Quotes about most
page 99

“One thinker no less brilliant than the heresiarch himself, but in the orthodox tradition, advanced a most daring hypothesis. This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variant: This happy conjecture affirmed that there is only one subject, that this indivisible subject is every being in the universe and that these beings are the organs and masks of the divinity.

Universe

“Liberty, n. One of imagination's most precious possessions.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Imagination

“Get there first with the most men.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

Reported by General Basil W. Duke and Richard Taylor
Often erroneously reported as "Git thar fustest with the most mostest." In The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 272, the phrase he used has also been reported to have been "I always make it a rule to get there first with the most men" and "I just took the short cut and got there first with the most men."
1860s

Men

“Unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of use passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 34, "Frames and reality", page 367 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Problem, Reality, Decision

“The prevalence of evil is the darkest and most frightening mystery of the universe.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Cardinal Luca Rossini in Ch. 8
Eminence (1998)

Universe, Evil

“If a society insists that warfare is the major occupation for the male sex, it is therefore insisting that all male children display bravery and pugnacity. Even if the insistence upon the differential bravery of men and women is not made articulate, the difference in occupation makes this point implicitly. When, however, a society goes further and defines men as brave and women as timorous, when men are forbidden to show fear and women are indulged in the most flagrant display of fear, a more explicit element enters in. Originally two variations of human temperament, a hatred of fear or willingness to display fear, they have been socially translated into inalienable aspects of the personalities of the two sexes. And to that defined sex-personality every child will be educated, if a boy, to suppress fear, if a girl, to show it.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 287

Women, Men, Children, Education

“His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Queer Feet
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“I ask myself why do these worshipers of this God want to convict him of being such a crummy designer - most of his creations die off, the rest suffer miserably; of being cruel and capricious and bungling and incompetent and callous as a father?”

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=THHapkLeSGo?t=24m23s

Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox - Is God Great? [2009]
2000s, 2009

God, Suffering

“As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican and Democratic Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election.
In recent times, each election year has seen each party's nominee selected - or at least subject to veto - by its most extreme wing and then forced to try to move back to the center before the general election.
This can only undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of the candidates of both parties.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"Bipartisan Primary Blues" http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmJhYWM0ZWIxZGZmYWU5YmVmZWQ3ZTUzYzFmMzQ4ZTM=, National Review (25 March 2008). <br class="br">2000s

Confidence, Time

“Because of the consensus on full employment, certain observations rarely break in to the public political dialogue. These include: … that even if full employment were possible, it might not be desirable in the new kind of society we are entering; and that even today, most of the useful work we do is not structured into paying "jobs."”

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

Source: New Options for America (1991), Chapter 6, "Should We Protect Jobs – or Redefine Work?," p. 46.

“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 562–569
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Wisdom

“There is one quality I find in all the artists I admire most – men like Masaccio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne. I mean a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle of some sort... Great Art is not Perfect. Here the disturbing element comes in. It is instructive to know that Rembrandt copied Mantegna, whose art is the extreme opposite of his own. Why did he do so? Because he was conscious that his own art lacked the classical element. He was aware of the opposite, and that makes him greater.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote in 'Conversations with Henri Moore', J.P. Hodin, in 'The Observer', 24 Nov. 1958
1955 - 1970

Men, Art, Perfection

“I admit that most of my records are silly, but they do require serious training.”

Ashrita Furman (1954) American world record holder

inspiringnews.wordpress.com / Interview with Ashrita Furman (July 7, 2009) https://inspiringnews.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/interview-with-ashrita-furman-the-king-of-records/

Training

“Most striking feature… is the author’s failure to understand the elementary mechanics of the competitive economic organization.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "Historical and theoretical issues in the problem of modern capitalism", 1928, p. 134

Failure, Understanding

“But you cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall. I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Full transcripts of Trump's calls with Mexico and Australia By Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya and Reuben Fischer-Baum; Aug. 3, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.95d2f93766d6 (Friday, January 27, 2017) <br class="br">2010s, 2016, January

“There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. The first is obvious, mechanical, and plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract, prospicient, and canonical.”

Thomas Love Peacock book Melincourt

Melincourt, chapter XVI.

Drink

“You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

Patrick McDonald (October 13, 1988) "David Lee Roth: Outrageous or normal?", The Advertiser.

