Quotes about news (10000 quotes, page 48)

“In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

Introduction, p. xxi
The English Constitution (1867)

Light , Time

“A new factor enters the situation when we encounter the influence of ‘scientific socialism.’ It is true, the party platform declares that ‘religion is a private affair.’ The saving of souls is the only industry that socialism distinctly relegates to private enterprise.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 108

Religion , Soul

“The news from France is very bad, and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune. Nothing will alter our feelings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again. What has happened in France makes no difference to our actions and purpose. We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honour. We shall defend our Island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (17 June 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 566
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People , World , Faith , Feeling

“I am prepared to retire (from playing) today…and coach the national team. Maybe it's time to bring in new blood, people who understand today's players, their psyche. If they ask me, I'll do it. It's an honour to coach the national team.”

Eyal Berkovic (1972) Israeli footballer and manager

When asked about what the IFA should do after Avraham Grant did not qualify the national team for the World Cup in 2006. [Berkovic ready to coach national side, Eurosport, 23 October 2005, http://www.eurosport.com/football/world-cup-2006-qualifying2/2004/sport_sto781152.shtml, 27 March, 2007]

People , Understanding , Time

“There is no unity or organisation or even aesthetic unity [in Abstract Expressionism / w:New York School (art), but we do have a very strong bond in our defense, but we also are strongest in our own individual identity. Our effort, I think, is all shooting off in independent directions. And the artists themselves will not admit to the existence of the New York School. They won't admit to any classification, and most of those painters known as Abstract Expressionists are the first to say they are not.”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

In an interview with w:David Sylvester (1960), edited for BBC broadcasting: first published in 'Living Arts', April 1964; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 12
1960s

School , Art , Thinking , Effort

“It's all right. You guys in New York City can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later, so let's be fair.”

Ray Nagin (1956) politician, businessman

Response to a reporters question addressing the length of the Katrina rebuilding efforts http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,210604,00.html (August 2006)
2006

Guy

“We are following the policies carried out by the new government. President Magufuli has the support of Tanzanian people. He is also very popular in other African countries. Now we see the optimism in Tanzania and this is very positive.”

John Magufuli (1959) Tanzanian politician

Turkish Ambassador to Tanzania, H.E Yasemin Eralp on President John Magufuli while talking about relationships with Tanzania and Turkey
Interview with the Turkish Ambassador to Tanzania http://allafrica.com/stories/201602291512.html
About

People , Optimism , Support , Country

“We must be careful, however, not to let the process of acquiring new ideas interfere with the detailed knowledge that our vehicle has assiduously collected and carefully stored in many associative connections during its lifetime. We know that this may happen in humans who are overly dedicated to the development of ideas. They tend to connect many individual cases into general categories ad then use the categories as if they were things, losing the potential for categorizing in other ways by remembering each instance.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

Source: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984), p. 52 as cited in: Vehicles – Valentino Braitenberg, 1984 http://problemboard.com/bio/?p=5 at problemboard.com, 2013

Way , Idea , Knowledge

“Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Life , People , Sense , Effort

“Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from kitchen tables to nonprofit organizations to corporate boards, Americans are turning away from the politics of bickering and division and working on a new politics – a politics of creative problem solving. It would have us take the best from the political left and right, and come up with something new that serves us all. It would have us come up with solutions to public issues that are thoughtful enough, clever enough, and inclusive enough, to bring people and factions together.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 1, "A Creative and Practical Politics," p. 3.

People , Problem

“New things always have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts.”

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

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Source: (zh-CN) 任何新生事物的成长都是要经过艰难曲折的。在社会主义事业中，要想不经过艰难曲折，不付出极大努力，总是一帆风顺，容易得到成功，这种想法，只是幻想。

Imagination , Effort , Success

“My major criticism of today's media is, they're no longer reporting the news, they're creating it. When that happens, you're in deep trouble.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 3 (p. 48)

“II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nations consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the dearest rights of loyal men, We cannot conceive.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Men , Thinking , Fight , Country

“Simultaneousness' is a technique. Simultaneous contrast is the most up-to-date honey of this technique in this field. Simultaneous contrast is visible depth – Reality, Form, construction, representation. Depth is the new inspiration. We live in depth, we travel in depth. I’m in it. The senses are in it. And the mind is too.”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote in Delaunay's text 'Simultanism', October 1913; as cited in Futurism, ed. by Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 57
1910 - 1915

Travel , Reality , Sense

“Two women and a child in a glade beside a spring. Beyond them, the varnished wilderness wherein bright birds cry. The child is chalk, Europe's daughter. Her dusky attendants, a green Indian and a maroon slave.
The scene, from Democracy in America, is discovered by that most famous European traveler to the New World, Alexis de Tocqueville, aristocratic son of the Enlightenment, liberal, sickly, gray, violet, lacking the vigor of the experiment he has set himself to observe… His description intends to show the African and the Indian doomed by history in corresponding but opposing ways.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

History is a coat cut only to the European.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Women , World , Way , Travel

“We cannot prevent Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we can never sanction it. Jews have not recognized Our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people. They had ample time to acknowledge Christ's divinity without pressure, but they didn't. Should the Jews manage to set foot on the once promised old-new land, the missionaries of the Church would stand prepared to baptize them. Jerusalem cannot be placed in Jewish hands.”

