Quotes about naming
page 35

“I can understand deposing the Queen from the throne perfectly well. I can understand an attempt made on the life of the Queen perfectly well, or expelling her from her dominions but I do not, for the life of me, know what it is to depose her ‘from the style, honour, or royal name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom.”

Robert Holmes (1765–1859) Irish writer

Speech (1848-05-20) in the case of John Mitchel, Young Irelander and one of the Irish Confederation Leaders. Mitchel was later sentenced to fourteen years transportation.

Life, Understanding

“It is time for those who love liberal democracy to join hands with Islam's reformists. Here is a clue to who's who: Moderate Muslims denounce violence committed in the name of Islam but insist that religion has nothing to do with it; reformist Muslims, by contrast, not only deplore Islamist violence but admit that our religion is used to incite it.”

Irshad Manji (1968) Feminist from Canada, author, journalist, activist

Irshad Manji: Islam Needs Reformists, Not 'Moderates' http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703992704576305412360432744 The Wall Street Journal (7 May 2011)

Love, Religion, Democracy, Time

“And there lies my dilemma here tonight. I know that my work in this case is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels. We know their names. They number a thousand for each one of the red ribbons that we wear here tonight. They finally rest in the warm embrace of the gracious creator of us all. A healing embrace that cools their fevers, that clears their skin, and allows their eyes to see the simple, self-evident, common sense truth that is made manifest by the benevolent creator of us all and was written down on paper by wise men, tolerant men, in the city of Philadelphia two hundred years ago. God bless you all. God have mercy on us all. And God bless America.”

Tom Hanks (1956) American actor

66th Academy Award Speech (1994)

Men, God, Truth, Angels

“I vowed to myself if I ever go to one of these award shows I'm gonna wear some kind of a bird. So I went to the Grammys last years I had a dress made out of peacock feathers. And I didn't win a Grammy, was named worst dressed. And that's impressive, because if you win a Grammy you had to just beat out what, three, four people? But if you're worst dressed you beat fifteen thousand people! I beat Mary J. Blige! I beat Lil' Kim!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Assassin CD

People, Bird

“When supper time came the old cook came on deck saying "Fellas its too rough to feed ya"
When at 7:00 pm the main hatch way caved in he said "Fellas its been good to know ya"
The captain wired in, he had water coming in and the big ship and crew was in peril
When latter that night when her lights went outta sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?…
And all that remains is the faces and names of the wives and the sons and the daughters…”

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Track 2, Reprise Get the kleenex now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw Summertime Dream (1976)

Love, God, Way, Light

“Racism is evil -- and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America. As a candidate I promised to restore law and order to our country and our federal law enforcement agencies are following through on that pledge. We will spare no resource in fighting so that every American child can grow up free from violence and fear. We will defend and protect the sacred rights of all Americans and we will work together so that every citizen in this blessed land is free to follow their dreams, in their hearts, and to express the love and joy in our souls.”

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

Subsequent statement regarding the violence at a far-right Charlottesville, VA rally held on August 11-12, 2017; Trump calls KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists 'repugnant' http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/trump-condemns-charlottesville-attackers/index.html (14 August 2017) 2010s, 2017, August

Love, Hate, Fear, Law

“I will not live in the same rooms as the Borgias lived. He [Pope Alexander VI] desecrated the Holy Church as none before. He usurped the papal power by the devil's aid, and I forbid under the pain of excommunication anyone to speak or think of Borgia again. His name and memory must be forgotten. It must be crossed out of every document ad memorial. His reign must be obliterated. All paintings made of the Borgias or for them must be covered over with black crepe. All the tombs of the Borgias must be opened and their bodies sent back to where they belong — to Spain.”

Pope Julius II (1443–1513) pope from 1503 to 1513

As quoted in Sex Lives of the Popes (1996) by Nigel Cawthorne, p. 219

Pain, Thinking, Memory, Painting

“Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences, human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” p. 3
Do What You Will (1928)

Men, God, World

“Press on! there's no such word as fail!
Press nobly on! the goal is near,—
Ascend the mountain! breast the gale!
Look upward, onward,—never fear!
Why shouldst thou faint? Heaven smiles above,
Though storm and vapor intervene;
That sun shines on, whose name is Love,
Serenely o'er Life's shadow'd scene.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Press On.

Love, Life, Fear, Smile

“Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.”

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

Between Going and Staying

Love, Books, World, Light

“That explains why it is the seer and not the scholar who has all along dominated the scene in Sanãtana Dharma. That explains why it is the saint and not the pandit who has always sat at the centre of Hindu society. That explains why it is the mystic and not the man of letters who has ruled the roost in Hindu culture. The most honoured names in Hindu history, above even those of the heroes, are the names of seers, sages, saints, and mystics - Vyasa, Valmiki, Yajnavalkya, the Buddha, Bhagvan Mahavira, Shankara, Ramanuja, Gorakhnath, Kabir, Nanak, Tulsidas, Mira, Ramakrishna, Raman - to mention only the most notable in a galaxy of great names.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

History

“Government by inquisition has never been good. However, since January 1979, our country has been under the yoke of inquisitorial power. Five centuries after the Spanish Inquisition, Iran is living under the terror of a new Torquemada who is more pitiless and more sinister than its predecessor. In fact the Inquisition tribunals did not sentence men to be executed unless they were known to be heretics. They had the opportunity to recant and to repent; and they would call witnesses, which the Iranian Torquemada does not allow.
The tribunals are said to be Islamic. But the truth cannot be overlooked, and genuine Islamic law insists on the right of an accused man to defend himself. Islam is never served by hatred, vengeance and murder, but by justice, goodness, forgiveness and high moral standards. This explosion of hatred, supposedly "in the name of God", is an insult to God and to our religion. And this insult, I repeat, unfortunately threatens to do great harm to Islam, just as the Inquisition did great harm to Catholicism.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 209
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

