Quotes about most (10000 quotes, page 91)

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. IV
Adonais (1821)

Music

“Restoration of peatlands is a low hanging fruit, and among the most cost-effective options for mitigating climate change.”

Achim Steiner (1961) German politician

IUCN UK Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands http://www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/sites/all/files/IUCN%20UK%20Commission%20of%20Inquiry%20on%20Peatlands%20Full%20Report%20spv%20web.pdf Full Report, IUCN UK Peatland Programme (October 2011), page 8.

Change

“I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Soul , Nature , Thinking , Effort

“Plato argued that in a good society the ratio of the richest to the poorest person's income should be at the most four to one.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 7, Income Redistribution Conceptual Issues, p. 147

Personality

“It is impossible to get help where it is most needed when any group is targeted for legal discrimination and stigma.”

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

2010s, 2014, U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Spousal Program (August 2014)

Help

“To show you how cosmically irrelevant the Warren Report is for the most part … one of the exhibits is classified in the front as, 'A Study of the Teeth of Jack Ruby's Mother.' Even if Jack Ruby had intended to bite Oswald to death, that still would not have been relevant.”

Jim Garrison (1921–1992) American judge

[Gil Jesus, The Garrison Investigation, video interview.]

Death , Study , Parting

“Our house is on the eastern slope of Rupert Mountain, just off a country road, still unpaved then, and five miles from the nearest town…Even at the most unpromising times of year – in mudtime, on bleak, snowless winter days – it is in so many unexpected ways beautiful that even after all this time I have never quite gotten used to it. I have seen other places equally beautiful in my time, but never, anywhere, have I seen one more so.”

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

Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (1983)

Beauty , Way , Mountain , Winter

“The idea of objectivity in the evaluation of pictures introduces the concept of rational and scientific assessment. There are some sciences involved in the making and in the study of pictures, but the art itself is finally not a science and will not submit to scientific regimentation because its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown. It is simply an avoidance of the interesting difficulty to subject the inexplicable to the process of rational explanation. For since the real pleasures of painting and the reality of its meaning exist in the part of its structure which cannot be explained, all suggestions and pretensions at explanation must lead us away from the area of greatest interest. This is to say that such analysis as purports to lay bare the machinery which makes a painting work — makes it a good painting — not only leaves out the most important factor, the element of mystery, but actively denies the reality which is the justification for the art at all.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life , Pleasure , Art , Idea

“I had no option to turn down the (Vice Premiership) appointment or make other choices as the country needs me at a time when it is facing the most trying challenge it ever has faced.”

Eric Chu (1961) Taiwanese politician

Eric Chu (2009) cited in " Chu said he could not turn down appointment http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2009/09/08/223721/Chu-said.htm" on The China Post, 8 September 2009.

Time , Country

“The three men I admire most -- the father, son, and Mickie Most -- took the last train for the coast, and rendezvoused with Peter Glaze, to kill Don Maclean.
Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off, This Leaden Pall”

Nigel Blackwell

1993
Lyrics

Men , Training

“George Bush is just about everything that is repellent in politics… You have got this super-patriotic hawk who was a coward when his country was actually involved in a war and has the most venal and corrupt administration since President Harding in the 20s. He is not a legitimate president… This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Remarks at a public meeting criticising George W. Bush (8 May 2003) , as quoted in "Mayor's Amazing Attack on Bush" by Ross Lydall in the Evening Standard (8 May 2003)

War , Country

“The Ten Commandments weren't historical. They're mythical, because they never existed and neither did Moses, neither does God; none of that is evidently real. Even rabbinical scholars now admit a consensus among archaeologists that the Exodus never happened, because the Hebrews were never enslaved in Egypt the way the Bible describes. Moses's childhood river arc was taken from the Saga of Sargon, and the parting of the Red Sea was adapted from the legend of an Egyptian pharaoh from an earlier millennium [Snefru and Djadjamankh]. Belief in the Ten Commandments never changed anything for the better either; most of the believers professing to promote them can't even recite them, and never knew what they meant.”

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

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

God , Way , Change , Parting

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Misquotation of a line from Walden cited above, with the addition of a spurious ending. For this and other misattributions, see: The Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page http://www.walden.org/thoreau/mis-quotations/
Misattributed

Men

“It is not, I think, going too far to say, that every fact connected with the human organization goes to prove, that man was originally formed a frugivorous animal … This opinion is principally derived from the formation of his teeth and digestive organs, as well as from the character of his skin, and the general structure of his limbs. It is not my intention now to go further into the discussion of this subject, than to observe, that if analogy be allowed to have any weight in the argument, it is wholly on that side of the question which I have just taken. Those animals, whose teeth and digestive apparatus most nearly resemble our own, namely, the apes and monkeys, are undoubtedly frugivorous.”

Thomas Bell (zoologist)

The Anatomy, Physiology, and Diseases of the Teeth, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830, p. 35 https://books.google.it/books?id=LK-_LIeEq2oC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35.

Question , Thinking , Animals

“At this moment the most stable Government in the world is our own, and it is solely because, in its real essence, it is the most free, in the only sense in which Freedom really exists; where men can act at their own free discretion, restrained only by the necessities of Justice. If the spirit of the Constitution is to be observed, that great instrument is always self-preserving. It needs only to be followed to be safeguarded.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty? (1920) by George H. Earle, Jr.

Men , World , Justice , Sense

“For the first time in my life, I have to grab the monks by the throat. Me! The most religious man in the Kingdom! Because I've had enough- more than enough! My subjects and the elite among my subjects must obey!”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Reaction to two Buddhist orders sympathising with communist rebels (1952), as quoted in Philip Short (2004) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, page 84.

Life , Time

“Sketches indeed, from that most passionate page,
A woman's heart, of feelings, thoughts, that make
The atmosphere in which her spirit moves;”

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

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Feeling , Passion , Heart

““Don’t believe everything you hear about hell. Next time you run into some anti-hell propaganda, consider the source.”
“You inflict eternal punishment on people,” Julie countered.
“Merely because it’s our job. And remember, we persecute only the guilty, which puts us one up on most other institutions.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 9 (p. 162)

People , Hell , Time

“Most people never see the trap they are in.”

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!

People

“Pascal suggests that people avoid looking inwards and keep running in the vain hope of escaping a face-to-face encounter with their predicament, which is to face up to their utter insignificance whenever they recall the infinity of the universe. And he censures them and castigates them for doing so. It is, he says, that morbid inclination to hassle around rather than stay put which ought to be blamed for all unhappiness. One could, however, object that Pascal, even if only implicitly, does not present us with the choice between a happy and an unhappy life, but between two kinds of unhappiness: whether we choose to run or stay put, we are doomed to be unhappy. The only (putative and misleading!) advantage of being on the move (as long as we keep moving) is that we postpone for a while the moment of that truth. This is, many would agree, a genuine advantage of running out of rather than staying in our rooms—and most certainly it is a temptation difficult to resist. And they will choose to surrender to that temptation, allow themselves to be allured and seduced—if only because as long as they remain seduced they will manage to stave off the danger of discovering the compulsion and addiction that prompts them to run, screened by what is called “freedom of choice” or “self-assertion.””

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

But, inevitably, they will end up longing for the virtues they once possessed but have now abandoned for the sake of getting rid of the agony which practicing them, and taking responsibility for that practice, might have caused.
Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 37.

Life , People , Truth , Hope

“I have tried to show pragmatism as a moment in the swing of thought from realism to idealism, and how for it the most vital, that is to say, the moral and religious aspects of our world are things to work and fight for, to make and to mould, not just to find and come across. Its god is indeed a god of battles, and we are his soldiers on whom his victory depends. But as I view this battle, it is not to be fought out in heart throes and outpourings of sentiment. These may indeed change and better human relationships; but it must not be forgotten that human relationships exist in a physical universe that is older than they, and promises to outlast them. Now, just the physics of things show a strong tendency to be amoral and atheistic. "You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees.”

Edgar A. Singer, Jr. (1873–1954) American philosopher

Source: Modern thinkers and present problems, (1923), p. 243-44: Partly cited in: John Barton (1999, p. 10)

God , World , Strong , Universe

“In theory, all Munich-based military units and thus Hitler’s regiment, too, were part of the Red Army. In that sense, Hitler served in the Red Army. In reality, however, most regiments neither actively supported the Soviet regime nor opposed it.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (2017), p. 52

Support , Reality , Sense , Parting

“After visiting these places, you can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”

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

After visiting such Nazi strongholds as were found in Berchtesgaden and Kehlsteinhaus; Personal diary (1 August 1945); published in Prelude to Leadership (1995)
Pre-1960

Death , World , Peace , Way

“Most people have a problem becoming a vegan or stopping eating meat, but because of how I want to live in this world and how I want to treat other creatures, I have to be a vegan. In order for me to eat meat, I would have to change all of my other beliefs.”

Jim Morris (bodybuilder) (1935–2016) American bodybuilder

"The Story of a 78-Year-Old Vegan Bodybuilder - Jim Morris: Lifelong Fitness" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUtv4slpm-U, documentary-film on YouTube (March 11, 2014).

People , World , Problem , Change

“Eros is a great leveller. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society. It is noticeable how often Uranians of good position and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs and political tendencies”

Edward Carpenter book The Intermediate Sex

The Intermediate Sex (1908), pp. 114-115

Way , Democracy

“The men in the laboratory… cannot be said to observe the actual objects of their curiosity at all. …The sense data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. …What is directly observable is only a sign of the "physical fact"; it requires interpretation to yield scientific propositions.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Philosophy in a New Key (1942)

Men , Sense , Science , Parting

“Most experts have assumed that the allosaurs, about 35 feet long, were the worst threats to the herbivores of the Jurassic, some of which were gigantic and probably able to fend off even an allosaur. But epanterias would have spelled trouble for everyone.”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

As quoted in Malcolm W. Browne, Scientist Raises Question: Is Tyrannosaurus Still Rex? http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/04/us/scientist-raises-question-is-tyrannosaurus-still-rex.html, The New York Times (January 4, 1990)

“!-- Most of the effects described in classical magical tradition I believe I can duplicate with art, possibly drugs – or some other means of integrating myself more deeply with that sort of reality, that sort of consciousness – I believe I could do most of the things that are described in traditional magic. This opens up wider possibilities. It also enables me to understand myself on a deeper level. -->By accepting the idea of endless pantheons of gods, I somehow accept these creatures as being distinct and separate from me, and not as being, to some degree, higher functions of me. Iain Sinclair was asking me about this: he asked me ‘do you think they are inside you, or outside you?’ The only answer I could come up with was, the more I think about it the inside is the outside. That the objective world and the non-objective world are the same thing, to some degree. Ideaspace and this space are the same space. Just different ends of the scale. That’s not a very good explanation, but the best I can come up with so far.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

God , World , Art , Idea

“Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Two, History Of Propaganda, p. 45

Democracy

“I feel the deepest affliction at the news we have just received at the loss of our dear and inestimable friend Laurens. His career of virtue is at end. How strangely are human affairs conducted, that so many excellent qualities could not ensure a more happy fate! The world will feel the loss of a man who has left few like him behind; and America, of a citizen whose heart realized that patriotism of which others only talk. I feel the loss of a friend whom I truly and most tenderly loved, and one of a very small number.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Letter to Nathanael Greene (12 October 1782), as quoted in Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene http://books.google.com/books?id=pLZSAAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s, page 342

Love , Fate , World , Feeling

“It has been well said … that there are steps on the way to the summit of Dietetic Reform, and, if only one step be taken, yet that single step will be not without importance and without influence in the world. The step, which leaves for ever behind it the barbarism of slaughtering our fellow-beings, the Mammals and Birds, is, it is superfluous to add, the most important and most influential of all.”

Howard Williams (humanitarian) (1837–1931) English humanitarian

The Ethics of Diet, Preface http://www.ivu.org/history/williams/preface.html from the 1st edition, 1883.

World , Way , Bird

“My generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music, advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work comes out of, for better or for worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile, that it's something other than just more smarmy entertainment—or at least, that it's genuine high quality entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it's revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings! I have an enormous ego and must resist the urge to come on like a know-it-all. Some of the imagery in my work is sorta scary because I'm basically a fearful, pessimistic person. I'm always seeing the predatory nature of the universe, which can harm you or kill you very easily and very quickly, no matter how well you watch your step. The way I see it, we are all just so much chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle, but unfortunately we don't seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of ignorant, depraved behavior. We're all depraved, me included. I can't help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in a never-ending deluge.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 363

Books , World , Fear , Hope

“No one respects a man who is always apologizing and backpedaling. No one respects a man who is always asking for permission. No one respects a man who won't stand up for himself or fight for his own interests. No one wants to cheer for a team that stopped playing to win. Most people would agree that men who don't play to win deserve to lose.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 40-41
Becoming A Barbarian (2016)

Men , People , Fight

“The spirit makes you a great fighter not drugs or anything … the smartest fighter, the fighter that's more determined, the fighter that's dedicated, the fighter that wants it the most.. you have to have the desire to hurt him [to be the best fighter].”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF-sxSipAMs
https://thefamouscelebrity.com/mike-tyson-wiki/
On boxing

Hurt

“I try to carry out the most precise and discriminative analyses I can in order to show in what ways things change, are transformed, are displaced. When I study the mechanisms of power, I try to study their specificity… I admit neither the notion of a master nor the universality of his law. On the contrary, I set out to grasp the mechanisms of the effective exercise of power; and I do this because those who are inserted in these relations of power, who are implicated therein, may, through their actions, their resistance, and their rebellion, escape them, transform them—in short, no longer submit to them. And if I do not say what ought to be done, it is not because I believe there is nothing to be done. Quite on the contrary, I think there are a thousand things to be done, to be invented, to be forged, by those who, recognizing the relations of power in which they are implicated, have decided to resist or escape them. From this point of view, my entire research rests upon the postulate of an absolute optimism. I do not undertake my analyses to say: look how things are, you are all trapped. I do not say such things except insofar as I consider this to permit some transformation of things. Everything I do, I do in order that it may be of use.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Quand j’étudie les mécanismes de pouvoir, j’essaie d’étudier leur spécificité… Je n’admets ni la notion de maîtrise ni l’universalité de la loi. Au contraire, je m’attache à saisir des mécanismes d’exercise effectif de pouvoir ; et je le fais parce que ceux qui sont insérés dans ces relations de pouvoir, qui y sont impliqués peuvent, dans leurs actions, dans leur résistance et leur rébellion, leur échapper, les transformer, bref, ne plus être soumis. Et si je ne dis pas ce qu’il faut faire, ce n’est pas parce que je crois qu’il n’y a rien à faire. Bien au contraire, je pense qu’il y a mille choses à faire, à inventer, à forger par ceux qui, reconnaissant les relations de pouvoir dans lesquelles ils sont impliqués, ont décidé de leur résister ou de leur échapper. De ce point de vue, toute ma recherche repose sur un postulat d’optimisme absolu. Je n’effectue pas mes analyses pour dire : voilà comment sont les choses, vous êtes piégés. Je ne dis ces choses que dans la mesure où je considère que cela permet de les transformer. Tout ce que je fais, je le fais pour que cela serve.
Dits et Écrits 1954–1988 (1976) Vol. II, 1976–1988 edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, p. 911-912

Law , Way , Exercises , Optimism

“One must perhaps qualify this statement and say that seemingly opposite tendencies each contain some modicum of the other. I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“When poetry loses its ability to enchant, it shrinks into what is just an elaborate form of argumentation. When verse casts its particular spell, it becomes the most evocative form of language.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

“Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said that your only asset was people you would end up living in a tent.”

Guy Browning (1964) British comedian

People, Office Politics (2006).

People

“Aristotle said melancholy men of all others are most witty.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 3, member 1, subsection 3.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Men

“If two classes express the same information, the most descriptive name should be kept. For example, although customer might describe a person taking an airline ﬂight, Passenger is more descriptive.”

James Rumbaugh (1947) Computer scientist, software engineer

Source: Object-oriented modeling and design (1990), p. 153; as cited in: Roger Chiang, ‎Keng Siau, ‎Bill C. Hardgrave (2009) Systems Analysis and Design. p. 163

Personality

“In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.”

J. Irwin Miller (1909–2004) American businessman

Cummins website http://www.cummins.com/cmi/content.jsp?menuIndex=8&siteId=1&overviewId=684&menuId=1&langId=1033&

Sex , Search , Intelligence , Failure

“Our American newspapers serve a double purpose. They bring knowledge and information to their readers, and at the same time they play a most important part in connection with the business interests of the community, both through their news and advertising departments. Probably there is no rule of your profession to which you gentlemen are more devoted than that which prescribes that the editorial and the business policies of the paper are to be conducted by strictly separate departments. Editorial policy and news policy must not be influenced by business consideration; business policies must not be affected by editorial programs. Such a dictum strikes the outsider as involving a good deal of difficulty in the practical adjustments of c very-day management. Yet, in fact, I doubt if those adjustments are any more difficult than have to be made in every other department of human effort. Life is a long succession of compromises and adjustments, and it may be doubted whether the press is compelled to make them more frequently than others do.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Life , Communication , Business , Knowledge

“It is apparent that prisoners of war are among the most vulnerable of people. Not only are they completely under the control of their captors, but in a time of conflict, the hatred and brutality of the battlefield are very likely to be mirrored within military prison walls.”

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

Pages 125-126
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

War , People , Time

“The author of the history of Mahmood Shah relates, that in the year AH 872 (AD 1468), the King saw the holy Prophet (Mahomed) in a dream, who presented before him a magnificent banquet of the most delicate viands. This dream was interpreted by the wise men as a sign that he would soon accomplish a conquest by which he would obtain great treasures, which prediction was soon after verified in the capture of Girnal….“In the year AH 873 (AD 1469), Mahmood Shah marched towards the country of Girnal, the capital of which bears the same name…“…The victorious army, without attacking the fort of Girnal, destroyed all the temples in the vicinity; and the King sending out foraging parties procured abundance of provisions for the camp…“The King, being desirous that the tenets of Islam should be propagated throughout the country of Girnal, caused a city to be built, which he called Moostufabad, for the purpose of establishing an honourable residence for the venerable personages of the Mahomedan religion, deputed to disseminate its principles; Mahmood Shah also took up his residence in that city…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511)Girnar (Gujarat)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Men , Religion , Dreams , History

“[In The Achieving Society, 'need for achievement' is uncovered by having individuals write stories based on pictures they see] the stories represented short samples of the things people are most likely to think about or imagine when they are in a state of heightened motivation having to do with achievement. It may be worth considering for a moment why fantasy as a type of behavior has many advantages over any other type of behavior for sensitively reflecting the effects of motivational arousal. In fantasy anything is at least symbolically possible… Overt action, on the other hand, is much more constrained by limits set by reality or by the person's abilities. Furthermore, fantasy is more easily influenced than other kinds of behavior.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 40; As cited in: Kevin Hindle, ‎Kim Klyver (2011), Handbook of Research on New Venture Creation, p. 74-75

People , Behavior , Imagination , Motivation

“An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its decisive place of rest, at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfections and guilt, certainly does not call himself a truth-witness but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has had nothing new to bring but “has wanted once again to read through, if possible in a more inward way, the original text handed down from the fathers” Preface P. 165”

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

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Truth , Way , Decision , Reading

“Juarez is reported to be the most dangerous city in America.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011-02-28, quoted in * 2011-03-01
Texas-sized gaffe: Rick Perry says Juarez is 'in America'
Andy
Barr
Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50368.html
2011

“By August, 1913, all links in the chain of moving assembly lines were complete except the last and most spectacular one - the one we had first experimented with one Sunday morning just five years before. Again a towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan. Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line. Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line. This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production. Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed. Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun.”

Charles E. Sorensen (1881–1968) American businessman

Source: My Forty Years with Ford, 1956, p. 130-131 ; As cited in: EyeWitness to History (2005)

History , Time , Parting , Speed

“The most advanced socialist thought in England is Raymond Williams’ superbly intricate and persuasive work… Any English Marxism will have to measure itself against this landmark in our social thought.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Perry Anderson, " Socialism and pseudo-empiricism http://newleftreview.org/static/assets/archive/pdf/NLR03401.pdf." New Left Review 35 (1966): 2-42; as cited in: Blackledge, Paul. Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left. Merlin Press, 2004. p. 91.

“Most American men of affairs have learned well the rhetoric of public relations, in some cases even to the point of using it when they are alone, and thus coming to believe it.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 5.

Men , Learning

“I write repeatedly—against my will—of those things I fear most happening. Losing a loved one, losing a parent, losing a child. I'm in terror of losing a child. It's never happened to me, but I am clearly compelled to write about it over and over again, and in a way I think, psychologically at least, this says more about me autobiographically as a novelist than the fact that Danny Angel goes to the Iowa Writers Workshop and has Kurt Vonnegut as a teacher, which I also did.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

The Best of The Sunday Edition, CBC.ca, CBC, Michael Enright, October 25, 2009, November 5, 2009 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/sundayedition_20091026_22073.mp3,

Love , Fear , Angels , Way

“The most abstract conservation laws of physics come into their being in describing equilibrium in the most extreme conditions. They are the most rigorous conservation laws, the last to break down. The more extreme the conditions, the fewer the conserved structures… In a deep sense, we understand the interior of the sun better that the interior of the earth, and the early stages of the big bang best of all.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Fourth Theme, Prelude Four
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Law , Understanding , Sense , Sun

“I believe the art of the future including poetry will be simple, fresh and strongly coloured and will be understood and loved by the ignorant as well as the most cultivated. A popular art in the finest sense of the word.”

Max Michelson (1880–1953) American poet

Love , Art , Sense , Future

“Arie de Geus is a former executive with Royal Dutch/Shell who, together with Peter M. Senge, is responsible for the development of the concept of the ‘learning organisation’. In the early 1990s it was Senge, through his best-selling book The Fifth Discipline (1990), who did most to disseminate and popularise the concept. More recently, however, de Geus has produced an important body of writing in his own right, notably The Living Company (1997), in which he takes an organic and holistic view of organisations and closely links their ability to learn with the extent to which they are integrated into their environment.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 55

Books , Learning

“Back in the mid-1700s, Samuel Johnson observed that there were two kinds of knowledge: that which you know, and that which you know where to get. It was a moment when cheap and abundant print coupled with reliable postal networks triggered an information explosion that dramatically changed the way people thought. […] Now the Internet is changing how we think again. Just as print took over the once-human task of knowing, cyberspace is assuming the task of knowing where to get what we seek. […] Now we revel in search, but most of what we search for isn't worth seeking, as the top search lists on Google, Yahoo and Bing make clear. […] The Internet has changed our thinking, but if it is to be a change for the better, we must add a third kind of knowledge to Johnson's list — the knowledge of what matters.”

Paul Saffo (1954) American writer

"A Third Kind of Knowledge" http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_7.html#saffo, in The Edge Annual Question—2010: How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html, January 2010

People , Way , Search , Knowledge

“While the censorious man is most severe in judging others, he is invariably the most ready to repel any animadversions made upon himself; upon the principle well understood in medical circles, that the feeblest bodies are always the most sensitive”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 357.

“Perhaps the most eloquent of the hard virtues is courage, the disposition to encounter adversity head-on and strive to overcome it.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 65.

Courage

“For a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice or a few such animals on which it can be most conveniently studied.”

August Krogh (1874–1949) Danish physiologist

A. Krogh (1929). The progress of physiology, American Journal of Physiology 90:243–251.
See Krogh Principle
Famously quoted by an important microbiologist in: Krebs H. A. (1975). The August Krogh Principle: "For many problems there is an animal on which it can be most conveniently studied." Journal of Experimental Zoology 194:221–226.

Problem , Study , Animals

“The power of the United States depended heavily on its pale empire of ideas, attitudes and innovations. Its ideas alighted effortlessly on foreign ground, irrespective of who owned the ground. Much of its influence came from such innovations as the telephone, electricity, aircraft and the cheap car, nuclear weapons and spacecraft, computers and the Internet. Its influence came through jazz, cartoons, Hollywood, television and popular culture. Its influence came from an excitement about technology and economic change, and a belief in incentives and individual enterprise. It was also the most ardent missionary for the creed of democracy. While military and economic might was vital to the success of the United States, the power of its pale empire of ideas was probably even more pervasive.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

Cars , Democracy , Idea , Change

“Hussein stated it is not only important what people say or think about him now but what they think in the future, 500 or 1000 years from now. The most important thing, however, is what God thinks. If God believes something, He will convince the people to agree. If God does not agree, it does not matter what the people think.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Interview by FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm.
Attributed

God , People , Thinking , Future

“I don't think there are any irredeemable themes or tropes, just ones that are waiting for a fresh eye. Horror, science fiction, and fantasy deal with the eternal verities, the subjects that have always - and will always - speak most deeply about who we are. That's why they're the most fascinating genres, and why they're always there to be reinvented. At the very least you can ask, "This subject has been done to death now, so why are we so obsessed with it?"”

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

and take a new angle from there.
Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Death , Thinking , Science , Waiting

“War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. X, ch. 25
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Life , War , Game , Understanding

“If I choose to impose individual blame for all past social ills, there will be no one left to like in some of the most fascinating periods of our history. For example […] if I place every Victorian anti-Semite beyond the pale of my attention, my compass of available music and literature will be pitifully small. Though I hold no shred of sympathy for active persecution, I cannot excoriate individuals who acquiesced passively in a standard societal judgment. Rail instead against the judgment, and try to understand what motivates men of decent will.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"The Moral State of Tahiti—and of Darwin", p. 269
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Men , Music , History , Literature

“From our very first conversation in the Closerie des Lilas the day after the opening of the first exhibition of Futurist painting [in Paris, February 1912] I noticed that Fernand Léger was one of the most gifted and promising Cubists... Léger's article ('Les origins de la peinture et sa valeur representative', Mai 1913) is a true act of Futurist faith which give us great satisfaction - all the more so since the author is kind enough to mention us.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Quote from 'Il dinamismo futurista et la pittura francese', Boccioni, in 'Lacerba', August 1913; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 118
1913

Faith , Painting

“I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished—not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt

World , Dreams , Nature , Appearance

“The most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences were those which had been neglected as a no-man's land between the various established fields.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Source: Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), p. 2

Science

“…how poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t”—is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.”

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

"The Obscurity of the Poet". p. 9
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)
Variant: How poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t” — is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.

Reading

“There were times apart, there were times together.
I was pledged to her for worse or better.
When it mattered most I let her down.
That's the way it goes, it'll all work out.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

It'll All Work Out
Lyrics, Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987)

Way , Time

“"It is undeniably beautiful, do you not agree?" Jarlaxle asked, looking back at the soaring cathedral, with its tall spires, soaring buttresses, and great, colored windows.
"The mask of a god," Entreri replied sourly.
"The mask or the face?" asked the always-surprising Jarlaxle.
Entreri stared hard at his companion, and back at the towering cathedral. "The mask," he said, "or perhaps the illusion, concocted by those who seek to elevate themselves above all others and have not the skills to do so."
Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.
"A man inferior with the blade or with his thoughts can still so elevate himself," Entreri explained curtly, "if he can impart the belief that some god or other speaks through him. It is the greatest deception in all the world, and one embraced by kings and lords, while minor lying thieves on the streets of Calimport and other cities lose their tongues for so attempting to coax the purses of others."
That struck Jarlaxle as the most poignant and revealing insight he had yet pried from the mouth of the elusive Artemis Entreri, a great clue as to who this man truly was.”

R. A. Salvatore book Servant of the Shard

Servant of the Shard

God , World , Beauty , Color

“I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious.”

