Quotes about most
page 94

“This observation might be repeated with regard to all objects of the outer world which enter into relation with us. Whether the knowledge of them be of the common-place or of a scientific order matters little. Sensation is its limit, and all objects are known to us by the sensations they produce in us, and are known to us solely in this manner. A landscape is nothing but a cluster of sensations. The outward form of a body is simply sensation; and the innermost and most delicate material structure, the last visible elements of a cell, for example, are all, in so far as we observe them with the microscope, nothing but sensation.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 13-14

World, Knowledge

“If you believe the promise that an authoritarian state makes that if it has enough knowledge on every citizen it will keep people safe. I think that’s a false promise. It doesn’t actually happen. If that was the case then East Germany would be a really incredible place to live and in fact it wasn’t, it was really horrible, most of these places were really horrible.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/08/17/heather-brooke-data-deali_n_928985.html "Heather Brooke: Data Dealing Is A Bigger Scandal Than Phone Hacking", Interview with Dina Rickman, 17 August 2011. Attributed, In the Media

People, Knowledge, Thinking, Falseness

“I didn't get the point", said Pig. "That's because you've got four pounds of provolone where most people got brains!", Mark shouted, shaking his fist. "This is college, you dumb bastard. This is a place where you're supposed to argue and learn and get pissed off. You don't go around choking your buddies just because they don't happen to believe what you believe.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 88

People, Learning

“(After kicking an extra point in a Bengals preseason game) Esteban' Ochocinco is back, the most interesting footballer in the world. Everyone has to remember, I've always said that soccer is my No. 1 sport. I think Ronaldinho would be proud of me right now.”

Chad Johnson (1978) American football player, wide receiver

"Ochocinco kicks PAT vs. Pats" http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4412952&campaign=rss&source=NFLHeadlines, ESPN.com (20 August 2009)

World, Game, Thinking, Sport

“In almost every edition (and consequently most performances) of Chopin's Sonata in B flat Minor, Op. 35, there is a serious error that makes awkward nonsense of an important moment in the first movement. The repeat of the exposition begins in the wrong place.”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 5 : Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms

Error

“I gave destiny a push to make it happen. You study history, so stop your pathetic whining. You know better than most that destiny happens to us, it is never something we call forth.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (p. 354)

History, Study

“Major corporations in most instances do not seek capital. They form it themselves.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The 20th century capitalist revolution. 1954, p. 40

“Christianity has both spurred and retarded the sciences and social sciences. Indeed, most of the modern debates of profound significance were originally dialogues with or within Christianity.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of Christianity

A Short History of Christianity (2011)

Science

“Our time’s the most precious thing we’ve got to offer folks, and the worst thing a body can do is to take it away from us.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

“Saxophone Joe and the Woman in Black”, p. 212
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)

Time

“Her style looks absurdly simple — an effortless act of projection, a serpentine lasso whereby her voice casually winds itself around our most vulnerable fantasies. But it is not easy. It is what remains when ingratiation, sentimentality and the manifold devices of heart-warming crap have been ruthlessly pared away. Steel and silk are left, shining and durable.”

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

"Marlene Dietrich" (1967), p. 215
Profiles (1990)

Heart

“Anime is the most disgusting, sexist, and misogynistic form of media to ever come out of Japan. Anime defiles women and caters to perverts and losers. These cartoons are corrupting teenagers and promoting rape culture.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

Andrea Hardie (4 October 2014), @JudgyBitch1, Twitter, falsely attributing a fabricated screenshot of an over 140-character tweet to @femfreq
Misattributed

Women, Animals

“We have allowed the worship of Satanism in the U. S. military, most Americans are not aware of that, and we wonder why it takes us ten years to defeat our weak enemies as Moses said in Deuteronomy 28. How is it that in World War II we whipped the world in four years and now we’re bogged down in one lingering war after another that does nothing but rape our economy and kill our young men? Why? Maybe the God of Heaven is not with us. He says when you accept another God, I leave. I’m either the only Lord, or you’re on your own. That means stop voting for pagans and putting them in public office.”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

Hagee: U.S. Can't Win Wars Because Of Satan Worship
Right Wing Watch
People for the American Way
2011-07-18
Brian
Tashman
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hagee-us-cant-win-wars-because-satan-worship
2011-08-06

Men, God, War, World

“Most of Europe has outlawed the Neo-Nazis, but the French Communist Party was from 1999 to 2002, part of a ruling government. One may not fly the swastika, but one may proudly hoist the hammer and sickle at official events. In most of Europe, the denial of Hitler's dead, or the minimization of the Nazi Holocaust, is literally a crime. The denial or minimization of communist crimes, on the other hand, is an intellectual and political art form. The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia enslaved the nation and slaughtered a fourth to a fifth of the entire Cambodian population, as if an American regime had slaughtered some 56 million to 70 million of its people.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

People, Art, Parting, Flying

“Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 88

Universe

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10 Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Happiness, People, Hope, Way

“Class, conservatives insist, is not really about money or birth or even occupation. It is primarily a matter of authenticity, that most valuable cultural commodity. Class is about what one drives and where one shops and how one prays, and only secondarily about the work one does or the income one makes. What makes one a member of the noble proletariat is not work per se, but unpretentiousness, humility, and the rest of the qualities that our punditry claims to spy in the red states that voted for George W. Bush. The nation’s producers don’t care about unemployment or a dead-end life or a boss who makes five hundred times as much as they do. No. In red land both workers and their bosses are supposed to be united in disgust with those affected college boys at the next table, prattling on about French cheese and villas in Tuscany and the big ideas for running things that they read in books.This sounds like a complicated maneuver, but it should be quite familiar after all these years. We see it in its most ordinary, run-of-the-mill variety every time we hear a conservative pundit or politician deplore "class warfare"”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

meaning any talk about the failures of free-market capitalism — and then, seconds later, hear them rail against the "media elite" or the haughty, Volvo driving "eastern establishment."
Part II: The Fury Which Passeth All Understanding, Chapter Six: Persecuted, Powerless, and Blind (pp. 113-114).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Life, Money, Boy, Idea