Men, God, Truth, Religion

“I say I can't thank you too much for the name 'Nocturne' as a title for my moonlights! You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics and consequent pleasure to me — besides it is really so charming and does so poetically say all that I want to say and no more than I wish.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Anderson and Koval, p. 186; as quoted on the English Wikipedia
posthumous published

Pleasure, Idea

“When Luther stood before the emperor and the representatives of church and state, he begged to be refuted, and if he were refuted, he promised to keep silence; but as he was not, he continued to preach and he preached boldly in the name of truth as one that had authority. Therefore let religious progress be made as in the era of the Reformation, not in complaisance to popular opinion, but squarely in the name of truth.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

Homilies of Science p. 31
Homilies of Science 1892

Truth, Silence

“From the water-fall he named her,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Song of Hiawatha

Pt. IV, Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis, st. 33.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Water

“The tragic situation of the modern liberalised Christian mind is just that. Having accepted with fervour the moral ideal as the Divine ideal, it still remains in bondage to the old mechanical conception of the great Divine operations called Regeneration and Creation. These it still thinks, at bottom, under the category of efficient causality. It takes their names literally, in accordance with the etymology, and thus the names themselves help the evil cause of prolonging conceptions that are hostile to the dearest insights of the moral spirit quickened in the school of Christ. Eminently is this true in the case of creation, into the current conception of which, so far as I can see, there as yet enters no gleam of the change that must be made if our relations to God in the basis of existence are to be stated consistently with the independence we must have of him in the moral world. This lack of a moral apprehension of creation is as characteristic, too, of historic philosophy as it is of historic theology, or even of ordinary opinion.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.342-3

God, Hostility, World, School

“The light through the stained glass was cobalt and red.
And the frayed cuffs and collars were mended by halos of golden thread.
The choir sang, "Once Upon a Time There Was An Ocean."
And all the old hymns and family names came fluttering down as leaves of emotion.
As nothing is different, but everything's changed.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)

Family, Light, Change, Time

“Consider one of the standard "laments" or "stories of wonder" in conventional tales of natural history: the mayfly that lives but a single day (a sadness even recorded in the technical name for this biological group - Ephemoptera). Yes, the adult fly may enjoy only a moment in the sun, but we should honor the entire life cycle and recognize that the larvae, or juvenile stages, live and develop for months. Larvae are not mere preparations for a brief adulthood. We might better read the entire life cycle as a division of labor, with larvae as feeding and growing stages, and the adult as a short-lived reproductive machine. In this sense, we could well view the adult fly's day as the larva's clever and transient device for making a new generation of truly fundamental feeders.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 356
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Sadness, History, Nature

“A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the dominion of Satan. He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course of vice, does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 56. Of Prayers
Essais (1595), Book I

God, Lie, Soul, Time

“I was quite surprised to find out all the places that he knew
And so I asked the townfolk if his stories were true
They said— Old John was born here, he's lived here all his life
He's never had a woman, let alone a wife.
And very soon you'll find out as you check around
That no one named Corey's ever lived in this town
So I chided the old man 'bout the truth that I had heard
He smiled and said— Reality is only just a word.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Corey's Coming
Song lyrics, On the Road to Kingdom Come (1976)

Life, Truth, Smile, Reality

“In Daniel 7, Daniel had a vision where “the four winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea. And four beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another” (vv. 2-3). In the vision, Daniel saw a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear with three ribs in its mouth, a leopard with four wings, and a terrible beast with iron teeth and ten horns (v. 7). Bible scholars have speculated on the meaning of this passage for centuries. Some think the four beasts in this chapter represent a rehash of the first four empires from Babylon to the Roman Empire; while others think it is all yet in the future. I’m no scholar but here is my opinion: I (and many Bible scholars) think the four beasts are four world powers that will “strive” for world power (domination?) at the end of time before the one with ten horns finally becomes dominant. I think the four beasts are interpreted as follows: The lion sometimes standing like a man with eagle’s wings (v. 4) represents England (whose symbol as always been the lion) and America (whose symbol is the eagle) united, as one of four major end-time powers. The eagle’s wings “were plucked” and “it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it” (v. 4). My best guess is that America will soon cease to be a world power (wings plucked) but there will still be enough of a godly influence that the English/American alliance will have some “heart” or compassion and maybe even be able to finally “take a stand” for God in the wicked world. I think the bear (v. 5) is Russia (whose symbol is the bear) and the three ribs in its mouth represent three countries it has dominated or “eaten,” such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, or perhaps Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia. The leopard with four wings (v. 6) could be some sort of oriental alliance between China, Japan, Korea, and a Southeast Asia alliance (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, etc.). Verse 6 says, “dominion was given to it.” Many certainly feel that China is soon to be the major economic (and military) power in the world. If they could get a military or economic alliance with some of the other oriental nations mentioned, they would indeed be a force to be reckoned with! No animal is named for the fourth beast. It is only described as being dreadful, terrible, strong exceedingly, having great iron teeth, different from all other beasts and having ten horns. As I said earlier there are three options from what I can see for this beast. It is either (A) the European Common Market or a future similar alliance; or (B) 10 world regions and (C) some sort of alliance of Muslim nations around the Middle East or the world. I tend to go with option (C)”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 94-95

