Quotes about naming (5121 quotes, page 16)

“There are some things I keep sacred. My middle name. Who I sleep with. And what kind of hand moisturizer I use.”

Johnny Weir (1984) figure skater

"Figure Skating Rivalry Pits Athleticism Against Artistry," 2008

Sleep

“I must admit to being increasingly deranged by the kinds of bizarre myths which have grown like moss around my name in comics fan circles - I keep coming up against this idiot savant image; me reflected back at myself as a shambling, incoherent drug addict, wanking and drooling out meaningless gibberish which can only be understood by 'those lying bastards' who claim they can see 'Magic Eye' 3-d pictures and wee men reading the news on the TV.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2004
https://web.archive.org/web/20041012215227/http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20042.html Popimage interview
On himself

Men , Lying , Reading

“It is said that in ancient days Trichila, an execrable monster with three heads, who was a brother of Rawan, with ten heads, had the sway over this country. No human being could oppose him. But as per the saying of the Prophet, ‘Islam will be elevated and cannot be subdued’, the Faith took root by the efforts of Hazarat Natthar Wali. The monster was slain and sent to the house of perdition. His image namely but-ling worshipped by the unbelievers was cut and the head was separated from the body. A portion of the body went into the ground. Over that spot is the tomb of the Wali, shedding rediance till this day.”

Nathar Shah (969–1039) Muslim missionary

About the legend surrounding the tomb of Nathar Shah at Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu). Bahãr-i-Ãzam, translated in English, Madras, 1960. p. 51.

Faith , Effort , Housing , Country

“Had a long talk to the Chinese First Secretary at the embassy — a very charming man called Liao Dong — and said how much I admired Mao Tse tung or Zedong, the greatest man of the twentieth century. He said that I couldn't admire Mao more than he did. I asked him how Mao was viewed now. He said Mao was 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong; the Cultural Revolution didn't work. He said he had been named after Mao — it was amusing.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Journal entry for 6 June 1996 in Free at Last!: Diaries, 1991-2001 (2003) p. 371
1990s

“I am convinced that in times such as these, every man must be a soldier, in substance as well as in name.”

Seishirō Itagaki (1885–1948) Japanese general

Quoted in "The Fight for the Pacific" - Page 157 - by Mark Gayn - 1941.

Time

“Artificial Life (``AL or ``Alife) is the name given to a new discipline that studies "natural" life by attempting to recreate biological phenomena from scratch within computers and other "artificial" media. Alife complements the traditional analytic approach of traditional biology with a synthetic approach in which, rather than studying biological phenomena by taking apart living organisms to see how they work, one attempts to put together systems that behave like living organisms.”

Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist

Christopher Langton in: Karl Gerbel, Peter Weibel, Katharina Gsöllpointner (1993) Genetische Kunst--künstliches Leben. p.25

Life , Nature , Study

“Ahmed comes back a conqueror, but what hath he found?
The cry of the orphan is loud on his ear,
And his eye hath beheld the young bride's bitter tear,
And the friend of his youth is left dead on the plain,
And the flower of his nobles return not again.
There are crowds that are filling the air with his name;
Do ye marvel the monarch is loathing his fame?”

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

The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
The Golden Violet (1827)

Youth , Flowers , Tear , Cry

“Vyasa wrote the first 40,000 verses and this book was named Jaya. Afterwards other writers added more stories and it became known as Bharata. Later still more additions were made until the composition became the Mahabharata as we know it today…. We believe that Veds Vyasa was one person and that he alone composed the entire Mahabharata consisting of 100,000 verses, it is the world’s largest epic in existence today and an encyclopedia of knowledge.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Swami Tejomayananada, in p. 139.
Sources, Hindu Culture, An Introduction

Books , World , Knowledge , Personality

“When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M.”

John Fowles book The Collector

The Collector (1963)

Men , School , Home , Sister

“The tomato hit Brother Leon on his left cheek, a ripe tomato that exploded in juicy fury, splattering his shirt and his hair and smearing his face with what looked like blood. Nobody said anything. Nobody moved. Nobody cheered or booed. Everybody sat there in a profound silence as Brother Leon, mouth agape, wiped the tomato from his face, still silent as he stalked from the stage, leaving an assembly hall full of students who sat stunned, silent for a few minutes, then quietly filed out of the hall. Broher Leon never learned the culprit's name. He, in fact, never made an effort to do so. Nobody else ever mentioned the incident. But Henry Malloran was elected president of the senior class at the next day's election and nobody ran against him.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 273

Effort , Silence , Learning

“A name illustrious and revered by nations.”
Clarum et venerabile nomen gentibus.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book IX, line 202 (tr. H. T. Riley).
Pharsalia

“Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead. There is no author's name on the title page, merely a modest line of italic type advising us that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev's 'short biography' has been composed 'by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee.' This is the one statement in the entire opus which is undeniably true. Only an Institute could write like this.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Brezhnev: A State of Boredom'
Opening lines of his review of the Brezhnev: A Short Biography
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