“Many of you share the burden of this knowledge tonight with me. But there is a difference. For finally I must be the one to order our guns to fire, against all the most inward pulls of my desire. For we have children to teach, and we have sick to be cured, and we have men to be freed. There are poor to be lifted up, and there are cities to be built, and there is a world to be helped. Yet we do what we must. I am hopeful, and I will try as best I can, with everything I have got, to end this battle and to return our sons to their desires. Yet as long as others will challenge America's security and test the clearness of our beliefs with fire and steel, then we must stand or see the promise of two centuries tremble. I believe tonight that you do not want me to try that risk. And from that belief your President summons his strength for the trials that lie ahead in the days to come. The work must be our work now. Scarred by the weaknesses of man, with whatever guidance God may offer us, we must nevertheless and alone with our mortality, strive to ennoble the life of man on earth. Thank you, and goodnight.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Men, God, Children

“It is therefore necessary to prepare the imminent and inevitable identification of man with the motor, facilitating and perfecting an incessant exchange of intuition, rhythm, instinct and metallic discipline, quite utterly unknown to the majority of humanity and only divined by the most lucid mind.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine' 1911
Source: Günter Berghaus (2000) International Futurism in Arts and Literature. p. 318

Perfection

“The first major discovery of prehistoric art was the Spanish cave of Altamira, which, like Lascaux, is one of the most spectacular examples of Upper Paleolithic art yet known.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art

“I have an ongoing operational preference, rather than an end goal. I was raised in a prison, as a war hostage. War is illogical, wasteful. Wars become less frequent the more incentives rational beings have to cooperate rather than to compete. A free and peaceful commonwealth embracing all rational entities of this and every other universe, Cosmic and Chaotic, mortal and immortal, will deter wars.
The primary requirement, however, is freedom: universal freedom. If there are other people out there, raised in imprisonment as I was, I have a duty to liberate them, for the same reason why I would have welcomed any outside liberator who would have attempted to free me. We were in the most pleasant prison imaginable. It was still unacceptable. The present condition of the universe is unacceptable. Anything I can do, large or small, along these lines, I will do. Other problems are secondary, and may resolve themselves once this primary problem is solved.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 3, “Within Sight of the Land of Freedom” Section 1 (pp. 42-43)

War, People, Peace, Imagination

“The Gods most pleasure in od numbers take.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Bucolicks

God, Pleasure

“I want a grown-up attitude to Cuba, for instance, a country and people I love. I want an end to the war immediately, and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. But most of all I want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend", and this Obama has shown he can do.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

"Obama is the change that America has tried to hide" in The Guardian (1 April 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/01/barackobama.uselections2008

Love, War, People, Confidence

“In the case of agriculture and drought, there’s a clear and accessible action most citizens can take: reducing or, ideally, eliminating the consumption of animal products. Changing one’s diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Meat Makes the Planet Thirsty", in The New York Times (7 March 2014) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html.

Food, Water, Change, Animals

“Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Cited in: Richard K. Betts (1982) Surprise attack: lessons for defense planning. p. 158
Principles of Operations Research (1975)

“Production management courses are often the repository for some of the most inappropriate and intellectually stultifying materials to be found in the business curriculum… many faculty members have little respect for such courses… and students complained more strongly to us about the pointlessness of the production requirement than of any other.”

Robert Aaron Gordon (1908–1978) American economist

As cited in: Wren & Bedeian (1972/2009; 474).
Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (1945)

Business

“This is going to sound really childish, but I've been intrigued by Romania ever since the 1976 Olympics, when Nadia Comăneci, the little gymnast, scored a perfect 10. And I thought any country that gave that to the world had to be wonderful, so I read up a lot on it. When the 1989 revolutions broke out, I remember cheering them on. They were the last ones to make a bid for freedom, and it was the bloodiest and the most spectacular of the revolutions. It was almost French in its drama, like the French Revolution.”

Mike McCormack (1965) Irish novelist and writer

McKeon, Belinda. Metaphysics gets a Mayo accent http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/metaphysics-gets-a-mayo-accent-1.441635, The Irish Times (13 May 2005)

World, Freedom, Reading, Perfection

“The best approach to this cultural revolution is therefore through family and household, i. e. through the structure of relations between the secondhand generations. In most societies this had been impressively resistant to sudden change, though this does not mean that such structures were static.”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

Source: The Age of Extremes (1992), Chapter Eleven, Cultural Revolution, p.320

Family, Change

“Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Address to the Prague World Congress of International PEN Club (7 November 1994) http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/wipcnews/peninternationaldeeplysaddenedbydeathofvclavhavelaconstantchampionforfreedomofexpression/

World, Feeling

“Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man's place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus. He is bound by pettiness.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Two, World Without Values

Feeling, History, Tree, Universe

“The big mistake most commonly made today is that when we speak of transportation we think only of persons and goods. We forget the existence of water, clean or otherwise, moving in pipes, of gas, oil, electricity, messages, the telephones etc. The result is that we waste a lot of space and Networks.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 21, The system of Networks, p. 286

Thinking, Water, Personality, Forgetting

“As Simone Weil— perhaps the strangest and most unlikely Thoreauvian solitary, outcast, and transcendentalist of all— wrote, echoing Thoreau's sense of awareness: "The authentic and pure values— truth, beauty, and goodness— in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object." Or, more tersely yet: "Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer."
It is perhaps the saddest, most hopeless thing we can say about our culture that it is a culture of distraction. "Attention deficit" is a cultural disorder, a debasement of spirit, before it is an ailment in our children to be treated with Ritalin.”