Music, Star, Learning, Drawing

“War's Over, We Won (No Thanks to Barack Obama) … If Barack Obama had gotten his way, Iraq would now be in the hands of Islamists, and America’s image would have suffered a crushing blow. He voted to cut off funding for the troops, just when they needed it most, and still refuses to admit he was wrong. Well, he was wrong, and George W. Bush deserves credit for refusing to back down when all around him were losing heart.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

November 14, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31910_Wars_Over_We_Won_(No_Thanks_to_Barack_Obama)&only http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31937_Victory_in_Iraq_Day&only

War, Way, Suffering, Heart

“In strategic thinking, one first seeks a clear understanding of the particular character of each element of a situation and then makes the fullest possible use of human brainpower to restructure the elements in the most advantageous way. Phenomena and events in the real word do not always fit a linear model. Hence the most reliable means of dissecting a situation into its constituent parts and reassembling then in the desired pattern is not a step-by-step methodology such as systems analysis. Rather, it is that ultimate nonlinear thinking tool, the human brain. True strategic thinking thus contrasts sharply with the conventional mechanical systems approach based on linear thinking. But it also contrasts with the approach that stakes everything on intuition, reaching conclusions without any real breakdown or analysis… No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield.”

Kenichi Ohmae (1943) Japanese academic

Source: The Mind Of The Strategist, 1982, p. 304

Way, Imagination, Understanding, Nature

“Harriet lived in Connecticut and influenced antislavery in her book "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Harriet was a optimist who expressed her feelings by writing. Harriet was listed as one of the people who started the civil war. She started it from one of her books (It was the most influencial book in all of American History) However, Harriet was a very successful person and never stood down.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Little Foxes (1865)

War, People, Books, Feeling

“This is the reason why all attempts to obtain a deeper knowledge of the foundations of physics seem doomed to me unless the basic concepts are in accordance with general relativity from the beginning. This situation makes it difficult to use our empirical knowledge, however comprehensive, in looking for the fundamental concepts and relations of physics, and it forces us to apply free speculation to a much greater extent than is presently assumed by most physicists.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1950s, On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation (1950)

Knowledge

“Once there is empathy, then there can be the feeling we call compassion. A version of the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you — is found in most religious traditions. … and emergent from our sense of compassion, in mortal conflict with our insistent sense that we should win, is our haunting sense that things should be fair.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 114

Feeling, Sense

“America is preeminently a country of, if not sexual licenses… a country of sexual tolerance, a country of sexual, I… would settle for pluralism, for now. Well, the Holy Mother Church doesn't settle for that. The Holy Mother Church makes rather strict demands. The Holy Mother Church prohibits, by various edicts,… statutes, and pronouncements, all forms of sex that are not specifically devoted to the outcome of procreating further Catholics, and it enforces this with a celibate hierarchy. Now, that's fine, and it is your choice, and… as Mr. Donohue did say, no one has to join that church, but that church, where it can, does try and impose those standards on non-believers and non-members. And there will always seem, to some people, I think, something absurd in the enforcement of such statutes, especially since we know most Catholics don't observe them, by a celibate oligarchy and hierarchy.”

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

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

People, Sex, Thinking, Country

“In the "static" universe expansion is impossible, the "empty" universe does expand. Therefore we may be tempted to consider the empty universe as the most likely approximation; and we can proceed to compute the radius of curvature of the universe, supposing it to be of the empty type, from the observed rate of expansion.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Universe

“There was an attack on our citizens in South Ossetia since most people had a Russian passport and thus Russian citizenship.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Talking about the Georgian War(2008), he also adds that Georgia also attacked Russian peacekeepers who were located there http://www.georgiatimes.info/en/news/64480.html

People

“Time has a way of demonstrating
The most stubborn are the most intelligent.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

A Career http://books.google.com/books?id=qFSwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Time+has+a+way+of+demonstrating+The+most+stubborn+are+the+most+intelligent%22&pg=PA63#v=onepage

Way, Intelligence, Time

“I think many non-Jews don't realise the tremendous emotional heat that is involved here in the second half of the twentieth century. A heat that derives from the Holocaust. That is to say the destruction, the mass murder of the Jews in Eastern Europe where most of the Jews were. That both the Israelis and the Jews of the United States are the bereaved children of that population who were murdered. And the bond between the Jews of the United States and the people of Israel has the emotional intensity derived from that common bereavement. And that is what gives. I do understand that people resent the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country [the US], but that power derives from that elemental basic bond of the common bereavement and the horror that is there in the background. Therefore, Jews in the United States do react strongly – and that's what makes this a very powerful lobby, and it is – they do react strongly to anything that seems to them to threaten the connection of the United States in Israel, which is Israel's lifeline. They see this as threatening. This may be an exaggerated fear, but always there is the shadow there of a possible new Holocaust. Israel overrun. The people of Israel massacred again.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008) Irish politician

C-SPAN (March 26 1986).