Books , Dogs , Bird , Sleep

“Above any Greek or Roman name.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Upon the Death of Lord Hastings, line 76. Compare: "Above all Greek, above all Roman fame"; Alexander Pope, Epistle I, Book 2, line 26.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Yes, I’m profoundly a representative of the great hypervirtuosic Romantic epoch. But as already mentioned, my roots also go back to Bach and this special style of interpretation, where I’m also at home. In this special field of tension I also see many of the major composers and works in the Romantic tradition. It was no less than Schumann himself who said that great music finds all its combinations in Bach. Indeed, Schumann also builds up his works in polyphonic style, and even in his orchestral scores and symphonic movements he is a counterpointer. As Romantic and modern his work must have seemed to people of his era and lifetime, in main he was a classicist. That means that - and only to name one typical Romantic composer - Schumann cannot be understood without Bach.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

People , Music , Home

“We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Death , Fools , Democracy , Communication

“QUESTION: Is there a reason for the pen name? One you’d be willing to share, I suppose. As in, is it because you’re actually a secret CIA agent and/or Russian spy, or merely because you don’t ever want your mother knowing what you’ve written?
JTH: My mother and the rest of my family don’t know that I have written the novels. Those people I know who aren’t close friends see me as a failure by the American standards of success. Being a “failure” in such a way has been a continual lesson. It’s helped me realize that we make quick judgments of others based on little real information. We assume so much – but don’t know the secrets held within the heart.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

From Interviews

People , Secret , Family , Way

“[T]he application of algebra to geometry… far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) as quoted in 5th ed. (1878) p. 617. https://books.google.com/books?id=ojQNAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA617

Science

“Neglect of the problem of the human individual leads to impoverishing Marxism at the theoretical level and to distorting it at the practical level. In this mistake lies the deep secret of Stalinism. This is why the protagonists of “true” Marxism — where the individual is absent—are so dangerous. I am referring not only to those who put Stalinism into practice, but also to its theorists, whose various political lucubrations and theoretical mistakes have resulted in the thesis that Marxism is anti-humanism. If this were the case, we would have to fight it. But it is a pure lie: Marxism is humanism, and it is the concern of Marxists to fight in the name of such humanism. This has always been my firm belief, as a Marxist and as a Communist. And this fact explains the choice of the lietmotif of my philosophical works.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Adam Schaff (1967) in: "Conversation with Ponzio," in Ponzio 2002; as cited in: Petrilli and Ponzio (2007)

Lie , Secret , Problem , Fight

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men , God , Children , World

“"What the Republicans have been doing is an insult to America…. These are foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging neanderthals." [Questioned, 'Why are you name-calling?'] "I didn't call names, what I said is true."”

Alan Grayson (1958) American politician

CNN, YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTyAQEAseb0 –September 30, 2009. CNN Political Ticker http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/30/grayson-calls-republicans-knuckle-dragging-neanderthals/.
2009, Regarding the Republican Party

Question

“He touched me…
Control myself and try to act
As if I remember my name
But he touched me…he touched me…
And suddenly nothing is the same!”

Ira Levin (1929–2007) Novelist, playwright

Song: He touched me

“The first impulse towards painting, or toward art in general, stems from the need to communicate, the effort to fix one's own vision, to deal with appearances (which are alien and must be given names and meanings.) Without this, all work would be pointless and unjustified, like Art for Art's Sake.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Art , Communication , Effort , Appearance

“I am Ra. The Law of One, though beyond the limitations of name, as you call vibratory sound complexes, may be approximated by stating that all things are one, that there is no polarity, no right or wrong, no disharmony, but only identity. All is one, and that one is love/light, light/love, the Infinite Creator.”

Carla Rueckert

Session 4 http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=4#20
Quotations as Ra

Love , Law , Light

“She always had been in touch with something outside of human ken. She had something in her no other human had. You sensed it, but you could not name it, for there was no name for this thing she had. And she had fumbled with it, trying to use it, not knowing how to use it, charming off the warts and healing poor hurt butterflies and only God knew what other acts that she performed unseen.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 34

God , Sense , Hurt

“I think they've always gone on. I've gotten some irate letters from oldsters saying "We did this in the 1930s. You didn't invent anything." And I'm like, "Gramps, you should have put a name on it and sold it, because that’s all I did."”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

On the creation of Fight Club
Interview with Rolling Stone (2002-09-19)

Thinking

“If every soul should lose it's way
If every face should lose it's name
If no one tries to end this game
Or find a way to ease the pain
Who's gonna stop the rain?”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Who's Gonna Stop the Rain
Not That Kind (2000)

Pain , Way , Soul , Game

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

People , World , Forgiveness , Parent

“A word to Sen. Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it -- we'll go at it over the next two months -- you know that's the nature of this business -- and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and my admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, and that's an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights. No country -- no country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Sen. Obama and his supporters for their achievement.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

People , Business , Support , Nature

“Curious it is that every hour of our day is repeated from myriad chimes; and yet how rarely do we attend to the clock striking! Alas! how emblematic is this of the way in which we neglect the many signs of time! How terrible, when we think of what time may achieve, is the manner in which we waste it! At the end of every man's life, at least three-quarters of the mighty element of which that life was composed will be found void—lost—nay, utterly forgotten! And yet that time, laboured and husbanded, might have built palaces, gathered wealth, and, still greater, made an imperishable name.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life , Way , Thinking , Time

“Racial prejudice is thus a generalized set of stereotypes of a high degree of consistency which includes emotional responses to race names, a belief in typical characteristics associated with race names, and an evaluation of such traits.”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Daniel Katz and K.W. Braly (1935) "Racial prejudice and racial stereotypes". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. p. 191-2 Cited in: Mark P. Zanna, James M. Olson (1994) The Psychology of Prejudice. p. 16

“The man that lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch
Whom't were gross flattery to name a coward.”