Curtis White (1951) American academic

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

Children, Truth, Beauty, Sense

“The goal of providing basic literacy and education to all the world’s people is still the most basic development challenge.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

October 14, 2003, at the World Congress –Engineering and Digital Divide, Tunisia.

People, World, Education

“Must one have a heart of stone to read The Ballad of Reading Gaol without laughing? (In life, practically no one ever gets to kill the thing he hates, much less loves.) And did not De Profundis plumb for all time the shallows of the most reported love affair of the past hundred years, rivalling even that of Wallis and David, its every nuance (O Bosie!) known to all, while trembling rosy lips yet form, over and over again, those doom-laden syllables The Cadogan Hotel?”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Oscar Wilde. Yet again. Why?
Opening lines to "Oscar Wilde: On the Skids Again"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Love, Life, Hate, Time

“I think we can all agree that Blue Lives Murder. Now… Not all of them, not most of them, but a bunch of em, murder. [scoffs] Theyre murdering us. Well, not us. We're white, but….”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

Making America Great Again

Thinking

“Your Excellency, Mr President: I greet you, in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq. I greet you, too, in the name of the Palestinian people, amongst whom I've just spent two weeks in the occupied Palestinian territories. I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt, fraternal greetings and support. And this was true, especially at the base in the refugee camps of Jabaliyah and Beach Camp in Gaza, in the Balatah refugee camp in Nablus and on the streets of the towns and villages in the occupied lands.I thought the president would appreciate knowing that even today, three years after the war, I still met families who were calling their newborn sons Saddam; and that two weeks ago, when I was trapped inside the Orient House, which is the Palestinian headquarters in al-Quds [Jerusalem], with 5,000 armed mustwatinin [settlers] outside demonstrating, pledging to tear down the Palestinian flag from the flagpole, the hundreds of shabab [youths] inside the compound were chanting that they wish to be with a DSh K [machine gun] in Baghdad to avenge the eyes of Abu Jihad. And the Youth Club in Silwan, which is the one of the most resistant of all the villages around Jerusalem, asked me to ask the president's permission if they could enrol him as an honourary member of their club and to present him with this flag from holy Jerusalem.I wish to say, sir, that I believe that we are turning the tide in Europe, that the scale of the humanitarian disaster which has been imposed upon the Iraqi people is now becoming more and more widely known and accepted. Fifty-five British members of parliament opposed the war, but 125 are demanding the lifting of the embargo; and this does not include the invisible section of the Conservative Party who must also be moving in that direction, and Sir Edward Heath is being a very persuasive advocate inside the Conservative Party.It is my belief that we must convey the very clear picture that 1994 has to be the year of the ending of the embargo against Iraq. Otherwise, famine and all the awful consequences, including acts of despair by Iraqis, will be the result; and this is the message we must convey to civilized opinion in Europe.Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem
"'I greet you in the name of thousands of Britons'", The Times, January 20, 1994, citing BBC monitoring service at 9 PM on January 19 as its source.
Speech to Saddam Hussein, January 19, 1994.
Source: See also David Morley Gorgeous George: The Life and Adventures of George Galloway, London: Politicos, 2007, p. 210-11. Galloway disputes the reporting of this quote and has repeatedly stated that the conclusion was a salute to "the Iraqi people" rather than Saddam Hussein personally.

Life, War, People, Youth

“The trends in modem technology reveal most clearly the contrasting modes of development in thinking about the future. Technology offers an unprecedented confirmation of the possibilities of the utopia, often far exceeding the utopian fantasies in its concrete achievements. Through technology, Homo sapiens can transform ail things; at last man appears to be master of his own fate.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 142

Fate, Thinking, Appearance, Future

“I stared down at the cemetery and the sight felt rich, rewarding, physically so, in the actual eyes. The very eyeball itself felt good. I became the most recent person on earth to see that everyone in every single or double plot had known life in all its extremes. They had all known extreme pain and stress; all been overjoyed. All had been enchanted; and they'd all known extreme grief so bad they thought it must be meant for another species.”

Robert Newman (1964) British comedian, born 1964

Dependence Day (1994).

Life, Pain, Personality

“Encapsulation is the key to increasing the value of such software metrics as reusability, refinability, testability, maintainability, and extensibility. Object-oriented languages provide a number of mechanisms for improving encapsulation, but it is during the design phase that the greatest leverage can be realized.
The data-driven approach to object-oriented design focuses on the structure of the data in a system. This results in the incorporation of structural information in the definitions of classes. Doing so violates encapsulation.
The responsibility-driven approach emphasizes the encapsulation of both the structure and behavior of objects. By focusing on the contractual responsibilities of a class, the designer is able to postpone implementation considerations until the implementation phase.
While responsibility-driven design is not the only technique addressing this problem, most other techniques attempt to enforce encapsulation during the implementation phase. This is too late in the software life-cycle to achieve maximum benefits.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: a responsibility-driven approach (1989), p. 75: Conclusion

Life, Behavior, Problem

“Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear the most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. xix

People, Fear, Feeling, Change

“What upsets me the most is that I was an accountable representative of a system under which people suffered, also under which repression was aimed at individuals, who were persecuted because of their oppositional stance. Their position was the right one. My position was the wrong one. We were not capable of democracy, but rather tried in the absence of better arguments to get rid of the other opinion with direct violence.”

