Quotes about news
page 24

“Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors. They have included large organizations (Ford) and small ones (Landmark Communications), companies based in the United States (General Motors) and elsewhere (British Airways), corporations that were on their knees (Eastern Airlines), and companies that were earning good money ((Bristol-Myers Squibb). Their efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, right-sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds. But, in almost every case, the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

John P. Kotter, "Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail." in: Harvard Business Review. March-April 1995. p. 59.

Money, Communication, Business, Effort

“When one speaks of America, millions of Germans think of their relatives who either recently or long ago left their German homeland to seek their fortune in the “New World.” When someone succeeded in quickly making a lot of money in America, people said he had made his fortune. The result was that the “rich uncle” in America was envied and his nephews and nieces were encouraged to join the fortune-seeker. Seeking fortunes in America led to Germany losing people, and the American continent received many people whose contributions are particularly clear in the agricultural and technical fields. That these people and their descendants now give great help to the enemies of Germany in this Second World War is a tragic fact.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der Stürmer, 1944

Money, War, People, World

“In terms of composition the new plasticism is dualistic. Through the exact reconstruction of cosmic relations it is a direct expression of the universal; by its rhythm, by the material reality of its plastic form, it expresses the artist's individual subjectivity. It thus unfolds before us a whole world of universal beauty without thereby renouncing the human element.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

World, Beauty, Reality, Universe

“I was honoured to be on our next performer’s new video. And if I ever record an album, I want this guy to produce it and make me beautiful duets, ‘cause he’s a freakin’ genius!”

Anna Nicole Smith (1967–2007) American model, actress, and television personality

Anna Nicole Smith (2004) cited in: Cyril H. Wecht, Dawna Kaufmann (2009) A question of murder: compelling cases from a famed forensic pathologist. p. 99
With this statement Smith introduced Kanye West at the 2004 American Music Awards, November 14, 2004

Beauty, Guy

“Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered the most brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things and all that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting, and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book, or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, the more spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they pay you, the more the people buy the issue.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Men, Money, People, Books

“Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts.
It would require brand new techniques.
Grimly he set out to evolve them.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Ch. 8 : Polly's Eyes

“When learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
Each change of many-colored life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toiled after him in vain.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

Life, World, Color, Imagination

“I was twenty-one when I first went to New York, and I was so fascinated by the architecture and glad that something like that existed and that I was able to have this visual experience that I thought to myself, this is where I want to live. To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture – that must have been it. Although at twenty-one I wasn't a sculptress yet, I was just starting my studies and I didn't even know what I wanted to do... New York is a city of incredible stability and solidity. And then the height of the buildings – that impressed me, like the people who always seemed a bit happier than the Germans in the street. When I came back to Germany it seemed to me that it wasn't particularly nice, my visual surroundings – it was all so dreary. And modernism hardly features at all in Germany. Okay, there was Bauhaus and there was this and that, but modernism is practically non-existent in architecture.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

People, Study

“We must expect for a long time yet to see capitalists still striving to obtain the highest possible profits. But observe, that the passion for wealth is certainly in some senses new. It grew up very rapidly at the beginning of the present century; it was not so strong in the last century, when men were much more content to lead a quiet easy life of leisure. The change has really influenced the relations between men; but in the future it is quite possible that the scramble for wealth may grow less intense, and a change in the opposite direction take place.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 134

Life, Men, Sense, Strong

“Old Christmas Songs. I feel something like a longing for a lost homeland.
We are giving gifts to each other. A beautiful, old New Testament from Hertha Holk is my greatest joy. I thank her for being my solace and my strength.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Alte Weihnachtslieder. Ich habe etwas wie Sehnsucht nach einem verlorenen Vaterland.
Wir beschenken uns. Ein schönes, altes Jesustestament von Hertha Holk ist meine größte Freude. Ich danke ihr, dass sie mein Trost und meine Stärke ist.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Beauty, Feeling, Joy, Christmas

“Television is to news as a bumper sticker is to Shakespeare. I remember hearing an analogy once that went something like that. Your typical nightly, 35-minute TV news broadcast is a headline service with pictures. Five minutes of police-blotter reporting - fires, murders, car accidents, etc. - five minutes of human-interest stories and small talk, five minutes of weather, five minutes of sports, ten minutes of commercials, and maybe a minute or two for business, science, politics, and affairs of the world.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