Pope Pius X (1835–1914) Catholic Pope and saint

To Theodor Herzl in a meeting in the Vatican (25 January 1904), quoted in "Catholic Church's long road to accepting Judaism" in The Los Angeles Times (11 May 2009) http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hier11-2009may11,0,1481965.story, "Jews Can't Take "Yes" for an Answer" (2000) by Harold M. Schulweis http://www.reformjudaismmag.net/900hs.html, and "Theodore Herzl and the Pope" http://ziomania.com/herzl/Theodore%20Herzl%20and%20the%20Pope.htm

People , Time , Christ

“People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter One

People , Sex , Loneliness , Madness

“I am inspired by New York…”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

Lula Magazine Interview (February 26, 2014)

“Today's novelist is not only limited by the thin subject matter of personal experience, but by the pinched clinical conventions of the Health generation. Faced with Othello, say, he would have to divide the man into departments, like a liberal arts course. Race relations — that's still a subject, although of course whites can't write about blacks and vice versa; sexual politics (somehow); Othello's ultimate therapy and decision to endure. Since jealousy is now curable, like TB, we can't have people dying of it anymore. A few rap sessions, some fearless touching, and a new sense of self-worth would have Othello and Iago and Hamlet and Juliet back on their feet in no time; and Fiction struggling.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"A Moral Problem" (1974), p. 88
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

People , Health , Jealousy , Art

“I mean, the official definition of Surrealism is to make a work automatically without a priori aesthetic or moral conditions, which is exactly what we do [artist in New York School / Abstract Expressionism]. At the same time Surrealism was an assault, - with a few exceptions: Giacometti, Arp and Miro - on the 'purity' of painting. I mean mean, on making painting - means themselves speak, without reliance on literature; and that second insistence of Surrealism, Americans really rejected. So that historically.... Abstract Expressionism is in part, I think, a fusion of certain Surrealist means, above all plastic 'automatism' with the Cubist's insistence that the picture speaks as a picture in strictly pictorial language.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

first published in 'Metro', 1962; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 82
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

School , Literature , Thinking , Time

“There is at Paris likewife another sort of fodder which they call la lucern which is not inferior, but rather preferred before sainfoin. Every day produces some new things concerning it, not only in other countries but in our own.”

Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662) German-British polymath

Samuel Hartlib Legacy, (1650), p. 4. cited in: Walter Harte. Essays on Husbandry (1764), Essay II on lucerne. p. 10.

Country

“Knowledge can in part be set aside, and one can then go further in order to collect new; the natural scientist can set aside insects and flowers and then go further, but if the existing person sets aside the decision in existence, it is eo ipso lost, and he is changed.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Papers VI B 66, 1845
1840s

Flowers , Nature , Knowledge , Decision

“And there we have my good rabbi.... he came up so tired in the studio, and then I put him down here. There was such a real seat in that guy, so with his pants slumped. That's nice, isn't it, that long black cloak with those wide folds and that slackly beer mat. He is holding the Torah role in his arm, do you see?... I known that old rab for a lot of years already, and with Purim and Rosh HaShanah [Jewish New Year] he comes faithfully around for his douceur [tip].”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): En dan heb je daar m'n goeie rebbe.. ..Hij kwam zo moe-gesjouwd 't atelier op, en toen heb ik hem hier neergezet. Daar zat zo'n echte zit in, in dien kerel, zoo met zoo'n uitgezakte broek.. .Da's mooi, nie-waar, die lange zwarte mantel met die wijde plooien en dat slappe viltje op.. .Hij heeft 't Seifer [de Tora-rol] in z'n arm, zie je wel?. ..Dien ouwe ribbe ken ik toch al wat 'n jaren, en met Poerim en Rausj Hasjoe [Joodse Nieuwjaar] komt ie trouw om z'n douceurtje.
Quote by Israëls, Jan. 1904, as cited in Jozef Israels, W.L. Brusse, 1905, pp. 135-136
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Guy , Beer

“I always want to tell stories. But they must be stories that evolve, like our own lives. Perhaps what I seek is a new kind of story.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

“The continuity of our science has not been affected by all these turbulent happenings, as the older theories have always been included as limiting cases in the new ones.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

As quoted in Beyond Positivism and Relativism : Theory, Method, and Evidence (1996) by Larry Laudan, p. 259

Science

“It seems that extremists on both sides are determined to maintain the state of hostility and hatred between the two states, but logic says that there should be a change of direction in order to turn a new page in this unstable relationship and minimise the state of hostility and mistrust between the two countries.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Presidential campaign, 2013

Hostility , Change , Country

“In tai chi chuan there is basic standing push hands, forward-backward push hands, dà lǜ and nine palace push hands, etc. In his later years, my older brother, Wu Kung-i (Wu Gongyi), created new techniques in applications. … The dà lǜ method of stepping is also called ‘eight gates and five steps”

