Quotes about news
page 37

Béla H. Bánáthy photo
Alexander Pope photo
Gwyneth Paltrow photo
Franz Marc photo
Pasuya Yao photo

“Taipei is not only the nation's capital, but also the engine of its economy. Yet, in the past few years the city's economy has shrunk and has been surpassed by New Taipei City.”

Pasuya Yao (1965) Taiwanese politician

Pasuya Yao (2017) cited in " Pasuya Yao throws hat in mayoral ring http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/07/24/2003675199" on Taipei Times, 24 July 2017

James Thurber photo

“He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: "After dinner, the men moved into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all night. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, pg.267)

Variant: From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988); Harold Ross was the editor of The New Yorker from its inception until 1951, and well-known for the overuse of commas
From other writings

St. Vincent (musician) photo
Mario Cuomo photo

“General Systems Theory, as originally intended by Von Bertalanffy, is an ideal framework for the modeling of a business enterprise. Work, in its most civilized form should enrich, empower and emancipate. Thus we must continue to find ways to support work as a humanistic, not mechanistic endeavor. We must continue to seek out new models of business that support and enhance the individual as well as the collective whole. Given all this new technology, we need new institutions for handling it.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Beer (1974) Designing Freedom. House Of Anansi Press, Toronto cited in: B. Dawson (2007) "Bertalanffy Revisited: Operationalizing A General Systems Theory Based Business Model Through General Systems Thinking, Modeling, And Practice", In: Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the ISSS, 2007.

Alan Rusbridger photo

“The BBC is almost certainly the best news organisation in the world – the most serious, comprehensive, ethical, accurate, international, wide-ranging, fair and impartial.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Source: 2010s, Does journalism exist? (2010), p. 5. Partly cited in: Bob Franklin (2013) The future of journalism. p. 1968.

Adolf Hitler photo
Pete Yorn photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Keynes was to economics as Katrina was to New Orleans.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Seeking honorable Hondurans for Hire,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=506 WorldNetDaily.com, July 10, 2009.
2000s, 2009

James Madison photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo

“I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

Agatha Christie photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“[The Spanish news] really keeps me awake at night and in the day I can think of nothing else. I did not think it possible that anything could have made me regret being out of office, but I now wish I was in a situation, in which it might be possible to assist this glorious cause.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to Lady Holland (2 July 1808), quoted in E. A. Smith, Lord Grey. 1764-1845 (Alan Sutton, 1996), p. 169.
1800s

Nathanael Greene photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Joseph Massad photo
Tom Stoppard photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo
Lesslie Newbigin photo
Fred Thompson photo
Eudora Welty photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Erich Segal photo

“News Headline Noun String Length World Record Breaker Runner-Up”

James Taranto (1966) American journalist

Referring to a BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13905331 with the headline "Breast Cancer Prostate Drug Hope"
from Best of the Web Today for June 27, 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576411740143493006.html

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Sebastian Gorka photo
Fay Weldon photo
Robert Oppenheimer photo

“The history of science is rich in the example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Science and the Common Understanding (1954); based on 1953 Reith lectures.

David Berg photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

“Who said last, 'A cleaner New York-school is Up To You?”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

1956 - 1967
Source: the 'Ad Reinhardts Papers', Archives of American Art, microfilm no. N/69-103, frame no. 285

Mitt Romney photo

“So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn't get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church's pension fund to invest, but I didn't. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him. That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we'd ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana. Today Steel Dynamics is one of the largest steel producers in the United States.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-31
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160357612/transcript-mitt-romneys-acceptance-speech
Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech
NPR
[2012-08-30, gopconvention2012, Mitt Romney: Introduction (video), YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cGyPwt5UI]
2012

“Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships.”

Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 1
Context: Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships. By the time they realized they were in a struggle Jake Holman would already have made for himself the place he wanted on their ship and they could never dislodge him. Or wish to.

Laura Anne Gilman photo
Angela Davis photo
Franz Marc photo
Tina Fey photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in Hitler (1974) by Joachim C. Fest, p. 533
Other remarks

Immortal Technique photo

“The devil crept into heaven, God overslept on the seventh, the new world order was born on September 11th.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The Cause of Death
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Jim Gaffigan photo

“I'd been acting and doing stand-up in New York about eight years, getting rejected, and I finally got the opportunity to do stand-up on Letterman, which holds even more importance for me. With comedians, that's definitely the pinnacle, but being from Indiana, it was a big to-do.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

On getting his big break, an appearance on Late Show With David Letterman — interview in Virginia Rohan (November 29, 2000) "Partly Howdy - Jim Gaffigan Is a Midwestern Weatherman Who Takes On The Big City in 'Welcome To New York'", The Record, p. Y1.