God, World, Feeling, Thinking

“Now ACORN has been named one of the national partners, which will be a recipient again of federal money. And they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public. This is very concerning because the mother lode of all data information will be from the Census. And, of course, we think of the Census as just counting how many people live in your home. Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal (with) a lot of the questions that are asked. And I know for my family the only question that we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Washington Times interview http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/17/exclusive-minn-lawmaker-fears-census-abuse/, 2009-06-17, quoted in * Michele Bachmann claims ACORN getting money to work for Census Bureau Politifact http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jun/26/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-claims-acorn-getting-money-work-c/ 2011-04-15 2010s

Money, People, Family, Home

“During my high school years, a boy from my neighborhood named Malcolm chose me to be his friend for a season. His elbow nudged my book in the public library one Saturday afternoon as he sprawled forward across the table feigning some condition—boredom, I suppose. His voice was like shadow—as whispery and as indistinct as shadow, due to an adolescent change. “Do you want to wrestle?” he asked. I have never met anyone since who speaks as Malcolm spoke: He daydreamed; he pronounced strategies out loud (as I raked elm leaves from our lawn and piled them in the curb)—about how he would befriend this boy or that boy, never anyone I knew; Malcolm went to a different high school. “First,” he said, “I will tease him about his freckles. Then I will tease him about his laugh—how his laugh sounds a little like a whinny sometimes. I won’t go too far. You should see how his wrist pivots as he dribbles down the court. “He’s got these little curls above his sideburns. I wish I had those.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

(He would catch me up on the way to the library.) “What are you reading? We read that last year. Not really a war story, though, is it? Want to go eat French toast?”
Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

War, Books, School, Way

“There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

Introduction; Republished in: " The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris https://books.google.nl/books?id=a0oEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA95," LIFE, Vol. 63, Nr. 25 (22 Dec. 1967), p. 95 The Naked Ape (1967)

Motivation, Time, Success

“This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don't. […] This new illiteracy is more pernicious than the old, because unlike the old illiteracy it does not debar its victims from power and influence, although like the old illiteracy it disqualifies them for it. Those long-dead men and women who learned to read so that they might read the Bible and John Bunyan would tell us that pride is the greatest of all sins, the father of sin. And the victims of the new illiteracy are proud of it. If you don't believe me, talk to them and see with what pride they trumpet their utter ignorance of any book you care to name.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"From a house on the Borderland", Horrorstruck (1987), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Women, Men, Books, Learning

“The West has repudiated Christianity and returned to rationalism, humanism and universalism, all of which are values cherished and promoted by the Hindu view of life. But the West does not realize that the massive finances which the Christian missions collect over there in the name of doing social service in 'a poor, starved, diseased and illiterate India' is used by the missions for the nefarious work of subverting the only sane society which has survived the depredations of genocidal creeds.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Life, Disease, Universe

“We are—proudly—a people with no sense of class or caste. We judge no man by his name or inheritance, but by what he does—and for what he stands.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)

People, Sense

“I would say if all the names you wrote in the last few days are correct we would have a 50-player squad and I hate to work with big squads.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/3769431.stm Chelsea FC

Hate

“Who is that goddess to whom men should pray
But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being they were born,
Whose mother nature they have named in scorn
Calling its holy substance common clay.
Yet from this so despised earth was made
The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed
Their generations with a light caress,
And from some image of whose loveliness
The heart built up high heaven when it prayed.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Men, Nature, Light, Heart

“It is necessary, therefore, to watch, not the political opponents of the administration, but the administration itself, and to see that it keeps within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws of the land. The executive of the Union has immense power to do mischief if he sees fit to exercise that power. He may prostrate the country. Indeed this country has been already prostrated. It has already fallen from pure republicanism to a monarchy in spirit if not in name.”

William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) American general and politician, 9th President of the United States (in office in 1841)

Speech at Fort Meigs (11 June 1840). Quoted in A B Norton, The Great Revolution of 1840: Reminiscences of the Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign. (Mount Vernon, OH and Dallas, TX: A B Norton & Co, 1888). p.186

Law, Exercises, Country

“Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper —
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Words" http://www.danagioia.net/poems/words.htm Poetry, Interrogations at Noon (2001)

Reading

“May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name,
And glorify what else is damn'd to fame.”

Richard Savage (1697–1743) English poet

Character of Foster, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "All crowd, who foremost shall be damn'd to fame", Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Book III, line 158.

“If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones. I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?”

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

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

Life, Men, War, Youth

“The subject matter ranges from subtle forms of intellectual sarcasm and humor to the crudest possible attacks on a person's courage, sexual prowess, or relatives. At one level, attacks may be subtle and indirect, involving allusion and figurative speech; at another, there may be explicit taunts, boasts, name calling, and jokes at the other's expense.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