Wu Kung-tsao (1902–1983) Chinese martial artist

bā mén wǔ bù
Wu Family T'ai Chi Ch'uan (1980)

“Today we know that on the sub-atomic level the fate of an electron or a whole atom is not determined by its past. But this discovery has not led to any basically new departure in the philosophy of nature, only to a state of bewildered embarrassment, a further retreat of physics into a language of even more abstract symbolism. Yet if causality has broken down and events are not rigidly governed by the pushes and pressures of the past, may they not be influenced in some manner by the "pull" of the future—which is a manner of saying that "purpose" may be a concrete physical factor in the evolution of the universe, both on the organic and unorganic levels. In the relativistic cosmos, gravitation is a result of the curvature and creases in space which continually tend to straighten themselves out—which, as Whittaker remarked, "is a statement so completely teleological that it certainly would have delighted the hearts of the schoolmen."”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Epilogue [footnote referenced E.T. Whittaker's Space and Spirit (1946)]
The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)

Fate , Departure , Nature , Universe

“In God the spiritual faculties
Come to their desired end,
Lose all sense of self and self-consciousness,
And are swept into infinity.
The soul, made new again,
Marveling to find itself
In that immensity, drowns.
How this comes about it does not know.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

God , Soul , Sense

“Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper.
Reporter 2: What’s your hurry Carl? The Jewish community’s lawyer is trying to show the damage done by the “Protocols of Zion” book.
Lawyer: Your honor, we have demonstrated that the “Protocols” is ‘’’smut…’’’ I would conclude by exhibiting evidence of its influence on public opinion as a fraud.
Judge: You may proceed!
Lawyer: Since its first publication in Russia by Dr. Nilus in 1905, four printings have been distributed there!
In 1919, type script copies were distributed to delegated at the Versailles peace conference by white Russians.
In England Victor Marsden translated the “protocols” into English in 1922.
In 1920, the first polish language edition was brought into the United States and South America by Polish immigrants.
In 1921, the first Arabic and the first Italian copies appeared!
In 1921, “The Times” of London published its famous expose of this false document!
And because of his fame, Henry Ford’s work deserves recounting.
Lawyer: In 1920, Henry ford the American auto magnate, bought a small newspaper, the “Dearborn Independent.” He began a series, “The International Jew,” made up of borrowings from the “Protocols of the Elders on Zion.”
Later, in 1922, it was published in sxteen language for a world-wide distribution. It sold over a ‘’’half million’’’ copies in America alone!
Reporter: Actually, Ford recanted in 1926 when he was threatened with a libel suit.

Reporter 2: Really?
Reporter 3: What did he say?
Reporter: He said in part, “…To my great regret I learn that in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ there appeared articles which induced the Jews to regard me as their enemy promoting anti-Semitism!”
HE WENT ON TO SAY, “…I am…mortified that this Journal…is giving currency to ‘The Protocols of the wise men of Zion,’ which I learn to be gross forgeries…I deem it my duty…to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers by asking their forgiveness.
HE GOES ON BY RECITING SOME OF THE MORE “evil ingredients” in the “Protocols” AND HE REFERS TO IT AS AN “infamous forgery.”
Reporter 3: DID HIS APOLOGY CHANGE ANYTHING?? HENRY FORD WAS FAMOUS the world over…his apology must have had influence!
Reporter: Not very much. In fact publication increased all over the globe.
Reporter 3: Look! Here I have two French translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that were published in ‘’’France,’’’ dated 1934. Later they had many printings!
Judge: …I hope to see the day when nobody will be able to understand why otherwise sane and reasonable men should torment their brains for fourteen days over the authenticity or fabrication of the “Protocols of Zion”’’’…I regard the “protocols” as ridiculous nonsense!
Reporter: Good news! …judge Meyer found against the Nazis and imposed a fine on them…

Publisher: We will publish the judge’s decision!
Reporter: This should put an end to the “Protocols” at last!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 102-107

Men , Books , World , Peace

“New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Paris Review interview (1969)

Love , World , Nature , Bird

“Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 7 “Tier” section II (p. 212).

Life , Age , Time

“After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

As quoted in The Sunday Telegraph, London (1981), and The Annual Obituary 1983 (1984) edited by Elizabeth Devine and Marion Stoker Morgan, p. 143

War , World , Idea , Thinking

“Modern positivism…expresses criticism against the naïve use of certain terms… by the general postulate that the question whether a given sentence has any meaning… should always be thoroughly and critically examined. This… is derived from mathematical logic. The procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain rules… However, a combination of symbols that does not comply with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning.
The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when a sentence should be considered meaningless. A definite decision is possible only when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some case the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to important progress… new connections which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example… sentence: "In which orbit does the electron move around the nucleus?"”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

But generally the positivistic scheme taken from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined.
Physics and Philosophy (1958)

Mathematics , Question , Nature , Decision

“The new way of thinking, spawned by the cognitive revolution, shows strong promise … Reversing previous doctrine in science, the new paradigm affirms that the world we live in is driven not solely by mindless physical forces but, more crucially, by subjective human values. Human values become the underlying key to world change.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

No page reference found; as quoted in "Search for Beliefs to Live by Consistent with Science" in Zygon, Journal of Religion & Science 26 p. 237–258
Science and the Problem of Values (1972)

World , Way , Thinking , Strong

“Ever since language allowed human cultural evolution to impinge upon age-old processes of biological evolution, humankind has been in a position to upset older balances of nature in quite the same fashion as disease upsets the natural balance within a host's body. Time and again, a temporary approach to stabilization of new relationships occurred as natural limits to the ravages of humankind upon other life forms manifested themselves. Yet, sooner or later, and always within a span of time that remained miniscule in comparison with the standards of biological evolution, humanity discovered new techniques allowing fresh exploitation of hitherto inaccessible forms of life.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.1.