July 3, 1998 Denver Post column

World, Cars, Business, Sport

“What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Love, Life, Pain, War

“You've got to watch yourself when you get as old as I am. You have to try new things, sometimes for no better reason than that they’re new. Otherwise you rust.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 18 (p. 170)

“When I think of the artist Yves Klein, I think of those absolutists who preceded him by a generation or two, those who vanished, think of the boxer and Dadaist poet Arthur Cravan who in 1918 was supposed to leave Mexico to meet his new wife in Argentina but was never seen again; of Everett Ruess, the bohemian who might have become an artist or writer had he not disappeared into the canyons of Utah at the age of twenty in 1934, leaving behind a final signature carved into the rock: “Nemo” or “no one”; of the aviator Amelia Earhart who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937; of the pilot Antoine de Saint Exupéry who left behind several lapidary books before his plane too disappeared, in 1944, in the Mediterranean. They were all saddled with a desire to appear in the world and a desire to go as far as possible that was a will to disappear from it. In the ambition was a desire to make over the world as it should be; but in the disappearances was the desire to live as though it had been made over, to refashion oneself into a hero who disappeared not only into the sky, the sea, the wilderness, but into a conception of self, into legend, into the heights of possibility.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005)

Books, Age, World, Thinking

“The intermediate goal is the creation of millions of new jobs and livelihood opportunities. This would necessitate being able to successfully attract much greater amounts of direct investments, especially foreign investments.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“Yours of July 27 is received. It confirms the accounts we receive from others that the infractions of the embargo in Maine and Massachusetts are open. I have removed Pope, of New Bedford, for worse than negligence. The collector of Sullivan is on the totter. The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it. I fear your Governor [Sullivan] is not up to the tone of these parricides, and I hope on the first symptom of an open opposition of the law by force you will fly to the scene, and aid in suppressing any commotion.”

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

Letter to General Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War (August 9, 1808) in regards to enforcing the American embargo.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Fear, Law, Hope, Flying

“I was involved with organising migrant worker nannies, domestic workers, in New York State with the IAF. We flew them to a hotel, got them together, and got them to talk to each other about what their issues were. What was incredible was that out of those 300 nannies all of them were prepared to pay a not insubstantial part of their wages to join a union that could articulate their concerns. They were getting sexual harassment, exploitation. It only grew out of them meeting each other, they had to have that initial investment to get them together. They came from all over the world but what they found when they got together was they had the same issues. If people knew you could join a union, get on, and protect each other it would be transformative – we’ve got to find a way, to put it bluntly, of supporting good work. There needs to be a complete transformation of the language and agenda of unions.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Left Foot Forward, 7 September 2011 https://leftfootforward.org/2011/09/lord-maurice-glasman-interview-unions-labour-party-businesses/

People, World, Way, Support

“The Internet is no longer a free realm, but neither has it fulfilled the Orwellian prophecy. It is a contested terrain, where the new, fundamental battle for freedom in the Information Age is being fought.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 6, Privacy and Liberty in Cyberspace, p. 171

Age, Freedom

“Q: "Congressman Paul, you've questioned the fiscal conservatism of all these candidates, but particularly Senator Santorum. You have a new television ad calling him a fake. Why?"”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

A: "Because he's a fake. I find it sort of fascinating how when people are running for office they're really fiscally conservative. When they're in office, they vote for something different, and then when they explain themselves they say "Oh! I want to repeal that." So the Senator voted for No Child Left Behind. He voted for it, but now he's running on the effort to get rid of it!.....This loses credibility." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZPexbzJUU4
2012

Question

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Age, Success

“Perhaps [Condoleezza Rice] would have made a more timely cameo in New Orleans had a Chevron tanker caught fire. Jane Crow seems to be just as willing as old Jim was.”

Larisa Alexandrovna (1971) Ukrainian-American journalist, essayist, poet

Defending Those Who Know http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/defending-those-who-know_b_7517.html; "Jim" is a reference to Jim Crow laws.