Source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 1987, p. 60

Courage, Personality

“Whether God can make the past not to have been?
Objection 1: It seems that God can make the past not to have been. For what is impossible in itself is much more impossible than that which is only impossible accidentally. But God can do what is impossible in itself, as to give sight to the blind, or to raise the dead. Therefore, and much more can He do what is only impossible accidentally. Now for the past not to have been is impossible accidentally: thus for Socrates not to be running is accidentally impossible, from the fact that his running is a thing of the past. Therefore God can make the past not to have been.
Objection 2: Further, what God could do, He can do now, since His power is not lessened. But God could have effected, before Socrates ran, that he should not run. Therefore, when he has run, God could effect that he did not run.
Objection 3: Further, charity is a more excellent virtue than virginity. But God can supply charity that is lost; therefore also lost virginity. Therefore He can so effect that what was corrupt should not have been corrupt. On the contrary, Jerome says (Ep. 22 ad Eustoch.): "Although God can do all things, He cannot make a thing that is corrupt not to have been corrupted." Therefore, for the same reason, He cannot effect that anything else which is past should not have been.
I answer that, As was said above (Q[7], A[2]), there does not fall under the scope of God's omnipotence anything that implies a contradiction. Now that the past should not have been implies a contradiction. For as it implies a contradiction to say that Socrates is sitting, and is not sitting, so does it to say that he sat, and did not sit. But to say that he did sit is to say that it happened in the past. To say that he did not sit, is to say that it did not happen. Whence, that the past should not have been, does not come under the scope of divine power. This is what Augustine means when he says (Contra Faust. xxix, 5): "Whosoever says, If God is almighty, let Him make what is done as if it were not done, does not see that this is to say: If God is almighty let Him effect that what is true, by the very fact that it is true, be false": and the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 2): "Of this one thing alone is God deprived---namely, to make undone the things that have been done."
Reply to Objection 1: Although it is impossible accidentally for the past not to have been, if one considers the past thing itself, as, for instance, the running of Socrates; nevertheless, if the past thing is considered as past, that it should not have been is impossible, not only in itself, but absolutely since it implies a contradiction. Thus, it is more impossible than the raising of the dead; in which there is nothing contradictory, because this is reckoned impossible in reference to some power, that is to say, some natural power; for such impossible things do come beneath the scope of divine power.
Reply to Objection 2: As God, in accordance with the perfection of the divine power, can do all things, and yet some things are not subject to His power, because they fall short of being possible; so, also, if we regard the immutability of the divine power, whatever God could do, He can do now. Some things, however, at one time were in the nature of possibility, whilst they were yet to be done, which now fall short of the nature of possibility, when they have been done. So is God said not to be able to do them, because they themselves cannot be done.
Reply to Objection 3: God can remove all corruption of the mind and body from a woman who has fallen; but the fact that she had been corrupt cannot be removed from her; as also is it impossible that the fact of having sinned or having lost charity thereby can be removed from the sinner.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Summa Theologica Question 25 Article 6 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q25_A4.html Summa Theologica (1265–1274), Unplaced by chapter

God, Nature, Time, Past

“Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless — when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

I and Thou (1923)

Life, God

“I was very glad when Mr. Attlee described my speeches in the late war as expressing the will not only of Parliament but of the whole nation. I have never accepted what many people have kindly said—namely, that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it and if I found the right word you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen, and by my tongue.”

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

Speech in Westminster Hall (30 November 1954), quoted in The Times (1 December 1954), p. 11
Post-war years (1945–1955)

War, People

“But ne'er the subject of your work proclaim
In its own colors and its genuine name;
Let it by distant tokens be conveyed,
And wrapped in other words, and covered in their shade.
At last the subject from the friendly shroud
Bursts out, and shines the brighter from the cloud;
Then the dissolving darkness breaks away,
And every object glares in open day.
Thus great Ulysses' toils were I to choose
For the main theme that should employ my Muse,
By his long labors of immortal fame
Should shine my hero, but conceal his name;
As one who, lost at sea, had nations seen,
And marked their towns, their manners, and their men,
Since Troy was leveled to the dust by Greece—
Till a few lines epitomized the piece.”
Jam vero cum rem propones, nomine nunquam Prodere conveniet manifesto: semper opertis Indiciis, longe et verborum ambage petita Significant, umbraque obducunt: inde tamen, ceu Sublustri e nebula, rerum tralucet imago Clarius, et certis datur omnia cernere signis. Hinc si dura mihi passus dicendus Ulysses, Non ilium vero memorabo nomine, sed qui Et mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes Naufragus, eversae post saeva incendia Trojae, Addam alia, angustis complectens omnia dictis.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book II, line 40
De Arte Poetica (1527)

Men, Color, Distant, Sea

“Before I got married, I was on a date one night. This girl had a snake as a pet. A 12-foot boa constrictor; she named it Fluffy. Well, that's just sick in my book. But I didn't know about the snake, and it was our first date. We'd been out drinking. We drank way too much. We get back to her mobile home. Woo, wish I was making that part up. She shuts the door behind me and gives me one of these. [hisses, exhales] She wasn't real good at it, alright? "I'm gonna slip into something a little more comfortable… okay?" and I'm like, "Alright! I'll be waitin' right here! Well, maybe here. Hell, you'll see me." She comes out of the bedroom/kitchen… in a negligee and that snake wrapped around her neck. Boy, that'll sober you up! I'm backin' out the front door, going, "No, thanks, I can drive." She looks at me and she goes, "No, wait, Bill! Fluffy can wrap around us while we make love."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

I said, "No, he can't, 'cause I'll kill him... Okay?"
Here's Your Sign (1996)

Love, Books, Making love, Way

“They must at the same time be so expressed as to be capable of appealing to the sentiments of the masses. An ideology embodying the interests of a given ruling class would not be of the slightest use as social cement if it openly expressed its function of keeping the ruling class in power over the rest of society. The ideology must ostensibly speak in the name of 'humanity', 'the people', the race', 'the future', 'God', 'destiny', and so on.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

186; as cited in: Thomas Diefenbach (2009) Management and the Dominance of Managers. p. 128
The Managerial Revolution, 1941

God, People, Time, Future

“Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 267–68 (1967)

Light

“No newspaper or periodical worth its name in India will publish what I write in the lines that follow. Not because the subject matter is seditious…, but simply because it defies the Emergency imposed on this country by Muslim theologians and politicians backed by 'secularist' intellectuals and politicians and riotous Muslim mobs and plain terrorists.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)