Life , Age , Disease , Fashion

“A perennial problem of any organization which is involved in systems work of a changing nature is the need for the organization itself to change as it adapts to new opportunities, new objectives, new equipment, and new people.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 119

People , Nature , Problem , Change

“A growing belief that behind every event lay intention—be it an evil thought in the mind of another, or the benevolent whim of a god in the sky—was perhaps inevitable in creatures with an innate understanding of causality. If you were smart enough to make multicomponent tools, you eventually came to believe in gods, the end of all causal chains. There would be costs, of course. In the future, to serve their new gods and shamans, the people would have to sacrifice much: time, wealth, even the right to have children. Sometimes they would even have to lay down their lives. But the payback was that they no longer had to be afraid of dying.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section IV (pp. 370-371)

God , Children , People , Understanding

“In the war [World War 1. ] things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready... I felt myself freed and had to shout my jubilation out to the world. Out of parsimony I took what I could find to do this, because we were now an impoverished country. One can even shout with refuse, and this is what I did, nailing and gluing it [gluing his collage art] together. I called it 'Merz'; it was a prayer about the victorious end of the war, victorious as once again peace had won in the end; everything had broken down in any case and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

quote, 1930
As quoted in Kurt Schwitters, das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, Dumont Cologne, 1973 – 1981, Vol. 5, p. 335.
1930s

War , World , Peace , Art

“The Court's reliance upon stare decisis can best be described as contrived. It insists upon the necessity of adhering not to all of Roe, but only to what it calls the 'central holding.' It seems to me that stare decisis ought to be applied even to the doctrine of stare decisis, and I confess never to have heard of this new, keep-what-you-want-and-throw-away-the-rest version.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On stare decisis (adhering to judicial precedent): Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=505&invol=833&friend=oyez (1992) (dissenting).
1990s

“All told it is a new world. It calls for new ideas. In Canada it calls for a New Party.”

Stanley Knowles (1908–1997) Canadian politician

Source: The New Party - (1961), Chapter 7, Program, p. 83

World , Idea

“In London, aside from bit parts, I was unlucky in my career but I was lucky in love. There was a theatrical club much frequented by all the young lions on their way up. They all gathered to eat inexpensively and be made blissful by the lethal house cider. It was there I met Ken Tynan, recently down from Oxford, and already the enfant terrible of Britain’s drama critics. Mutually magnetized, we married three months later. I sent a wire to my parents in New York: "Have married Englishman. Letter follows."”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

I was madly in love with him and stepped happily into the Wonderland of his fame.
Afterword to The Dud Avocado (2006)

Love , Way , Parent , Parting

“The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)

People , Communication , Freedom

“It is questionable whether there does not exist in man an obscure and blind will to make war; an impulse towards change, towards emergence from the familiarities of everyday life and from the stabilities of well-known conditions — something like a will to death as a will to annihilation and self-sacrifice, a vague enthusiasm for the upbuilding of a new world.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)

Life , Death , War , World

“Interviewer: France has announced that it is planning to withdraw its troops from the Central African Republic at the end of the year. Is this good or bad news?
Catherine Samba-Panza: The international community, be it the United Nations, the European Union or friendly countries like France, has been helping us from the very first hours of the crisis. Regional organizations like the African Union have accompanied us throughout all our difficulties. However, this is very expensive. So all these countries and organizations need to consider up to which limit they are able to continue with their efforts. We took note of France's intention to start withdrawing their troops right at the end of the transitional period. We can all see that the French Sangaris mission is still of great help for the mission of the European Union as well as the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSCA. So I would say that it is a withdrawal, but not a total withdrawal”

Catherine Samba-Panza (1954) Central African politician

2010s, 2016

Communication , Effort , Help , Country

“Prediction of the fall of Russian communism: "Russia enveloped with communism—a new religious freedom must come. God will overrule it, for that people must hear the truth, and truth in simplicity. Truly there is much for the church to do in the coming century."”

David O. McKay (1873–1970) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

At Brigham Young University, reported in Church News, May 28, 1960.

God , People , Truth , Communication

“Vito Acconci’s extraordinary career—poetry, art, architecture: a sort of triathlon of the arts—began in the Bronx, where as an aspiring author of seven years he wrote stories about cowboys and athletes. At his Catholic college, he published sexy stuff about priests and nuns that got the school magazine banned for three issues running. He went on to write fiction in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. But when he came back to New York in the early ’60s, something changed, and he began writing poems. Highly conceptual constructions, they did not tell stories, express feelings, or evoke a fictional world. They were not representational. Maybe you could call them presentational: this is a word, this is a sentence, you are reading.”