Günter Schabowski (1929–2015) German politician

Am meisten bedrückt mich, dass ich ein verantwortlicher Vertreter eines Systems war, unter dem Menschen gelitten haben, dass Repressionen gegen einzelne Menschen gerichtet waren, die wegen ihrer oppositionellen Haltung verfolgt wurden. Ihre Einstellung war die richtige. Meine Einstellung war die falsche. Wir waren nicht demokratiefähig, sondern haben versucht, mangels besserer Argumente uns der anderen Meinung mittels direkter Gewalt zu entledigen.
[citation needed]

People, Democracy, Suffering

“He taught that I should behold the glorious Satisfaction : for this Amends-making is more pleasing to God and more worshipful, without comparison, than ever was the sin of Adam harmful. Then signifieth our blessed Lord thus in this teaching, that we should take heed to this: For since I have made well the most harm, then it is my will that thou know thereby that I shall make well all that is less.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 29

God

“It may be inappropriate to put it in this way, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, God's gifts. Now we can end the war without making it clear that we have to end the war because of the domestic situation. I have long been advocating the conclusion [of the war], not because I am afraid of the enemy's attacks or because of the atomic bombs or the Soviet participation in the war; The most important reason is my concern over the domestic situation.”

Mitsumasa Yonai (1880–1948) Prime Minister of Japan

Quoted in "A-bombs were 'God's gifts' to Japanese regime", Taipei Times (August 7, 2005).

God, War, Way, Sense

“But this brings us to what I consider the fatal flaw in the monetarist prescriptions. If the leader of the school cannot make up his own mind regarding what the most desirable rate of monetary increase should be, what does he expect to happen when the decision is put in the hands of the politicians? … The fatal flaw in the monetarist prescription, in brief, is that it postulates that money should consist of irredeemable paper notes and that the final power of determining how many of these are issued should be placed in the hands of the government—that is, in the hands of the politicians in office. The assumption that these politicians could be trusted to act responsibly, particularly for any prolonged period, seems incredibly naive. The real problem today is the opposite of what the monetarists suggest. It is how to get the arbitrary power over the stock of money out of the hands of the government, out of the hands of the politicians.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money, School, Problem, Decision

“Perhaps the biggest reason why intellectuals excoriated entertainment was that they understood all too well their own precariousness in a world dominated by it. For whatever the overt content of any particular work, entertainment as a whole promulgated an unmistakable theme, one that took dead aim at the intellectuals’ most cherished values. That theme was the triumph of the senses over the mind, of emotion over reason, of chaos over order, or the id over the superego, of Dionysian abandon of Apollonian harmony. Entertainment was Plato’s worst nightmare. It deposed the rational and enthroned the sensational and in so doing deposed the intellectual minority and enthroned the unrefined majority.”

Neal Gabler (1950) American journalist

Source: Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (1998), p. 21

World, Sense, Dead

“The most serious menace to Japan comes from the Soviet Union. Numerous European countries will eventually embrace Communism. So will China and India if we just watch them with folded arms.”

Toshio Shiratori (1887–1949) Japanese politician

Letter to Hachiro Arita, November 1935. Quoted in "Beacon Across Asia: Biography of Subhas Chandra Bose" - Page 122 - by Subhas Chandra Bose, Sisir Kumar Bose, Narayan Gopal Jog - 1998.

Communication, Country

“Looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links. Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

. Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter VI: "Difficulties on Theory", page 179 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=197&itemID=F373&viewtype=side

Nature, Parent, Time

“Grey was an ambitious man who always wished to lead, but his overt ambition during his youth made him unpopular. He lacked the warmth of personality that made Fox revered by his followers. Grey was respected but rarely loved. His achievements were few, but they were significant. He helped to keep liberal principles alive during the years of conflict with revolutionary France, and in 1832 he safeguarded the continuity of the British constitution into an era of increasingly rapid social and political change. In character he was a man of contradictions, headstrong but easily discouraged by failure, imperious but indecisive, cautious and introspective. He was at his best when in office, for he sought fame and reputation: in opposition he often became despondent. He was a man of principle and integrity, though not always successful in execution. His bearing and attitudes were aristocratic, and his instincts were fundamentally conservative. He was a whig of the eighteenth-century school, most at home among his deferential clients, tenants, and labourers at Howick, and he never came to terms with the new industrial society which was coming into being during his later years. It is greatly to his credit that his Reform Act, whatever its conservative purpose, smoothed the path for that new society to establish its dominance without destroying the old.”

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

E. A. Smith, ‘ Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey (1764–1845) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11526’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 8 Sept 2012. About

Love, Youth, School, Home

“It is a false doctrine that labor must assume all management. Those best suited for management must manage, whatever may lie their source. Every industry is searching eagerly for brains. My observation convinces me that most business firms pledged to welfare work are interested in their employed; they often remain open in order to protect those who serve them, even though it might be more profitable for them to close down. People need to stop to think, when the laborer clamors against the unorganized labor market, whether the menace is from the immigrant or from some other source. For no business enterprise wishes its help to leave that it may employ others; the turnover is one of the most expensive things industry has to face. The expense of breaking in new help is appalling.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

People, Lie, Search, Business

“As she stumbled forward she cried out in her mind, which was as dark, as shaken as the subterranean vault, “Forgive me. O my Masters, O unnamed ones, most ancient ones, forgive me, forgive me!”
There was no answer. There had never been an answer.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Chapter 10, "The Anger of the Dark"

Forgiveness

“Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?”