Country

“[P]ride has no intrinsic substance, being no more than the name given to the soul devouring itself. When that loathsome perversion of love has borne its fruit, it has another, more meaningful and weightier name. We call it hatred.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: L'imposture (The Impostor), 1927, p.156

Love, Soul

“There is a right and legitimate Pan-Islamism to which every sincere and believing Mahomedan belongs--that is, the theory of the spiritual brotherhood and unity of the children of the Prophet. It is a deep, perennial element in that Perso-Arabian culture, that great family of civilisation to which we gave the name Islamic in the first chapter. It connotes charity and goodwill towards fellow-believers everywhere…It means an abiding interest in the literature of Islam, in her beautiful arts, in her lovely architecture, in her entrancing poetry. It also means a true reformation -- a return to the early and pure simplicity of the faith, to its preaching by persuasion and argument, to the manifestation of a spiritual power in individual lives, to beneficent activity for mankind. This natural and worthy spiritual movement makes not only the Master and His teaching but also His children of all climes an object of affection to the Turk or the Afghan, to the Indian or the Egyptian. A famine or a desolating fire in the Moslem quarters of Kashgar or Sarajevo would immediately draw the sympathy and material assistance of the Mahomedan of Delhi or Cairo. The real spiritual and cultural unity of Islam must ever grow, for to the follower of the Prophet it is the foundation of the life of the soul.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

p. 156; a variant of this begins "This is a right and legitimate Pan-Islamism…", but is otherwise identical.
/ India in Transition (1918)

Love, Life, Children, Family

“I was sitting in my suite one night after the show, and I looked out at the [Las Vegas] Strip and saw the huge neon billboard with my name on it, spelled out in those giant letters they use. Then I looked across the street at Caesars Palace and saw Frank Sinatra's name, in the same giant letters. And I said to myself, 'Face it, Anne; you're in the business.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On her popularity in Las Vegas, as quoted in "Anne Murray: Facing the Big Time Her Own Way", Section "Her Own Way", by George Anthony, Billboard, Oct 20, 1979

Business, Night

“The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain's self-confidence and for our standing in the world…We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

The Downing Street Years (1993)

War, World, Peace, Confidence

“Neither Hitler nor Stalin have been named persons non grata in Pontevedra.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

24 February, 2016, after having been named person non grata in Pontevedra -his place of birth. As President, 2016 Source: 20 Minutos http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2681078/0/entrevista-rajoy-espejo-publico/

Personality

““Most people have a price. And they have a price because of human emotions named fear and greed.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

People, Fear

“I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; — one, that I have lost all the names, — the other, that I have spent all the money.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1781, p. 477, Referring to subscribers to his edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, with Notes (1765)
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Money

“Name is a fence and within it you are nameless.”

Samuli Paronen (1917–1974)

Samuli Paronen, quoted in: M.kumar. Dictionary of Quotations, APH Publishing, 2008. p. 168

“I was born in Lucknow 1938, 4 February. It was Friday. A hot day as it usually happens in spring…in that home where I was born there were only girls. I was the only boy. So our neighbours came saw that that there were all girls and just one boy… like Krishna and gopis they used to say. So my name became Brijmohan Misra. Brij is the name of the city where Krishna was born and ‘Mohan ‘means attraction. Brijmohan is a way of saying Krishna, the god of love and dance.”

Birju Maharaj (1938) Indian dancer

In [Reena Shah, Movement in Stills: The Dance and Life of Kumudini Lakhia, http://books.google.com/books?id=sSKU2DROHMgC&pg=PA117, January 2006, Mapin Publishing Pvt Ltd, 978-81-88204-42-7, 117–]

Love, God, Way, Home

“[T]he Islamic world is a source of danger and destruction is all too conceivable. Indeed, it’s been on display, in plain sight, for years… The jihadist threat is real, and it must, obviously, be fought and defeated. But that raises another problem—not a problem with Islam, but a problem with the West. We have lost our nerve. In recent years, the attitude of Barack Obama has prevailed over the spirit of Charlie Hebdo. The claims of sensitivity have trumped the attachment to freedom. Appeasement of jihad has supplanted the war on terror. Most fundamentally—let’s be honest—fear has overwhelmed courage. And so the American president has been happy to proclaim, as he did at the United Nations in September 2012, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” He has been less willing to say that the future must not belong to those who kill in the name of the prophet of Islam… We face a crisis of Islam. We need to be clear-eyed about that. But we also face a crisis of the West. Only if we come to grips with that second crisis will this period of consequences turn out to be an occasion for renewal rather than another marker on the path to decadence.”

William Kristol (1952) American writer

2010s, 2017, The Two Crises (2017)

War, Happiness, World, Fear

“Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Personality

“This absence of similarity among military questions naturally brings out the inability of memory to solve them; also the sterility of invariable forms, such as figures, geometrical drawings (épures), plans (schémas), etc. One only right solution imposes itself : namely, the application, varying according to circumstances, of fixed principles.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 154

Question, Nature, Memory, Drawing

“To a linguist, the phenomenon is familiar: the euphemism treadmill. People invent new "polite" words to refer to emotionally laden or distasteful things, but the euphemism becomes tainted by association and the new one that must be found acquires its own negative connotations. "Water closet" becomes "toilet" (originally a term for any body care, as in "toilet kit"), which becomes "bathroom," which becomes "rest room," which becomes "lavatory." … The euphemism treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are in charge. Give a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored by the concept; the concept does not become freshened by the name.”