Shelley Jackson (1963) a writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments

Shelley Jackson, in: Shelley Jackson talks with Vito Acconci http://www.believermag.com/issues/200612/?read=interview_acconci, in: The Believer, Nr. 12. 2006.

World , School , Art , Feeling

“A new dawn has broken, has it not?”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Victory speech at Labour election-night party, Royal Festival Hall, London, 2 May 1997.
1990s

“The principal applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been—and will continue to be—applications created by that technology.”

Herbert Kroemer (1928) Nobel laureate in physics

in his Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/kroemer-lecture.html, Quasi-Electric Fields and Band Offsets: Teaching Electrons New Tricks, 8 December 2000, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University.

“The short step then required to complete the stride consists in recognition of the fact that a contre-relief is an architectonic structure, but the slightest deviation from the plumb-line of economy leads into a blind alley. The same fate must also overtake the architecture of cubist contre-relief... By taking these elements FROM THEM for itself it wants to become equally entitled to take its place alongside them as a new creation. The reference is to the narrow technical discoveries for example the submarine, the aeroplane, the motors and dynamos of every kind of motive power in each part of a battle-ship. Contre-relief is instinctively aware of their legitimate origin their economy of form and their realism of treatment.”

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

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Fate , Motivation , Parting

“Schumpter's daring and dashing entrepreneur is now a legendary figure from the distant past - if not from the mythology of capitalism - or is to be found only in the demimonde of business, founding new ice cream parlors or "deep freeze subscription clubs."”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Three, Standstill And Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, I, p. 77

Business , Distant , Past

“In the intellectual market the quantity of the demand rises in proportion to that of the supply, but its quality does not keep pace with this increase. For example, the Old Testament of pianoforte players, Bach’s “Wohltenoerurtes Klavier” is perhaps in almost as many hands as the New Testament, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, but in few more heads than it was in former years, when it could only be had for six times the present price. Doubtless, its leaves are somewhat oftener turned over, but now, as then, about the sixth part, likely enough just the first sixth, is all that is studies in the real meaning of the word. Here truly is little more gained than a merely superficial acquaintance with the great father of German music.”

Hans von Bülow (1830–1894) German musician

Preface to Instructive ausgabe. Klavier-Etuden von Fr. Chopin, 1880.

Music , Study , Time , Parting

“Go to the cross, and meet there God in sacrifice. Behold Him as Jesus bearing your sin, receiving the shafts of your enmity! Embrace Him, believe in Him, take Him to your inmost heart. Do this, and you shall feel sin die within you, and a glorious quickening, Christ the power of God, Christ in you the hope of glory, shall be consciously risen upon you, as the morn of your new creation.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 232.

God , Hope , Feeling , Heart

“Despite the potential to lead us to new cures, the federal government has restricted funding for creating new cell lines – putting the burden of any future research squarely on the shoulders of the private sector. The consequences of this decision have not only driven thousands of scientists overseas in search of more money and greater opportunity – but also put the brakes on the march of medicine. I’ve always wondered how these legislators would act if their health – or their children’s health – was on the line and stem cell research might lead to a cure.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/education/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_slate_60_dinner_keynote_address_at_william_j_clinton_presidential_library
Stem Cell Research

Money , Children , Health , Search

“Now, I don't have all the answers, but I do know the old ways don't work. Trickledown economics has sure failed. And big bureaucracies, both private and public, they've failed too. That's why we need a new approach to government, a government that offers more empowerment and less entitlement. More choices for young people in the schools they attend- in the public schools they attend. And more choices for the elderly and for people with disabilities and the long-term care they receive. A government that is leaner, not meaner; a government that expands opportunity, not bureaucracy; a government that understands that jobs must come from growth in a vibrant and vital system of free enterprise.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

William J. Clinton: "Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York," July 16, 1992. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25958
1990s

People , School , Way , Understanding

“There are three kinds of writing in economics: Greek-letter, up-and-down, and airport. Greek-letter writing formal, theoretical, mathematical is how professors communicate. Like any academic field, economics has its fair share of hacks and phonies, who use complicated language to hide the banality of their ideas; it also contains profound thinkers, who use the specialized language of the discipline as an efficient way to express deep insights. […] Up-and-down economics is what one encounters on the business pages of newspapers, or for that matter on TV. It is preoccupied with the latest news and the latest numbers, hence its name. […] Finally, airport economics is the language of economics bestsellers. These books are most prominently displayed at airport bookstores, where the delayed business traveler is likely to buy them. Most of these books predict disaster: a new great depression, the evisceration of our economy by Japanese multinationals, the collapse of our money. A minority have the opposite view, a boundless optimism: new technology or supply-side economics is about to lead us into an era of unprecedented economic progress. Whether pessimistic or optimistic, airport economics is usually fun, rarely well informed, and never serious.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Preface
The Age of Diminished Expectations (1990; 1994; 1997)