“We accepted her as an artist. And with her popularity, everybody, from school kids to grown ups, have watched her sites. People are paying money to watch her. How can there be tolerance for all this? What will the new generation learn?”

On pornstar-turned-actress Sunny Leone, as quoted in " I don't mind being called conservative: Pahlaj Nihalani http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pahlaj-nihalani-censor-board-chief-interview/article6823559.ece" The Hindu (26 January 2015)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Alexej von Jawlensky photo
Joseph McManners photo

“Everything is so exciting at the moment. My school friends back home in Canterbury can't quite believe what I am up to. I can't wait for everyone to hear my new album”

Joseph McManners (1992) British singer, actor

Source: Official Site http://www.josephmcmanners.com at www.josephmcmanners.com (accessed July 8, 2007)

Thomas Jefferson photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“Now I ask you whether you yourself have not often noticed that the policy of floating between the old and the new is not tenable? Just think this over. Sooner or later it ends with one's standing frankly either to the right or to the left.
It is no ditch, and I repeat, then it was '48 [the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, ] now it is '84 [1884]; then there was a barricade of paving stones - now it is not of stones, but a barricade as to the incompatibility of old and new.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Autumn 1884; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 381) p. 38
1880s, 1884

Ron Paul photo
Camille Paglia photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Toby Keith photo
Jane Roberts photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Sam Harris photo
Colin Wilson photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Val Logsdon Fitch photo
Niall Ferguson photo

“In response to news that Devyani Khobragade's 9 January 2014 indictment was dismissed - "They tried to trap Devyani with a false complaint against her. I thank the Indian government and the Indians for their cooperation and help. She will go back to America with full diplomatic immunity."”

Uttam Khobragade (1951) bureaucrat

India welcomes dismissal of visa fraud charges against Devyani Khobragade http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-welcomes-dismissal-of-visa-fraud-charges-against-Devyani-Khobragade/articleshow/31930921.cms, The Times of India, 13 March 2014

Grover Norquist photo

“Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you're right, there's an exemption for — I don't know — maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

interview with NPR's Terry Gross on the program Fresh Air, October 2, 2003.
2003

Anthony Kennedy photo

“The freedom secured by the Constitution consists, in one of its essential dimensions, of the right of the individual not to be injured by the unlawful exercise of governmental power. The mandate for segregated schools, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954); a wrongful invasion of the home, Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961); or punishing a protester whose views offend others, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397 (1989); and scores of other examples teach that individual liberty has constitutional protection, and that liberty’s full extent and meaning may remain yet to be discovered and affirmed. Yet freedom does not stop with individual rights. Our constitutional system embraces, too, the right of citizens to debate so they can learn and decide and then, through the political process, act in concert to try to shape the course of their own times and the course of a nation that must strive always to make freedom ever greater and more secure. Here Michigan voters acted in concert and statewide to seek consensus and adopt a policy on a difficult subject against a historical background of race in America that has been a source of tragedy and persisting injustice. That history demands that we continue to learn, to listen, and to remain open to new approaches if we are to aspire always to a constitutional order in which all persons are treated with fairness and equal dignity. Were the Court to rule that the question addressed by Michigan voters is too sensitive or complex to be within the grasp of the electorate; or that the policies at issue remain too delicate to be resolved save by university officials or faculties, acting at some remove from immediate public scru-tiny and control; or that these matters are so arcane that the electorate’s power must be limited because the people cannot prudently exercise that power even after a full debate, that holding would be an unprecedented restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right held not just by one person but by all in common. It is the right to speak and debate and learn and then, as a matter of political will, to act through a lawful electoral process.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U. S. ____, (2016), plurality opinion.

Barrett Brown photo

“The main point seems to be that I'm arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

Huffington Post, "Palin biographer accuses me of planning anti-government violence" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/palin-biographer-accuses-_b_791741.html, 3 December 2010.

Reggie Fils-Aimé photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Guess what? Wheels have been round for a really long time, and anybody who "reinvents" the new wheel is generally considered a crackpot. It turns out that "round" is simply a good form for a wheel to have. It may be boring, but it just tends to roll better than a square, and "hipness" has nothing what-so-ever to do with it.”

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

Attributed
Source: on Desktop_architects: Drivers – below the OS, Fri Aug 3 18:12:57 PDT 2007 https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/2007-August/002446.html.