Children, People, Fear, Understanding

“A line cannot control pictorial space absolutely. A line may flow freely in and out space, but cannot independently create the phenomenon of push and pull necessary to plastic creation. Push and pull are expanding and contracting forces which are activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes are the most important carriers, lines and points less so... the picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus action continues as long as it receives stimulus in the creative process. Push answers with pull and pull with push. … At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 44
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life, Color, Sense

“Who is Gloria Estefan today? I'm very fulfilled as a woman. I've been able to have a wonderful family life, a fantastic career. I have a lot of good friends around me. My family has been my grounding point, and rooted me deeply to the earth... I'm very happy. I've done everything I ever wanted to do. The key to me was -- I told my husband when we were in our 20s -- I'm going to work really hard, so one day I won't have to work so hard. And to me what that was, was having choices. And I do have choices now -- and I have take full advantage of that. It's important for me now to be here for my little girl [Emily, age 12]. My son is full grown -- and I know have quickly that goes. So, I'm balancing being a mother -- which to me is the most important role I have on this earth -- and still being creative, writing -- which is what I love to do. So, I've been able to branch out into not just writing songs like you have heard through the years -- but writing children's books, writing a screenplay. But at my core that's what I am: a writer. And that's what I enjoy doing behind the scenes: writing the songs for albums, recording it. And that's why you have seen me take more of a back seat to being the center of attention, and being out on tour and doing that kind of thing. I've stepped up a lot of my charity work. This year, the five concerts I did were all for charity: different ones and my own foundation. So, that's becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life -- as I wanted it to be. And [I keep] just growing and evolving.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007

Love, Life, Happiness, Children

“Whether in a South African coal mine, on an Alaskan fishing boat, or in the American military, men's protective instinct toward women, and women's protective instinct toward themselves (and children) keeps men more disposable than women. Here's an example of the dynamic at work in the military. At the military's SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) schools, concern about the well-being of women was so prevalent among male students that trainers now work to desensitize men to sexual assault and other abuse of women lest their sensitivity be used against them in war. We think of women in the military as being safer in part because they are still prohibited from the most dangerous assignments. But this prohibition is just a reflection of the traditional male's instinct to protect women.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 33.

Women, Men, War, Children

“I told my constituents when I ran for office that the most important vote I would ever take would be on sending their men and women — the boys and girls, the young men and women in my state — or anywhere else in the United States — to war. To me, it's an amazing thing, an amazing thing that we would do this so lightly, without any consideration by this august body. To send our young men and women to war without any congressional approval.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Senate floor, 2011-03-30
regarding US participation in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya
2010s

Women, Men, War, Girl

“Perhaps not only in his attitude towards truth, but in his attitude towards himself, Montaigne was a precursor. Perhaps here again he was ahead of his own time, ahead of our time also, since none of us would have the courage to imitate him. It may be that some future century will vindicate this unseemly performance; in the meanwhile it will be of interest to examine the reasons which he gives us for it. He says, in the first place, that he found this study of himself, this registering of his moods and imaginations, extremely amusing; it was an exploration of an unknown region, full of the queerest chimeras and monsters, a new art of discovery, in which he had become by practice “the cunningest man alive.” It was profitable also, for most people enjoy their pleasures without knowing it; they glide over them, and fix and feed their minds on the miseries of life. But to observe and record one’s pleasant experiences and imaginations, to associate one’s mind with them, not to let them dully and unfeelingly escape us, was to make them not only more delightful but more lasting. As life grows shorter we should endeavour, he says, to make it deeper and more full. But he found moral profit also in this self-study; for how, he asked, can we correct our vices if we do not know them, how cure the diseases of our soul if we never observe their symptoms? The man who has not learned to know himself is not the master, but the slave of life: he is the “explorer without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the fool of the play.””