Money , Books , Way , Travel

“Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Address To The General Assembly Of The International Press Institute At Helsinki Wednesday, 9th June, 1971 http://journalism.sg/lee-kuan-yews-1971-speech-on-the-press/
1970s

Freedom

“So what happens when the regime falls, as it must? We are in the first stage of change in our country, and the feeling among the revolutionaries is that the people of Yemen will find solutions for our problems once the regime has gone, because the regime itself is the cause of most of them. A new Yemen awaits us, with a better future for all.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Our revolution's doing what Saleh can't – uniting Yemen (2011)

People , Feeling , Problem , Change

“For decades, the circle of liberty and security and development has been expanding in our world. This progress has brought unity to Europe, self-government to Latin America and Asia, and new hope to Africa. Now we have the historic chance to widen the circle even further, to fight radicalism and terror with justice and dignity, to achieve a true peace, founded on human freedom.”

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

2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)

World , Peace , Justice , Hope

“I said it again as a German might. "Rabinovitz. Ich bin Lew Rabinowitz, LR, von Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Du Kennst?" And then I spoke Yiddish. "Und ich bin ein Yid. Farshtest?" And then in English. "I am a Jew. Understand?" And then in my fractured German. "Ich bin Jude. Verstehst?" Now they didn't know where to look, but they did not want to look at me. I've got blue eyes that can turn into slits of ice, Claire still tells me, and a pale, European skin that can turn red fast when I laugh hard or get mad, and I wasn't sure they believed me.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961), pp. 122

Understanding , Madness

“It is strange that no one seems to think it at all necessary to say a single word about another new school of poetry which has of late sprung up among us. This school has not, I believe, as yet received any name; but if I may be permitted to have the honour of christening it, it may henceforth be referred to by the designation of The Cockney School.”

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October 1817, p. 38.

School , Thinking

“Mussolini…hoped Herr Hitler would see his way to postpone action [against Czechoslovakia] which the Chancellor had told Sir Horace Wilson was to be taken at 2 p. m. to-day for at least 24 hours so as to allow Signor Mussolini time to re-examine the situation and endeavour to find a peaceful settlement. In response, Herr Hitler has agreed to postpone mobilisation for 24 hours. Whatever views hon. Members may have had about Signor Mussolini in the past, I believe that everyone will welcome his gesture of being willing to work with us for peace in Europe. That is not all. I have something further to say to the House yet. I have now been informed by Herr Hitler that he invites me to meet him at Munich to-morrow morning. He has also invited Signor Mussolini and M. Daladier. Signor Mussolini has accepted and I have no doubt M. Daladier will also accept. I need not say what my answer will be. [An HON. MEMBER: "Thank God for the Prime Minister!"] We are all patriots, and there can be no hon. Member of this House who did not feel his heart leap that the crisis has been once more postponed to give us once more an opportunity to try what reason and good will and discussion will do to settle a problem which is already within sight of settlement. Mr. Speaker, I cannot say any more. I am sure that the House will be ready to release me now to go and see what I can make of this last effort. Perhaps they may think it will be well, in view of this new development, that this Debate shall stand adjourned for a few days, when perhaps we may meet in happier circumstances.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/sep/28/prime-ministers-statement in the House of Commons (28 September 1938). Chamberlain received Hitler's invitation to Munich as he was ending his speech.
Prime Minister

God , Peace , Hope , Way

“The hoary centuries are full of Him; the echoes of His sweet voice are heard to-day; His love has perfumed the past eighteen hundred years, and He lives to-day, as the Head of His church; He lives to-day, the object of the warmest adoration, the most passionate love, for whom millions would die this very hour. Empires have fallen, thrones have crumbled; but Jesus lives, His empire extending every day, His throne gaining new trophies of His grace.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

P 79.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Love , Passion , Past

“It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 109.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Men , Knowledge , Sense , Time

“While we could study any of the world’s dictators to see how they gained control over their people, Hitler is probably the best known and most well documented example. I believe his persecution of the Jews was Satan's trial run for the end time events coming upon us soon including the 3½ years of “great tribulation” (4D). Hitler's method of getting Germans to hate and then kill the Jews should be studied carefully. I am convinced similar methods will be used to bring persecution against any who will not go along with Satan’s plans for his New World Order, especially Christians and anyone else who won’t take the mark”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Revelation 13-14
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 138

Hate , People , World , Study

“These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together.”

Bill McKibben (1960) American environmentalist and writer

Source: Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), p. 199

Life , Freedom , Fight

“[It is] evident that Jesus in no way intended to abolish this Jewish religion and introduce a new one in its place. … From this it follows inevitably that the apostles taught and acted exactly the reverse of what their master had intended, taught, and commanded…”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Reimarus: Fragments, ed. Charles H. Talbert, trans. Ralph S. Fraser (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), I/19, pp. 41–42

Religion , Way

“It has always been characteristic of American Industry to change products and methods of doing jobs as often as competitive conditions or engineering progress dictates. This makes frequent changes in an individual's work necessary. In addition, the markedly greater turnover and absenteeism of recent years result in unbalanced production lines which again makes for frequent shifting of individuals from one job to another. One of the most serious production problems faced at the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation has been the resistance of production workers to the necessary changes in methods and jobs. This resistance expressed itself in several ways, such as grievances about the piece rates that went with the new methods, high turnover, very low efficiency, restriction of output, and marked aggression against management. Despite these undesirable effects, it was necessary that changes in methods and jobs continue.”