Eudora Welty book The Optimist's Daughter

The Optimist's Daughter(1972)

Sleep, Parting, Personality

“Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical — and maybe even experimental — grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

Source: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (2005), Ch. 24.

Life, Lie, World, Idea

“On Barack Obama: "No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous 'Change you can believe in,' it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. 'We will be the most powerful,' he often declared."”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, "The Madmen Did Well" http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2009/05/barack-obama-pilger-bush, New Statesman, 30 April 2009

War, Change

“Cesalpino, a celebrated botanist, conceived that fossil shells had been left on the land by the sea, and had concreted into stone during the consolidation the soil; and in the following year (1597), Simeone Majoli went still farther, and coinciding for the most part with views of Cesalpino, suggested that the shells and matter of the Veronese, and other districts, might have cast up, upon the land, by volcanic explosions, like those gave rise, in 1538, to Monte Nuovo, near Puzzuoli.- This hint was the first imperfect attempt to connect the position fossil shells with the agency of volcanoes, a system more fully developed by Hooke, [Antonio] Lazzaro Moro, Hutton, and other writers. Two years afterwards, Imperati advocated the animal origin of fossilized shells, yet admitted that stones could vegetate by force of 'an internal principle,' and, as evidence of this, he referred to the teeth of fish, and spines of echini found petrified.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Ref. Ferrante Imperato, Dell'Historia Naturale http://books.google.com/books?id=heGCGe1Rn3YC& (1599) Chpt.3, p. 30 Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Fish, Animals, Parting, Sea

“At present, there are hundreds of thousands of prisoners in Germany of all nationalities and degrees, partly in camps, but for the most part, however, as workers…The dangers of inter-mixing and bastardizing of our people are extraordinarily grave. They lie to a great extent in the almost unlimited lack of knowledge throughout our nation of the problems of blood.”

Günther Pancke (1899–1973) German general

(3 July 1940). Quoted in "Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals" - Page 117 - 1953

People, Lie, Knowledge, Problem

“History will remember me as the most powerful puncher that rambled through divisions like the Nazi divisions did France, Belgium & the lowlanders. Ducking me and running away to Dunkirk makes you a coward. Until someone stands up to my fistic tyranny I am the one and only dictator.”

Ali Raymi (1973–2015) Boxing Knockout Artist

Comment from Facebook account to FightNews (10 September 2014) http://www.fightnews.com/Boxing/ali-raymi-announces-move-to-flyweight-260235 Facebook comments

History

“Over the years I have had the most contact with Lee Kuan Yew, most recently in 2006, and have always found him impressive, even though we do not always see eye to eye. I met him first when he was George Shultz's guest at the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Bohemian Grove, a male only bonding retreat among the redwoods of California.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Fifteen, "The Tigers and the Elephant", p. 312.

Dependency

“Raw artistic talent is abundant. What is truly rare are the cultural circumstances, attitudes, and institutions to develop and perfect it. Few American cities have ever managed to foster a vibrant literary milieu of international significance — perhaps only Boston, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. American literature has most often been an affair of isolated genius or small coterie.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Fallen Western Star," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ewestern.htm Denver Quarterly (Fall 1998) Essays

Literature, Perfection

“The most egregious and demeaning aspect of the Fair Tax, however, is that it puts every American man, woman and child on welfare. Here again proponents turn common sense, the meaning of words, and basic economic principles upside down. They call making all citizens wards of the state a good thing. Every household graciously receives a monthly check from the beneficent federal government. This dole is supposed to make sure all Americans can consume “their necessities of life free of tax,” according to FairTax. org. This is not an “entitlement,” they explain, but merely a “rebate (in advance)” of what they would pay in taxes. And it is “progressive,” say the Fair Tax folks, because everyone gets the same, whether they make poverty-level wage or a million dollars a year.”

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

2012, " The Fair Tax Isn't Fair, It's a Farce http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7101"

Life, Sense

“Groups follow the most charismatic person, even though there is no correlation between being a good speaker and having great ideas.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

"An introverted call to action: Susan Cain at TED2012," TED, February 28, 2012.

Idea, Personality

“This is the predicament of man. All souls descend a ladder form heaven to the world. Then the ladders are taken away. Once they are in this world, they are called upon from heaven to rise, to come back. It is a call that goes out again and again. Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found. Most people make no effort to ascend, claiming, how can one rise to heaven without a ladder? However, there are souls which resolve to leap upwards without a ladder. So they jump and fall down. They jump and fall down, until they stop. Wise people think that since no ladder exists, there must be another way. We must face the challenge and act. Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"No Religion is an Island", p. 266
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

God, People, World, Way

“I very firmly believe that what unites America today is infinitely more important than those things which divide us. We are united Americans — North, East, West, and South, both parties — in our desire for peace, peace with honor, the kind of a peace that will last, and we are moving swiftly toward that great goal, not just in Vietnam, but a new era of peace in which the old relationships between the two super powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, and between the world's most populous nation, the People's Republic of China, and the United States, are changed so that we are on the eve of what could be the greatest generation of peace, true peace for the whole world, that man has ever known.”

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

1970s, Remarks on Being Reelected (1972)

People, World, Peace, Change

“We are the beneficiaries of a life of surpassing service. Wise in wisdom and gentle in gentleness, freedom has many sides and angles. Human slavery has been swept away. With security of personal rights has come security of property rights. The freedom of the human mind is recognized in the right to free speech and free press. The public schools have made education possible for all and ignorance a disgrace. In political affairs, the vote of the humblest has long counted for as much as the vote of the most exalted. We are working towards the day when, in our industrial life, equal honor shall fall to equal endeavor.”