John Tobin The Honey Moon

The Honeymoon (1805), Act ii. Sc. 1.

Way

“It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow all of them. To be able to do this, socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is, in three respects, a war between slave-holders with the aim of consolidating slavery.”

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

Socialism and War (1914), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

War , People , Truth , Business

“I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this, I know what they mean, I sympathize with them, I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed; it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"How it came about?" from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)

Love , Feeling , Understanding , Passion

“In the heartlands of Islam, from Saudi mansions to ISIS dungeons, there are still slaves, laboring, beaten, bought, sold, raped and disposed of in Mohammed's name.”

Louie Gohmert (1953) American politician

Speech to the United States House of Representatives (July 2015)

“Okay, time for me to rain on this parade. I didn’t know he had kids. Young kids. This alters the mix considerably. This makes him an asshole. Cops and firemen, to name but two, place their lives on the line every day to protect others. There was nothing Steve Irwin was doing that he could not have done—as did, say, David Attenborough—without putting his life at risk. This takes this from tragedy to stupidity, and, worse, irresponsibility.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=14104&PN=1&totPosts=25
On the death of Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter"

Life , Stupidity , Time

“Yes. I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.”

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) Poet and journalist

"Adlestrop", line 1, cited from Collected Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 71.

Training

“The French botanist and chemist Henri-Louis Duhamel de Monceau (1700–1782) identified a fungal disease on the bulbs of saffron crocus (now named Helicobasidium purpureum) and illustrated its sclerotia on the bulbs. His report was read to the Academie royale des Sciences in April 1728; it was “wellconceived, thorough, and conclusive, and led to his election as adjoint chimiste in the same year” (Eklund 1971:223). Duhamel discovered that this fungus spreads underground from one bulb to another. In his Éléments d’agriculture (two volumes, 1762; English edition, 1764), he also accepted insects as a cause of some plant diseases.”

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700–1782) French naval engineer, botanist and agronomist

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, " A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 29: Plant Disease Studies During the 1700s http://esapubs.org/bulletin/current/history_list/history29.pdf." in: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, July 2008, p. 231-242.

Disease , Science , Reading

“The true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and good-will among men, are trying to show their antagonism and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must stand forward with our voice of protest, and say that religion is defeating its own legitimate object.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, in a meeting held to constitute a Theistic Association in London on 20th July 1870. See Universal Religion for full speech.

Men , God , Peace , Religion

“They say use it, channel it. Do it, like there will be a sign, be an artist, you're so creative, do anything, you've got to do it, use it. Then, things like, and you've got to collect yourself, too. I mean, you know, make your hair more about yourself, self-respect. But I mean, ridiculous. You know why my doctor got so mad this time? He said, that scene, remember in the LSD bit, the only time I had it in that, sleeping with what's-his-name and having that sex bit go on while, it was very strange-mannered, but I certainly wasn't mortified. I mean, I humanly might be a little mortified knowing that a thousand other human beings would think it mortifying, but basically, me. So he thought that was a total lack of self-respect, which is wrong. Totally wrong.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Sex , Thinking , Sleep , Time

“As you turned to go I heard you call my name,
You were like a bird in a cage spreading its wings to fly
"The old ways are lost," you sang as you flew
And I wondered why.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Visit (1991), The Old Ways

Way , Bird , Flying

“I know that my early life was at one and the same time so common as to be unremarkable, and so strange as to be the stuff of fiction. I know of course that this is how all human lives are, but that it is only given to a few of us to luxuriate in the bath of self-revelation, self-curiosity, apology, revenge, bafflement, vanity and egoism that goes under the name Autobiography. You have seen me at my washpot scrubbing at the grime of years: to wallow in a washpot may not be the same thing as to be purified and cleansed, but I have come away from this very draining, highly bewildering and passionately intense few months feeling slightly less dirty. Less dirty about the first twenty years of my life, at least. The second twenty, now that is another story.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Life , Feeling , Revenge , Passion

“In the Name of God, the Most Exalted, the Most Holy. All praise and glory befitteth the sacred and glorious court of the sovereign Lord, Who from everlasting hath dwelt, and unto everlasting will continue to dwell within the mystery of His Own divine Essence, Who from time immemorial hath abided and will forever continue to abide within His transcendent eternity, exalted above the reach and ken of all created beings. The sign of His matchless Revelation as created by Him and imprinted upon the realities of all beings, is none other but their powerlessness to know Him. The light He hath shed upon all things is none but the splendour of His Own Self. He Himself hath at all times been immeasurably exalted above any association with His creatures. He hath fashioned the entire creation in such wise that all beings may, by virtue of their innate powers, bear witness before God on the Day of Resurrection that He hath no peer or equal and is sanctified from any likeness, similitude or comparison. He hath been and will ever be one and incomparable in the transcendent glory of His divine being and He hath ever been indescribably mighty in the sublimity of His sovereign Lordship. No one hath ever been able befittingly to recognize Him nor will any man succeed at any time in comprehending Him as is truly meet and seemly, for any reality to which the term ‘being’ is applicable hath been created by the sovereign Will of the Almighty, Who hath shed upon it the radiance of His Own Self, shining forth from His most august station. He hath moreover deposited within the realities of all created things the emblem of His recognition, that everyone may know of a certainty that He is the Beginning and the End, the Manifest and the Hidden, the Maker and the Sustainer, the Omnipotent and the All-Knowing, the One Who heareth and perceiveth all things, He Who is invincible in His power and standeth supreme in His Own identity, He Who quickeneth and causeth to die, the All-Powerful, the Inaccessible, the Most Exalted, the Most High. Every revelation of His divine Essence betokens the sublimity of His glory, the loftiness of His sanctity, the inaccessible height of His oneness and the exaltation of His majesty and power. His beginning hath had no beginning other than His Own firstness and His end knoweth no end save His Own lastness.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