Adam Gopnik photo
Alexander Pope photo
John Muir photo

“When night was drawing near, I ran down the flowery slopes exhilarated, thanking God for the gift of this great day. The setting sun fired the clouds. All the world seemed new-born. Every thing, even the commonest, was seen in new light and was looked at with new interest as if never seen before.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 7: Glenora Peak
1910s

Alice A. Bailey photo
John Hennigan photo

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the reason you're all here tonight, the new face of extreme, the man who defeated CM Punk in the middle of the ring at the Great American Bash, the greatest ECW champion of all time… John Morrison.”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

BLATT vs. ECW live coverage for July 24th, 2007 http://www.insidepulse.com/articles/69129/2007/07/24/blatt-vs-ecw-live-coverage-for-july-24th-2007.html

Rufus Choate photo
Dane Clark photo
Adam Smith photo
Alexander H. Stephens photo

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the north, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Karl Pilkington photo

“Any problem solved is a new problem made.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 5 Episode 1
On Life

Calvin Coolidge photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo

“This book [full of linoleum prints] will be an alphabet of pictorial elements without text, which shall aim at establishing a larger scale of painting, a closer contact between the artist and the wall, and a new spirit of art accompanying architecture.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

In the introduction, (written in 1951) of his not published book: "Line Form and Color"; as quoted in "Ellsworth Kelly, a Retrospective", ed. Diane Waldman, Guggenheim museum, New York 1997, p. 22
1950 - 1968

Theodor Mommsen photo

“n a word, this new office of Imperator was nothing else than the primitive regal office re-established; for it was those very restrictions--as respected the temporal and local limitation of power, the collegiate arrangement, and the cooperation of the senate or the community that was necessary for certain cases-- which distinguished the consul from the king.(17) There is hardly a trait of the new monarchy which was not found in the old: the union of the supreme military, judicial, and administrative authority in the hands of the prince; a religious presidency over the commonwealth; the right of issuing ordinances with binding power; the reduction of the senate to a council of state; the revival of the patriciate and of the praefecture of the city. But still more striking than these analogies is the internal similarity of the monarchy of Servius Tullius and the monarchy of Caesar; if those old kings of Rome with all their plenitude of power had yet been rulers of a free community and themselves the protectors of the commons against the nobility, Caesar too had not come to destroy liberty but to fulfil it, and primarily to break the intolerable yoke of the aristocracy. Nor need it surprise us that Caesar, anything but a political antiquary, went back five hundred years to find the model for his new state; for, seeing that the highest office of the Roman commonwealth had remained at all times a kingship restricted by a number of special laws, the idea of the regal office itself had by no means become obsolete. At very various periods and from very different sides-- in the decemviral power, in the Sullan regency, and in Caesar's own dictatorship--there had been during the republic a practical recurrence to it; indeed by a certain logical necessity, whenever an exceptional power seemed requisite there emerged, in contradistinction to the usual limited -imperium-, the unlimited -imperium- which was simply nothing else than the regal power.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

On the Re-Establishment of the Monarchy
Vol. 4. pt. 2, Translated by W. P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Al Sharpton photo

“Crime is going down everywhere but in the New York City Police Department.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Protest against the police brutalization of Abner Louima (29 August 1997)[citation needed]

“Against this view, it is still possible to identify some cultural continuities. Kitromilides himself alludes to some of them, when he mentions “inherited forms of cultural expression, such as those associated with the Orthodox liturgical cycle and the images of emperors, the commemoration of Christian kings, the evocation of the Orthodox kingdom and its earthly seat, Constantinople, which is so powerfully communicated in texts such as the Akathist Hymn, sung every year during Lent and forming such an intimate component of Orthodox worship...“ (Kitromilides 1998, 31). There are other lines of Greek continuity. Despite the adoption of a new religion, Christianity, certain traditions, such as a dedication to competitive values, have remained fairly constant, as have the basic forms of the Greek language and the contours of the Greek homeland (though its centre of gravity was subject to change). And John Armstrong has pointed to the “precocious nationalism” that took hold of the Greek population of the Byzantine Empire under the last Palaeologan emperors and that was directed as much against the Catholic Latins as against the Muslim Turks—an expression of medieval Greek national sentiment as well as a harbinger of later Greek nationalism. But again, we may ask: was this Byzantine sentiment a case of purely confessional loyalty or of ethnoreligious nationalism?”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

See Armstrong 1982, I74—8I cf. Baynes and Moss 1969, 119—27, and Carras 1983.
Source: The Nation in History (2000), p. 42-43.

Colin Wilson photo
George W. Bush photo
Al Hurricane photo

“It's New Mexico-style. But, it's not -- I don't want to call it "traditional". We can do traditional songs, but you got to be "modern" in what you do.”

Al Hurricane (1936–2017) American singer-songwriter

"Local Legends" on the CBS Early Show (December 26, 2011)