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

1920s, Duty of Government (1920)

Life, Wisdom, Education, School

“I’m pretty serious about what I’m doing. I’m not as unapproachable as many would say and I’m not as grumpy (as they would say), (but I get) a little frustrated sometimes with the lobbyists and bureaucrats, (and) if they’d let us do our jobs we’d be a lot better off. I’m a little older than most in this building, and with social media this whole thing has changed. We’ve got so many (Senate) members that are glued to their phones and the perception of what people are saying about them, rather than just doing their business and their job. I’m walking down the hallway and I get a few people run into me because they’re too busy looking on their cell phones, and I’ll chastise them and tell them to pay attention to what you’re doing.”

Ron Richard (1947) American politician

Ron Richard denies being a ‘grumpy old man,’ but says he’s serious about running the Missouri Senate http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/ron-richard-denies-being-grumpy-old-man-says-he-s-serious-about-running-missouri-senate#stream/0 (January 4, 2016)

People, Business, Change

“So no, I'm not in that camp, but I do think that statutory regulation is not required, and most of the heinous crimes that came up and have made such a splash in front of this Inquiry have already been illegal. Contempt of court is illegal. Phone tapping is illegal. Taking money from - policemen taking money is illegal. All of these things don't need a code. We already have laws for them. The fact that these laws were not rigorously enforced is, again, due to the behaviour of the police, the interaction of the police and News International, and - I mean, let's be honest about this - the fact that our politicians have been very, very involved, in ways that I think are not sensible, with senior News International people, and I hope you'll be calling the Prime Minister and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to explain how that comes down from the top.”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

At the Leveson Inquiry, 17 January 2012.

Money, People, Law, Hope

“Most [people] see education only as the means by which a person is transported from one economic plane to a higher one.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Education and the individual,” p. 42.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

People, Education, Personality

“I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Letter to Blanche Jennings (15 April 1908), Letters of D.H. Lawrence (1979), edited by James T. Boulton

Business, Parting

“Th. Jefferson returns his thanks to Dr. De La Motta for the eloquent discourse on the Consecration of the Synagogue of Savannah, which he has been so kind as to send him. It excites in him the gratifying reflection that his country has been the first to prove to the world two truths, the most salutary to human society, that man can govern himself, and that religious freedom is the most effectual anodyne against religious dissension: the maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where its true form is "divided we stand, united, we fall."”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson to Jacob De La Motta, September 1, 1820. Manuscript Division, Papers of Thomas Jefferson. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/madison.html For the background of the letter see "Thomas Jefferson's Letter on Religious Freedom" Dr. Kenneth Libo Ph.D and Michael Skakun from the Center for Jewish History, New York City, New York. http://sephardicoralhistory.org/education/essays.php?action=show&id=19 1820s

Truth, World, Religion, Freedom

“My initially happy interest in the game Warcraft 3 had an ominous tone to it. This was the beginning of a long relationship with the Warcraft franchise. In less than a year from that point, they would release their ultimate game, World of Warcraft, a game that I would find sanctuary in for most of my teenage years.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

Happiness, World, Game

“Let us remember that this scene [the Nativity] represents so much more than just a touching story or a nostalgic holiday fairytale. It is, in fact, a reminder of the most amazing reality: That God came, and God spoke. Peace on earth, God is with us. And the God who spoke still speaks. And the God who came still comes. This is the true Miracle of Christmas – that as we stand here tonight in our real world with our real lives full of problems and questions, past hurts and future hopes, God is with us.”

Steven Curtis Chapman (1962) American Christian music singer-songwriter, record producer, actor, author, and social activist

Playing Pastor Michael Curtis in the Lifetime movie "Christmas Child," 2003 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346750/

God, World, Peace, Hope

“HP’s goal is to bring the most compelling entertainment content and experiences to our customers, … We explored a range of alternatives to deliver a great digital music experience and concluded Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes music service were the best by far. By partnering with Apple, we have the opportunity to add value by integrating the world’s best digital music offering into HP’s larger digital entertainment system strategy.”

Carly Fiorina (1954) American corporate executive and politician

2000s, 2004

World, Music

“I feel that these old Northmen wore looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Love, Way, Feeling, Soul

“Most of these who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Source: War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

War

“Do everything to demonstrate, and in the most emphatic manner, our sympathy for the Moslems, their autonomy, independence, etc.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 494.
Collected Works

“A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 66

Life, Men, Disease

“The origins of secularism in the west may be found in two circumstances—in early Christian teachings and, still more, experience, which created two institutions, Church and State; and in later Christian conflicts, which drove the two apart. Muslims, too, had their religious disagreements, but there was nothing remotely approaching the ferocity of the Christian struggles between Protestants and Catholics, which devastated Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finally drove Christians in desperation to evolve a doctrine of the separation of religion from the state. Only by depriving religious institutions of coercive power, it seemed, could Christendom restrain the murderous intolerance and persecution that Christians had visited on followers of other religions and, most of all, on those who professed other forms of their own.Muslims experienced no such need and evolved no such doctrine. There was no need for secularism in Islam, and even its pluralism was very different from that of the pagan Roman Empire, so vividly described by Edward Gibbon when he remarked that "the various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship. It did, however, accord to the holders of partial truth a degree of practical as well as theoretical tolerance rarely paralleled in the Christian world until the West adopted a measure of secularism in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

People, Truth, World, Religion

“America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the most virtuous nation on Earth. This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice and immorality in America. Some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty. Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option. Even amid the temptations of a rich and free society, they have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen. By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in this, because she is being compelled. Compulsion cannot produce virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like America's is not merely more prosperous, more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant; it is also morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes that America's enemies advocate.”