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Source: "Overcoming resistance to change." 1948, p. 512; Lead paragraph

Way , Problem , Change

“She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Ranke's History of the Popes (1840)

Travel , Solitude

“Do these things for the sake of your country during the war. Do them for the sake of your country after the war. When the smoke of this great conflict has been dissolved in the atmosphere we breathe there will reappear a new Britain. It will be the old country still, but it will be a new country. Its commerce will be new, its trade will be new, its industries will be new. There will be new conditions of life and of toil, for capital and for labour alike, and there will be new relations between both of them and for ever. (Cheers.) But there will be new ideas, there will be a new outlook, there will be a new character in the land. The men and women of this country will be burnt into fine building material for the new Britain in the fiery kilns of the war. It will not merely be the millions of men who, please God! will come back from the battlefield to enjoy the victory which they have won by their bravery—a finer foundation I would not want for the new country, but it will not be merely that—the Britain that is to be will depend also upon what will be done now by the many more millions who remain at home. There are rare epochs in the history of the world when in a few raging years the character, the destiny, of the whole race is determined for unknown ages. This is one. The winter wheat is being sown. It is better, it is surer, it is more bountiful in its harvest than when it is sown in the soft spring time. There are many storms to pass through, there are many frosts to endure, before the land brings forth its green promise. But let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Speech in his constituency of Carnavon Boroughs (3 February 1917), quoted in The Times (5 February 1917), p. 12
Prime Minister

Life , Women , Men , God

“The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

"Jerry Seinfeld, Online Force", in The New York Times (27 May 2015) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/arts/television/jerry-seinfeld-online-force.html

Way

“The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.”

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

Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), pp. 33-34

Communication

“I was in my forties and teaching magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico. I was hired on a fluke. The professor who was scheduled to teach the course became ill, so the chair of the department, my personal friend Tony Hillerman, asked me to fill in for a semester. Tony knew I’d never been to college and didn’t care; he just knew I’d written successfully for magazines for years. The original professor never returned, and someone else replaced Tony as Chair and automatically kept me on. I discovered I loved teaching writing and started to get worried that my deep dark secret, (no college!) might be discovered, so I began taking courses under my married name, Lois Arquette, hoping I could get a degree before someone “outed” me. In the course of that endeavor, I took a juvenile literature class where they were studying “Lois Duncan books.””

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

My fellow students were excitedly writing A-plus papers about how many of my books were based on Greek myths. I had never even read those myths!
On teaching and attending college, interview https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20111119202009/https://abbottgran.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-deep-bottom-drawer-an-interview-with-lois-duncan/ with Megan Abbott (2011)
2003–2016

Love , Secret , Books , Hope

“p>I'm making a song
where my mother and all mothers
will see themselves mirrored,
a song that speaks like two eyes.I'm walking on a road
that runs through many countries.
They may not see me, but I see
and salute old friends.I'm spreading a secret
like a man who loves or smiles.
Affection seeks affection
in the most natural way.My life, our lives,
form a single diamond.
I've learned new words
and made others more beautiful.I'm making a song
for waking up men
and putting children to sleep.”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) Brazilian poet

Eu preparo uma canção
em que minha mãe se reconheça,
todas as mães se reconheçam,
e que fale como dois olhos.Caminho por uma rua
que passa em muitos países.
Se não me vêem, eu vejo
e saúdo velhos amigos.Eu distribuo um segredo
como quem ama ou sorri.
No jeito mais natural
dois carinhos se procuram.Minha vida, nossas vidas
formam um só diamante.
Aprendi novas palavras
e tornei outras mais belas.Eu preparo uma canção
que faça acordar os homens
e adormecer as crianças.
"Canção amiga" ["I'm Making a Song"]
Novos Poemas [New Poems] (1948)

Love , Life , Men , Children

“In the old romanticism the poem was an uncommon effect of common experience on the poet. All interest in the poem centred in this mysterious capacity of the poet for overfeeling, for being overaffected. In Poe the old romanticism ended and the new romanticism began. That is, the interest was broadened to include the reader: the end of the poem was pushed ahead a stage, from the poet to the reader. The uncommon effect of experience on the poet became merely incidental to the uncommon effect which he might have on the reader. Mystery was replaced by science; inspiration by psychology.”

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

"What is a Poem?" from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)

Science

“Rate of change is this mathematics known as Calculus. … Now I hope you understand this, because I've never been able to make head nor tail of it. It must be some sort of a Black Magic operation, started out by the Luce cult — some immoral people who are operating up in New York City, Rockefeller Plaza — been thoroughly condemned by the whole society. Anyway, their rate-of-change theory — I've never seen any use for that mathematics, by the way — I love that mathematics, because it — I asked an engineer, one time, who was in his 6th year of engineering, if he'd ever used Calculus, and he told me yeah, once, once I did, he said. When did you use it? And he said I used it once. Let me see, what did you use it on? Oh yeah. Something on the rate-of-change of steam particles in boilers. And then we went out and tested it and found the answer was wrong.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Philadelphia Doctorate Course, Tape #58 (November 1952) http://www.rr.cistron.nl/xenu/quotes.htm.

