the nation in every workplace, in every part of the country. What I fear most of all is the ultimate impact of this on the fabric of Australian family life.”

Kevin Rudd (1957) Australian politician, 26th Prime Minister of Australia

Rudd's first speech as Labor leader
Speaking of the Workchoices Act introduced by the Howard government in March 2006.
2006

Life , Fear , Disease , Family

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#89
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Courage

“I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.”

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

To Sir Ian Gilmour on Commonwealth immigration to England in 1955, quoted in Ian Gilmour, Inside Right (Hutchinson, 1977), p. 134
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Thinking , Country

“What some of the revolutionary syndicalists proceed to do was to identify the ‘communality’ of man not will class, but with the nation. The first intimations of a ‘revolutionary nationalism’ made their appearance among the most radical Marxists.”

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

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 55

Communication , Appearance

“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Pleasure , Education , Fools , Art

“Every part of the photographic image carries some information that contributes to its total statement; the viewer's responsibility is to see, in the most literal way, everything that is there and respond to it”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Becker (1986) "Do Photographs Tell the Truth?” and “Aesthetics and Truth" as cited in: Ingolf Erler (2010) Das Buch als soziales Symbol. p. 147.

Way , Parting

“They tell me that truth lies somewhere at the bottom of a well, and at virtually the door of our home is a most notable if long dried well. Our location is thus quite favorable, if we but keep patience.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Kerin, in Book Seven : What Saraïde Wanted, Ch. XLII : Generalities at Ogde
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Truth , Home , Patience

“Most people have music in the center of their lives. I believe my work sheds light on how music affects us and why it is so influential.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

from http://web.archive.org/20030225083736/www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/html_2001_2002/fac0502_mcclalry.html

People , Music , Light

“I would say that poetry for most people is like the Christmas tree that is kept in the attic and is taken down in its appropriate season.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Poetry Quotes

People , Tree , Christmas , Season

“Apple's two most memorable accomplishments are the GUI, or graphical user interface, and the mouse, both of which it literally stole from Xerox PARC.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Technology Trends: Looking Back at 2015 http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/technology-trends-looking-back-at-2015.html in IT Business Edge (29 December 2015)

Guy

“It’s not by chance that most of the basketball players are tall men, nor that most of the transvestite are homosexuals. It’s also not a coincidence that most of those who hold the power are ambitious people. In other words, it’s not a coincidence that the world is ruled by people who shouldn’t rule.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Critica de la pasión pura (1998)

Men , People , World , Chance

“I was born in the richest, most technologically advanced (and consequently the most powerful) country in the world. We were the leaders in science, so of course we had a better economy, and we had a higher standard of living than anyone else at that time. The rest of the globe sent their best and brightest to enroll in our schools because our students were among the most inventive, innovative and involved. Some of the greatest American scientists were the immigrants who stayed and enabled the United States to achieve more than anyone else had in the history of mankind. That's when our secular government still cared about better education. Sadly, that is not the country I still live in. America was number one, but saying that now reminds me of Aesop's fable where the hare is still resting on its laurels long after the tortoise has passed. In the fifty years since I was born, America's rating in science has fallen from number one to number thirty-seven. We have one of the lowest science scores of all countries in the developed world (or first world). Foreign scholars and foreign scientists don't stay here long after graduation (if they come at all), because what sort of environment do we offer intellectuals now? Our own scientists, our own graduate scholars are leaving as well, moving to Europe or Asia where they're more welcome, although an American going abroad now means that he will have to try to live down new stereotype instead of living up to the old one.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

World , Education , School , History

“I don't think that you're born with gut [instinct], a gut matures and gets better and better over time, the struggle that most people have is learning to listen to it. Figuring out how to access it in some way. What I found is that even thought I'm an engineer and an analytical person at heart the most important decisions I've made had nothing to do with any of that. They were always based on intuition. The Apple one [choosing to leave Compaq to take the job at Apple in 1998] is a prime example of that. I remember forming my list of pluses and minuses and I could not get the chart to work out the way I wanted it to. Because I wanted something to say this says I should go to Apple. But it would not. Nothing financially would do that, I talked to people I trusted, that knew me, and they said: 'This is not what you should do'. It wasn't so easy. People said, you're just crazy, you're working for the top PC company in the world, how could you even think of doing it, you've lost your mind. And yet that voice said, 'Go West young man, Go West.”

Tim Cook (1960) American business executive

And some times you just have to go for it.
macworld.co.uk http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apples-tim-cook-following-instinct-finding-best-people-treating-people-fairly-3451130/

People , World , Way , Thinking

“Man has such a capacity for rationalization that when he finds himself affluent and able to spend as he pleases he is quick to justify his most indefensible expenditures on the ground that they give some people employment. There is probably no rich person who upon quaffing a glass of champagne does not experience a happy glow of pleasure at the thought of all the vintners, bottlers, freighters, and servants to whom his simple act has given livelihood.”