Time

“An income tax intended to reduce inequality and promote the diffusion of wealth has in practice fostered reinvestment of corporate earnings, thereby favoring the growth of large corporations, inhibiting the operation of the capital market, and discouraging the establishment of new enterprises.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 13 Conclusion, 2002 edition, p. 198

Wealth

“The invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable “commodity,” the first assembly-line, and the first mass-production.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 142

Knowledge

“The next day he [uncle Alfred] took me to hear the 'Concert Colonne' at the Chatelet. First we lunched and then went to the hall. There was a fine program! Schumann, Bizet (new to me), Berlioz (ditto). - I can scarcely express how I marveled at the Hamlet and Romeo et Juliette of Berlioz. - He belongs with Delacroix, with Shakespeare, he is of the same family, he has the mark of these men of genius. He is prodigious in movement, imagination, strangeness, vigor, delicacy, sense of contrast, he is terrible and suave.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 2 April 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 26
1880's

Men, Family, Imagination, Sense

“The expansion of Europe was the transforming force in human history of the last 500 years, and yet the modern academy looks for reasons not to study it. In the era of decolonisation the new nations want to stress their indigenous roots and sympathetic scholars explain that European influence was not overwhelming, but that it was used and subverted by locals for local purposes. To concentrate on Europe is criticised as 'Eurocentric.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

But to ignore Europe makes the history of any part of the globe unintelligible.
Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (2005)

History, Study, Parting

“You know, the whole American culture is going down the drain, you can't turn on a television set and see anything, or walk in the street and not find garbage, or neighborhoods that were formerly beautiful now have McDonald's in them, and it's all a part of an enormous degeneration of culture in the United States. People that exist in that culture are forced to make moral decisions all the time about their lives, their occupations, their love-lives, and they make decisions that are commensurate with what's happening to them in this culture, and it's too bad that that's happening because that's what Manhattan is about, that New York used to be such a great city, so wonderful, and it has to fight every day for its survival against the encroachment of all this terrible ugliness that is gradually overcoming all the big cities in America.
This ugliness comes from a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life. They don't know what they're doing, or why they're here. They have no religious center, they have no philosophical center, and so they act, they do what's expedient at the moment. They have no long view of society. They only have the view of quick money, and kill the pain of the moment, and so instead of dealing with the real problems that exist, that are complicated, they sweep them under the rug by turning on the television set, or taking cocaine, or doing many things that enable them to escape confrontation with the unpleasant realities of the world.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

[Allen, Woody, France Roche, Woody Allen, ou L'Anhedoniste; le Plus Drole du Monde, New York, 1979, France 2, 05 January 2013]
Others

Love, Life, Money, Pain

“When working on my choreography I am not always receptive to outside suggestions or opinions. I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of a creation, such as a new dance, a sequence, or an effect, you are certain to come up with inaccurate criticism and damaging results if you go around asking for opinions.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

op. cit., p. 6.

Way, Dance

“Only a radical cleaning of social and artistic life as, in the domain of art, is already done by Dada, which is anti-sentimental and healthy to the core, since it is anti-art. Only unscrupulously striking down any systematically bred amateurism in any field, can prepare civilization for the 'New Vision's happiness which is greatly and purely alive in a dew people.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Is a Universal Plastic Notion Possible Today?', as cited in 'Bouwkundig weekblad' [a Dutch architectural magazine], XLI 39, 1920, pp. 230–231
this quote of Theo van Doesburg is one of his earliest Dada expressions
1920 – 1926

Life, People, Art, Happiness

“My mom thinks my new daughter is exceptionally bright, because now she will lie on the floor and talk to the ceiling fan. I said, "Mom, Uncle Harold does that and y'all call him an alcoholic."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

You Might Be a Redneck If… (1993)

Alcohol, Lie, Moms, Thinking

“Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on Letters on the Nature and Development of Man (1851), by Harriet Martineau. Letter to James Taylor (11 February 1851) The life of Charlotte Brontë

Life, God, Truth, Books

“I’d got all this new technology and we spent a year making the album, programming all these primitive computers. [The LinnDrum] sounded so much like real drums it was difficult to tell it apart. The tempo was absolutely precise because it all ran to a digital clock and the record just was precision itself. It was also very simple. If you actually analyse what was going on at any given moment in time there may be only four or five things going on, but it does the job.”

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

Time

“The truth is that dinosaurs have always lived with man. They were called dragons for most of human history and man killed most of them. In 1841, a new name "dinosaur" was given to them. It is quite possible that a few are still alive. There have been thousands of sightings of creatures, such as the Loch Ness Monster or the dead dinosaur that washed up on the beach in California in 1925.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: Are you being brainwashed?: Propaganda in science textbooks (2007), pp. 22-23

Truth, History, Dead

“The first time I saw youI knew it would never lastI'm not half what I wish I wasI'm so angryI don't think it'll ever passAnd I was bad news for you just becauseI never meant to hurt you”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Pitseleh.
Lyrics, XO (1998)

Thinking, Time, Hurt

“The mythology of the New Testament, also, is not to be questioned with respect to the content of its objectifying representations but with respect to the understanding of existence that expresses itself in them.”

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976) German theologian

Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 10

Understanding, Question

“Prosper's earliest memory was of hearing the enormous Hoover starting up somewhere in the house, brand-new then possibly, anyway unknown to him, an inexplicable noise at once a roar and shriek and coming closer; moving away; closer again, and evidently seeking him out where he lay in bed. Then to find the great gray floor-sucker thing entering his room, manipulated by his grim-faced mother, therefore not dangerous at all, maybe.”

John Crowley book Four Freedoms

Part Two, Chapter 2
Four Freedoms (2009)

Memory, Housing

“As a believer is changed, receiving a glorified body, so similarly, the earth is changed into a new earth, unstained by sin.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 97

Change

“McLuhan after his September 1979 stroke. Brand, Stewart. "McLuhan's last words." New Scientist, 29 Jan 1981.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Boyoboy oboyoboy oboyoboyoboyoboyoboyoboy...
1980s

“Many nights I stood on the bridge — and in the middle alone — lost — a defenseless prey to the surrounding swarming darkness — crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers — here and there lights resembling suspended falls of astral bodies or fantastic splendors of remote rites — shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion, like blood in the arteries—at times, ringing as alarm in a tempest, the shrill sulphurous voice of the trolley wires — now and then strange moanings of appeal from tugboats, guessed more than seen, through the infernal recesses below — I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new DIVINITY.”

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist

Source: "The Brooklyn Bridge (A page of my life)," 1929, p. 88; Cited in: Beth Venn, Adam D. Weinberg. Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950 : Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art. University of California Press, 1999. p. 123

Religion, Mountain, Light, Time

“I think the evening news broadcasts are very different today than they were 25-years-ago. I think that the advent of 24-hour cable television. You don't have to wait for 6:30 or 7:00 to get the national news. You can turn on cable any time and you're going to get it right away. And I think that that 24-hour continuous news cycle has affected the way that news is covered. And I'm not sure that that's always a good thing. It can be, but it's not always a good thing.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Larry King, Interview with Ed Bradley, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/08/lkl.00.html, February 8, 2004, Larry King Live, CNN]

Way, Thinking, Time, Waiting

“Liberation from every form of exploitation, the possibility of a more human and dignified life, the creation of a new humankind - all pass through this struggle.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Conclusion, p. 174
A Theology of Liberation - 15th Anniversary Edition

Life

“Okay, I get it. You people destroy billions of brain cells on a daily basis with your excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, over-the-counter as well as prescription medication—the latter of which, chances are, aren't even yours—and a veritable laundry list of substances that you shove into your soft little bodies day after day. The reason I bring up your chemically-induced mind is because I think the lot of you have forgotten my accomplishments, so please allow me to jog your ailing memory: I am the only three-time straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in WWE history, I am the only Superstar in WWE history to win back-to-back Money in the Bank Ladder Matches at WrestleMania, and don't forget I am the man that did you, the WWE Universe, a favor that you didn't even deserve when I got rid of the Charismatic Enabler Jeff Hardy from this company…forever. But that runs a close #2 to my crowning achievement of using my Anaconda Vice and, for the first time, making the Undertaker [makes the motion on his chest] tap out—I did that. Me. I did that, and I did it all without drugs, I did it all without alcohol, and above all else, I did it all without any help from any of you. So I want somebody, anybody in a position of power to come out here right now and treat me with the respect I have earned, not only as the face of SmackDown, but the poster boy of the entire company, and as the choice of a new generation, I deserve to know who my next opponent is now that I have defeated the all-powerful Undertaker. [Waits amidst the boos of the crowd] Oh, that's right. There isn't anybody left!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 25, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Money, People, Alcohol, World

“Naturally, in order to find in this break [in the visual perception] with time-honored habits a basis for a new pictorial harmony and a plastic means of dealing with life and movement, there must be an artistic sensibility far in advance of the normal vision of the crowd.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Life, Nature, Time