Steven Pinker (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

We will know we have achieved equality and mutual respect when names for minorities stay put. The game of the name, Baltimore Sun, 1994-04-06, http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_04_03_newyorktimes.pdf, 1994-04-03, 2011-01-19 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-04-06/news/1994096202_1_dutch-words-language,

People, Color, Water

“For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlow's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I will not seek
For names…”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Source: To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1618), Lines 27 - 33

Sport

“It is difficult to live up to one's posters…When I pass my name in such large letters I blush, but at the same time instinctively raise my hat.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

Page 188.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)

Time

“For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Source: Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603) Works, Vol. 1; The Works of Francis Bacon (1857) p. 232, https://books.google.com/books?id=HloJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA232 Vol. 3.

Life, Men, Truth, Business

“And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt. It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of this knowledge. I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Our seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen. In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds. We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here from all quarters of the globe, by a common aspiration for national liberty as against caste, divine right govern and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves, it would be unadvised to attempt to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or prescribe any on account of race, color or creed.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People, World, Family, Faith

“I have taught – until 10 years ago – for nearly 40 years, that is almost half of my life. And when I think that over – now afterwards -, I come to a surprising conclusion, namely that I did not teach arts as such, but philosophy and psychology of art.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Source: Homage to the square' (1964), A conversation with Josef Albers' (1970), p. 459

Life, Art, Thinking

“time in an allegory of itself imparts to us lessons of wisdom which the moment they are formulated are immediately destroyed by the merest flickers of light or shadow which are nothing more than time in its incarnations and disincarnations which are the phrases that I am writing on this paper and that disappears as I read them:
they are not the sensations, the perceptions, the mental images, and the thoughts which flare up and die away here, now, as I write or as I read what I write: they are not what I see or what I have seen, they are the reverse of what is seen and of the power of sight—but they are not the invisible: they are the unsaid residuum;
they are not the other side of reality but, rather, the other side of language, what we have on the tip of our tongue that vanishes before it is said, the other side that cannot be named because it is the opposite of a name:
what is not said is not this or that which we leave unsaid, nor is it neither-this-nor-that: it is not the tree that I say I see but the sensation that I feel on sensing that I see it at the moment when I am just about to say that I see it, an insubstantial but real conjunction of vibrations and sounds and meanings that on being combined suggest the configuration of a green-bronze-black-woody-leafy-sonorous-silent presence;
no, it is not that either, if it is not a name it surely cannot be the description of a name or the description of the sensation of the name or the name of the sensation:
a tree is not the name tree, nor is it the sensation of tree: it is the sensation of a perception of tree that dies away at the very moment of the perception of the sensation of tree;
names, as we already know, are empty, but what we did not know, or if we did know, had forgotten, is that sensations are perceptions of sensations that die away, sensations that vanish on becoming perceptions, since if they were not perceptions, how would we know that they are sensations?;
sensations that are not perceptions are not sensations, perceptions that are not names—what are they?
if you didn’t know it before, you know now: everything is empty;
and the moment I say everything-is-empty, I am aware that I am falling into a trap: if everything is empty, this everything-is-empty is empty too;
no, it is full, full to overflowing, everything-is-empty is replete with itself, what we touch and see and taste and smell and think, the realities that we invent and the realities that touch us, look at us, hear us, and invent us, everything that we weave and unweave and everything that weaves and unweaves us, momentary appearances and disappearances, each one different and unique, is always the same full reality, always the same fabric that is woven as it is unwoven: even total emptiness and utter privation are plenitude (perhaps they are the apogee, the acme, the consummation and the calm of plenitude), everything is full to the brim, everything is real, all these invented realities and all these very real inventions are full of themselves, each and every one of them, replete with their own reality;
and the moment I say this, they empty themselves: things empty themselves and names fill themselves, they are no longer empty, names are plethoras, they are donors, they are full to bursting with blood, milk, semen, sap, they are swollen with minutes, hours, centuries, pregnant with meanings and significations and signals, they are the secret signs that time makes to itself, names suck the marrow from things, things die on this page but names increase and multiply, things die in order that names may live:”

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

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

Wisdom, Secret, Feeling, Thinking

“Come now: Do we really think that the gods are everywhere called by the same names by which they are addressed by us? But the gods have as many names as there are languages among humans. For it is not with the gods as with you: you are Velleius wherever you go, but Vulcan is not Vulcan in Italy and in Africa and in Spain.”
Age et his vocabulis esse deos facimus quibus a nobis nominantur? At primum, quot hominum linguae, tot nomina deorum. Non enim, ut tu Velleius, quocumque veneris, sic idem in Italia, idem in Africa, idem in Hispania.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book I, section 84
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

God, Thinking

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Life, Women, God

“Its easier to forget a thing without a name. I’ve learned to guard my affections.” “I know, you’ve never asked mine.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Learning, Forgetting

“Sheep run to the slaughterhouse, silent and hopeless, but at least sheep never vote for the butcher who kills them or the people who devour them. More beastly than any beast, more sheepish than any sheep, the voter names his own executioner and chooses his own devourer, and for this precious “right” a revolution was fought.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Voters' strike

People

“Half of life—the interesting half of life—we don't even have a name for.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 33

Life

“At least we’ll hear less about corn subsidies and Corinthians II, or is it Two Corinthians? Discuss. No, don’t! Stupid, stupid people. Again, that’s Trump talking, not me. He uses that word to describe nearly everyone not named Donald J. Trump. He’s presented no governing philosophy, no policy details, nothing resembling even-keeled judgment. He’s running a combustible celebrity feud fest, and you love it.”