I, 1
The Persian Bayán

God , Fashion , Reality , Light

“Considering the fact that the armies of the Northern and Southern States participated in the hardest fought battles of the nineteenth century, and the additional fact that Maine is the only State which has placed two regiments of different arms of the service at the head of the list in each of these aims, it seems but fitting that, as we proudly look back upon Maine's record in the great struggle for national life, we should be reminded of the career of a Maine soldier, who did much to render famous in the war the name of his native State.”

Charles P. Mattocks (1840–1910) American soldier, lawyer and politician

Read before the Maine Historical Society February 14, 1901, at [Third Series, Vol. I, http://archive.org/stream/collectionsofmai11lcmain/collectionsofmai11lcmain_djvu.txt, Maine Historical Society, 10 April 2018, 1904]

Life , War

“Your armed forces have toppled the reactionary, backward and corrupt regime. With one strike your heroic army has toppled idols and destroyed them in one of Providence's fateful moments. As of now Libya shall be free and sovereign, a republic under the name of the Libyan Arab Republic. No oppressed or deceived or wronged, no master and no slave; but free brothers in a society over which, God willing, shall flutter the banner of brotherhood and equality. And thus shall we build glory, revive heritage and avenge a wounded dignity. Sons of the Bedouins, sons of the desert, sons of the ancient cities, sons of the countryside, sons of the villages, the hour of work has struck and so let us forge ahead.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Radio broadcast from Benghazi (1 September 1969), quoted in The Libyan Revolution: Its Origins and Legacy (2009) by Nicholas Hagger
Speeches

God , Fate

“You might with advantage take out your map of modern literature and mark on it the name of Italo Svevo…for Svevo and his novel, Confessions of Zeno…will henceforth be on other people's maps, and it is well that the atlases of the enlightened should agree.”

Italo Svevo (1861–1928) Italian writer

Arnold Bennett (ed. Andrew Mylett) The Evening Standard Years (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974) pp. 357-8.
Criticism

People , Literature

“This song is actually about when I got arrested for about 30 minutes in Mexico, and as we were just about to cross into Tijuana, we were just about to cross the "Bridge of Freedom", which I always thought was an ironic name for the bridge into Tijuana, or the one coming back for that matter. And this woman was selling these crucifixes before you got to the bridge, and she looked at me and said "You're in for trouble", and I just scoffed and laughed and was like "You don't live forever" and I thought "Jeez, what's up with the weird old woman?". And then later that night I was sitting in this police car in Tijuana and they just beat the crap out of this other guy, not that I was with, and I was like "Am I next?". I had bought this fake gold chain because my dad had said "If you go to Tijuana, have some fake jewellery to barter with."”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

I traded with them - they just wanted cash. But I felt so sick in the back of the police car that I was like "If I throw up in here I'm dead".
Over the Years and Through the Woods, "Mexicola" commentary footage (2005)
Over the Years and Through the Woods

Cars , Guy , Freedom , Night

“When I was fourteen, I was so bloody ugly and I thought I was Kate Moss. I chased this guy named Mark Rennie, who was the hottest photographer in Portland, around, convinced him to [take pictures of me]. I had this big schnoz, I had blusher on, I'm wearing white gloves, and I [was] making new wave faces, and, like, voguing… there was a gap in my teeth, and I was 180 pounds. So if someone calls me ugly, it sort of rolls off my back because it's not about looks, it's about attitude—you get laid on attitude.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On confidence; The Opie & Anthony Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUA98nxYLXE (30 May 2013)
2006–2013

Guy

“When then is liberalism correctly understood? Liberalism is not an exclusvely political term. It can be applied to a prison reform, to an economic order, to a theology. Within the political framework, the question is not (as in a democracy) “Who should rule?” but “How should rule be exercised?” The reply is “Regardless of who rules—a monarch, an elite, a majority, or a benevolent dictator—governments should be exercised in such a way that each citizen enjoys the greatest amount of personal liberty.” The limit of liberty is obviously the common good. But, admittedly, the common good (material as well as immaterial) is not easily defined, for it rests on value judgments. Its definition is therefore always somewhat arbitrary. Speed limits curtail freedom in the interests of the common good. Is there a watertight case for forty, forty-five, or fifty miles an hour? Certainly not…. Freedom is thus the only postulate of liberalism—of genuine liberalism. If, therefore, democracy is liberal, the life, the whims, the interests of the minority will be just as respected as those of the majority. Yet surely not only a democracy, but a monarchy (absolute or otherwise) or an aristocratic (elitist) regime can be liberal. In fact, the affinity between democracy and liberalism is not at all greater than that between, say, monarchy and liberalism or a mixed government and liberalism. (People under the Austrian monarchy, which was not only symbolic but an effective mixed government, were not less free than those in Canada, to name only one example.)”

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

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 21

Life , People , Way , Exercises

“In our time mathematics has penetrated into economics so solidly, widely and variously, and the chosen theme is connected with such a variety of facts and problems that it brings us to cite the words of which are very popular in our country: "One can not embrace the unembraceable". The appropriateness of this wise sentence is not diminished by the fact that the great thinker is only a pen-name.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

Lead paragraph
"Mathematics in Economics: Achievements, Difficulties, Perspectives," 1975

Mathematics , Problem , Time , Country

“What will it take to rally all peoples and nations to unite in the name of humanity? An all-out alien invasion or imminent mass extinction? Perhaps a gentler proposal like a Human Heritage Month would help to raise awareness that we are all human beings living together on the same beautiful planet marred by undue human conflicts and selfishness.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

People , Beauty , Help , Selfishness

“The name of the slough was Despond.”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Part I, Ch. II : The Slough of Despond
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I

“This new-democratic republic will be different from the old European-American form of capitalist republic under bourgeois dictatorship, which is the old democratic form and already out of date. On the other hand, it will also be different from the socialist republic of the Soviet type under the dictatorship of the proletariat which is already flourishing in the U. S. S. R., and which, moreover, will be established in all the capitalist countries and will undoubtedly become the dominant form of state and governmental structure in all the industrially advanced countries. However, for a certain historical period, this form is not suitable for the revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. During this period, therefore, a third form of state must be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely, the new-democratic republic. This form suits a certain historical period and is therefore transitional; nevertheless, it is a form which is necessary and cannot be dispensed with.”

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

On New Democracy (1940)
Original: (zh-CN) 这种新民主主义共和国，一方面和旧形式的、欧美式的、资产阶级专政的、资本主义的共和国相区别，那是旧民主主义的共和国，那种共和国已经过时了；另一方面，也和苏联式的、无产阶级专政的、社会主义的共和国相区别，那种社会主义的共和国已经在苏联兴盛起来，并且还要在各资本主义国家建立起来，无疑将成为一切工业先进国家的国家构成和政权构成的统治形式；但是那种共和国，在一定的历史时期中，还不适用于殖民地半殖民地国家的革命。因此，一切殖民地半殖民地国家的革命，在一定历史时期中所采取的国家形式，只能是第三种形式，这就是所谓新民主主义共和国。这是一定历史时期的形式，因而是过渡的形式，但是不可移易的必要的形式。

Country

“Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?

And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph?

Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?

Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War.
Who else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?

Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.

So many questions.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Questions from a worker who reads" [Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters] (1935) from The Svendborg Poems (1939); trans. Michael Hamburger in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 252
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

War , Books , Question , Time

“I've got a cat named Easter; he says, 'Will you ever learn?
You're just an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Crucify".
Songs

Girl , Cats , Bird , Learning

“Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche.This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"Letter From Washington," http://www.panarchy.org/hess/libertarianism.html The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 http://web.archive.org/web/20071201123614/http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf (15 June 1969), p. 2

Freedom , Cry

“I take this cadence from a man named Yeats:
I take it and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.
Yes, I was dancing mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 19-24
The Waking (1953)

Heart , Dance , Madness

“From Pythagoras to Boethius, when pure mathematics consisted of arithmetic and geometry while applied mathematics consisted of music and astronomy, mathematics could be characterized as the deductive study of 'such abstractions as quantities and their consequences, namely figures and so forth' (Acquinas ca. 1260). But since the emergence of abstract algebra it has become increasingly difficult to formulate a definition to cover the whole of the rich, complex and expanding domain of mathematics.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

Music , Mathematics , Study

“There is hardly a philosophy which has not invoked something like the will or desire to know, the love of truth, etcetera. But, in truth, very few philosophers—apart, perhaps, from Spinoza and Schopenhauer—have accorded it more than a marginal status; as if there was no need for philosophy to say first of all what the name that it bears actually refers to. As if placing at the head of its discourse the desire to know, which it repeats in its name, was enough to justify its own existence and show—at a stroke—that it is necessary and natural: All men desire to know. Who, then, is not a philosopher, and how could philosophy not be the most necessary thing in the world?”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Lectures on the Will to Know (1970), pp. 4-5

Love , Men , Truth , World

“This is the first time that Maidenhead has had its own Member of Parliament. In view of the potential origin of the town's name in the symbol of the maiden's head, it is perhaps appropriate that it should now be represented by a maiden—although I must confess to using the term somewhat loosely.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Maiden speech to Parliament https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1997-06-02a.59.0 (02 June 1997)

Time

“We Communists never conceal our political views. Definitely and beyond all doubt, our future or maximum programme is to carry China forward to socialism and communism. Both the name of our Party and our Marxist world outlook unequivocally point to this supreme ideal of the future, a future of incomparable brightness and splendor.”

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

On Coalition Government (1945)

World , Communication , Future

“Out whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretense of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more. And nothing was left them but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

World , Heart , Christ , Despair

“If thou art sailing upon the sea of God’s Names, which are reflected in all things, know thou that He is exalted and sanctified from being known through His creatures, or being described by His servants. Everything thou beholdest hath been called into being through the operation of His Will. How can such a created thing, therefore, be indicative of His essential oneness? God’s existence in itself testifieth to His Own oneness, while every created thing, by its very nature, beareth evidence that it hath been fashioned by God. Such is the proof of consummate wisdom in the estimation of those who sail the ocean of divine Truth.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

Wisdom , God , Truth , Art

“The next monument visited was the great Jain temple built only a few years before by Shantidas Jhaveri, one of the wealthiest men of Gujarat in his day and high in favour both with Shah Jahan and after him with Aurangzeb. …In 1638, however, when Mandelslo visited the place, this temple which he calls ‘ the principal mosque of the Banyas ’ was in all its pristine splendour and ‘ without dispute one of the noblest structures that could be seen’. ‘It was then new,’ he adds, ‘ for the Founder, who was a rich Banya merchant, named Shantidas, was living in my time.
As Mandelslo’s description is the earliest account we have of this famous monument, which was desecrated only seven years after visit by the Orders of Aurangzeb, then viceroy of Gujarat (1645), we shall reproduce it at some length. It stood in the middle of a great court which was enclosed by a high wall of freestone. All about this wall on the inner side was a gallery, similar to the cloisters of the monasteries in Europe, with a large number of cells, in each of which was placed a statue in white or black marble. These figures no doubt represented the Jain Tirthankars, but Mandelslo may be forgiven when he speaks of each of them as ‘ representing a woman naked, sitting, and having her legs lying cross under her, according to the mode of the country. Some of the cells had three statues in them, namely, a large one between two smaller ones.’ At the entrance to the temple stood two elephants of black marble in life- size and on one of them was seated an effigy of the builder. The walls of the temple were adorned with figures of men and animals. At the further end of the building were the shrines consisting of three chapels divided from each other by wooden rails. In these were placed marble statues of the Tirthankars with a lighted lamp before that which stood in the central shrine. One of the priests attending the temple was busy receiving from the votaries flowers which were placed round the images, as also oil for the lamps that hung before the rails, and wheat and salt as a sacrifice. The priest had covered his mouth and nose with a piece of linen cloth so that the impurity of his breath should not profane the images.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Mandelslo’s Travels In Western India (a.d.1638-9) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531053 p. 23-25

Life , Men , Flowers , Lying

“Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”

John Podesta (1949) Former White House Chief of Staff

March 25, 2015 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/11500
Attributed, WikiLeaks - The Podesta Emails

Guy

“Rajneesh is a great leader and a good man who was never really understood in our own country. In India he was a philosophy professor whose real name was Mohan Chandra. Rajneesh was a nickname he acquired in his childhood. He began lecturing in 1957 at colleges and universities. In 1971, he changed his name to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.”

Ma Anand Sheela (1949) former chief assistant for the Indian mystic Rajneesh

1982 interview with FBI Agent Mike McPheters, quoted in — [Mike, McPheters, Agent Bishop, 145, 1599553171, 2009, Cedar Fort]

Universe , Change , Childhood , Country

“The collapse of European communist regimes will not entail disillusionment with the substance of socialism under other names until the latter is identified and linked to the catastrophic experience of the former. There is no reason to believe that this has occurred.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

“Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.”

Sinclair Lewis book It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here (1935)

Men , History , Sport , Light

“The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them so that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

World , Way

“The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science, or outside of it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses. First, in the engineering sense: Science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge – all information between human beings – can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance – and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it – the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

World , Religion , History , Literature

“Floating down a river named Emotion…will I make it back to shore, or drift into the unknown?”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Morning View (2001)

“General Grievous," a bad guy so sinister, his very name stands for PAIN AND SUFFERING. Nice job assholes… Why not just call all your characters "Evil" and "Bad" next time?”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Star Wars Episode III: a steaming pile of Sith http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=episode3
The Best Page in the Universe

Pain , Guy , Suffering , Evil

“Boy with the name and face I don't remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

'The Shout', from The Universal Home Doctor.

Boy

“An armed seizure of power by a highly organized minority party, whether in the name of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Glory of Rome, the Supremacy of the Nordics, or any other slogan that may be invented, and no matter how ingeniously integrated with the masses of the population, will normally lead to the totalitarian state. 'Totalitarian state' is merely the modern name for tyranny.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

Source: Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), p. 18

“"Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him.
"Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth. And the mastery of Man ever the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works.
"And how will this come to pass?" He paused and lowered his voice. "In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world."”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 20
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

Death , Men , Truth , Age

“The old man reminded Tito of those ghost-signs, fading high on the windowless sides of blackened buildings, spelling out the names of products made meaningless by time.
If Tito were to see one of those announcing the very latest, the most recent and terrible news, yet could know that it had always been there, fading, through every kind of weather, unnoticed until today, that might feel something like meeting the old man in Washington Square, beside the concrete chess tables, and carefully passing him an iPod, beneath a folded newspaper.…
Sensing an immense patience, and power, Tito imagined that this old man, for reasons of his own, disguised himself as a revenant from Lower Manhattan's past. Each time the old man received another iPod, accepting it the way an ancient and sagacious ape might accept a piece of some not particularly interesting fruit, Tito half-expected him to crack its virginal white case like a nut, and then to draw forth something utterly peculiar, utterly dire, and somehow terrible in its contemporaneity.”

William Gibson book Spook Country

Source: Spook Country‎ (2007), Ch. 2, Ants in the Water

Way , Feeling , Imagination , Sense

“I had a special project to do a campaign for a Philadelphia politician named Arlen Spector (sic). “When do I get to see Arlen Spector?” I asked. “You don’t.” Spector was a district attorney in Philadelphia, running for mayor. He wanted New York advertising but he had placed through a Philadelphia agency. I complained about not being able to see Arlen Spector. “Are you crazy?” his people said. “Nobody gets to meet Arlen Spector. We can’t even see him.” “All right,” I said, “what’s Arlen Spector for?” “Arlen Spector is for getting elected.” “All right,” I said, “what’s Arlen Spector against?” “Arlen Spector is against losing.””

Jerry Della Femina (1936) American advertising executive

I did the campaign, but Arlen Spector lost.
From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor (1970), chap. 13.

People

“Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires:
This fact, in virtue's name, let Crabbe attest,—
Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 839.

Truth , Nature

“We have named PROUN [the art, stepping over from painting to architecture] a station on the path to the construction of the new form... From being a simple depicter the artist becomes a creator (builder) of forms for a new world — the world of objectivity. This does not mean the creation of a rivalry with the engineer. Art has not yet crossed paths with science.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Theses on the 'PROUN': from painting to architecture' (1920)

World , Art , Science , Painting

“Chivalry!-why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection-the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant-Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 29, Ivanhoe explains to Rebecca the virtues of chivalry.

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion. And it has been proven as much of an illusion in Stalinist Russia as it proven an illusion in pre-Hitler Germany. Communism in anything but name was abandoned in Russia when the Five-Year Plan was substituted for the New Economic Policy (NEP) after Lenin’s death.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 246

Death , Communication

“Nietzsche asks how it has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that between the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in actually possessing the only true one and he finds the answer in the circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no former century has known, and to which (in 1873) he gave the name of “Culture-Philistines.””

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 8

Men

“Canada is sinking deeper and deeper into illiberalism--in the name of liberal values”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/957353757259509761 (27 January 2018)
2018

“"The language spoken by these early Macedonians has become a controversial issue in modern times. It seems not to have been so in antiquity. As we have seen, Hesiod made Magnes and Macedon first cousins of the Hellenes, and he therefore regarded them as speakers of a dialect (or dialects) of the Greek language. That he was correct in the case of the Magnetes has been proved by the discovery of early inscriptions in an Aeolic dialect in their area of eastern Thessaly. Then, late in the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, who visited the court of Macedonia, made the father of Macedon not Zeus but Aeolus, a thing which he could not have done unless he knew that the Macedonians were speaking an Aeolic dialect of Greek. A remarkable confirmation of their Greek speech comes from the Persians, who occupied Macedonia as part of their conquests in Europe c.510-480. […] Disagreements over this issue have developed for various reasons. In the second half of the fifth century Thucydides regarded the semi-nomadic, armed northerners of Epirus and western Macedonia as "barbarians", and he called them such in his history of events in 429 and 423. The word was understood by some scholars to mean "non-Greek-speakers" rather than "savages." They were shown to be mistaken in 1956, when inscriptions of 370-68, containing lists of Greek personal names and recording in the Greek language some acts of the Molossians, were found at Dodona in Epirus. This discovery proved beyond dispute that one of Thucydides "barbarian" tribes" of Epirus, the Molossians, was speaking Greek at the time of which he was writing. Demosthenes too called the Macedonians "barbarians" in the 340s. That this was merely a term of abuse has been proved recently by the discovery at Aegae (Vergina) of seventy-four Greek names and one Thracian name on funerary headstones inscribed in Greek letters.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"The Miracle That Was Macedonia", Palgrave Macmillan (September 1991)

History , Time , Parting , Personality

“War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

War , Idea

“Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.”

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

Forbearance http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/forebearance.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)

Love , Bird

“Accounting for the artificial boom and the consequent bust is not part of Keynesian income-expenditure analysis, nor is it an integral part of monetarist analysis. The absence of any significant relationship between boom and bust is an inevitable result of dealing with the investment sector in aggregate terms. The analytical oversight derives from theoretical formulation in Keynesian analysis and from empirical observation in monetarist analysis. But from an Austrian perspective, the differences in method and substance are outweighed by the common implication of Keynesianism and monetarism, namely, that there is no boom-bust cycle of any macroeconomic significance.”

Roger Garrison (1944) American economist

Pages 136–137.
"Is Milton Friedman a Keynesian?" (1992)

Parting

“My name is Steinar Steinsson, from Hlíðar in Steinahlíðar. I bid the king welcome to Iceland. We are of the same kin, according to the genealogy which Bjarni Guðmundsson of Fuglavík prepared for my grandfather. I am of Jutland origin, descended from King Harald Hilditönn, who fought the battle of Brávellir.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Steinar addressing King Kristian
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick,
Though he gave his name to our Old Nick.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 1313
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

“Cannon his name,
Cannon his voice, he came.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Napoléon, I (1898).

“Each year she taught him the names of the flowers in her language and in his, and from one year to the next he could not even remember the English. For nearly thirty years Sabbath had been exiled in these mountains, and still he could name hardly anything. They didn't have this stuff where he came from. All these things growing were beside the point there. He was from the shore. There was sand and ocean, horizon and sky, daytime and nighttime - the light, the dark, the tide, the stars, the boats, the sun, the mists, the gulls. There were the jetties, the piers, the boardwalk, the booming, silent, limitless sea. Where he grew up they had the Atlantic. You could touch with your toes where America began. They lived in a stucco bungalow two short streets from the edge of America. The house. The porch. The screens. The icebox. The tub. The linoleum. The broom. The pantry. The ants. The sofa. The radio. The garage. The outside shower with the slatted wooden floor Morty had built and the drain that always clogged. In summer, the salty sea breeze and the dazling light; in September, the hurricanes; in January, the storms. They had January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, December. And then January. And then again January, no end to the stockpile of Januaries, of Mays, of Marches. August, December, April - name a month, and they had it in spades. They'd had endlessness. He had grown up on endlessness and his mother - in the beginning they were the same thing. His mother, his mother, his mother, his mother, his mother… and then there was his mother, his father, Grandma, Morty, and the Atlantic at the end of the street. The ocean, the beach, the first two streets in America, then the house, and in the house a mother who never stopped whistlîg until December 1944. If Morty had come alive, if the endlessness had ended naturally instead of with the telegram, if after the war Morty had started doing electrical work and plumbing for people, had become a builder at the shore, gone into the construction business just as the boom in Monmouth County was beginning…Didn't matter. Take your pick. Get betrayed by the fantasy of endlessness or by the fact of finitude. No, Sabbath could only have wound up Sabbath, begging for what he was begging, bound to what he was bound, saying what he did not wish to stop himself from saying.”

Philip Roth book Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath's Theater (1995)

War , People , Mountain , Star

“Golovinski: Mr. Rachkovsky, a Zionist congress met last year. I can simply fabricate a manifesto!
Rachkovsky: Not good enough…and that will take too much time!
I have a solution!
Here is an old book by someone named Maurice Joly. It appeared here in France in 1864… and four years ago our journalist Decyon tried to use it to attack Russia’s financial system.
Golovinski: The “Dialogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquie”!
Jolly’s book attacks Napoleon III’s government! It can be read as a plan for tyranny!
Rachkovsky: Exactly.
All you have to do is 'change this into a testament that emanates from the Jewish leaders…eh, Golovinski?
Golovinski: Ah, yes. A Jewish conspiracy! Yes, yes.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.59

Books , Hell , Appearance , Change

“You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi.”

Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) American actor

Attributed without citation in Vivian Cook, " Can they spell your name in Karachi? British and American style spelling http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/KarachiAmBrit.htm"

Star

“When he saw Tiny, he was delighted, and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head, and placed it on hers, and asked her name, and if she would be his wife, and queen over all the flowers. This certainly was a very different sort of husband to the son of a toad, or the mole, with my black velvet and fur; so she said, "Yes," to the handsome prince. Then all the flowers opened, and out of each came a little lady or a tiny lord, all so pretty it was quite a pleasure to look at them. Each of them brought Tiny a present; but the best gift was a pair of beautiful wings, which had belonged to a large white fly and they fastened them to Tiny's shoulders, so that she might fly from flower to flower.”

Hans Christian Andersen Thumbelina

Thumbelina
Fairy Tales (1835)

Pleasure , Beauty , Flowers , Flying

“What's more important for me is the brand name Lucy Aharish. The Arab sector does not pay me a salary. My national identity is that of an Arab-Israeli. I identify with Palestinian suffering, but I am not part of it. I have a different suffering here: I am not getting the rights that accrue to me as a citizen of Israel – such as better mortgage terms – because I did not do army service.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Suffering , Parting

“What he had done, how he had chosen to spend his energies, really was science. A way of looking, reverencing. And the purpose of all science, like living, which amounts ot the same thing, was not the accumulations of Gnostic power, fixing of formulas for the names of God, stockpiling brutal efficiency, accomplishing the sadistic myth of progress. the purpose of science was to revive and cultivate a perpetual state of wonder. For nothing deserved wonder so much as our capacity to feel it.”

Richard Powers (1957) novelist

The Goldbug Variations, pg. 611

God , Way , Feeling , Science

“At that moment I railed against a God who could condemn such an innocent soul to Purgatory. What had Sedenko done that was not the result of his upbringing or his religion, which encouraged him to kill in the name of Christ? It came to me that perhaps God had become senile, that He had lost His memory and no longer remembered the purpose of placing Man on Earth. He had become petulant, He had become whimsical. He retained His power over us, but could no longer be appealed to. And where was His Son, who had been sent to redeem us? Was God’s Plan not so much mysterious as impossible for us to accept: because it was a malevolent one?”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 7 (pp. 85-86)

God , Religion , Soul , Memory

“To sow, that others may reap; to work and plant for those that are to occupy the earth when we are dead; to project our influences far into the future, and live beyond our time; to rule as the Kings of Thought, over men who are yet unborn; to bless with the glorious gifts of Truth and Light and Liberty those who will neither know the name of the giver, nor care in what grave his unregarded ashes repose, is the true office of a Mason and the proudest destiny of a man.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 317

Men , Truth , Light , Time

“God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Written prayer placed by the pope into the Western Wall in Jerusalem on 26 March 2000, during his apostolic journey to the Holy Land
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000326_jerusalem-prayer_en.html

God , Children , People , History

“Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.”

Thomas Browne book The Garden of Cyrus

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 4

Life , Death , God , Soul

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Men , Truth , Books , World

Quotes about naming page 16

Quotes about naming
page 16