Quotes about naming
page 23

“The total turtle count - two hundred and thirty species - doesn't seem like an irresistible horde compared to the several thousand mammals in today's global ecosystem. However, turtles have scored quite an impressive ecological triumph in one very important role, that of freshwater predator-omnivore… All through the Temperate Zone, otters delight the naturalist and the lay public. But how many other freshwater, semi-aquatic mammal predators can you name? Mink, of course. Relatives of otters on one hand, land weasels on the other, mink do hunt in streams. How many others? If you caught the excellent BBC series "Life on Earth", you saw footage of the swimming shrew, the Desman of the Pyrenees, a molelike furball that dives for aquatic worms and other freshwater small fry. Our own New England star-nosed mole goes hunting in water, using its starburst-shaped snout tip to feel out wriggling prey. Andean streams flowing through Preu are host to the fish-spearing mouse, Ichthyomys, that impales prey on its projecting front teeth. But if we go to a tropical lake or sluggish river, is it full of otters, mink, and paddling shrews? No, it is full of turtles.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 57
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Life, Feeling, Star, Fish

“For a long time, I didn't understand the idea of not being able to appeal to a human heart. And then Marianne Williamson (if I can dare drop her name)… we were doing a Q&A on stage, and there was a question about evil, and my quick, sort of spiritual response was (and I actually stand by it in some senses)… was that human beings are… maybe we're traumatised, maybe we're disconnected, and our behavior, ideally, would be separate from the truth of who we essentially are.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Alanis Morissette - Wake Up San Francisco with Adyashanti & Tami Simon - YouTube (28 March 2015; starts at 14:17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_ClddVgJs

Truth, Behavior, Idea, Understanding

“They [mathematicians] only take those things into consideration, of which they have clear and distinct ideas, designating them by proper, adequate, and invariable names, and premising only a few axioms which are most noted and certain to investigate their affections and draw conclusions from them, and agreeably laying down a very few hypotheses, such as are in the highest degree consonant with reason and not to be denied by anyone in his right mind. In like manner they assign generations or causes easy to be understood and readily admitted by all, they preserve a most accurate order, every proposition immediately following from what is supposed and proved before, and reject all things howsoever specious and probable which can not be inferred and deduced after the same manner.—Barrow, Isaac.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 66

Idea, Drawing

“I felt comparatively happy, but I can assure the reader that I had had a far worse time of it than I have told him; and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if he can; or, at any rate, in some country which has been explored and settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him. Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 4

Happiness, Nature, Time, Country

“There was only one cadet I ever really hated. Just one name I can think of,' The Boo said. 'That'll make an interesting story for the book, Colonel. Who is the jerk?' I asked. 'It was you, Conroy. Just you. There was something about you that I hated when you first walked into fourth battalion, you worthless bum.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Eulogy for "The Boo" (May 3, 2006)

Hate, Books, Jerk, Thinking

“As for the name Rehnquist, I am quite uncertain as to its origin. Under the Swedish patronymic system of naming, my grandfather and his brothers would have been named Anderson, since Anders was the name of their father. "Quist" in Swedish means branch, I am told. For example, "Lindquist" means lime branch or linden branch, and Palmquist means palm branch. The best I can come up with is that the "rehn" in my name refers to a small village near the farm on which my grandfather grew up.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

Address at a Swedish Colonial Society luncheon in Philadelphia (9 April 2001).
Books, articles, and speeches

“Praise be to God!, that he (the sultan) so ordered the massacre of all the chiefs of Hindustan out of the pale of Islam, by his infidel-smiting sword, that if in this time it should by chance happen that a schismatic should claim his right, the pure Sunnis would swear in the name of this Khalifa of God, that heterodoxy has no right.”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

Amir Khusrau, Khazain-ul-Futuh, trs., in E.D. vol. III, p. 77. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3
Khazainu’l-Futuh

God, Chance, Time

“Much brass has been sounded and many cymbals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton book The Man Nobody Knows

Source: The Man Nobody Knows (1924), Ch. 5 : His Advertisements

Men, People, Intelligence, Sincerity

“New Song rapidly accumulated a nucleus of talent, and its best-known group was Els Setze Jutges, The Sixteen Judges, whose odd-sounding name came from a phrase used as a password by Catalan patriot troops during the rising against and occupation army in 1640 during the Reapers' War: "Setze jutges d'un jutjat menjen fetge d'un penjat" ("Sixteen judges on a tribunal eat the liver of a hanged man"). No lisping Castilian, it was believed, could pronounce this barrage of fricatives.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Page 11
Barcelona (1992)

War

“Possibilities that fail to get realized are, for determinism, pure illusions: they never were possibilities at all. There is nothing inchoate, it says, about this universe of ours, all that was or is or shall be actual having been from eternity virtually there. The cloud of alternatives our minds escort this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of sheer deceptions, to which 'impossibilities' is the only name that rightfully belongs.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

The Dilemma of Determinism in "The Will to Believe" p. 151 http://books.google.com/books?id=Moqh7ktHaJEC&pg=PA151 1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Universe

“On account of his extensive charities, scholars from Irãq, Khorãsãn and Mawãraun-Nahar started presenting themselves in his court and Islãm was spread. He held in great regard Sayyid Muhammad who was a very great scholar of the time, and strived to destroy the idols and temples of the infidels. He got demolished the famous temple of Mahãdeva at Bahrãre. The temple was dug out from its foundations and the hole (that remained) reached the water level. Another temple at Jagdar was also demolished… Rãjã Alamãdat had got a big temple constructed at Sinpur. He had come to know from astrologers that after 11 hundred years a king by the name of Sikandar would get the temple destroyed and the idol of Utãrid, which was in it, broken. He got this [forecast] inscribed on a copper plate which was kept in a box and buried under the temple. The inscription came up when the temple was destroyed [by Sikandar]…“…The value of currency had come down, because Sultãn Sikandar had got idols of gold, silver and copper broken and turned into coins…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir (AD 1389-1413) Kashmir
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Water, Time, Box

“There is, I venture to think, no ground for the ordinarily accepted statement of the relation of philosophy to theology and religion. It is usually said that while^hilosophy is the creation of an individual mind, theology or religion is, like folk-lore and language, the product of the collective mind of a people or a race. This is to confuse philosophy with philosophies, a conmion and, it must be admitted, a not unnatural confusion. But while a philosophy is the creation of a Plato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, ^hilosophy itself is, like religion, folk-lore and language, a product of the collective mind of humanity. It is advanced, as these are, by individual additions, interpretations and syntheses, but it is none the less quite istinct from such individual contributions. philosophy is humanity's hold on Totality, and it becomes richer and more helpful as man's intellectual horizon widens, as his intellectual vision grows clearer, and as his insights become more numerous and more sure. Theology is philosophy of a particular type. It is an interpretation of Totality in terms of God and His activities. In the impressive words of Principal Caird, that philosophy which is theology seeks "to bind together objects and events in the links of necessary thought, and to find their last ground and reason in that which comprehends and transcends all— the nature of God Himself." Religion is the apprehension and the adoration of the Grod Whom theology postulates.
If the whole history of philosophy be searched for material with which to instruct the beginner in what philosophy really is and in its relation to theology and religion, the two periods or epochs that stand out above all others as useful for this purpose are Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, and that interpretation of the teachings of Christ by philosophy which gave rise, at the hands of the Church Fathers, to Christian theology. In the first period we see the simple, clear-cut steps by which the mind of Europe was led from explanations that were fairy-tales to a natural, well-analyzed, and increasingly profound interpretation of the observed phenomena of Nature. The process is so orderly and so easily grasped that it is an invaluable introduction to the study of philosophic thinking. In the second period we see philosophy, now enriched by the literally huge contributions of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, intertwining itself about the simple Christian tenets and building the great system of creeds and thought which has immortalized the names of Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Gregory, Jerome and Augustine, and which has given color and form to the intellectual life of Europe for nearly two thousand years. For the student of today both these developments have great practical value, and the astonishing neglect and ignorance of them both are most discreditable.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"

Life, God, People, Religion

“As to my body and burial, I do leave it to the disposition and discretion of my executor, hereafter named, but with this special charge, that it be done as privately as may be, without any state, acknowledging myself to be unworthy of the least outward regard in this world, and unworthy of any remembrance, that hath been so great a sinner, and I do further charge and desire that no monument be made for me, but at the utmost a plain stone with this inscription only — Vermis sum.”

William Lenthall (1591–1662) English politician, died 1662

I am a worm.
Last will, as quoted in History of Burford (1891) by William John Monk, p. 131.

World

“Not believing in something is not in itself a belief or a philosophy: it is the 'ism' at the end that tends to cause the trouble. Both atheists and believers can be as arrogant and witless as each other in frustrated debate, and people may choose strong and unapologetic words to raise awareness of the agenda. But despite the name-calling, it is still a fair point that to not believe in God is no more a 'belief in itself' than to not believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Poseidon or anything else one might personally consider far-fetched. Beyond that, there is only how you choose to express yourself.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

God, People, Strong, Personality

“Alexander Bain was probably the first modern thinker whose primary concern was with psychology itself He has been credited with writing the first 'comprehensive treatise having psychology as its sole purpose'. His two-volume systematic work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), was the standard British text for almost half a century, until Stout's replaced it. He also founded Mind (1876-), the first psychological journal in any country. His work requires close attention, because it is the meeting-point of experimental sensory-motor physiology and the association psychology. His influence on the conceptions of later workers was direct and extremely important. Ferrier studied classics and philosophy under Bain at Aberdeen (first class honours, 1863). When he and Jackson acknowledge their intellectual debts or make references to psychology, the names most often mentioned are Bain and Spencer-the figures whose work was the culmination of the association psychology in its traditional form.”

Robert Maxwell Young (1935–2019) American medical historian

Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101

Sense, Study, Country

“Fifty years from today, Americans will revere the name, 'Obama.' Because like his Canadian predecessors, he chose the tough responsibilities of national leadership over the meaningless nostrums of sterile partisanship that we see too much of in Canada and around the world.”

Brian Mulroney (1939) 18th Prime Minister of Canada

September 17,2009, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090917/Brian_Mulroney_090917/20090917?hub=TopStories|year=2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpUpmlgYjSw

World

“You call me Mr. Pitiful;
Baby that's my name now, oh.
They call me Mr. Pitiful;
That's how I got my fame.
But people just don`t understand, now
What makes a man feel so blue, now
Ooh, they call me Mr. Pitiful;
Cause I lost someone just like you, now.”

Otis Redding (1941–1967) American singer, songwriter and record producer

Mr. Pitiful, co-written with Steve Cropper.
Song lyrics, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (1965)

People, Feeling, Understanding, Baby

“Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

My Days Among the Dead Are Past, st. 4.