Love , People , Hope , Way

“The highest activities are always essentially lonely and private, and these men had a robust sense of their independence and the ultimate self-sufficiency of the mind. In this they were just like Socrates. The only change they operated was to bring philosophy out of the closet into the open, instead of seeking protection behind a little wall like men in a storm. Of course, in so doing they made philosophy, on the one hand, more vulnerable to the public if the hopes of controlling the public are not fulfilled, and, on the other, put at risk that inner intransigence which is the necessary condition of the quest for truth. Not only the rewards but the new responsibilities might prove irresistible temptations to compromise.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 290.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Men , Truth , Hope , Sense

“The state system, a joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes and the system of government, democratic centralism--these constitute the politics of New Democracy, the republic of New Democracy, the republic of the anti-Japanese united front, the republic of the new Three People's Principles with their Three Great Policies' the Republic of China in reality as well as in name. Today we have a Republic of China in name but not in reality, and our present task is to create the reality that will fit the name.”

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

On New Democracy (1940)
Original: (zh-CN) 国体——各革命阶级联合专政。政体——民主集中制。这就是新民主主义的政治，这就是新民主主义的共和国，这就是抗日统一战线的共和国，这就是三大政策的新三民主义的共和国，这就是名副其实的中华民国。我们现在虽有中华民国之名，尚无中华民国之实，循名责实，这就是今天的工作。

People , Democracy , Reality

“Let us look facts straight in the eye. World imperialism headed by its aggressive detachment, U. S. imperialism, is directing the course of its economy towards preparations for war. It is arming itself to the teeth. U. S. imperialism is rearming Bonn's Germany, Japan, and all its allies and satellites with all kinds of weapons. It has set up and perfected aggressive military organizations, it has established and continues to establish military bases all around the socialist camp. It is accumulating stocks of nuclear weapons and refuses to disarm, to stop testing nuclear weapons, and is feverishly engaged in inventing new means of mass extermination. Why is it doing all this? To go to a wedding party? No, to go to war against us, to do away with socialism and communism, to put the peoples under bondage.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

War , People , World , Communication

“The swarm-like appearance of new combinations easily and necessarily explains the fundamental features of periods of boom.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter The Theory of Economic Development

The Theory of Economic Development (1934), Ch. 6 : The Business Cycle

Appearance

“The crux of the retrieval problem is that selecting documents to read grows ever more difficult, and new techniques are continually needed.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (1970) Techniques of information retrieval. p. 5.

Problem , Reading

“.. it [painting art] has never been so truly realistic, so firmly attached to its own period as it is today. A kind of painting that is realistic in the highest sense is beginning to appear, and it is here today... The advertising billboard, dictated by modern commercial needs, that brutally cuts across a landscape.... this yellow or red poster shouting in a timid landscape, is the best of possible reasons for the new painting; it topples the whole sentimental literary concept and announces the advent of plastic contrast.”

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

Art , Sense , Appearance , Painting

“When I started out, Indians did not have much interest in chess…Now India seems to spawn new chess academies every day.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

page=292
Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower

“The thing about most of the media is that they want to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator. They don't want people to have any heroes. I've got nothing against criticism of political figures, but that's different from a personal attack. It's easier to do sensationalism and character assassination than focus on the real issues. And they're obsessed, it seems, with portraying the ugliest side of humanity—the dishonesty, hypocrisy, ego battles, and fights.
How dare Fox, CNN, and MSNBC call themselves news stations? They're entertainment stations.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 3 (p. 51)

People , Fight , Personality

“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. … I'm saying we don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?" You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Focus Magazine No. 43 (23 October 1995) http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html 
1990s

People , Personality

“The consolidation of State capitalism in Russia itself was the determining basis for the character of the Communist Party. Whilst in its foreign propaganda it continued to speak of communism and world revolution, decried capitalism, called upon the workers to join in the fight for freedom, the workers in Russia were a subjected and exploited class, living mostly in miserable working conditions, under a strong and oppressive dictatorial rule, without freedom of speech, of press, of association, more strongly enslaved than their brethren under Western capitalism. Thus an inherent falsehood must pervade politics and teachings of that party. … The doctrine it taught under the name of Marxism was not the theory of the overthrow of highly developed capitalism by a highly developed working class, but its caricature. … The Communist Party did not intend to make the workers independent fighters capable by their force of insight themselves to build their new world, but to make them obedient followers ready to put the party into power.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Workers Councils (1947), Section 2.5

World , Communication , Freedom , Strong

“Most merciful and gracious God, who hast preserved me unto this hour, I most humbly acknowledge Thee as the guide and companion of my youth. Thou hast protected me through the dangers of infancy and childhood, and in my youth Thou didst bless me with the full enjoyment, the happy intimacy, of the best of fathers. