Quotes about most
page 92

Thomas Carlyle photo
Natália Correia photo

“A dark and troubled abstention:
Put a flower for me in the most secret garden
In a horizon of grace and clarity
Which was untouchable and next.A static promise in the light of the moon
Of the density which was corporal in me.
It is not the fault, it is the memory
Of the first morning of the sin
Without Eve and Adam.Only the proven fruit
And the rolled serpent
In my loneliness.”

Natália Correia (1923–1993) Portuguese writer

Uma obscura e inquieta castidade:
pôs uma flor para mim no jardim mais secreto
num horizonte de graça e claridade
intangível e perto.<p>Promessa estática no luar
da densidade em mim corpórea.
não é a culpa, é a memoria
da primeira manhã do pecado
sem Eva e sem Adão.<p>Só o fruto provado
e a serpente enroscada
na minha solidão.
Obscura Castidade (Dark Abstention).

Matt Ridley photo
Vanna White photo

“It's not the most intellectual job in the world, but I do have to know the letters.”

Vanna White (1957) American model and game show hostess

Cited in: Quentin Parker (2011). The Incontrovertible Code of (Formerly) Unwritten Rules. p. 51

Henry James photo
Samuel Richardson photo
Howell Cobb photo
Mark Steyn photo
Iain Banks photo
Frances Burney photo

“Money is the source of the greatest vice, & that Nation which is most rich, is most wicked.”

Frances Burney (1752–1840) English writer

The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 48, journal entry, November 17, 1768.
Letters

Linus Torvalds photo
Samuel Adams photo
Michael Johns photo

“Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," Policy Review, Fall 1987, by Michael Johns: In the former Soviet Union, we face an 'Evil Empire'.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh photo

“Aren't most of you descended from pirates?”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Said in 1994 to an inhabitant of the Cayman Islands as quoted in "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC News (1 March 2002)
1990s

John Harvey Kellogg photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

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

2000s, 2004

Pete Yorn photo

“And even if. I don't know what the day will bring. Still I can tell most anything. To a girl like you.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

A Girl Like You
Song lyrics

Lew Rockwell photo
John Dee photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley photo
Vin Scully photo

“And, (relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley) walked (pinch-hitter Mike Davis) … and look who's comin' up!
(36 seconds of crowd cheering)
All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight—with two bad legs: the bad left hamstring, and the swollen right knee. And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice … this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now!
Fouled away.
He was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off. Well, now, he can't push off and he can't land. … 4-3 A's, two out, ninth inning, not a bad opening act!
Mike Davis, by the way, has stolen 7 out of 10, if you're wondering about Lasorda throwing the dice again. 0-and-1.
Fouled away again. … 0-and-2 to Gibson, the infield is back, with two out and Davis at first. Now Gibson, during the year, not necessarily in this spot, but he was a threat to bunt. No way tonight, no wheels.
No balls, two strikes, two out.
Little nubber … foul—and, it had to be an effort to run that far. Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced; he did not come out onto the field before the game. … It's one thing to favor one leg, but you can't favor two. 0-and-2 to Gibson.
Ball one. And, a throw down to first, Davis just did get back. Good play by Ron Hassey using Gibson as a screen; he took a shot at the runner, and Mike Davis didn't see it for that split-second and that made it close.
There goes Davis, and it's fouled away! So, Mike Davis, who had stolen 7 out of 10, and carrying the tying run, was on the move.
Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. 2-and-2! … Tony LaRussa is one out away from win number one. … two balls and two strikes, with two out.
There he goes! Wa-a-ay outside, he's stolen it! … So, Mike Davis, the tying run, is at second base with two out. Now, the Dodgers don't need the muscle of Gibson, as much as a base hit, and on deck is the lead-off man, Steve Sax. 3-and-2. Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.
High fly ball into right field, she i-i-i-is gone!!
(67 seconds of cheering and organ music)
In a year that has been so improbable … the impossible has happened!
And, now, the only question was, could he make it around the base paths unassisted?!
You know, I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player; that the Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But, tonight, I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson. And, look at Eckersley—shocked to his toes!
They are going wild at Dodger Stadium—no one wants to leave!”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Kirk Gibson's World Series-game-winning home run, October 15, 1988, transcribed from mlb.com archives <nowiki>[</nowiki>excising comments by color commentator Joe Garagiola]

Ron Paul photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Herbert Read photo

“Why do we forget our childhood? With rare exceptions we have no memory of our first four, five, or six years, and yet we have only to watch the development of our own children during this period to realize that these are precisely the most exciting, the most formative years of life. Schachtel’s theory is that our infantile experiences, so free, so uninhibited, are suppressed because they are incompatible with the conventions of an adult society which we call ‘civilized’. The infant is a savage and must be tamed, domesticated. The process is so gradual and so universal that only exceptionally will an individual child escape it, to become perhaps a genius, perhaps the selfish individual we call a criminal. The significance of this theory for the problem of sincerity in art (and in life) is that occasionally the veil of forgetfulness that hides our infant years is lifted and then we recover all the force and vitality that distinguished our first experiences—the ‘celestial joys’ of which Traherne speaks, when the eyes feast for the first time and insatiably on the beauties of God’s creation. Those childhood experiences, when we ‘enjoy the World aright’, are indeed sincere, and we may therefore say that we too are sincere when in later years we are able to recall these innocent sensations.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: Collected Poems (1966), pp. 16-17

Francis Heylighen photo
Edward Carpenter photo
Lawrence M. Schoen photo
Rand Paul photo
Harry Harrison photo

“The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness.”