“They [great works of literature] are invalidated not because of their literary obsolescence. Some of these images pertain to contemporary literature and survive in its most advanced creations. What has been invalidated is their subversive force, their destructive content—their truth. In this transformation, they find their home in everyday living. The alien and alienating oeuvres of intellectual culture become familiar goods and services. Is their massive reproduction and consumption only a change in quantity, namely, growing appreciation and understanding, democratization of culture? The truth of literature and art has always been granted (if it was granted at all) as one of a “higher” order, which should not and indeed did not disturb the order of business. What has changed in the contemporary period is the difference between the two orders and their truths. The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction—the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which was repressed and repelled in reality.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 60-61

Truth, World, Hope, Art

“It is significant that nothing resembling Platonism arose in China. Classical Chinese script is not ideographic, as used to be thought; but because of what A. C. Graham terms its 'combination of graphic wealth with phonetic poverty' it did not encourage the kind of abstract thinking that produced Plato's philosophy. Plato was what historians of philosophy call a realist - he believed that abstract terms designated spiritual or intellectual entities. In contrast, throughout its long history, Chinese thought has been nominalist - it has understood that even the most abstract terms are only labels, names for the diversity of things in the world. As a result, Chinese thinkers have rarely mistaken ideas for facts. Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Wars have been fought and tyrannies established, cultures have been ravaged and peoples exterminated in the service of these abstractions. Europe owes much of its murderous history to errors of thinking engendered by the alphabet.”

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

The Deception: Plato and the alphabet (p. 57-8)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

War, People, World, Beauty

“They were not aware of the way of modesty, to distinguish between good and bad. Even though there had been put in man knowledge to be able to call the animals names, there had not been put in him the drive towards evil.”

Rashi (1040–1105) French rabbi and commentator

Commenting on Gen. 2:25; they were both naked and they were not ashamed.
Commentary on Genesis

Way, Knowledge, Evil, Animals

“Does the same as the system call of that name. If you don't know what it does, don't worry about it.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

In the perl man page regarding chroot(2).
Documentation

“I just can't understand why they carried on with the name. It did them no favours, and however it can be defended, it spoils the memory. It's not so much that it's unforgivable, but it is a pity that we don't see each other and never talk to each other.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Referring to Echo & the Bunnymen continuing after he left the band.
Q magazine (1992)

Understanding, Memory

“An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.
When a good sculptor models a torso, he not only represents the muscles, but the life which animates them — more than the life, the force that fashioned them and communicated to them, it may be, grace or strength, or amorous charm, or indomitable will.
In the works of Michael Angelo, the creative force seems to rumble; in those of Luca della Robbia it smiles divinely. So each sculptor, following his temperament, lends to nature a soul either terrible or gentle.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. Mystery in Art, p. 178

Life, Truth, Smile, Soul

“Government shouldn't be doing that to a private company. And I think you named it clearly: It's a slush fund.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Alan Stock Show
2010-07-07
GOP Candidate: BP Relief Program Is 'Slush Fund'
2010-07-08
Associated Press
http://politics.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/07/08/gop-candidate-bp-relief-program-is-slush-fund.html
on the BP escrow account to pay out oil spill claims, in response to caller

Thinking

“The Watchman falls "into" the trap of looking. The "spy" is a different person.... The spy must be ready to "move", must be aware of his entrances and exits. The watchman leaves his job & takes away no information. The spy must remember & must remember himself & his remembering. The spy designs himself to be overlooked. The watchman "serves" as a warning. Will the spy & the watchman ever meet? In a painting named SPY, will he be present? The spy stations himself to observe the watchman. If the spy is a foreign object, why is the eye not irritated? Is he invisible? When the spy irritates, we try to remove him. "Not spying, just looking"”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Watchman. Somewhere here, there is the question of "seeing clearly". Seeing what? According to what?
Book A (sketchbook), c 1965: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 60
1960s

Question, Painting, Personality

“It filled me with dread – she had a reputation for being difficult. She had been headlining on the Royal Command performance the night before we were due to start. She arrived and swept through reception looking like thunder and disappeared into the studio. I thought, ‘I’m the first here, I’d better go in and introduce myself’. I walked in and I said: ‘Morning Miss Bassey, my name is Martin Rushent and I’m going to be your new engineer and co-producer’. She threw a mic stand at me. She told me to get out. She apologised afterwards, I hasten to add.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

[Serck, Linda, Legendary producer Martin Rushent, 2009, http://www.getreading.co.uk/entertainment/music/s/2061462_legendary_producer_martin_rushent, Get Reading, 6 June 2011]

Night

“Our investment style has been given a name - focus investing - which implies ten holdings, not one hundred or four hundred. The idea that it is hard to find good investments, so concentrate in a few, seems to me to be an obvious idea. But 98% of the investment world does not think this way. It's been good for us.”

Charlie Munger (1924) American business magnate, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist

Poor Charlie's Almanack, p. 100

World, Way, Idea, Thinking

““What do you know about the activities of the brain and the nervous system?”
I laughed. “About as much as any hustler from the Budayeen who can barely read and write his name. I know that the brain is in the head, I’ve heard that it’s a bad idea to let some thug spill it on the sidewalk. Beyond that, I don’t know much.” I did, truthfully, know some more, but I always hold something in reserve. It’s a good policy to be a little quicker, a little stronger, and a little smarter than everybody thinks you are.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 12 (p. 160).

Idea, Thinking, Reading

“No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

1990s, 1991-94

People

“What glass unwinking gives our trust
Its image back, what echo names
The names we hurl at namelessness?”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

Love's Voice (c.1935–1939)

“But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act I, scene ii.
Manfred (1817)

“In the name of toleration, the believer is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the pervert, the criminal, and the adherents of other religions as though no differences existed.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 294

Religion

“I cannot see the word ‘troubled’ prefixing the name of some poor starlet who has been dragged through the mire of tabloid spite without vomiting directly onto the newspaper. Troubled by whom? Troubled by you, you fuckwits.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

“There was a time when religion was kept secret from popular belief within the mystery cults like a holy fire, sharing a common sanctuary with philosophy. The legends of antiquity name the earliest philosophers as the originators of these mystery cults, from which the most enlightened among the later philosophers, notably Plato, liked to educe their divine teachings. At that time philosophers still had the courage and the right to discuss the singly great themes, the only ones worthy of philosophizing and rising above common knowledge. P. 7”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

Philosophy and Religion 1804)

Secret, Education, Religion, Courage

“Silence brings us new names
new feelings and new knowledge.
Dreams dress us carefully
in the colors of power and faith.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street, p. 98).
Book Sources, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008)

Faith, Dreams, Color, Feeling

“In the midst of all this, there was Bernie Madoff. An embezzler named "made off." Hmm. Was the name not a clue? Did he have to be with the accounting firm of Dewey, Fuckyou, and Howe?”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

“The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name.”

George Gordon Byron The Giaour

Source: The Giaour (1813), Line 1099.

Love

“One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.”

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867) American writer

Marco Bozzaris.

“Since so little is known about the early Macedonians, it is hardly strange that in both ancient and modern times there has been much disagreement on their ethnic identity. The Greeks in general and Demosthenes in particular looked upon them as barbarians, that is, not Greek. Modern scholarship, after many generations of argument, now almost unanimously recognises them as Greeks, a branch of the Dorians and ‘NorthWest Greeks’ who, after long residence in the north Pindus region, migrated eastwards. The Macedonian language has not survived in any written text, but the names of individuals, places, gods, months, and the like suggest strongly that the language was a Greek dialect. Macedonian institutions, both secular and religious, had marked Hellenic characteristics and legends identify or link the people with the Dorians. During their sojourn in the Pindus complex and the long struggle to found a kingdom, however, the Macedonians fought and mingled constantly with Illyrians, Thracians, Paeonians, and probably various Greek tribes. Their language naturally acquired many Illyrian and Thracian loanwords, and some of their customs were surely influenced by their neighbours[…] To the civilised Greek of the fifth and fourth centuries, the Macedonian way of life must have seemed crude and primitive. This backwardness in culture was mainly the result of geographical factors. The Greeks, who had proceeded south in the second millennium, were affected by the many civilising influences of the Mediterranean world, and ultimately they developed that very civilising institution, the polis. The Macedonians, on the other hand, remained in the north and living for centuries in mountainous areas, fighting with Illyrians, Thracians, and amongst themselves as tribe fought tribe, developed a society that may be termed Homeric. The amenities of city-state life were unknown until they began to take root in Lower Macedonia from the end of the fifth century onwards.”

John V.A. Fine (1903–1987) American historian

"The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History", Harvard University Press, 1983, pgs 605-608

Life, God, People, World

“The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people, and we are the friends of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith. The United States of America is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion by committing murder in its name. This military action is a part of our campaign against terrorism, another front in a war that has already been joined through diplomacy, intelligence, the freezing of financial assets and the arrests of known terrorists by law enforcement agents in 38 countries.”

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

2000s, 2001, Invasion of Afghanistan (October 2001)

War, People, Faith, Religion

“Part of the unknown reality, then, is hidden beneath language and the enforced pattern of accustomed words-so, for an exercise, look about your environment. Make up new, different 'words' for the objects that you see about you. Pick up any object, for example. Hold it for a few seconds, feel its texture, look at its color, and spontaneously give it a new name by uttering the sounds that come into your mind. See how the sounds bring out certain aspects of the object that you may not have noticed before. The new word will fit as much as the old one did. It may, in fact, fit better. Do this with many objects, following the same procedure. You can instead say the name of any object backwards. In such ways you break up to some extent the automatic patterning of familiar phrases, so that you can perceive the individuality that is within each object.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 726, p. 460
The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979)

Color, Way, Feeling, Exercises

“If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 33
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Country

“Since it cannot be overlooked by the Doctrine of Knowledge that Actual Knowledge does by no means present itself as a Unity, such as is assumed above but as a multiplicity, there is consequently a second task imposed upon it, — that of setting forth the ground of this apparent Multiplicity. It is of course understood that this ground is not to be derived from any outward source, but must be shown to be contained in the essential Nature of Knowledge itself as such; — and that therefore this problem, although apparently two-fold, is yet but one and the same, — namely, to set forth the essential Nature of Knowledge.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

II.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)

Nature, Knowledge, Problem

“For you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary ‘obviousness’ (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc.). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the ‘transparency’ of language), the ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 116

Problem, Appearance

“The Russian Armies and all the peoples of the Russian Republic have rallied to the defence of their hearths and homes. … The aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered. For the first time in his experience mass murder has become unprofitable. He retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands—literally scores of thousands—of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler's tanks. We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (24 August 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1173
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People, Home, Time

“After thirteen hours we arrived at Bangkok airport and I raced for the smoking room. Smoking room was a big name for a small Perspex cubicle that was opaque from the outside because of the grey pressure of the fumes within. I opened the door, saw all the other smokers sitting there face to face in two tight rows, and I realised that I would have to smoke in the standing position. Then I realised I didn’t have to light up. All I had to do was breathe in. It was the moment of truth.”

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

'Smoking the Memory', on giving up smoking
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

Truth, Light

“The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now!”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

As "Navin R. Johnson" in The Jerk (1979)

Books

“Today, our country has ushered into an era of technological advancements, when current achievements oblige us to mobilize all our forces and work with a maximum effectiveness and goal-orientation. Therefore, our goal is a single one, namely: to rally around our values, to be proud of our achievements and to be confident with the future. This is the way in which Armenia can move ahead. Armenia should improve more than the previous day. All of us should constantly remember this. All of us should remember the logic of a better Armenia, a safer Armenia, a prosperous Armenia, and a powerful Armenia… Let there be an atmosphere of kindness and tolerance throughout all our undertakings. I am thankful…and onward to a new Armenia, onward to a prosperous Armenia.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

Government of the Republic of Armenia http://www.gov.am/old/enversion/premier_2/primer_home_S.Sargsyan.htm?mat=2341 (December 20, 2007)

Way, Confidence, Future, Country

“When I was in my prime, I was an egomaniac and didn’t allow my wife to buy the best sardines–the King Oscars–which bear my name. I felt there should be only one king in my house.”

Oscar Levant book The Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)

Housing

“Amongst the half-human progenitors of man, and amongst savages, there have been struggles between the males during many generations for the possession of the females. But mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory, unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy. With social animals, the young males have to pass through many a contest before they win a female, and the older males have to retain their females by renewed battles. They have, also, in the case of mankind, to defend their females, as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds, and to hunt for their joint subsistence. But to avoid enemies or to attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination. These various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test and selected during manhood; they will, moreover, have been strengthened by use during this same period of life. Consequently, in accordance with the principle often alluded to, we might expect that they would at least tend to be transmitted chiefly to the male offspring at the corresponding period of manhood.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

second edition (1874), chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", page 564 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=587&itemID=F944&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Life, Imagination, Fashion, Courage

“In a way, your law school becomes part of your extended family. I say this because once you graduate with your Juris Doctor degree you are essentially married to that particular institution. No matter what your experience or opinion of the place, your alma mater is a name you cannot escape. The individuals that attend law school with you will be your life-long partners as you progress from a common starting point. Understanding the basic principles of professional networking, and utilizing the knowledge while on your law school campus, will reap a lifetime of rewards and provide you with many genuinely enhancing relationships.”

Don West, Jr.

in [Ann K. Levine, Esq., The Law School Admission Game: Play Like An Expert http://www.lawschoolexpertbook.com/, Abraham Publishing, Inc, 2009, 978-0-615-27183-5, 148-149]

Life, School, Family, Law

“By the way, _____ was a name I used to dance under.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

citation needed
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), "By the way…" variations

Way, Dance

“My name is Odd Thomas, though in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas (2003), Chapter 1; Odd Thomas's introduction

People, Age

“…this is not the only time that I have stuck out my neck for a Greek film director. With Nikos Nikolaides I introduced him to Mr Constantini as well, and undertook to send his XXX-rated movie "Singapore Sling" to two of the top film agents in the UK, Jenny Cassarotto and PDF who have now changed their name on account of a merger. Ms Cassarotto was indulgent, but the other agent was so shocked that he treated me as if I was peddling porn. The things I've done for Greece!”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On helping Greek film directors find funding
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Change, Time

“The philosophy of the soul of my people appears to me as an expression of an inward tragedy analogous to the tragedy of the soul of Don Quixote, as the expression of conflict between what the world is as scientific reason shows it to be and what we wish that it might be, as our religious faith affirms it to be. And in this philosophy is to be found the explanation of what is usually said about us — namely, that we are fundamentally irreducible to Kultur — or in other words, that we refuse to submit to it. No, Don Quixote does not resign himself either to the world, or to science or logic, or to art or esthetics, or to morality or ethics.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

People, World, Faith, Art

“The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. We'd sit backstage and talk about names we'd never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, "If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when you're unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart." It was like "Ha-ha-ha-ha—Whoopi!" So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, "You won't be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

Playboy interview, Playboy magazine, June 1988

Children, People, Christmas

“The tradition in Hinduism is that it is not open to any Hindu, whatever be the name and mental image of the Supreme Being he uses for his devotional exercises, to deny the existence of God that others worship. He can raise the name of his choice to that of the highest, but he can not deny the divinity or the truth of the God of other denominations. The fervor of his own piety just gives predominance to the name and form he gives for his own worship and contemplation, and he treats the other gods as deriving the divinity therefrom. This reduces all controversy to a devotional technique of concentration on a peculiar name and mental form or concrete symbol as representing the supreme being. It makes no difference in the contents of Vedanta to which all devotees equally subscribe… ‘just as all water raining from the skies goes to the ocean, worship of all gods go to Keshava.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

C. Rajagopalachari (1900) Hinduism, doctrine and way of life https://archive.org/stream/cu31924091600688#page/n37/mode/2up, p. 31; As quoted in [Rao, K.L. Seshagiri, Mahatma Gandhi And Comparative Religion, http://books.google.com/books?id=HSGWZ9mpNl4C&pg=PA110, 1 January 1990, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 978-81-208-0767-9, 110–]

God, Truth, Exercises, Water

“Man’s tragic apostasy from God is not something which happened once for all, a long time ago. It is true in every moment of existence.... It involves no scientific description of absolute beginnings. Eden is on no map, and Adam’s fall fits no historical calendar. Moses is not nearer to the Fall than we are, because he lived three thousand years before our time. The Fall refers not to some datable, aboriginal calamity in the historical past of humanity, but to a dimension of human experience which is always present—namely, that we who have been created for fellowship with God repudiate it continually; and that the whole of mankind does this along with us. Every man is his own ‘Adam,’ and all men are solidarily ‘Adam.’ Thus, Paradise before the Fall, the status perfectionis, is not a period of history, but our ‘memory’ of a divinely intended quality of life, given to us along with our consciousness of guilt.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.237 (John S. Whale: Christian Doctrine. 1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 52)

Life, Men, God, History

“My brothers,
They never went blind for what they did, but I may as well have.
In the name of the Father, the Skeptic and the Son,
I had one more stupid question.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Forgiven
Jagged Little Pill (1995)

Stupidity, Question

“Dharma is the repository of the nation’s soul. If Dharma is destroyed, the Nation perishes. Any one who abandons Dharma, betrays the nation…… Since Dharma is supreme, our ideal of the State has been Dharma Rajya…… What constitutes the good of the people, Dharma alone can decide. Therefore a democratic government Jana Rajya must also be rooted in Dharma i. e. a Dharma Rajya… Since in the West injustice and atrocities were perpetrated, bitter conflicts and battles were fought in the name of religion, all these were en bloc listed on the debit side of Dharma also. We feel that in the name of Dharma also battles were fought. However battles of religion and battles of Dharma are two different things. Religion means a creed or a sect, it does not mean Dharma. Dharma is very wide concept. It is concerned with all aspects of life. It sustains the society. Even further, it sustains the whole world. That which sustains is Dharma.”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Life, People, World, Religion

“Just as the Congress party did not plan the riots, but certain individuals belonging to the party have been accused of them, I have come to know that certain people belonging to the RSS were also named in some FIRs.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, as quoted in "Manmohan says he was misquoted on RSS role in '84 riots" http://www.rediff.com/election/1999/sep/04man.htm, Rediff (4 September 1999) 1991-2000

People

“Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause — and of obstinacy in a bad one.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 17.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Perseverance

“Now look at the ideology of American supremacy. It has a solid foundation in reality; namely, the United States is the dominant power in the world. The current government believes the United States ought to use this dominant position to impose its will on the world. That is the misconception. This approach is not what made America great. America did not arrive at its dominant position by imposing its will on the world.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

BuzzFlash interview (2004)

World, Reality

“Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut – at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus – and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it.”

David Lodge book Changing Places

Changing Places ([1975] 1978), ch. 1, p. 16. ISBN 0140046569

Happiness, Education, Time

“When closed societies collapse but fail to make the transition to openness the reason need not be that they languish in anarchy or suffer a return to dictatorship. It may be that they adopt an illiberal form of democracy. Along with the liberal democratic tradition that goes back to Locke and the English civil war there is a tradition, originating in the French Revolution and formulated theoretically by Rousseau, which understands democracy as the expression of popular will. The elective theocracy that is emerging in much of post-Saddam Iraq is a democratic polity in the latter sense, as is the current regime in Iran; so is the Hamas government in Palestine… To be sure, these regimes often lack freedom of information and expression and legal limitations on government power, which are essential features of democracy in the liberal tradition. In these respects they are closed societies, but they are not dictatorships. It is often forgotten that democracy, defined chiefly by elections and the exercise of power in the name of the majority, can be as repressive of individual freedom and minority rights as dictatorship - sometimes more so.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'George Soros and the Open Society' (p.116-7)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

War, Exercises, Democracy, Understanding

“And the boy was right in back of her, his neck thin as a pencil. "My name is Thomas," he said. "Thomas Neary."
She didn't answer.
"The horse's name is Alfred, in case you want to know." He screwed up his face. "Or maybe Fernando."”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 1-10, p. 21-22

Boy, Horse

“But a class of structures fraught with much greater evils exist in great abundance throughout the country—namely, those in which the faults of an unscientific design have been so far counteracted by massive strength, good materials, and careful workmanship, that a temporary stability has been produced, but which contain within themselves sources of weakness, obvious to a scientific examination… that must inevitably cause their destruction within a limited number of years.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Evil, Country

“Even as the light that shifts and plays upon a lake, when Cynthia looks forth from heaven or the bright wheel of Phoebus in mid course passes by, so doth he shed a gleam upon the waters; he heeds not the shadow of the Nymph or her hair or the sound of her as she rises to embrace him. Greedily casting her arms about him, as he calls, alack! too late for help and utters the name of his mighty friend, she draws him down; for her strength is aided by his falling weight.”
Stagna vaga sic luce micant ubi Cynthia caelo prospicit aut medii transit rota candida Phoebi, tale iubar diffundit aquis: nil umbra comaeque turbavitque sonus surgentis ad oscula nymphae. illa avidas iniecta manus heu sera cientem auxilia et magni referentem nomen amici detrahit, adiutae prono nam pondere vires.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book III, Lines 558–564

Light, Water, Help, Drawing

“Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2015, The religion of Islam must reform (December 9, 2015)

God, People

“I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

(1773), translated by Albert Schweizer in Goethe: Five Studies http://archive.is/tOo5z (1961), Beacon Press, p. 53

Love, Happiness, Faith, Christ

“The blackest Ink of Fate, sure, was my Lot,
And, when she writ my Name, she made a blot.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Pretty-man, Act III, sc. iv
The Rehearsal (1671)

Fate

“The difficult decisions first began in December 1964, when I refused to join a Progress Labor Party group preparing to go ‘underground.’ They ended with the most difficult choice—to leave the movement silently, quietly, as so many other had done before, or to risk the censure of those who had once been my friends and tell of the personal experience, political truths, and illegal activities that forced me to ‘split.’ The friends who were no longer friendly, the attempts at personal slander, the chorus that now sang out my name as the most dangerous enemy of all, the attempts to isolate me—all were expected. But the contemptuous and defamatory quality of the attacks were not, and the only thing one can say is that the Old and New Left have this something in common—they have no scruples when it comes to one who sways from their prescribed faith.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 3

Truth, Faith, Decision, Personality

“For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation surrounded by superior forces dares to counter the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury by revolutionary passion, the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge. For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person — Lajos Kossuth.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

The Magyar Struggle http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm in ' (13 January 1849).

People, Passion, Time, Personality

“Afterwards Nadir Shah himself, with the Emperor of Hindustan, entered the fort of Delhi. It is said that he appointed a place on one side in the fort for the residence of Muhammad Shah and his dependents, and on the other side he chose the Diwan-i Khas, or, as some say, the Garden of Hayat Bakhsh, for his own accommodation. He sent to the Emperor of Hindustan, as to a prisoner, some food and wine from his own table. One Friday his own name was read in the khutba, but on the next he ordered Muhammad Shah's name to be read. It is related that one day a rumour spread in the city that Nadir Shah had been slain in the fort. This produced a general confusion, and the people of the city destroyed five thousand1 men of his camp. On hearing of this, Nadir Shah came of the fort, sat in the golden masjid which was built by Rashanu-d daula, and gave orders for a general massacre. For nine hours an indiscriminate slaughter of all and of every degree was committed. It is said that the number of those who were slain amounted to one hundred thousand. The losses and calamities of the people of Delhi were exceedingly great….
After this violence and cruelty, Nadir Shah collected immense riches, which he began to send to his country laden on elephants and camels.”

Nader Shah (1688–1747) ruled as Shah of Iran

Tarikh-i Hindi by Rustam ‘Ali. In The History of India as Told by its own Historians. The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot. John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 37-67. https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_tarikh-i5_frameset.htm

Men, People, Food, Wine

“Hardly is there anywhere in the United States a church possessing originality which has been built after 1840. The houses of God are usually misplaced gothic or romanesque imitations squeezed in between dismal railway stations or surging skyscrapers. It is even more shocking to see the abortive efforts of town planning, or the utopian habit of naming streets after mere numbers or letters. A cultured man cannot possibly live in room 6489 on the sixty-fourth floor of a house on the corner of 109th Street and 10th Avenue. This may be fitting for one of the unfortunate creatures in Huxley's Brave New World but not for man created in the image of God.”

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

Pgs 268-269
The Menace of the Herd (1943)

God, World, Effort, Housing

“Prostitution/trafficking/pornography systematically discriminate against women, against the young, against the poor and against ethnically subordinated groups. Specific acts commonly perpetrated against women in prostitution and pornography are the same as the acts defining what torture is: verbal sexual harassment, forced nudity, rape, sexual mocking, physical sexual harassment such as groping, and not permitting basic hygiene. The psychological consequences of these acts are the same whether it is named state-sponsored torture or prostitution.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia (2006)

Women

“Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Westminster Abbey".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

History

“Yet spirit immortal, the tomb can not bind thee,
But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle,
No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o’er the plain:
Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,
No sound can awake thee to glory again.”

Lyman Heath (1804–1870) American musician

The Grave of Bonaparte, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) (incorrectly attributed as "Leonard" Heath).

War, Sleep, Sun

“So how are you going to recognise God if He comes on earth? Are you going to ask to see His identity card or passport? See if it says, 'Name … God; Occupation … Generator, Operator, Destroyer'? That's foolish! Or are you going to recognise Him only if He fits your mental picture of Him -- what you have picked up from scriptures and other impressions, what you imagine Jesus or Krishna looked like? But even two Christians will have different impressions of what Jesus will look like. So what will be recognised by one will not be recognised by the other. But the test of the Perfect Master is that which is undeniable to everybody and that is the experience of Himself, which He can give, and that is the True Knowledge.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

from "The Sayings of Guru Maharaj Ji" - Published by Shri Hans Publications, 148-150 Lordship Lane, London SE22, Copyright Divine Light Mission 1974.
1970s

God, Imagination, Knowledge, Perfection

“The sound rule in business is that you may give money freely when you have a surplus, but your name never—neither as endorser nor as member of a corporation with individual liability”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, 1920, Chapter XVI

Money

“In one respect, however, I agree that monetarism was wrong, namely, to the extent that it failed to recognize the need to allow inflation to occur to the extent that it was solely due to falling output or productivity—a case I have argued, along with the symmetrical one for letting prices fall as productivity improves, in my IEA pamphlet Less Than Zero.”

George Selgin (1957) economist

In Defense of Monetarism (2008)

“A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Bk. II, Ch. 7
Elective Affinities (1809)

Feeling, Nature, Teachers, Memory

“Just name me one honest man and I'll move.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 5'
Valmiki To Narada
Ramayana

“the reality beyond language is not completely reality, a reality that does not speak or say is not reality;
and the moment I say that, the moment I write, letter by letter, that a reality stripped of names is not reality, the names evaporate, they are air, they are a sound encased in another sound and in another and another, a murmur, a faint cascade of meanings that fade away to nothingness:
the tree that I say is not the tree that I see, tree does not say tree, the tree is beyond its name, a leafy, woody reality: impenetrable, untouchable, a reality beyond signs, immersed in itself, firmly planted in its own reality: I can touch it but I cannot name it, I can set fire to it but if I name it I dissolve it:
the tree that is there among the trees is not the tree that I name but a reality that is beyond names, beyond the word reality, it is simply reality just as it is, the abolition of differences and also the abolition of similarities;
the tree that I name is not the tree, and the other one, the one that I do not name and that is there, on the other side of my window, its trunk now black and its foliage still inflamed by the setting sun, is not the tree either, but, rather, the inaccessible reality in which it is planted:
between the one and the other there appears the single tree of sensation which is the perception of the sensation of tree that is vanishing, but
who perceives, who senses, who vanishes as sensations and perceptions vanish?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Reality, Sense, Tree, Appearance

“All this (the early excitement of Cybernetics) is now history, and in the decade which elapsed since these early baby steps of interdisciplinary communication, many more threads were picked up and interwoven into a remarkable tapestry of knowledge and endeavour: Bionics. It is good omen that at the right time the right name was found. For, bionics extends a great invitation to all who are willing not to stop at the investigation of a particular function or its realization, but to go on and to seek the universal signiﬁcance of these functions in living or artiﬁcial organisms.
The reader who goes through the following papers which constitute the transactions of the ﬁrst symposium held under the name Bionics will be surprised by the multitude of astonishing and unforeseen connections between concepts he believed to be familiar with. For instance, a couple of years ago, who would have thought to relate the reliability problem to multi-valued logics; or, who would have thought that integral or differential geometry would serve as an adequate tool in the theory of abstraction? It is hard to say in all these cases who was teaching whom: The life-sciences the engineering sciences, or vice versa? And rightly so, for it guarantees optimal information ﬂow, and everybody gains…”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Von Foerster (1960) as cited in Peter M. Asaro (2007). "Heinz von Foerster and the Bio-Computing Movements of the 1960s," http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20HVF%26BCL.pdf 1960s

Life, History, Communication, Optimism

“Amen', … in Hebrew, is one of a cluster from a root which signifies reliability, integrity and truth. … Our utterance of it is acknowledgment of God's 'Amen', which always goes before. The recognition of God's integrity and truthfulness, unswerving faithfulness in execution of his promises, is so central to Judaism's faith that 'Amen' may almost be taken as a name for God. We might miss this when we read, in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, that 'he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth', but the Hebrew here, if rendered literally, would be 'by the God Amen.”

Nicholas Lash (1934) British theologian

Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostles' Creed (1992)

God, Truth, Faith, Reading

“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Speaker (15 December 1900)

Indifference

“I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something--a sculptor he would have been, no doubt--who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Life, School, Girl, Learning

“I believe in all-wise-and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individuals highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) American financier and philanthropist

I Believe

Love, God, Happiness

“In short, Muhammad Bakhtiyar assumed the canopy, and had prayers read, and coin struck in his own name and founded mosques and Khãnkahs and colleges, in place of the temples of the heathens.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

About Ikhtiyãru’d-Dîn Muhammad Bakhtiyãr Khaljî (AD 1202-1206) Bengal The Tabqãt-i-Akbarî translated by B. De, Calcutta, 1973, Vol. I, p. 51
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Reading

“From all who dwell below the skies
Let the Creator's praise arise;
Let the Redeemer's name be sung
Through every land, by every tongue.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Psalm 117.
1710s, "Our God, our help in ages past" (1719)

“"When challenged, Wilt could do almost anything he wanted. In 1961 a new star named Walt Bellamy came into the league. Bellamy was 6-foot-11, and was scoring 30 points a game. First time they played against each other, they met at half court. Bellamy said, 'Hello, Mr. Chamberlain. I'm Walter Bellamy.' Chamberlain reached for Bellamy's hand and said, "Hello, Walter. You won't get a shot off in the first half." Wilt then blocked Bellamy's first nine shots. At the start of the second half Wilt said to Bellamy, 'Okay, Walter. Now you can play.'"”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=9389 Blocking

Game, Star, Time

“Therefore, it is you, the giver of life and being, who seem to be sought in the different rites by different ways and are named with different names, because as you are you remain unknown and ineffable to all. For you who are infinite power are none of those things which you have created, nor can a creature grasp the concept of your infinity since there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite. But you, almighty God, who are invisible to every mind, are able to show yourself as visible to whom you will and in the way in which you can be grasped. Therefore, do not hide yourself any longer, O Lord; be merciful and show your face, and all peoples will be saved who are no longer able to forsake the source of life and its sweetness when they have had even a little foretaste of them. For no one withdraws from you unless he does not know you.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Life, God, People, Way

“Montaigne speaks of an “Abecedarian” ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it. The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their A-B-C’s, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, “bookful blockheads, ignorantly read.” There have always been literate ignoramuses, who have read too widely, and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all “sophomores.””

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 11

Books, Age, Knowledge, Learning

“If blasted hopes and ruin'd name,
And all the venom Love lends Shame —
The violent death, and rabble eye,
To look upon its agony;
If these are not enough to win
A pardon for Earth's deadliest sin,
Words will not, cannot! — never dare
Tell me it may be won by prayer!
The coward prayer, the coward tear,
Not from remorse wrung, but from fear!”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Death, Fear, Hope

“I definitely worry about that. I think about it all the time because that's the way Hollywood thinks. It's all about momentum and keeping your name out there, and college certainly takes you away from that. But, if I look at it in the longer term, it's so worthwhile.”

Julia Stiles (1981) American actress

On the fear that taking a career break to attend Columbia University will stall her career,
London Times, March 29, 2001

Way, Thinking, Time

“We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis? For subsidising the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? They [Arabs] should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States. What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors?”

Robert Kilroy-Silk (1942) British politician

Sunday Express, 4 January 2004 ( full text of the column http://www.caabu.org/campaigns/kilroy-article.html) This column resulted in Kilroy-Silk's dismissal from the BBC.

Women, God, People, Way

“All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Men, Fraud, Parting

“It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us time and again down through history. Let us rise to the call for freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

First Inaugural Speech as Governor of Alabama, (January 1963)
1960s

Love, People, History, Freedom

Quotes about naming page 23

Quotes about naming
page 23