“Marxism has only killed 100 million people, so naturally at the new voice of the mainstream center Democratic Party, they’re ready to give it another chance.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

August 26, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26823_Daily_Kos_Diary-_Mainstream_Marxism&only

People, Nature, Chance

“The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators.
Goodnow contends that the civil service reformers persuasively argued that the separation of administration from politics, far from destroying the democratic links with the people, actually served to enhance democracy. While John Rohr, in his outstanding new introduction carefully notes loopholes in the theoretical scaffold of Goodnow's argument, he is also careful to express his appreciation of the pragmatic ground for this new sense of government as needing a partnership of the elected and the appointed.
Goodnow was profoundly influenced by European currents, especially the Hegelian. As a result, the work aims at a political philosophy meant to move considerably beyond the purely pragmatic needs of government. For it was the relationships, the need for national unity in a country that was devised to account for and accommodate pluralism and diversity, that attracted Goodnow's legal background and normative impulses alike. That issues of legitimacy and power distribution were never entirely resolved by Goodnow does not alter the fact that this is perhaps the most important work, along with that of James Bryce, to emerge from this formative period to connect processes of governance with systems of democracy.”

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) American historian

Abstract, 2009 edition:
Politics and Administration (1900)

People, Democracy, Sense, Partnership

“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Army Major Livovich was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, eight hundred Palestinians. The total is now a thousand. She replied instantly, "Five hundred of them were militants."”

Gerald Kaufman (1930–2017) British politician

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
Speech to the House of Commons, Jan 2009

Home, Time, Fight, Dead

“Americans and Europeans alike sometimes forget how unique is the United States of America. No other nation has been created so swiftly and successfully. No other nation has been built upon an idea – the idea of liberty. No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations within a single culture. Both the founding fathers of the United States and successive waves of immigrants to your country were determined to create a new identity. Whether in flight from persecution or from poverty, the huddled masses have, with few exceptions, welcomed American values, the American way of life and American opportunities. And America herself has bound them to her with powerful bonds of patriotism and pride. The European nations are not and can never be like this. They are the product of history and not of philosophy. You can construct a nation on an idea; but you cannot reconstruct a nation on the basis of one.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at Hoover Institution Lunch (8 March 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108264 This quote appears to be the basis for the following condensed version, seen on numerous internet sites : Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. Post-Prime Ministerial

Life, People, Way, History

“Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U. S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture — "enhanced interrogation techniques" — is a term originally coined enhanced interrogation techniques by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

" 'Verschärfte Vernehmung' http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html#more " The Daily Dish (29 May 2007)

Death, War, Past

“It is nice to see that the royal family of England has easily adapted to the changed times. They are well-trained to retain their memories, updated their knowledge and live according to the new conditions.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

In "When 'Maharaja of Travancore' met Queen Elizabeth II (8 July 2012)".

Family, Knowledge, Memory, Change

“We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgement of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, Men, World, Birthday

“The most serious problems lie in the financial sphere, where the economy’s debt overhead has grown more rapidly than the ‘real’ economy’s ability to carry this debt. … The essence of the global financial bubble is that savings are diverted to inflate the stock market, bond market and real estate prices rather than to build new factories and employ more labor.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Financial Capitalism v. Industrial Capitalism http://michael-hudson.com/1998/09/financial-capitalism-v-industrial-capitalism/ (September 3, 1998) Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Lie, Problem

“Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.”

James Reston (1909–1995) Journalist, newspaper editor

The President and the Press, The Artillery of the Press (1966)

“It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures—its species—and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.”

David Brin book Earth

Part XI (pp. 634-635)
Earth (1990)

World, Sister

“There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worth while, especially when it is new and different.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Variant: There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worth while, especially when it is new and different.
Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 127

Courage

“The erection of a great public building in any city almost always engenders controversy. The maxim that there can be no disputing about matters of taste seldom deters an eager host of critics, informed and uninformed, from rushing into print. But the new buildings of London University have had the good fortune to rise undisturbed by the clamours of contention and indeed with a degree of public approval which must be almost unprecedented… I have found, as a matter of experience, that the gravamen of complaints about any public scheme may generally be found to reside not in its intrinsic demerits but in the fact that the objectors were not consulted about it.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 268

Universe

“Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk.”

Fran Lebowitz book Metropolitan Life

"No News is Preferable" ( p. 221 http://books.google.com/books?id=wKnCCIk9O0wC&q=%22Radio+news+is+bearable+This+is+due+to+the+fact+that+while+the+news+is+being+broadcast+the+disc+jockey+is+not+allowed+to+talk%22&pg=PA221#v=onepage) Originally published in "The Lebowitz Report" http://books.google.com/books?id=k_MxAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Radio+news+is+bearable+This+is+due+to+the+fact+that+while+the+news+is+being+broadcast+the+disc+jockey+is+not+allowed+to+talk%22&pg=PA209#v=onepage column in Mademoiselle (1975) Metropolitan Life (1978)

“I’ve had 37 orthopedic operations. I ground my feet up into dust. I’ve got a new knee. I‘ve got a new spine. I’m the lucky one… I never thought going through all of it that I would be healthy at the end. And I almost wasn’t.”

Bill Walton

"The Thing Bill Walton Still Can't Forgive Himself For" https://www.gq.com/story/bill-walton-back-from-the-dead-interview, interview with GQ (March 26, 2016).

“The Democratic Party, whatever that is, lacks a vision or an ideology. But many people have said this. Why? That is because it is a conglomeration of mutually exclusive parts. It contains a large part of the American working class, which has suffered greatly since the Great Recession began. But it also contains a lot of Wall Street people and well-to-do people, and new technologists. What policies is going to unite these people? It's hard to find a unifying theme among them, other than they don’t want the Republicans in power. Now, that often gets you fairly far, but it doesn't allow you to govern very effectively.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

"How Radical Change Occurs: An Interview With Historian Eric Foner" http://www.thenation.com/article/how-radical-change-occurs-interview-historian-eric-foner/ (3 February 2015), by Mike Konczal, The Nation 2010s

People, Suffering, Parting

“Sport belongs in a news bulletin about as much as a mummified cat's head belongs in a Caesar salad.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Newswipe

Cats, Sport

“The fact remains that there are probable past events that can "still happen" within your personal previous experience. A new event can literally be born in the past -- "now."”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. 355: session 654: April 9, 1973

Past, Personality

“Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by State intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify. Society will have to live for the State, man for the governmental machine. And as, after all, it is only a machine whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the State, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism. Such was the lamentable fate of ancient civilisation. … Already in the times of the Antonines (IInd Century), the State overbears society with its anti-vital supremacy. Society begins to be enslaved, to be unable to live except in the service of the State. The whole of life is bureaucratised. What results? The bureaucratisation of life brings about its absolute decay in all orders.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XIII: The Greatest Danger, The State

Life, Death, Fate, Support

“Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. It seems almost as if progress itself and our fight against the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill path from which we are trying to escape.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

II. Progress and Entropy. p. 46-47
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Future, Fight

“It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Life, Dependency

“(about her beginnings) "People assume I always wanted to be a violinist. It was actually just one of many other hobbies that I had. I had very enthusiastic parents. They gave me swimming lessons and horseback riding and gymnastics and ballet. My mom put me on the piano when I was about 3i. I asked for the violin when I was 4 because I wanted something that was smaller and more portable. I auditioned for the Juilliard School when I was about 6. During the week, I went to a regular school in Philadelphia so I could be with kids my own age." and "I started my career when I was 8 with two debuts in New York and Philadelphia, and then I started recording when I was 9. When you're so young, you don't realize the impact of a New York Philharmonic debut. You're told to do something and you go out and do it and you don't ask too many questions. I think the questions come later when you're in your teens. By the time I was 14, I was spending probably half the year in Europe. So I was out of school a lot. I did most of my homework by e-mail or fax. We made it work because my professors were incredible."”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

Newsweek September 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870541/site/newsweek/?page=6

People, Age, School, Moms

“New-classical economics has been undeniably influential, but not in the way that its three prominent creators originally imagined. Its most important contribution to macroeconomics, the assumption of rational expectations, was stolen almost immediately, and applied more fruitfully, by the new Keynesians.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

"Fresh Water, Salt Water, and other Macroeconomic Elixirs", 1989

Way, Imagination

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 74) - Speech given before the destruction of the nuclear-armed satellite Circum-Terra.

Men, People, Stupidity, Light

“As Love alone can exquisitely bless,
Love only feels the marvellous of pain;
Opens new veins of torture in the soul,
And wakes the nerve where agonies are born.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

The Brothers (1753), Act V, scene i.

Love, Pain, Feeling, Soul

“Photographers are the new Brahmins: we have no volition when they rule us.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

“In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.”

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

April Thesis (1917)

War, Nature, Parting

“I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of His existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence, prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers. Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance, I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man, who can but wonder and adore.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Death, God, Feeling, Confidence

“The salmon swimming upstream to spawn may be wily in a hundred ways, but she cannot even contemplate the prospect of abandoning her reproductive project and deciding instead to live out her days studying coastal geography or trying to learn Portuguese. The creation of a panoply of new standpoints is, to my mind, the most striking product of the euprimatic revolution.”

Daniel Dennett book Freedom Evolves

Freedom Evolves (2003)

Way, Study, Learning

“Where did you set your standard of faith? Do you desire the greatest blessing? I know you do. Are you willing to take up the cross? Do you know what Jesus said? He said, "He who loves his mother, his father, his wife, his brothers and sisters, his children more than me is not worthy of me. To come with me, you must bear your own cross." Jesus Christ, of course, was a pathfinder. He opened up the territory, the new way. In order to be adopted as a true son and daughter of God, those who followed his path must walk the same way. The time has come when the tears of civilized people are necessary. The tears of the millionaire are needed, The tears of the men of talent, the men of knowledge are needed. And their sweat. And even their blood. This is the only way we can expedite the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Process of Restoration http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon65/SM650213.htm, (1965-02-13)

Love, Men, God, Children

“If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “God,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.”

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

June 15, 1844
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Life, God, School, Law

“Duplicity in events: What happens here as new, happens somewhere else just the same way. That's so exciting. That is one of the secrets of life. Why did I sometimes build a lamp in the Bauhaus and somebody comes from Holland and says, 'Oh, somebody in Holland makes just the same lamp.' Such duplicity shows that the time is ripe for a problem and thus it is in the air, and will be solved here – and there. With this we are finding the 'creative process', for which somebody is coming to ask me about. I would say, 'I paint because I have no time not to paint.”

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

That's my creative process.
Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Life, Secret, Way, Problem

“It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Philosophy and Equal Temperament
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles

Perfection

“Whatever his inner thoughts and intentions, Hitler now had to serve as a representative of his unit within the new Soviet regime. By his willingness to run for office as Bataillons-Rat, he had become even more significant cog in the machine of Socialism than previously had been the case. Hitler’s actions helped sustain the Soviet Republic.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (2017), pp. 49-50

Help

“I am always surprised that the information profession, so quick to sing the virtues of literature search for its customers, pays so little attention to its own history. I have been told: “our problems are different from those of the past”. It is not so the problems are often the same, only the technical means available for solution may be new. The thinking and experience of the past can often shed light on the present.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (2008), "Emanuel Goldberg and his knowledge machine by Michael Buckland". Book review, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 40(2), p. 144.

History, Search, Literature, Problem

“Following the lead given by new institutional economics, we shall take the transaction as our unit of analysis. For our purposes, a transaction can be thought of as any act of social exchange that depends on information flows for its accomplishment. Transactions can be as simple and brief as the purchase of a packet of cigarettes, or as complex as and extended as those which bind a Zen master to his disciples. Like institutional economists, we are interested in the relationship that can be established between different transactional characteristics and the phenomenon of institutionalization. Our use of the term transaction, however, will extend beyond that of institutional economics where the focus has tended to be primarily on transaction costs and efficiency considerations. These, to be sure, are relevant. But, as we shall see, they are not the whole story.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 124; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

Dependency

“I realize that for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you've heard my name, and you don't know much about me. Over these next two years you will get to know me, but more importantly, I will get to know you.”

Kirsten Gillibrand (1966) United States Senator from New York

At the press conference where New York Governor David Paterson announced Gillibrand's appointment to the senate
[N.Y. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Pickert, Kate, Time, Inc., Time, 2009-01-23, 2011-01-28, http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1873589,00.html]

Time

“I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes,
And
I certainly haven't been spreading myself around.
I still only travel by foot, and by foot it's a slow climb.
But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so
I can't stop changing all the time.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Extraordinary Machine
Song lyrics, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

Shoe, Travel, Change, Time

“The discovery of new knowledge for ourselves, then, means the assimilation of public information into our unique context of thought. ie can establish relations between ideas and concepts which are not available to anyone else, because no-one else has precisely the same system of information available.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Librarians and Information Systems (1995)

Idea, Knowledge

“In reinforced concrete we have not only a new material but, of far greater consequence, new constructions and a new method for designing buildings. Therefore, in using [reinforced concrete], we have to renounce the old traditions and concern ourselves with meeting new tasks.”

Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) Russian artist

Quote in: 'Zodchii 19' (1915), p. 198; as quoted by Vasilii Rakitin, in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 30
Quotes, 1910 - 1925

“Historical Overdosing: to live in a period of time when too much seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Definitions
Variant: Historical Overdosing: to live in a period of time when too much seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts.

Time

“All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to William McKinley (27 December 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Men, Hostility, Support, Hurt

“There is also a considerable tendency to define the subject as a kind of meeting place of science and art. This is exemplified by Eckert. He pleads for artistic imagination and intuition in cartographic portrayal and claims that the inter-action of such talents with scientific geography produces the aesthetic map. There is no question about the importance of imagination and new ideas, but it is equally important that significant processes be objectively investigated, whether it be the visual consumption of a graphic technique or a process in geomorphology. It can perhaps best be approached by a comparison of the aims, techniques involved, and the results accomplished by each activity”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Source: The Look of Maps (1952), p. 17; as cited in: Kirk Patrick Goldsberry (2007) Real-time Traffic Maps. p. 23-24

Art, Imagination, Idea, Question

“The last piece of advice I shall venture to offer the Liberal party is this, that they shall not dissociate themselves, even indirectly or unconsciously, or by any careless words, from the new sentiment of Empire which occupies the nation. To many the word "Empire" is suspect as indicating aggression and greed and violence and the characteristics of other empires that the world has known; but the sentiment that is represented now by Empire in these islands has nothing of that in it. (Cheers.) It is a passion of affection and family feeling, of pride and of hopefulness; and the statesman, however great he may be, who dissociates himself from that feeling must not be surprised if the nation dissociates itself from him.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Cheers
Speech at Chesterfield (16 December 1901), reported in The Times (17 December 1901), p. 10.

World, Family, Hope, Feeling

“When I released GNU Emacs and people started using it, they started sending me improvements in the mail. So I would get a message with a bug fix, and a message with a new feature, and another bug fix, and another new feature, and another… and another… until they were pouring in on me so fast that just taking advantage of all of the help people were giving me was a big job. Microsoft doesn't have this problem.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System", address at LinuxTag (July 2000)
2000s

People, Problem, Help

“Outside the party, formless revolutionary frustration mingled with distinctly counter-revolutionary trends. Since the ruling group had singled out Trotsky as a target for attack he automatically attracted the spurious sympathy of many who had hitherto hated him. As he made his appearance in the streets of Moscow [in the spring of 1924], he was spontaneously applauded by crowds in which idealist communists rubbed shoulders with Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, and the new bourgeoisie of the NEP, by all those indeed who, for diverse reasons hoped for a change”

Isaac Deutscher (1907–1967) British historian

Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, Pelican, 1966, p. 279. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, pp. 25.

Hate, Hope, Spring, Appearance

“At the very high speed of living, everybody needs a new career and a new job and a totally new personality every ten years.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Forces interview (1973)

Personality, Speed

“I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer (2000), p. 169

“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 66.
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Men, Books, Search, Business

“We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love

“The tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the US is a wonderful allegory for new racism. Every year, the National Turkey Federation presents the US president with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.

That's how new racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys - the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) - are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park.
The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically, they're for the pot. But the fortunate fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the World Trade Organisation - so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee - so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/569/569p12.htm given at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004 Speeches

Life, Children, World, School

“How will the cessation of war purchases of planes, guns, tanks, and ships … affect the national level of employment? How many new jobs will be created by the consumers’demand for an additional one million of passenger cars, how many of these jobs can be expected to be located in the automobile industry itself, and how many in other industries such as Steel and the Chemicals, the Coal and the Petroleum industries? How much additional freight traffic and revenue can the American railroads expect to derive from every billion dollars worth spent on post-war housing construction?”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 141: as cited in: Frits Bos, " Three centuries of macro-economic statistics http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35391/1/Three_centuries_macroeconomic_statistics.pdf." (2011).

War, Cars, Housing