Harry Harrison (1925–2012) American science fiction author

This is the radio personality Harry Harrison (born 20 September 1930), quoted in Think Vol. 21, No. 1 (January 1955), and The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) edited by John Cook, Steve Deger, and Leslie Ann Gibson
Misattributed

Germaine Greer photo

“The most unpardonable privilege that men enjoy is their magnanimity.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

"Eternal war: Strindberg's view of sex" (3 June 1978), p. 207
The Madwoman's Underclothes (1986)

Mario Bunge photo
Gene Wolfe photo
Ken Ham photo
Denis Diderot photo

“The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and … people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774)

A.E. Housman photo
Antonín Dvořák photo

“What the hell kind of conclusion can you come to there? The most important thing, from the patient's perspective, they don't talk about.”

John Bonica (1917–1994) Anesthesiologist; pioneer in pain management

After having read 14,000 pages of medical textbooks and finding only 7 1/2 pages mentioning "pain," as quoted by Latif Nasser, "The amazing story of the man who gave us modern pain relief" (2015) TED Talks

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
John E. Sununu photo
Barry Boehm photo
Philip Warren Anderson photo
Hans Haacke photo
Jimmy Buffett photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
John P. Kotter photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.”

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

Speaking on inter-Allied debts in the House of Commons (December 10, 1924); reported in Parliamentary Debates (Commons) (1925), 5th series, vol. 179, col. 259.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Bem Cavalgar photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“We learn the most from fools … yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude.”

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 85

Bram van Velde photo

“The most difficult thing is not to want anything.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

James Anthony Froude photo

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Jean Ingelow photo

“If one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

Chapter 3, John Jerome, His Thoughts and Ways (1886)

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Spanish: Sobre todo, sean siempre capaces de sentir en lo más hondo cualquier injusticia cometida contra cualquiera en cualquier parte del mundo. Es la cualidad más linda de un revolucionario.
Letter to his Children (1965)

Gerald James Whitrow photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Gary S. Becker photo

“There is nothing glamorous in what I do. I'm a working man. Perhaps I'm luckier than most in that I receive considerable satisfaction from doing useful work which I, and sometimes others, think is good.”

Saul Bass (1920–1996) American graphic designer and filmmaker

"Art Directors Club biography & images of work" http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1977/?id=275. adcglobal.org. Retrieved 2011-04-02.

Kevin Kelly photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course…. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being…. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind…. Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant's endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

July, 1918
India's Rebirth

Koenraad Elst photo
Rudy Giuliani photo

“Most of Clinton's policies are very similar to most of mine.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

1996 statement to Jack Newfield, as quoted by Newfield in the New York Post (8 June 1999)

Dave Eggers photo
Samuel Butler photo
Epifanio de los Santos photo

“He was, in the early twentieth century, the country's most eminent biographer and literary scholar.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Resil B. Mojares in Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pado de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes. 2006. p. 477.
BALIW

Scott Lynch photo

“Most of us find it starkly ludicrous that the height of all possible ambition, to the ungifted, must be to drape oneself in crowns and robes.”

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 4 “Across the Amathel” section 3 (p. 191)

Rebecca West photo
Thomas Chatterton photo

“This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

Samuel Johnson, April 29, 1776; reported by James Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 752.
Criticism

George Bernard Shaw photo

“Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 235

Madeline Kahn photo

“She is one of the most talented people that ever lived. I mean, either in stand-up comedy, or acting, or whatever you want, you can't beat Madeline Kahn.”

Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) American actress

Mel Brooks, reported in Tom Vallance, (December 6, 1999) "Obituary: Madeline Kahn" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n14275712, The Independent
About

Christopher Moore photo
Menno Simons photo

“As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

"Tallulah" in Dreams Underfoot : The Newford Collection (2003), p. 399

Anthony Trollope photo
Walter Benjamin photo
Colin Wilson photo
Steve Ballmer photo

“We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is "stolen."”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

[John, Lettice, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/07/ballmer_doesnt_get_it/, Love DRM or my family starves: why Steve Ballmer doesn't Get It, Software, The Register, 7 October 2004, 2007-04-20]
2000s

Philo photo
Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) photo

“Whence this secret Chain between each Person and Mankind? How is my Interest connected with the most distant Parts of it?”

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) (1694–1746) Irish philosopher

An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Treatise II: An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, Sect. I

Glenn Beck photo

“The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be "What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?"”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-01-12
2000s, 2009

Jorge Luis Borges photo
Kamala Surayya photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo
André Maurois photo
Mary Midgley photo