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

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

People, Peace, Freedom, Evil

“There is one thing about “our tiny Parsi community” that you must know, which is that to us (or at least to most of us) the one thing greater than being a Parsi is being an Indian. I am proud of the fact that our community rejected the offer made at the time of drafting of India’s Constitution — to Anglo Indians and Parsis alike — to have, for at least 10 years, one special representative in Parliament. Sir Homi Mody said in the Constituent Assembly that Parsis would rather join the mainstream of free India. And we did. We have no regrets. I must also tell you that the “tiny Parsi community” not only churns out legal luminaries, but produces geniuses in the medical field as well. As to how it is that we have been formidable in the legal and medical world, I just cannot say. But I like to think that it is because of our religion — a religion of good morals, which Parsi Zoroastrians find difficult to explain, but easy to live by.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

World, Religion, Communication, Thinking

“I am more than seventy years old. Having lived under different regimes, from Japanese colonialism to Taiwan’s recovery, I have greatly experienced the miseries of the Taiwanese people. In the period of Japanese colonialism, a Taiwanese would be punished by being forced to kneel out in the sun for speaking Tai-yü. The situation was the same when Taiwan was recovered: my son, Hsien-wen, and my daughter-in-law, Yüeh-yün, often wore a dunce board around their necks in the school as punishment for speaking Tai-yü… [Taiwanese peoples’] lives are influenced by history. I think the most miserable people are Taiwanese, who have always tried in vain to get their heads above the water. This was the Taiwanese situation during the period of colonialism; it was not any different after Taiwan’s recovery [that is, the rule of the Chiang-era KMT]. I have deep feelings about this.”

Lee Teng-hui (1923) former President of Republic of China

Chung-yang jih-pao (Central Daily News), International Edition, 1994-04-16), as quoted in Hsiau, A-chin, "Language Ideology in Taiwan: The KMT’s language policy, the Tai-yü language movement, and ethnic politics," Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (1997), 18.4, p. 302

People, School, Law, Feeling

“Credomancy may seek to exploit the human desire for a tidy narrative where an unblemished romantic hero vanquishes all obstacles, but such ideals have very little to do with reality. Reality requires pragmatism and compromise. Men fail. Women fail. There are no heroes, only human beings who somehow find the strength to behave heroically, no matter how many times they have been unable to do so in the past. If you understand that, Miss Edwards—if you truly and deeply understand that, then you will understand the most powerful thing anyone with a heart can understand.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

“And what’s that?” Emily said softly.
“That love is not enough. But it’s a start.”
Source: The Hidden Goddess (2011), Chapter 19, “The Ruined Woman” (p. 291)

Love, Women, Men, Understanding

“Undoubtedly one of the most important provisions in the preparation for national defense is a proper and sound selective service act. Such a law ought to give authority for a very broad mobilization of all the resources of the country, both persons and materials. I can see some difficulties in the application of the principle, for it is the payment of a higher price that stimulates an increased production, but whenever it can be done without economic dislocation such limits ought to be established in time of war as would prevent so far as possible all kinds of profiteering. There is little defense which can be made of a system which puts some men in the ranks on very small pay and leaves others undisturbed to reap very large profits. Even the income tax, which recaptured for the benefit of the National Treasury alone about 75 per cent of such profits, while local governments took part of the remainder, is not a complete answer. The laying of taxes is, of course, in itself a conscription of whatever is necessary of the wealth of the country for national defense, but taxation does not meet the full requirements of the situation. In the advent of war, power should be lodged somewhere for the stabilization of prices as far as that might be possible in justice to the country and its defenders.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Men, War, Justice, Law

“"Forgive and forget" goes the expression, and for our idealized magnanimous selves, that was all you needed. But for our actual selves the relationship between those two actions wasn’t so straightforward. In most cases we had to forget a little bit before we could forgive; when we no longer experienced the pain as fresh, the insult was easier to forgive, which in turn made it less memorable, and so on.”

Ted Chiang (1967) American science fiction writer

"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang, Subterranean Press Magazine, Fall 2013

Pain, Forgiveness, Forgetting

“Christine O'Donnell: I think especially in such an unstable economic environment, what people criticized him for in 2008 — his consistency, the fact that he was so strong, and — I think people will find that appealing going into the 2012.
Carol Costello: Well, some people say Mitt Romney isn't the most consistent candidate, because he's changed his minds about big, important issues over the years.
Christine O'Donnell: You know, that's one of the things that I like about him — because he's been consistent since he changed his mind.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

CNN, 2011-12-14, quoted in * 2011-12-14
Christine O’Donnell: I like Mitt Romney's flip
MJ
Lee
Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70418.html
2011-12-15
about Mitt Romney
TV appearances

People, Thinking, Strong, Change

“To be alive is to feel the joy of being./ In spite of the sorrows and joys of life/ The primary joy is that of being./ That of my existence. / That I exist is the most fundamental experience is joy for me!/ I, who do not deserve to, really exist./ I, who need not, do exist!/ I, who may not, do exist.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Death: Live It! p. 130.
Death: Live It! (2005)

Life, Feeling, Joy

“Most people wander through life, carelessly taking whatever risk crosses their paths without compensation, but never consciously accepting extra risk to pick up the money and other good things lying all around them.”

Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 3, Finance Basics, p. 67

Life, Money, People, Lying

“Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Reviewing World within World, the autobiography of Stephen Spender, in The Tablet (5 May 1951)

Life, Art, History

“I hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Interview (April 1935) in The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, No. 8 (1936), as quoted at "A Shavian and a Theologian" at World Islamic Mission http://www.wimnet.org/articles/shaviantheo.htm Disputed

People, Hell, Understanding

“Obeying an order was the most important thing to me. It could be that is in the nature of the German.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Die Welt memoirs (1999)

Nature

“For me, the most enjoyable aspect of going out and performing is that I never know how susceptible people will be to my methods.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

People

“I am naturally anti-Russian just as most Germans are. I admire their achievements in industrial fields. I was in Moscow personally. I would not be in favor of the Russian system in the western nations. I don't condemn the system — I recognize the good results that it has produced in its proper setting. But in order to be Communist, one must be a fanatic. I am very suspicious of all systems requiring fanaticism. I am convinced that the world would be a better place if people were satisfied with enough to eat and a job to keep them occupied.”

Paul Schmidt (1899–1970) German translator, Nazi

To Leon Goldensohn (13 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

People, World, Nature, Personality

“I had a very traditional background. My parents are neat people. I'm lucky to have been raised in the most beautiful place -- Amherst, Massachusetts, state of my heart. I'm more patriotic to Massachusetts than to almost any place.”

Uma Thurman (1970) American actress and model

Interview with Laura Yorke. Reader's Digest. July 2006

People, Beauty, Parent, Heart

“Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 with the intention of destroying secular Palestinian nationalism.… OK, they did destroy the secular PLO and instead what they got was an Islamic fundamentalist movement that they couldn't control, that drove them out of most of Lebanon. What did they do next? They did exactly the same thing in the West Bank.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

“Most people keep their brains between their legs”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the song "Such a Little Thing Makes Such a Big Difference"
From songs

People

“Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving. The more you give — the more you will have!”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Be Generous!

“The fear of being different prevents most people from seeking new ways to solve their problems.”

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, Fear, Way, Problem

“Third and finally, poetry originated as a form of vocal music. It began as a performative and auditory medium, linked to music and dance and associated with civic ceremony, religious ritual, and magic. (The earliest poetry almost certainly served a shamanistic function.) Most aboriginal cultures did not distinguish poetry from song because the arts were so interrelated as to be porous. Nor did the classical Greek or Chinese cultures two or three millennia ago differentiate poetry from song”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

10
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

Art, Music, Dance

“There is something so gratifying to human vanity in fancying ourselves superior to most around us, that we believe few young men attain their majority without imbibing more or less of the taint of unbelief, and passing through the mists of a vapid moral atmosphere, before they come to the clear, manly, and yet humble perceptions that teach most of us, in the end, our own insignificance, the great benevolence as well as wisdom of the scheme of redemption, and the philosophy of the Christian religion, as well as its divinity.
Perhaps the greatest stumbling-block of the young is a disposition not to yield to their belief unless it conforms to their own crude notions of propriety and reason. If the powers of man were equal to analyzing the nature of the Deity, to comprehending His being, and power, and motives, there would be some little show of sense in thus setting up the pretence of satisfying our judgments in all things, before we yield our credence to a religious system. But the first step we take brings with it the instructive lesson of our incapacity, and teaches the wholesome lesson of humility. From arrogantly claiming a right to worship a deity we comprehend, we soon come to feel that the impenetrable veil that is cast around the Godhead is an indispensable condition of our faith, reverence, and submission.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Preface
The Wing-and-Wing (1842)

Wisdom, Men, Faith, Religion

“Machiavel's The Prince is to ethics what the work of Spinoza is to faith. Spinoza sapped the fundamentals of faith, and drained the spirit of religion; Machiavel corrupted policy, and undertook to destroy the precepts of healthy morals: the errors of the first were only errors of speculation, but those of the other had a practical thrust. […] I always have regarded The Prince as one of the most dangerous works which were spread in the world; it is a book which falls naturally into the hands of princes, and of those who have a taste for policy. […] There is a real injustice in concluding that the rotten apples are representative of all of them.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Foreword
Anti-Machiavel

Books, World, Faith, Religion

“The landscapes of Ruysdael present the greatest possible contrast to those of Claude, showing how powerfully, from the most opposite directions, genius may command our homage. In Claude's pictures, with scarcely an exception, the sun ever shines. Ruysdael, on the contrary, delighted in, and has made delightful to our eyes, those solemn days, peculiar to his country and to ours, when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' third lecture, Royal Institution (9 June 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 366-67
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Sun, Country

“The drug user evokes an immediate gut reaction, while most criminals are immediately understandable in both motives and life style. For the criminal is merely cheating at the rules of a game which the policeman himself plays, whereas the bohemian is sceptical of the validity of the game itself and casts doubts on the world-view of both policeman and criminal.”

Jock Young (1942–2013) British sociologist and criminologist

“The role of the police as amplifiers of deviancy,” Images of Deviance (1971), p. 31

Life, World, Game, Motivation

“While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken, and so solemnly repeated on that venerable ground, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull http://books.google.com/books?id=E2kFAAAAQAAJ&dq=editions%3AVsZcW99fWPgC&pg=PA265#v=onepage&q&f=false (New York, 1848), pp 265-6. There are some differences in the version that appeared in The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1854), vol. 9, pp. 228-9 http://books.google.com/books?id=PZYKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q&f=false, most notably the words "or gallantry" instead of "and licentiousness". 1790s

People, World, Religion, Justice

Quotes about most page 94

Quotes about most
page 94