Ferdinand Lundberg America's 60 Families

America's 60 Families, p. 445 (Vanguard Press, 1938)

People , Pleasure , Personality , Happiness

“The visual possibility of seeing the historical person (as opposed to the eternal Qur'anic man) on screen is arguably the single most important event allowing Iranians access to modernity.”

Hamid Dabashi (1951) American academic

Close-up: Iranian Cinema Past, Present and Future

Personality

“He lacks confidence to the most enormous degree of all the people in the world. He will not even go to see his rushes. He’ll stay out in the alley and pace up and down and worry and collar you when you come out and say: ‘How good was so and so?’, and he’ll keep you for 45 minutes. It would be much simpler if he would go and look at them himself, you know? But he always thinks he’s no good.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Vincente Minnelli quoted in Schickel, Richard. The Men Who Made The Movies. New York: Atheneum, 1975. (M).

People , World , Confidence , Thinking

“Though but ten years old he was fully as strong as the average man of thirty, and far more agile than the most practiced athlete ever becomes. And day by day his strength was increasing.
His life among these fierce apes had been happy; for his recollection held no other life, nor did he know that there existed within the universe aught else than his little forest and the wild jungle animals with which he was familiar.
He was nearly ten before he commenced to realize that a great difference existed between himself and his fellows. His little body, burned brown by exposure, suddenly caused him feelings of intense shame, for he realized that it was entirely hairless, like some low snake, or other reptile.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 5 : The White Ape

Life , Feeling , Strong , Universe

“To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

On n'est jamais excusable d'être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.
XXVIII: "La Fausse Monnaie"
Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

Stupidity , Evil

“"The "futures" and "careers" for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant.”

Mario Savio (1942–1996) American activist

"An End to History" Humanity (December 1964).

Women , Men , Children , Future

“Behind the entire problem, however, is the fear of using one's full power or energy. Cancer patients most usually feel an inner impatience as they sense their own need for future expansion and development, only to feel it thwarted.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 5/11, Page 273
The Way Toward Health (1997)

Fear , Feeling , Problem , Sense

“Sexual speech, not MacKinnon's speech, is the most repressed and disdained kind of expression in our world, and MacKinnon is no rebel or radical to attack it.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

"The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon" http://susiebright.blogs.com/Old_Static_Site_Files/Prime_Of_Kitty_MacKinnon.pdf, by Susie Bright, East Bay Express, October 1993.

World

““In the year 817, eight hundred and seventeen Hijri, he resolved to march with intent of jihad against the unbelievers of Girnar, a famous fort in Sorath. Raja Mandalik fought with him but was defeated and took refuge in the fort. It is narrated that even though that land (region) this time did not get complete brightness form the lamp of Islam, yet the Sultan subdued the fort of Junagadh situated near the foot of Girnar mountain. Most of the Zamindars of Sorath became submissive and obedient to him and agreed to pay tribute. After that, he demolished the temple of Sayyedpur in the month of Jamadi I of the year 818, eight hundred and eighteen Hijri… In the year 823, eight hundred and twenty-three Hijri, he attended to the establishment of administrative control over his dominion. He suppressed refractoriness wherever it was found. He demolished temples and constructed masjids in their places…”364”

Ahmad Shah I (1389–1442) Indian king who founded Ahmedabad city

Sidhpur (Gujarat) Mir’at-i-Ahmadî, Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp. 37-38.

Mountain , Time

“I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions.
Next I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs.
And, finally I believe if an organization is to meet the challenge of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life.
Basic philosophy, spirit and drive of an organization have far more to do with its relative achievements than do technological or economic resources, organizational structure, innovation and timing…”

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Watson, Jr. (1962) as cited in: Heather Clark, John Chandler, Jim Barry (1994) Organisation and Identities: : Text and Readings in Organizational Behaviour. p. 355.

Life , World , Faith , Change

“If we had to name the one cultural current that most characterizes America in the twentieth century, it might be the work of Freud and the disciplines that grew out of it.”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

Source: The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Chapter Four

“Q: Why is it that in all of your commercials you have the image of Latinos? What do you see when you hear, and I quote, "illegal aliens?"
Sharron Angle: I think that you're misinterpreting those commercials. I'm not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That's the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists; we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don’t know why they're coming. So we have to secure all of our borders and that's what that was about, is border security. Not just our southern border, but our coastal border and our northern border.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

speaking to Rancho High School's Hispanic Student Union
Jon
Ralston
Video: Angle tells Hispanic kids “I’m not sure those are Latinos” in her ad (!), says really about northern border (!!)
2010-10-17
Las Vegas Sun
http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/ralstons-flash/2010/oct/17/video-angle-tells-hispanic-kids-im-not-sure-those-/
2010-10-20
Quinn
Bowman
Terence
Burlij
Angle Caught on Tape Again, Tells Latino Students They 'Look a Little More Asian'
2010-10-19
The Rundown
PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/10/the-morning-line-angle-caught-on-tape-again.html
2010-10-20

People , Quotes , Thinking

“I lay down as a proposition that most of the people who work hard for a living in the country belong to the Liberal Party. I would say, and I think, without offence, that most of the people who never worked for a living at all belong to the Tory Party.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 160.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People , Thinking , Country

“Coming to the period following Islamic invasions, Hindu society did not bother to remember the Arabs, the Ghaznavids, the Ghurids, the Mamluks, the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs, the Sayyads, the Lodis, and the Mughals. But it took pride in Bapa Raval who had humbled the Arabs; in Maharani Nayakidevi of Gujarat and Prithivi Raj Chauhan who had defeated Muhammad Ghuri again and again; in Gora and Badal who had rescued Rana Ratan Singh from the camp of Alauddin Khalji and then laid down their lives in defence of Padmini and her Chittor; in Harihara and Bukka who had founded the Vijayanagar Empire which stood like a rock against Islamic imperialism for more than two centuries; in Rana Sangram Singh who had crossed swords with Babur; in Maharana Pratap who had defied the mightiest Mughal in the midst of great adversity; in Durgadas Rathor who had despised the wrath of Aurangzeb in defence of his right to give refuge to a rebellious Mughal prince; in Chhatrapati Shivaji who devised a new diplomacy and innovated a new art of warfare which finally worsted the most powerful Muslim empire and rolled back the Islamic invasion; in Chhatrasal Bundela and Maharaja Surajmal who revived Hindu rule in the north; in Banda Bairagi who avenged the wrongs done by Muslim despots to Guru Arjun Deva, Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh; and in Maharaja Ranjit Singh who liberated the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province from Islamic stranglehold.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Art

“Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right--a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Kinsey Millhone
"A" Is for Alibi (1982)

Love , Family , Time

“Sometimes it felt to him as though he’s spent most of his life traveling, and never quite got to anywhere that mattered.
Then again, that might be as good a description of what life was supposed to be as anyone ever thought of. The only real destination was death, and our lives consisted of finding the most circuitous and pleasant path to get there.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 7 “Errand Boy” (p. 136).

Life , Death , Travel

“We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

Behavior , Search , Learning

“They that govern the most make the least noise.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

Power.
Table Talk (1689)

“The economic problems of society are important. On the whole, we are meeting them fairly well. They are so personal and so pressing that they never fail to receive constant attention. But they are only a part. We need to put a proper emphasis on the other problems of society. We need to consider what attitude of the public mind it is necessary to cultivate in order that a mixed population like our own may dwell together more harmoniously and the family of nations reach a better state of understanding. You who have been in the service know how absolutely necessary it is in a military organization that the individual subordinate some part of his personality for the general good. That is the one great lesson which results from the training of a soldier. Whoever has been taught that lesson in camp and field is thereafter the better equipped to appreciate that it is equally applicable in other departments of life. It is necessary in the home, in industry and commerce, in scientific and intellectual development. At the foundation of every strong and mature character we find this trait which is best described as being subject to discipline. The essence of it is toleration. It is toleration in the broadest and most inclusive sense, a liberality of mind, which gives to the opinions and judgments of others the same generous consideration that it asks for its own, and which is moved by the spirit of the philosopher who declared that 'To know all is to forgive all.”

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

It may not be given to infinite beings to attain that ideal, but it is none the less one toward which we should strive.
1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Life , Family , Home , Forgiveness

“The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today's vineyard, the military-industrial complex. They've got to be processed in the most efficient way to see to it that they have the fewest dissenting opinions, that they have just those characteristics which are wholly incompatible with being an intellectual. This is a real internal psychological contradiction. People have to suppress the very questions which reading books raises.”

Mario Savio (1942–1996) American activist

Quoted in interview with Jack Fincher, "The University Has Become a Factory," Life magazine (1965-02-26).

People , Books , Way , Question

“Our native susceptibilities and acquired tastes determine which of the many qualities in an object shall most impress us, and be most clearly recalled. One man remembers the combustible properties of a substance, which to another is memorable for its polarising property; to one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezveus for lovers.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Lovers , Water

“What it is, is it’s the insecurity. It’s the latent insecurity. Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Conversation on Jewish aides as quoted on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/1_INFERIORITY.mp3 "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times (10 December 2010)
1970s

People

“One more word on talking, before I stop talking, at least about this subject: You or I may not like the talker, but talk matters, much of the time. It is especially significant when the talker is lonely — when most around him are keeping mum.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

2010s, Some Talk about Talk (2018)

Time

“When I ask the classes I teach, “How many of you can cook a better hamburger than McDonald’s?” almost all the students raise their hands. I then ask, “So if most of you can cook a better hamburger, how come McDonald’s makes more money than you?” The answer is obvious: McDonald’s is excellent at business systems. The reason so many talented people are poor is because they focus on building a better hamburger and know little to nothing about business systems.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Money , People , Business , Cooking

“Another conspicuous failure of classical mechanics was with one aspect of the problem of radiation. …Imagine a crowd of steel balls rolling about on a steel floor. …There must… be a steady leakage of energy from… causes, such as air resistance and the friction of the floor, so the balls will eventually lose energy, and, after no great length of time, will be found standing at rest on the floor. The energy of their motion seems to have been lost… most of it has been transformed into heat. The classical mechanics predicts that this must happen; it shows that all energy of motion, except possibly a minute fraction of the whole, must be transformed into heat whenever such a transformation is physically possible. It is because of this that perpetual-motion machines are a practical impossibility.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Imagination , Failure , Problem , Time

“Great strength of body is the gift of nature;
But to be able to advise whate'er
Is most expedient for one's country's good,
Is the peculiar work of sense and wisdom.”

Bias of Priene (-600–-530 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the Seven Sages

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230)

Wisdom , Nature , Sense , Country

“All texts are incarnational, and the climax of the entire Christian Bible, "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," is the most logocentric sentence ever written.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

1:154
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

“Credo Mutwa, the most knowledgeable man i have ever had the honor of knowing.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: The Biggest Secret, 1998

Knowledge

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Men , Sense , Parting

“Yeah. And as Linus once said: most numerical problems today in pure CPU cycles are actually 3D games. … It's not "incorrect" to say that you want the result faster, even if that result doesn't match your theoretical models.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message to GCC mailing list, 2001-07-30, Torvalds, Linus, 2009-10-15 http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-07/msg02084.html,
Torvalds did not originate this quote. It is a reference from David Braben following the release of Elite, and is itself a rephrasing of a reference to relative worth of game coding.
2000s, 2000-04

Game , Problem

“It seemed too easy to claim that there was nothing new under the sun, that … our spear-wielding ancestors had been as wise and good as ourselves and that the onward march of rational thought had brought with it nothing but tragedy. Did any of these arguments take into account Ariane’s profile on her way up? Did they credit the impeccable logic of her hydraulic systems? And most of all, did not such bromides merely betray the resentment of a defeated and unimaginative class? I felt my allegiances shift to the engineers and technicians around me, these new medicine men who often sported baseball caps, and had a tendency towards unsophisticated humour. What astonishing creatures they were! What extraordinary horizons they had opened up!”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

[describing his sentiments after the launch of the rocket Ariane] pp. 163-164.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009)

Men , Way , Sport , Sun

“"Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible… so that when she teaches you how it's really done, it'll seem that much easier…. Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop." This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn't heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago, I would have been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things would get much worse.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 4, "Anathem"
Anathem (2008)

World , Way , Feeling , Time

“The most signal triumphs of the Romantic portrayal of memory are not those which recall past happiness, but remembrances of those moments when future happiness still seemed possible, when hopes were not yet frustrated.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 3 : Mountains and Song Cycles

Hope , Memory , Past , Future

“The Democrats had begun to use the basics of framing issues in terms of their own values and principles… Had they continued to argue with unity on the difference between 911 and Iraq, and on the fact that George Bush betrayed our troops and is weakening our country, they might have made it impossible for Bush to once again link Iraq with 911.
Then they lost it. Karl Rove outsmarted the Democrats again. And he used the most basic trick in the book to do it… This time John Kerry stepped in to help Bush, basically supporting the president’s position but offering policy-wonk modifications. The message: Bush is basically right, except for some minor twiddles.”

George Lakoff (1941) American linguist

"Rove Rides Again — With the Help of the Democrats" in The Huffington Post (29 June 2005) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/rove-rides-again-with-_b_3414.html

Books , Support , Time , Help

“For to love is to give what one is, his very being, in the most absolute, the most brazenly metaphysical, the least phenomenalizable sense of this word.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

The Peasant of the Garonne (1968), p 9.

Love , Sense

“I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

As quoted in Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science (1960) by René Jules Dubos, Ch. 3 "Pasteur in Action"

War , Peace , Suffering , Science

“The fighting in western Bosnia intensified as the cease-fire approached. (…) Facing the end of the fighting, the Croats and the Bosnians finally buried their differences, if only momentarily, and took Sanski Most and several other smaller towns. But Prijedor still eluded them. For reasons we never fully undestood, they did not capture this important town, a famous symbol of ethnic cleansing.* (*In March 1997, I attended a showing at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York of a powerful documentary film, Calling the ghosts, that recounted the brual treatmen two Bosnian women from Prijedor had suffered during their incarceration at the notorious Omarska prison camp. Following the film, the two women angrily asked me why they were still unable to return to their hometown. I told them we'd repeatedly encouraged an assault on Prijedor. They were stonished; they said General Dudakovic, the Bosnian commander, had told them personally that "Holbrooke would not let us capture Prijedor and Bosanski Novi". I subsequently learned that this story was widely believed in the region. This revisionism was not surprising; it absolved Dudakovic and his associates of responsibility for the failure to take Prijedor. I suspect the truth is that after the disaster at the Una River the Croatians did not want to fight for a town the would have to turn over to the Muslims - and the Bosnians could not capture it unaided.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 206

Women , Truth , Failure , Suffering

“There is no reason why the U. S. cannot achieve our objectives in Iraq. Our aim must be to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not: enslave its own people, threaten its neighbors, or produce weapons of mass destruction. This is a 10-year task. We should be able to draw down most of our combat forces in 3–5 years. We have few alternatives to the current U. S. strategy, which is painfully but gradually succeeding. This is now a race against time. Do we have the political will, do we have the military power, will we spend the resources required to achieve our aims?”

Barry McCaffrey (1942) United States Army general

As quoted in "The Bottom Line – Observations from Iraqi Freedom" http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Iraqreport.html (4 May 2006), Chaos Manor Special Reports

People , Law , Time , Drawing

“One of the things I've found in Congress is that most people recognize that failure would be a disaster for the United States. And in that I'm the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster. In other words, I had to think about what's likely to work. And so I worked with our military and I worked with Secretary Gates to come up with a plan that is likely to succeed. And the implementor of that plan is going to be General Petraeus. And my call to the Congress is, is that I know there is skepticism and pessimism, and that they are -- some are condemning a plan before it's even had a chance to work. And they have an obligation and a serious responsibility, therefore, to put up their own plan as to what would work. I've listened a lot to members of Congress. I've listened carefully to their suggestions. I have picked the plan that I think is most likely to succeed, because I understand, like many in Congress understand, success is very important for the security of the country.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Press Conference http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070126.html introducing General David Petraeus as the new commander of the Multinational Force Iraq (January 26, 2007)
2000s, 2007

People , Way , Failure , Understanding

“Opportunity marries with circumstance and is midwife to the resultant bartering of public office. The mutuality is advantage to the parties involved merely facilitates the spread of such practices. When it reaches the point of being commonplace and is pragmatically perceived as the most practical means of getting things done, it has become systemic and difficult to eradicate.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening remarks to Transparency International Pacific Regional Meeting, 13 April 2005.

“It was always something of a puzzle to observers of Australia to explain the high standing of working men and the prevalence of their values in the culture. The easy answer was to say the middle-class was numerically weak. But in a capitalist society their values should be predominant whatever their numbers. So was it that they lacked the will to rule? I have suggested here that convict origins help to explain this puzzle. The bourgeoisie, sharing the shame of the nation, looked for respectability through White Australia and military prowess, and the forms these took had a strong proletarian cast; the working man was elevated by one and was the most notable embodiment of the other.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

"An Oddity from the Start" https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2008/july/1277335186/john-hirst/oddity-start, The Monthly, July 2008.

Men , Strong , Help

“Christ has been much misinterpreted by the world. Even the most elementary principles of his teachings have been desecrated, and their esoteric depths have been forgotten. They have been crucified at the hands of dogma, prejudice, and cramped understanding. Genocidal wars have been fought, people have been burned as witches and heretics, on the presumed authority of man-made doctrines of Christianity. How to salvage the immortal teachings from the hands of ignorance? We must know Jesus as an Oriental Christ, a supreme yogi who manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-union, and thus could speak and act as a savior with the voice and authority of God.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

God , War , People , World

“Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires. You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning. You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.””

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Evolution? No" http://archives.adventistreview.org/2004-1509/story2.html, The Adventist Review (2004)

Love

“The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Men , Truth , World , Nature

“The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities—that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future—will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2000 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2000.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Money , Hate , People , Behavior

“I am reasonably certain of one thing. The unquestioning acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation has served to hold back progress on the development of alternative approaches. Blind acceptance of the orthodox position cannot produce the challenges needed to push the theory eventually to its breaking point. And break it will, probably in a way nobody can predict, to produce a theory nobody can imagine. The arguments about reality will undoubtedly persist, but at least we will have a better theory.
I have tried to argue that quantum theory is a difficult subject for modern students of physical science because its interpretation is so firmly rooted in philosophy. If, in arguing the case, I have only made the subject seem even more confusing, then I apologize. However, my most important message is a relatively simple one: quantum theory is rife with conceptual problems and contradictions, and its most common interpretation is anti-realist in nature. If you fine the theory difficult to understand, this is the theory's fault—not yours.”

Jim Baggott (1957) British writer

Closing remarks
Beyond Measure (2004)

Way , Imagination , Understanding , Nature

“You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

As quoted in Marianne Sinclair's !Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (1968)

Age , Drawing , Personality

“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy…censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

Robert A. Heinlein book If This Goes On

If This Goes On— (p. 401)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Motivation , Sense , Reading

“The future painter must feel what is useful for his development – drawing or even sculpture everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things – which is what I call Nature – that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 238-239
1940s

Color , Feeling , Nature , Sense

“We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Dreams , Reading , Parting

“I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one's elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

As quoted in Toole, Betty Alexandra (1998), Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age, Strawberry Press, ISBN 0912647183. p. 99

Mathematics , Thinking , Study , Reading

“For days I have seen nothing but the most awful scenes that the human mind can imagine... Stay calm and don't worry: I will come back to you – the war will end this year. I must stop; the transport of the wounded, which will take this letter along, is leaving. Stay well and calm as I do.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

from the battlefield at Verdun
In a letter to his wife Maria (2 March 1916), from the battlefield at Verdun; as cited in Letters from the war: Franz Marc, new edition by Klaus Lankheit & Uwe Steffen, American University Studies, Vol. 16, p. 113
1915 - 1916

War , Imagination

“Lenin was the contemporary politician whom [Mussolini] most admired and he studied the Russian revolution closely to see what lessons it offered. Lenin seemed to him ‘the very negation of socialism’ because he had not created a dictatorship of the proletariat or of the socialist party, but only of a few intellectuals who had found the secret of winning power. Mussolini was, in truth, envious.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 41

Truth , Secret , Study

“People do what they do by choice, so I don’t really know it’s a matter of people being comfortable in front of the camera. I think it’s a matter of doing the work that’s available to you and then striving in it. If you realized how hard it is to get a job in the entertainment industry, and you were working prolifically in voice over and you can work doing on camera stuff here and there, it has nothing to do with being worried about how you look on camera. It’s about the work and you do the work that is available to you. These actors are that good that they’re able to do the voiceover stuff. It’s hard. A lot of people think that it’s easy to just go and talk in front of a microphone and that’s not the case. You’re not just talking, you’re acting. You’re acting in front of a microphone as opposed to a camera. It’s a lot more specific of a technique than most people think. It’s not, “Oh, do a silly voice!” Try doing a silly voice for four hours, then take a lunch break, and then do another silly voice for four hours. It’s not easy, especially because it’s about the acting. So I think that mindset is a little off.”

John DiMaggio (1968) American voice actor and comedian

Exclusive Interview: John DiMaggio & Lawrence Shapiro https://diaboliquemagazine.com/exclusive-interview-john-dimaggio-lawrence-shapiro/ (September 6, 2013)

People , Thinking

“Longevity for a columnist is a simple proposition: once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die, or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, 18 December 2009, An anniversary of sorts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer121809.php3#.WzW2c8KWyUk at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2009

“Humanity faces the most complex task of its history so far. Stated in a solution-oriented way, it is necessary gradually to reorganize this planet at two levels. One must deal with the competing necessities of biosphere and mankind with all their environmental and climatic consequences. On the other level, it is necessary to resolve the demands of competing nations and worlds within mankind's hierarchy of socioeconomic developmental levels and the "Christmas tree" of sociopolitical, ideological, and military consequences.”

Krafft Arnold Ehricke (1917–1984) German aerospace engineer

The Extraterrestrial Imperative (1978)

World , Way , History , Tree

“Ichthyophils imagine that human beings want a life in which they can make their own choices. But what if they can be fulfilled only by a life in which they follow each other? The majority who obey the fashion of the day may be acting on a secret awareness that they lack the potential for a truly individual existence. Liberalism – the ichthyophil variety, at any rate – teaches that everyone yearns to be free. Herzen’s experience of the abortive European revolutions of 1848 led him to doubt that this was so. It was because of his disillusionment that he criticized Mill so sharply. But if it is true that Mill was deluded in thinking that everyone loves freedom, it may also be true that without this illusion there would be still less freedom in the world. The charm of a liberal way of life is that it enables most people to renounce their freedom unknowingly.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Ichthyophils and Liberals (p. 62)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Love , Life , People , Secret

“It is apparently futile only to insist that the more backward countries restrict their birth rates. What is needed most of all is economic and technical assistance to these countries. This assistance must be of such scale and generosity that it is unlikely before the estrangement in the world and the egotistical, narrow-minded approach to relations between nations and races are eliminated.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Hunger and Overpopulation (and the Psychology of Racism)

World , Birth , Country

“In spite of the president's phone call, I remained a vocal critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy priorities through that summer because I didn't trust most of the people he had around him. The civilians in the Department of Defense were unlike any I'd ever seen. They seemed to think our nation was so powerful that we could simply impose our will on the rest of the world with almost no ill consequence. It seemed to me that Rumsfeld and his chief deputy at Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, were so totally in thrall to that conservative think-tank-generated ideology that they were steering the president down a dangerous path. And they were so intent on overturning President Clinton's foreign policy initiatives that they were losing sight of the bigger goal, which was keeping America safe at home and engaged in doing good in the world.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 298
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

People , World , Home , Thinking

“Having written all that, I must admit that there is some soul searching going on in the economics profession. As obvious as the financial crisis seems after the fact, few economists saw it coming (with some notable exceptions). Virtually none anticipated how severe it might be. In the fall of 2005, several prominent economists wrote in a prestigious journal, “As of the end of 2004, our analysis reveals little evidence of a housing bubble.”
Wrong. Actually the article was worse than wrong, because it was written explicitly to refute the signs of a bubble that had become obvious to many laypeople—which is kind of like the fire department showing up at a house with smoke wafting from the roof and declaring, “No, that’s not a fire,” only to have flames start leaping from the attic twenty minutes later. There was a bubble. And it can be explained best by incorporating psychology into economics, namely the tendency of individuals to believe that whatever is happening now is what’s most likely to happen in the future.”

Charles Wheelan (1966) American politician

Introduction
Naked Economics (rev. and updated ed., 2010)

Soul , Search , Future , Housing

“Jack: A potential Cabinet Minister if ever I saw one. Dishonest in a way which seems embarrassingly frank. Upright when creeping. And dignified when at his most stupid.”

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

Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

Stupidity , Way

“The Bible predicts that in the last days of man-made regimes on earth, a totally godless, anti-Christ world government will arise, led by a Devil-possessed dictator, Satan incarnate, who will bring a temporary false peace on earth and a counterfeit utopia. Its price will be enforced worship of him as the imitation Messiah. All of his subjects will be branded with a credit number in order to buy or sell or obtain food or employment, and all those who refuse to cooperate will be hunted, persecuted, and slaughtered by his commandment. This will be a time of Great Tribulation.
This anti-Christ government of anti-Christ forces under the leadership of the Antichrist himself, this superhuman world dictator of man's last one-world godless government, will then set up its headquarters in Jerusalem, his capital, and unite all peoples of the world into a one-world worship of this demon-demagogue and his magical image which can speak.
These startling events will immediately precede the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which is the major endtime event, the grand climax, as the Lord Himself returns and wipes out the Antichrist and his followers and sets up the last and most lasting and only perfect government the world has ever known, and "the meek shall inherit the earth"”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Psalm 37:11
A More Sure Word of Prophecy (2 Peter 1:19)

People , World , Peace , Food

“"Come on! You too, Will."
"If you must call me anything, you may address me as Most Excellent Testamentary Clause," said the sun bear.
"Claws?" said Suzy, as she tilted the chair to speed the bear on its way. "Orright, Claws, hop to it."
"No, no, no," protested the sun bear. "Most Excellent-"
"Claws it is," said Suzy loudly. "After you, Claws."
"I said… oh… just don't speak to me," huffed the Will as it waddled after Arthur.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Grim Tuesday (2004), p. 300.

Way , Sun , Speed

“Dawn of the Dead is one of the most prophetic and disturbing films you’ll see, and I challenge you to find anyone who can find another film from that era which provides the same level of social commentary.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[The Skinny, Scotland, http://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/features/44237-director_olly_blackburn_talks_donkey_punch, Radge Media, 10 November 2008, 23 February 2012, Director Olly Blackburn talks Donkey Punch, Michael, Gillespie]

“Since I have been in England I have been asked several times why I am studying business management. I will try to tell you. Free to choose between different paths of study, I have chosen this for a number of reasons. First of all, it is among businessmen (not all, but a few) that I find the greatest vitality of thinking to-day, and I like to do my thinking where it is most alive. I said last winter to a Professor of Philosophy: 'Do you realize that you philosophers have got to look to your laurels, that businessmen are doing some very valuable thinking and may get ahead of you?' And he acknowledged this, which I think was a very significant concession. Moreover, I find the thinking of businessmen to-day in line with the deepest and best thinking we have ever had. The last word in science—in biology—is the principle of unifying. The most profound philosophers have always given us unifying as the fundamental principle of life. And now business men are finding it is the way to run a successful business. Here the ideal and the practical have joined hands. That is why I am working at business management, because, while I care for the ideal, it is only because I want to help bring it into our everyday affairs.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xix-xx

Life , Men , Way , Business

“This could be the beginning of Civil War. There is no kind more distressing, no kind which so rapidly describes the pointlessness of human killing human. I have been fated, for a reason I cannot comprehend or for no reason at all, to witness the worst examples of insane warfare (and all warfare, it seems to me now, is that) and having to listen to the most ridiculous explanations as to its “necessity” from otherwise perfectly rational people, I have long since become weary, Moorcock, of the debate. If I appear to you to be in a more reconciled mood than when your grandfather first met me it is because I have learned that no individual is responsible for War—that we are all, at the same time, individually responsible for the ills of the human condition. In learning this, (and I am about to tell you how I learned it) I also learned a certain tolerance for myself and for others which I had never previously possessed.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Black Ships” (p. 359)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Fate , War , People , Mood

“Our communion with Christ is not on a level of our common humanity, but we rise in it; we scale the heavens where He sitteth at the right hand of God; we send our longings up and ask to have attachments knit to Him; to be set in deepest, holiest, and most practical affinity with Him; and so to live a life that is hid with Christ in God. In such a life, we become partakers of His holiness, and, in the separating grace of that, partakers also of His power.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 609.