Timothy Egan (1954) American writer

How Stupid Is Iowa? (2016)

Love, People, Stupidity

“The Hindu pantheon has changed to some extent but the old Gods are still active and are still understood though under modified names. Hindu India has a sense of continuity with its past which other nations, that changed their religions at some later stage, lack. It is also known that the Hindu religion preserves many old layers and forms. Therefore, its study may link us not only with its own past forms but also with the religious consciousness, intuitions and forms that prevailed in the past in Europe, in Greece, in Rome, in many Scandinavian and Baltic countries, amongst Germanic and Slavic peoples and also in several countries of the Middle East. In short, the study may reveal a fundamental form of spiritual consciousness which is wider than its Hindu expression.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

The World As Revelation: Names of Gods (1980)

God, People, Religion, Sense

“The defendant styles herself "a creator of fashions." Her favor helps a sale. Manufacturers of dresses, millinery and like articles are glad to pay for a certificate of her approval. The things which she designs, fabrics, parasols and what not, have a new value in the public mind when issued in her name. She employed the plaintiff to help her to turn this vogue into money.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, 222 N.Y. 88, 91; 118 N.E. 214 (N.Y. 1917). This opening paragraph has been debated among legal practitioners, some of whom take its tone to be a sly rebuke by Cardozo of a profession which he considered to have an exaggerated influence.
Judicial opinions

Money, Fashion, Help

“‎Sometimes traveling people will be talking together. They will say how good it is in some places and how bad it is in others. And, sooner or later, one of them is bound to mention it. "Talk about really being out in the boondocks!" he will say, "there's a little planet named Earth —"”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

The Reefs of Earth (1968)

People, Travel

“Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.”

John Webster The Devil's Law Case

The Devil's Law Case (1623).

Dead

“To his son Henry, the quality that distinguished his father from all the other figures in the family group, was that, in his opinion, Charles Francis Adams possessed the only perfectly balanced mind that ever existed in the name.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Family

“A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case. … It's nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a menace; we can peacefully co-exist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does not become a public menace. We're all on the Earth together, and we have to learn some accommodation. … The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for. Slavery is beyond the pale. Child abuse is beyond the pale. Discrimination is beyond the pale. The pronouncing of death sentences on those who blaspheme against a religion (complete with bounties or reward for those who carry them out) is beyond the pale. It is not civilized, and it is owed no more respect in the name of religious freedom than any other incitement to cold-blooded murder. … That is — or, rather, ought to be, the message of multiculturalism, not the patronizing and subtly racist hypertolerance that "respects" vicious and ignorant doctrines when they are propounded by officials of non-European states and religions.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Death, Wisdom, Faith, Religion

“Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 233

People, Age, Thinking, Country

“I believe in God. And I believe in the custody of God vested in kings. And I'm very happy to have your name as "King." It's the King!”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Quoted from Larry King Weekend, Interview With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (2002-05-12) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/12/lklw.00.html

God, Happiness

“A thoughtful historian tells us that, between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, Italy produced three great men. As the first of these, he names Machiavelli, who he says, "taught the world to understand political despotism and to hate it"; as the second, he names Sarpi, who "taught the world after what manner the Holy Spirit guides the Councils of the Church"; and as the third, Galileo, who "taught the world what dogmatic theology is worth when it can be tested by science."”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 3

Men, Hate, Age, World

“It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where 't is kept is lighter than vanity.”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Part I, Ch XIII : Vanity Fair
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I

“Something rather frightening takes place, namely a self-fulfilling fame that's come up only in the past decade or so, that does not need to base itself in adaptive skill, or any skill for that matter. All it needs is the fuel of more celebrity, and thus more prestige, and thus more celebrity, and so on ad infinitum.”

Jack Gleeson (1992) Irish actor

Speech at Oxford Union (2014)

Past

“At this point in the dreadful story I am writing, I must interrupt for a moment and describe something that happened to a good friend of mine named Mr. Sirin. Mr. Sirin was a lepidoptrerist, a word which usually means "a person who studies butterflies." In this case, however, the word "lepidopterist" means "a man who was being pursued by angry government officials," and on the night I am telling you about they were right on his heels. Mr. Sirin looked back to see how close they were--four officers in their bright-pink uniforms, with small flashlights in their left hands and large nets in their right--and realized that in a moment they would catch up, and arrest him and his six favorite butterflies, which were frantically flapping alongside him. Mr. Sirin did not care much if he was captured--he had been in prison four and a half times over the course of his long and complicated life--but he cared very much about the butterflies. He realized that these six delicate insects would undoubtedly perish in bug prison, where poisonous spiders, stinging bees, and other criminals would rip them to shreds. So, as the secret police closed in, Mr. Sirin opened his mouth as wide as he could and swallowed all six butterflies whole, quickly placing them in the dark but safe confines of his empty stomach. It was not a pleasant feeling to have these six insects living inside him, but Mr. Sirin kept them there for three years, eating only the lightest foods served in prison so as not to crush the insects with a clump of broccoli or a baked potato. When his prison sentence was over, Mr. Sirin burped up the grateful butterflies and resumed his lepidoptery work in a community that was much more friendly to scientists and their specimens.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

Life, Secret, Food, Feeling

“Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against... a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism.””

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 4 : Goodbye to All That?

World, Democracy, Freedom, Change

“In the name of the Prophet—figs.”

Horace Smith (1779–1849) English poet and novelist

Johnson's Ghost, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“When I stand up from my writing desk, "John Banville", or "Benjamin Black" – that is, the one whose name will appear on the title page – vanishes on the instant, since he only existed while the writing was being done.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

Appearance

“In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil. And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium, "Hitler, we are yours." And they nearly took the world. Lenin once said, "give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I'll change the world." And, he nearly did. A few years ago, they took the sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book, and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the Chairman Mao. When I hear those kinds of stories, I think 'what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say 'Jesus, we are yours'? What kind of spiritual awakening would we have?”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Speech at the Anaheim Angels sports stadium (17 April 2005); transcript and video http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/follow-jesus-like-nazis-f_b_158295.html

Women, Men, People, Books

“Trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, tires, telephones, radios, television, electricity, atomic energy, computers, and fax machines. All miracles made possible by the minds and spirits of men with names like Ampere, Bell, Caselli, Edison, Ohm, Faraday, Einstein, Cohen, Teller, Shockley, Hertz, Marconi, Morse, Popov, Ford, Volta, Michelin, Dunlop, Watt, Diesel, Galileo, and other "dead white males." … The great majority of advancements past and present have been brought about by the genius and inventiveness of that most "despicable" of colors and genders, the dreaded white male, or, to be exact, by specific, individual white males. This is not to discredit the many contributions coming from nonwhites, but fact is fact. Our most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males. … If you eliminate, suppress, or debase the while male, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If you ace him out with "affirmative" action, exile him from the family, teach him that he's a blight on mankind, then bon voyage to our society. We will devolve into a Third World cesspool. Where has there ever before in history been a group of human beings who have brought about the likes of the Magna Carta, the U. S. Constitution, and the countless life-saving and life-improving inventions that we now enjoy? … Does this mean we should sit back and let ourselves be governed by someone just because he's a white male? Of course, it doesn't. It means simply that we shouldn't suppress anyone, including white males. Let our God-given gifts run free in a free and just society, free from the oppression and tyranny of social engineers. If anyone has gifts beyond our own—be he a white male or other—be grateful. Maybe we have gifts that in some small way can contribute something of value as well. One way or another, we're all in the same boat. Few of us have truly outstanding gifts. And most of us have to humbly accept that there are others around who are more gifted than we are. In a Democratic society, it's not for Big Brother to decide who shall thrive and who shall struggle in the hive.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Source: The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture (2003), pp. 136–138; "White Male Inventions" http://www.dadi.org/ms_dwm.htm (December 15, 1999)

Life, Men, God, World

“This terrible tragedy has created the opportunity to fashion a determined global response to terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, wherever it exists and under whatever name. I assured President Bush of India's complete support in this.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

After his meeting with George W. Bush in Washington in 2001 A World United, 5 December 2013, The White House http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/national-anthem/newdelhi.html,

Fashion, Support

“Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?”

Honoré de Balzac book Séraphîta

Source: Seraphita (1835), Ch. 4: The Clouds of the Sanctuary.

Lie, Law, Nature, Science

“Higher than name of Prince is Father's name.”

Ubaldo Mari

Piu che il noma di Prence è quel di Padre.
VI, 73. Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 393.
La Giasoneide, o sia la Conquista del Vello d'Oro (1780)

“What language did these Macedones speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means highlanders, and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', meaning 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded […] has a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen's three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus-who were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive.”

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

"The Macedonian State" p.12-13)

Men, People, Family, Mountain

“The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/catwoman-2004 of Catwoman (23 July 2004) Reviews, One-star reviews

Birth

“The researches of the last thirty or forty years into the history of mathematics (I need only mention such names as those of [Carl Anton] Bretschneider, Hankel, Moritz Cantor, [Friedrich] Hultsch, Paul Tannery, Zeuthen, Loria, and Heiberg) have put the whole subject upon a different plane. I have endeavoured in this edition to take account of all the main results of these researches up to the present date. Thus, so far as the geometrical Books are concerned, my notes are intended to form a sort of dictionary of the history of elementary geometry, arranged according to subjects; while the notes on the arithmetical Books VII.-IX. and on Book X follow the same plan.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Books, History, Mathematics

“For the early Greek writers Ethiopia was less a geographical location than a state of mind. For Greeks and Romans generally, Ethiopians meant dark-skinned peoples who lived south of Egypt. At times the reference was so vague as to include peoples from West Africa, Arabia, and India. At times it was more localized, referring to the Nubian kingdom of Kush, with its capital first at Napata and later at Meroe. What was constant was that the name Ethiopian denoted a person of dark color — literally, of burnt face — and that it connoted, above all else, remoteness.”

Donald N. Levine (1931–2015) sociologist

Donald N. Levine (2014), Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society. p. 1

People, Color, Time, Personality

“Ever since its emergence a few months ago, the declared ambition of the startup caliphate of the Islamic State has been to “wipe out every trace of Infidel influence” in areas under its control. Yet, with each passing day, it becomes more clear that, its deadly fantasies notwithstanding, the IS can’t escape from a world created and dominated by the Infidel. Start with the name that the IS, or Daesh in Arabic, has chosen for itself: ad-dawlat al-Islamiyah, or “Islamic Government.” The concepts of “state” and “government” are entirely Western, not adopted by Muslim peoples until the 19th century. The very words “state” and “government” are never mentioned in the Quran. Daesh’s “caliph” has also appointed a number of vizirs. This, too, is un-Islamic. Of Persian origin, the word vizir designated high officials of the pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire overthrown by Arab Muslim warriors in the 7th century. Mohammad had no vizirs, nor did any of his four immediate successors, the so-called “Well Guided caliphs…” The Islamic State’s most noteworthy embrace of the works of the “Infidel,” however, is surely its use of the satanic Internet. Its personnel, including converts from Europe and North America, regularly display across the Web what seems to be the main, if not the only, thing they’ve learned from Islam: cutting the throats of defenseless captives.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The not-so-Islamic State: ISIS’ huge debt to the infidel" http://nypost.com/2014/11/20/the-not-so-islamic-state-isis-huge-debt-to-the-infidel/, New York Post (November 20, 2014). New York Post

People, World, Learning