Robert A. Heinlein book If This Goes On

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

History , Thinking

“If A is A, a philosopher should equal a philosopher. But that's not the way the cosmos works. Similar things set themselves apart from one another. …What's more, opposites are joined at the hip. Einstein says that most creative acts come from opposition. They come from pitting yourself against someone with another point of view. They come from the law of differentiation. And that was true of Aristotle and his law of identity, his law of noncontradiction, his construction for the base for A is A. Aristotle came up with his idea… to fling a finger in the face of another philosopher [Heraclitus]…”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

When a Frog is a River? Aristotle Wrestles Heraclitus
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

Law , Way , Idea

“The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature: being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endowed him with the faculty of freewill. But every man, when he enters into society, gives up a part of his natural liberty, as the price of so valuable a purchase; and, in consideration of receiving the advantages of mutual commerce, obliges himself to conform to those laws, which the community has thought proper to establish.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book I, ch. 1 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals.
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

God , Law , Communication , Birth

“The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world. These they taught were of two kinds-the Cataclysm, or destruction by deluge, which sweeps away the whole human race, and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of nature; and the Ekpyrosis, or conflagration, which dissolves the globe itself. From the Egyptians also they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of men, and a shock of the elements or a deluge overwhelmed them; after which calamity, Astrea again descended on the earth, to renew the golden age.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Men , God , Age , World

“Mankind has never been renowned for accepting logical solutions to its most serious problems. As a rule, the degre of logicality of solutions seemed to vary inversely with the urgency or seriousness of the problems.”

Edmund Cooper book Five to Twelve

Five to Twelve (1968)

Problem

“The easiest way in which one can put unintentional strains on the enemy is to have a force which looks "trigger-happy." The one circumstance under which almost all Soviet experts agree the Russians might strike is the one in which they feel they are anticipating a strike by us. It will be difficult for them to read our intentions. They will doubtless err on the side of caution. But it is not clear which side will look cautious, particularly if there is a crisis which creates apprehension. It will add a real element of stability if our posture is such that we do not look as if we have to be "trigger-happy" in order to survive. This is an important reason for not relying solely on quick reaction as a protection and for not having forces so vulnerable that we could lose most of them from a Russian first strike. Under some circumstances our vulnerability to a Russian first strike would both tempt the Russians to initiate a war and at the same time compel them, because they might feel that we would be tempted to pre empt for our own protection. If we are sufficiently vulnerable they might find it impossible to believe that we were willing, in this crisis to rely on their good will, morality; caution, or sense of responsibility as a protection.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

War , Way , Feeling , Sense

“Most often, the reason something is "on your mind" is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcomes is; you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust. That's why it's on your mind.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001), Chapter 1

“Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

The New Yorker (30 July 1990)

People , Art , Change

“Protocols:
Number 24, paras. 3-15
Certain members of the sneed of David will prepare the kings and their heirs inducting them into the most secret mysteries of the political, into schemes of government, but providing always that none may come to knowledge of the secrets….
The king’s plan of action for the current moment, and all the more so for the future, will be unknown, even to those who are called his closest counselors. <br? Only the king and the three who stood sponsor for him will know what is coming.
In the person of the king who with unbending will is master.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret , Knowledge , Future , Personality

“All the real money in investment will have to be made—as most of it has been in the past— not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 17

Wisdom , Money , Past

“It is most amazing that one encounters fairly well-educated Christians who believe that "we are all equal before God." If Judas Iskariot were equal to John the Baptist or John the Evangelist, Christianity would have to close shop. Dominican R. L. Bruckburger said rightly that the New Testament is a message of human inequality. (Could one imagine that, at the Day of Judgment, all sentences could be equal? That God would not "discriminate" between saints and sinners?) (Pg 7n)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Monarchy and War

God , Education , Imagination

“Notice that there is no sociology in the book. Scientific communities and their practices are, however, at its core, entering with paradigms, as we saw, at page 10 and continuing to the final page of the book. There had been sociology of scientific knowledge before Kuhn, but after Structure it burgeoned, leading to what is now called science studies. This is a self-generating field (with, of course, its own journals and societies) that includes some work in the history and the philosophy of sciences and technology, but whose emphasis is on sociological approaches of various kinds, some observational, some theoretical. Much, and perhaps most, of the really original thinking about the sciences after Kuhn has had a sociological bent.
Kuhn was hostile to these developments. In the opinion of many younger workers, that is regrettable. Let us put it down to dissatisfaction with growing pains of the field, rather than venturing into tedious metaphors about fathers and sons. One of Kuhn’s marvelous legacies is science studies as we know it today.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (2012), Introductory Essay, in 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Pain , Hostility , Books , History

“I am the most curious of all to see what will be the next thing that I will do.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Jacques Lipchitz cited in: Bertie Charles Forbes (1992) Forbes, Vol. 149, Nr. 5-9, p. 424

“Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is different from any other ideological and social system, and is the most complete, progressive revolutionary and rational system in human history. The ideological and social system of feudalism has a place only in the museum of history. The ideological and social system of capitalism has also resembles "a dying person who is sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills", and will soon be relegated to the museum. The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt.”

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

On New Democracy (1940)

Youth , World , History , Communication

“The most important victory, in fact, was in Indonesia. In 1965 there was a military coup, which instantly carried out a Rwanda-style slaughter, and it's not an exaggeration. Rwanda-style slaughter, which wiped out the only mass-based political organization, killed mostly landless peasants, and instituted a brutal and murderous regime. There was total euphoria in the United States. So happy, they couldn't contain it. When you read the press, it was just ecstatic. It's kind of suppressed now because it doesn't look pretty in retrospect, but it was understood. Years later, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security advisor, recognized that, he said, and I think he's right, the U. S. should have stopped the war in Vietnam in 1965, because we basically won. By 1965 South Vietnam was largely destroyed, most of the rest was going to quickly be destroyed, and we had saved the major prize, Indonesia. The rot wasn't going to spread to Indonesia after this delightful Rwanda-style slaughter.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Teach-in on the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, in New York, April 2000 https://www.democracynow.org/2000/5/12/noam_chomsky_on_vietnam
Quotes 2000s, 2000

War , Thinking , Reading , Victory

“Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — NATO. But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U. S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

The Republican Party is dead, May 8, 2016, latimes.com, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-republicans-in-exile-20160508-story.html,

War , World , History , Success

“Cats have no souls,” Hamilton said morbidly, watching his tomcat avidly feed. “The most majestic cat in the universe would balance a carrot on his head for a bite of pork liver.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 3 (p. 30)

Soul , Cats , Universe

“(Woman organizing picnic) Most normal people would agree that pizza is nature's perfect food, right?”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 50

People , Food , Nature , Perfection

“On one level, then, Cadbury can be seen as a classic example of Victorian industrial paternalism, albeit carried to greater lengths than in most other companies of the day. On another level, however, the Cadbury system resulted in a very strong, highly flexible organisation which, thanks to the strong levels of employee commitment and participation, could draw on a large bank of experience and intelligence to solve problems and undertake what amounted to continuous improvement. The employee participation system in particular meant that Cadbury was constantly upgrading its processes and products. Herbert Casson regarded Cadbury in the 1920s as one of the best-run companies in Britain, if not the world, and summed up the key to its success very succinctly: ‘At Cadbury, everybody thinks.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 39; Quote on the Cadbury company at the time Edward Cadbury was managing director.

World , Intelligence , Problem , Thinking

“On grounds of sheer character formation, the patient endurance of pain brings out in a man ( that enhance and ennoble his character. There is no finer man than a man who 'can take ft'J self-sacrificing care of invalids, of the sick, of the aged, is one of the most refining factors in the\ realm of human experience. Thoroughbreds don't cry and pain can be a blessed thing”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Suffering

Pain , Age , Cry

“The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Goethe; or, the Writer,” p. 272
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

“Many, if not most, Americans can imagine a fate worse than death, and it is a seemingly interminable process of dying. For them, it is frightening that politicians can find ways to interject themselves into this sad process.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 72
Faith and Politics (2006)

Death , Fate , Sadness , Way

“The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office.”

Charles Dickens book Little Dorrit

Bk. I, Ch. 10
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)

Business , Time

“Bombay, which sold about 120,000 copies, is widely rated as my most successful work, though Roja is definitely the score that brought me where I am today.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

In “A R Rahman: Composing a winning score”.

Success

“It is children and savages and the illiterate who have the most implicit faith. It is said that unbelief is sin. This is not so; it is nobler to doubt than to believe, for to doubt is often to take sides with fact against oneself. Nietzsche said that this is characteristic of "higher men."”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 88

Men , Children , Faith

“By some strange and sinister fatality the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favourites—the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth; the dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Source: The Modern Rack (1889), Ch. I: The Moral Aspects of Vivisection, p. 15

Love , Faith , Dogs , Confidence

“.. Yes, indeed, what have we been up to? I feel rather like I've retired to the country, in some remote province, for that's what my life is like in N. Y. I see few people and people don’t try to see me anymore as they know they bore me. I write to the Arensberg's once a year and they do the same. There is a general weariness which, I think, is not confined to our generation. To tell the truth, most people prefer war to peace... Well, there you are, my dear Yvonne. Nothing as usual. Chess as much as possible: at least chess players don’t talk”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from his letter to Yvonne Chastel, New York, 8 January 1949; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 159
1921 - 1950

Life , War , People , Truth

“It is not my aim and object to paint a cow for the cow's sake or a tree for the tree's, but by means of the whole to create a beautiful and huge impression which nature sometimes creates, also with most simple means. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Het is mijn doel niet eene koe te schilderen om de koe, noch een boom om den boom; het is om door het geheel een indruk te weeg te brengen, dien de natuur somtijds maakt, een grootschen, schoonen indruk, ook door de eenvoudigste middelen.
Quote of Gerard Bilders in his letter c. 1861-1864; as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

Beauty , Nature , Tree , Painting