Life , God , Christ

“This man, I say, is most perfect who shall have understood everything for himself, after having devised what may be best afterward and unto the end: and good again is he likewise who shall have complied with one advising him well: but whoso neither himself hath understanding, nor when he hears another, lays it to heart, he on the other hand is a worthless man.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 293.

Understanding , Heart , Perfection

“After dinner my father asks me into his study…. Then he slams the door so hard that I nearly jump out of the chair. He tells me that he's been ashamed to invite anyone over since I "came back" because of my "long" hair and my clothes…. "That's all right," I say after a tense silence. "I'm leaving for New York tomorrow. And I'm leaving for Canada, as soon as I get my immigrant status!" His expression breaks first. He urges me to "reconsider." I am afraid to say anything at all. He says, "Ever since you left home your life has been a series of blunders, and this is your biggest; your most fatal…. You tried to destroy society and you couldn't. Really, you were trying to destroy me. Now you're going to destroy yourself instead."”

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

Page 206. Spring of 1967. Satin had flown home to Wichita Falls, Texas, to tell his family he was immigrating to Canada. His father is a college professor.
Confessions of a Young Exile (1976)

Life , Home , Study , Silence

“May I be perfectly candid? I also am still a Unionist in this sense. If I were certified of twenty years of unbroken power in this country, I am still most clearly of opinion that the solution of the Irish question which would be best for England and best for Ireland would be the prosecution during that period of the policy which, in our opinion at least, had attained so large a measure of success in the year 1906. In saying this I make it quite plain that I am conscious that there are many of my colleagues—there must be many of my colleagues—who would not take that view. You must make the reservation that you are given that power and that you are given that power for the requisite period. The late Lord Salisbury spoke of "twenty years of resolute government." The Unionist Party, in the period to the close of which I refer, had been given some ten years, and it was only given those ten years by what many members of this House would describe as the accident of the issue, with its repercussion on the Election, of the war in South Africa. That accident and that Election gave the Unionist Party some ten years of office. Is it not evident, in trying to descry what lies in front of us through the mists of the future, that no man living can claim that twenty years, or anything like twenty years, lie in front of any Party that believes in the maintenance of the relations between Ireland and this country on the lines that have existed since the passing of the Act of Union?”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1920/nov/23/government-of-ireland-bill on the Government of Ireland Bill (23 November 1920).

War , Lie , Question , Sense

“I come here today…not just because you are doing well and because you are outstanding students, but because we expect something of you. And unless in this free country of ours we are able to demonstrate that we are able to make this society work and progress, unless we can hope that from you we are going to get back all of the talents which society has helped develop in you, then, quite obviously, all the hopes of all of us that freedom will not only endure but prevail, of course, will be disappointed. So we ask the best of you…I congratulate you on what you have done, and most of all I congratulate you on what you are going to do.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: "Remarks in New York City to the National Convention of the Catholic Youth Organization (463)," (15 November 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx

Hope , Disappointment , Freedom , Help

“Nolan Ryan is simply a flame-thrower. They call him The Express. Get it? Ryan's Express. Harmon Killebrew says if he ever gets hit by Ryan's express, he'll have the pitcher arrested for manslaughter. Oakland slugger Reggie Jackson says Ryan is the only pitcher he's afraid of, down-deep-in-the-guts afraid of. "If a pitch ever gets away from him, he will kill someone." Nolan Ryan pitches for the California Angels, in Anaheim, which you also wouldn't confuse with New York. Thus, few people really know what an exciting young man this is, perhaps the most exciting single performer in baseball today. Yes, I've heard of Hank Aaron. For years I beat the drums, by myself, for Roberto Clemente. I like the cool gall of Vida Blue, the hot moxie of Pete Rose. They all excite me. But not down deep in the guts, the way this kid does. He excites me. He frightens me. He puts me on that double-pronged fork of attraction and revulsion. When you watch Nolan Ryan rear and throw that screaming blur of white toward the plate, you don't know whether to watch or cover your eyes. Will he strike out the hitter, or will he strike him dead?”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Nolan Ryan: The Untouchable," in Baseball Stars of 1973 (March 1973), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 92
Sports-related

People , Angels , Way , Dead