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 6
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Life, People, Pleasure, Truth

“The American people have a stake in the maintenance of the most thorough-going inquisition into American institutions. They have a stake in nonconformity, for they know that the American genius is nonconformist.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Who is Loyal to America? (1947)

People

“You shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves?”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Atheism
Essays (1625)

God, Thinking, Suffering

“That most human and American of presidents—of Americans—Abraham Lincoln, said as a young man: “The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.” It’s a hard heart, and a dull one, that doesn’t go out to that sentence. The man who will make us see what we haven’t seen, feel what we haven’t felt, understand what we haven’t understood—he is our best friend. And if he knows more than we do, that is an invitation to us, not an indictment of us. And it is not an indictment of him, either; it takes all sorts of people to make a world—to make, even, a United States of America.”

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

“The Intellectual in America”, p. 15; conclusion
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People, Books, World, Feeling

“They made a porn movie about Sarah Palin, and the same actress, Lisa Ann, played me in the porn version of 30 Rock. Weirdly, of the three of us, Lisa Ann knows the most about foreign policy.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

"Ask Tina" segment from NBC's 30 Rock website

“Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 41

Life, Family

“Thus far, gentlemen, I have been insisting very strenuously upon what the most vulgar common sense has every disposition to assent to and only ingenious philosophers have been able to deceive themselves about. But now I come to a category which only a more refined form of common sense is prepared willingly to allow, the category which of the three is the chief burden of Hegel's song, a category toward which the studies of the new logico-mathematicians, Georg Cantor and the like, are steadily pointing, but to which no modern writer of any stripe, unless it be some obscure student like myself, has ever done anything approaching to justice.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.59
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Justice, Sense, Study

“Probably in most education systems in a sense we are stuck with the disciplines as we created them last, last century and before that.”

Horst Ludwig Störmer (1949) German physicist

Small Wonders – The World of Nanoscience. Honeywell-Nobel Laureate Lecture Series at Czech Technical University, Prague (October 19, 2006), http://www.honeywellscience.com/nobel-laureates/physics/horst-stormer

Education, Sense

“What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported—and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores—these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

June “CRITICAL”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Life, People, World, Way

“The Prince then remembered the white-haired Theel in the Castle of Bone, who had also been kind, if a little odd, and he wondered why such nice creatures always seemed to live in bad places with wicked things going on all around them.
“That’s easy,” said the girl, seeming to read his thoughts as the other Theel had done. “The bad places are where we can do the most good.””

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Prince on a White Horse (1982), Chapter 8 “The Tower of the Purple Knight” (pp. 231-232)

Girl, Reading

“Still, no matter how commonplace, one’s death is the most interesting event of one’s life.”

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 1 (p. 1)

Life, Death

“Orthodox tools based on a normal distribution therefore fail exactly where they are most needed, at the extremes.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 7, Straight Versus Crooked, p. 223

“I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the Book of Genesis. It is right up there on the desk.In Genesis 13:14–17, the Bible says, "The Lord said to Abraham, 'Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever.... Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to thee.'" That is God talking.The Bible says that Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the Lord. Hebron is in the West Bank. It is at this place where God appeared to Abram and said, "I am giving you this land — the West Bank."”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true. <br class="br">" Peace in the Middle East http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/peace.htm", Senate Floor speech regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict ()

God, Books, Support, Appearance

“Did not Nietzsche too warn of that “life-destroying enlightenment” that touches on our life-supporting self-delusions? Can we afford to shake up the “basic fictions” of privacy, personality, and identity? Be that as it may, in this question both old and new conservatives have come to the hard decision to take the “stance” of defending, against all the demands of reflection, their “unavoidable lies for living,” without which self-preservation would not be possible. That they are aided in this by the general fear of self-experience, which competes with curiosity about self-experience, does not have to be expressly emphasized. Thus the theater of respectable, closed egos goes on everywhere, even where the means have long been available to secure better knowledge. Crosswise to all political fronts, it is the “ego” in society that offers the most resolute resistance against the decisive enlightenment. Scarcely anyone will put up with radical self-reflection on this point, not even many of those who regard themselves as enlighteners.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 60

Life, Fear, Question, Support

“Over the years, I've made a lot of predictions that have come true. Remember this one: two years from now, even those who supported Barack Obama most enthusiastically will be feeling a certain nostalgia about George W. Bush and secretly wishing they'd voted for John McCain.
Yeah, I know, disgusting. But that's the way the world works. Nobody alive today would willingly admit to voting for Adolf Hitler, although the third or fourth worst mass-murderer in history (behind Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, and, on a per capita basis, Pol Pot) won by a landslide. Once the outrages to come have ended and there are thousands — perhaps even millions — of Obama's crimes to account for, would you want to admit to having voted to make those crimes possible?”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Only Nixon".

World, Way, Feeling, History

“We believe it is imperative that farm laborers, among the most abused and neglected of all American workers, be included at last among those who benefit from the Fair Labor Standards Act. We want coverage extended to include those millions in retail trades, laundries, hospitals and nursing homes, restaurants, hotels, small logging operations and cotton gins who still work for starvation wages.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Statement on minimum wage legislation (18 March 1966)], as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

Home

“The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process.”

Richard Middleton British musicologist

[Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ISBN 0631212639, Middleton, Richard, 1999]

Music, Time, Country

“Reincarnation is but a part of this probability system, the part that falls within your particular universe. There are also root dreams shared by the race as a whole. Most of these are not as symbolic as Jung thought them to be but are literal interpretations of the abilities used by the inner self. For that matter, as you know, flying dreams need not be symbolic of anything. They can be valid experiences, though often intermixed with other dream elements.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 309-310, quoting from Session 282

Dreams, Universe, Parting, Flying

“Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Quoted in Remembrance by Tom Johnson (September 1987)

Music

“Courting Peggy McGrath provided me with a very pleasant diversion and eventually with the most important relationship of my life.”

David Rockefeller (1915–2017) American banker and philanthropist

On courting his wife, as quoted in a review of his Memoirs — "Born to Be Mild" by David Brooks in The New York Times (20 October 2002) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E4D6163AF933A15753C1A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Life

“The world is changing and we are awakening. These statistics give us a numerical glimpse at the visceral dissatisfaction that most of us feel. Now is the time to express it. These corrupt structures cannot be maintained without our compliance. You could vote against them, if there was anything to vote for, but there isn’t, or you could stop paying your mortgage, stop paying your taxes, stop buying stuff you don’t need. When we, the majority, unite and demonstrate our new intention, we will be invincible. If we, who are complicit by our silence, become active and disobedient. This is a pivotal time in the history of our species. We are transitioning from an ideology that places power and responsibility in the hands of the few to one where we all collectively have power. It is important that we clarify, in a manner accessible to all, which institutions and systems are beneficial and which ones have to go. It is important that we propose ideas and systems that will be advantageous, like the handful in this book, and ensure that they are presented properly. When they are inevitably disparaged by the fearful enemies of change, we must remain unified and insistent. At this climactic time, we have no choice but change. This book, written by a twerp, with minimal interaction with brilliant thinkers and uncorrupted minds, demonstrates that. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Books, World, Fear, Feeling

“Taxation is by definition legalized robbery. Clearly, it is initiated coercion. As such, no Objectivist can in good conscience support it. So, naturally, most of them don't. Ayn Rand, in her essay in The Virtue of Selfishness entitled "Government Financing in a Free Society," states emphatically that the financing of the state in a free society would be voluntary. But can it be?”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

“The Contradiction in Objectivism,” 1968

Support, Nature, Selfishness

“Machine-held strings of binary digits can simulate a great many kinds of things, of which numbers are just one kind. For example, they can simulate automobiles on a freeway, chess pieces, electrons in a box, musical notes, Russian words, patterns on a paper, human cells, colors, electrical circuits, and so on. To think of a computer as made up essentially of numbers is simply a carryover from the successful use of mathematical analysis in studying models. Most of this series of lectures has been devoted to applications of computers, and this is not the time to give details about their usefulness. I merely wish to point out certain types of things being done with computers today that could not have been done in 1945. Some of these are technological, some are intellectual.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

As cited in: Zenon Pylyshyn (1970) Perspectives on the computer revolution. p. 379
"Educational implications of the computer revolution," 1963

Music, Color, Mathematics, Thinking

“Utu, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Hero, 's son, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Utu, you have let me come up into the mountains in the company of my brothers. In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer! Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value, my mother is not here to say "Alas, my child!" My brother is not here to say "Alas, my brother!" … Don't make me flow away like water in a violent death! Don't make me eat saltpetre as if it were barley! Don't make me fall like a throw-stick somewhere in the desert unknown to me! Afflicted with a name which excites my brothers' scorn, let me be ill no longer! Afflicted with the derision of my comrades, let me be ill no longer! Let me not come to an end in the mountains like a weakling!”

Lugalbanda

In Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.1#

Death, Mountain, Affliction, Water

“As for procreation, no one in his right mind would say that it is the only activity devoid of a praiseworthy incentive. Those who reproduce, then, should not feel unfairly culled as the worst conspirators against the human race. Every one of us is culpable in keeping the conspiracy alive, which is all right with most people.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

People, Feeling

“The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is the faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous; the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider. The picture must be for him, as for anyone experiencing it later, a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, p. 168

Faith, Fashion

“Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 143

“The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible…Resistance is folly or heroism—a virtue or a vice—in most cases, according to the probabilities there are of its being successful.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'Parliamentary Reform', Quarterly Review, 117, 1865, p. 550

Hope, Change, Success, Parting

“It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Empire of Lies" Presented to the Libertarian Party of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 15 June 2003 http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2003/libe228-20030622-01.html.

War, Truth, Lie, Way

“When I was 16, I saw six people die horribly in an accident. I walked home holding on to walls and trees. It took me months to begin to function again. So I don't drive. But whether I drive or not is irrelevant. The automobile is the most dangerous weapon in our society — cars kill more than wars do. More than 50,000 people will die this year because of them and nobody seems to notice.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

War, People, Cars, Home

“I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Women, World, Education, Sex

“The most pitiless warriors against drugs have always been militant progressives. In China, the most savage attack on drug use occurred when the country was convulsed by a modern western doctrine of universal emancipation — Maoism. It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness — the United States. For the corollary of that improbable quest is a puritan war on pleasure.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: Artificial Paradises (p. 141)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

War, Happiness, Pleasure, Wedding

“…the practice of thrift is not one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the people of this country. It exists more beyond the border, in Scotland, undoubtedly, than it does in England, but it is increasing, and increasing very much, happily, in England itself. I rejoice to say that it has been in the power of the State to effect this by judicious legislation—not by what is called "grandmotherly legislation", of which I for one have a great deal of suspicion—but by legislation thoroughly sound in principle—namely, that legislation which like your savings bank, helps the people by enabling the people to help themselves.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the annual meeting of the depositors in the provident savings banks connected with the South-Eastern and Metropolitan Railway Companies in the City Terminus Hotel (18 June 1890), quoted in The Times (19 June 1890), p. 6.
1890s

People, Help, Country

“Take a moment to remember the times on your own spiritual quest when you felt most enthusiastic. We want to pinpoint the times in which we felt more God conscious and devotional than ever before. Conversely, look at the times when you felt unenthused and do a similar analysis. These questions might help stimulate your thought process: Are you enthusiastic about your existence as a servant of the Lord? Are you enthusiastic to follow the basic principles that will help elevate your consciousness? Are you enthusiastic in the association of saintly people? Are you enthusiastic about what you can experience in your purest state? We must examine our spiritual life on a daily, weekly, and even yearly basis. This examination will help us recognize how various activities and thoughts affect us. We should note how the quality of our experiences varies according to our absorption in the process of bhakti.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior V: Making the Mind Your Best Friend (Hari-Nama Press, 2003), Chapter 4 - The Necessity of Enthusiasm

Life, God, People, Question

“When we had these African bombings of those embassies, we had an intelligence service in there that helped us. We had law enforcement agencies that helped us. We had access. In Libya, you have a government that does not control most of Libya, or a good portion of Libya. And consequently, the ambassador, the State Department, ourselves -- were pushing to get in there at the earliest possible moment. And that ended up being a couple of weeks down the road. But that does not mean that we have not very thoroughly investigated that and are continuing to investigate it. And I do believe the persons responsible will be brought to justice.”

Robert Mueller (1944) Sixth director of the FBI; American attorney

CNN Interview (2013)

Justice, Law, Intelligence, Help

“Most people, even in simple risky situations, don't behave the way the theory of utility would have them behave.”

Howard Raiffa (1924–2016) American academic

Part III, Chapter 11, Tradeoffs and Concessions, p. 155.
The Art and Science of Negotiation (1982)

People, Way

“Autobiography. Apparently one should not name the names of those one has been to bed with, or give explicit figures on the amount of money one has earned, those being the two data most eagerly sought by readers; all the rest is legitimate to reveal.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

"Sounding Brass, Tinkling Cymbal" in Hell's Cartographers (1975) edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison

Money

“French music is really very sensory, and appeals to sense of smell, taste, touch. It can be languorous, and almost erotic. Russian music is very subjective, sometimes whiny, breast-beating 'Look how I suffer, look how I suffer!'. German music is, to use your word, metaphysical. It really asks those existential questions of 'How do I relate to the Universe?', 'Is there a heaven?', 'How am I like a brook, or a leaf on a tree?'. I know this was the music that most challenged Schnabel. He said Mozart was the most inaccessible of the great masters, because with the fewest number of notes, he accesses the deepest levels of human awareness and experience.”

Leon Fleisher (1928) American conductor and pianist

Interview with pianist Leon Fleisher http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-pianist-leon-fleisher by Elijah Ho (October 1, 2014)

Music, Question, Sense, Tree

“The original Golden Dawn was not always as serious as it should have been. Mathers was a clown, and Yeats was just a romantic trying to deceive himself. Most of them were interested in personal power, and it ended up by destroying them. The aim of our group is the scientific exploration of the hidden powers of the human mind.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Schoolgirl Murder Case (1974), p. 113

Personality

“You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Seduced and Abandoned, Salon.com, 1997-05-09, 2006-08-25, http://web.archive.org/web/19990828005105/http://www.salon.com/may97/vep970509.html, 1999-08-28 http://www.salon.com/may97/vep970509.html,

“To tell the truth, peasant subjects suit my nature best, for I must confess, at the risk of your taking me to be a Socialist, that the human side is what touches me most in art... The joyous side never shows itself to me; I know not if it exists, but I have never seen it. The gayest thing I know is the calm, the silence, which are so delicious, both in the forest and in the cultivated fields, whether the soil is good for culture or not. You will confess that it always gives you a very dreamy sensation, and that the dream is a sad one, although often very delicious.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

In his letter to fr:Alfred_Sensier, Barbizon, February 1850; as quoted in Prints & drawings Europe 1500–1900 - catalogue for the exhibition 'European prints & drawings: 1500 - 1900', ed. Peter Raissis; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 2014, pp. 136-137
1835 - 1850

Truth, Sadness, Dreams, Art

“The easiest and most popular way of practically refuting… any Fallacy is, by bringing forward a parallel case, where it leads to a manifest absurdity. A metaphysical objection may still be urged against many cases in which we thus reason from calculation of chances; an objection not likely indeed practically to influence any one, but which may afford the Sophist a triumph over those who are unable to find a solution.”

Richard Whately (1787–1863) English rhetorician, logician, economist, and theologian

Source: Elements of Rhetoric (1828), p. 52-53

Way, Chance

“Here we come upon one of the most profound reasons for Socratic irony: direct language is not adequate for communicating the experience of existing, the authentic consciousness of being, the seriousness of life as we live it, or the solitude of decision making.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 156
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

Life, Communication, Decision, Solitude

“The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favour.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Spirit of Obligations"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Pleasure, Personality

“The composition may be ever so carefully worked out, but it must appear unconsciously done. And so it will be best in most cases to depart slightly from precise and symmetrical arrangement, as though unintentionally, lest the endeavor to obey artificial rules betrays itself.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Methods - The practical application of means to end, p. 20

Appearance

“In business the 80/20 principle is behind any innovation, any extra value. It is an entrepreneurial principle, a formula for value creation utilized not only by entrepreneurs, but by most managers and organizations.”

Richard Koch (1950) German medical historian and internist

Source: The 80/20 Individual (2003), Chapter: The 80/20 Principle Is at the Heart of Creation

Business

“I have no doubt but that every State bordering upon the enemy, will apply for a proper force, to protect them against their ravages. To comply with these demands, will hard the safety of the whole army. Divide your force,, and you will fall a prey in every quarter; and, I am persuaded, were you to adopt the plan which would be most flattering to the wishes of the people, it would be so far from affording them that protection and security which they promise themselves, that it would become one of the principal causes of the enemy's making inroads, and committing depredations upon them.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

People

“In this situation, any feeling of gee-wiz exhilaration would be out of place. Consternation and fear would be closer to the mark; but the most appropriate attitude may be a bitter determination to be as competent as we can, much as if we were preparing for a difficult exam that will either realize our dreams or obliterate them.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Fear, Dreams, Feeling

“At every stage of my career, I sought out the most influential people around me and asked for their help and guidance.”

Keith Ferrazzi (1966) American businessman and writer

Never Eat Alone

People, Help

“Perhaps the most prominent single element in modern scientific management is the task idea. The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work. And the work planned in advance in this way constitutes a task which is to be solved, as explained above, not by the workman alone, but in almost all cases by the joint effort of the workman and the management. This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 39.

Way, Idea, Effort, Time

“I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having first learned to listen to my unwillingness to sell my hours, then to listen to the signals of my body, then to listen to the disease that has made my insides my home, and thus become a part of me. And I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having talked to other people courageous enough to validate my perception of an animate world. I talked to the writer Christoper Manes, who said, 'For most cultures through history--including our own in preliterate times--the entire world used to speak. Anthropologists call this animism, the most pervasive worldview in human history. Animistic cultures listen to the natural world. For them, birds have something to say. So do worms, wolves, and waterfalls.' Later the philosopher Thomas Berry told me, 'The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees--all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

Source: A Language Older Than Words (2000), p. 361

People, World, Disease, Home

“Of all the arts poetry is the most intimate and personal.”

Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927) American writer and poet

On poetry

Art, Personality

“Adam and I had a special friendship for more than 50 years. We shared some of the most fun times of our lives together; our families have deep love and respect for each other. This is a terribly unexpected loss of my lifelong friend, I will forever miss him. There are several fine actors who have portrayed Batman in films, in my eyes there was only one real Batman and that is and always will be Adam West; He was truly the Bright Knight.”

Burt Ward (1945) American actor

Hollywood Reacts to Adam West's Death http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/hollywood-reacts-adam-wests-death-a-sweet-nutty-guy-1012217 (June 10, 2017)

Love, Friendship, Family, Loss

“The Athenian empire lasted for fifty years at the most, and the stupendous creation of Alexander the Great for less. What has been the fate of succeeding imperialisms? That of Spain endured on the grand scale for little more than a century; that of Napoleon for a decade; the British Empire is less than two centuries old, and in its present form is a thing of yesterday. In the brief span of recorded history empires have had a shorter life than many monarchies, theocracies, and even republics. The Augustan alone reached a venerable age. In the coming of Christianity it had to face the greatest of all historic convulsions, but such was its potency that it weathered the storm and influenced profoundly the organization of the Christian church.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

Life, Fate, Age, History

“We must not suppose any corporeal conjunction or marriage in the case — all which are merely the sportive fables of Poetry; but must hold the father and the producer of that Being as something most divine and super-eminent. Of such a nature is He who is above all things, around whom, and by reason of whom, all things do subsist. But Homer calls him by his father's name, "Hyperion," in order to show that he is independent, and not subjected to any constraint.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

Marriage, Nature

“Sometimes the moments that challenge us the most, define us.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

24 Nov 2011, Twitter
Speaking & Features

“The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the republic lives.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Men, Beauty, Art, Flowers

“Among both the Northern and Eastern Hamites are to be found some of the most beautiful types of humanity.”

Ashley Montagu (1905–1999) British-American anthropologist

[Ashley, Montagu, An Introduction to Physical Anthropology – Third Edition, 1977/2011, 456]

Beauty

“People always died in the most hidden places. They'd bleed to death, I guess. By the time their bodies were brought in, they're bloated, and they'd dig out the identification tags on some corpse's chest, maggots all over the place. And those aren't scenes which you want to report to your people back home. I mean, everybody would think it was their own son. I didn't have his name.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

All Things Considered, NPR, Washington, D.C.: February 6, 2003, transcript available at ProQuest: from Research Library Core. (Document ID: 351141181); excerpted from a 1994 concerning what LeSueur saw on D-Day at Normandy.

Death, People, Home, Thinking

“We’re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody’s afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Way

“A chance remark by Ardini, an Italian master carver whom I met there [in Rome], that 'marble changes colour under different people's hands' made me decide immediately that it was not dominance which one had to attain over material, but an understanding, almost a kind of persuasion, and above all greater co-ordination between head and hand. This thought has recurred again and again ever since - and has developed my greatest interests; the reason why people both move differently and stand differently in direct response to changed surroundings; the unconscious grouping of people when they are working together, producing a spatial movement which approximates to the structure of spirals in shells or rhythms in crystal structure; the meaning of the spaces between forms, or the shape of the displacement of forms in space, which in themselves have a most precise significance. All these responses spring from a factual and tactile approach to the object.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Extract from Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, (from Chapter 1: The excitement of discovering the nature of carving, 1903-1930), with an introduction by Herbert Read, London, 1952
1947 - 1960

People, Spring, Understanding, Change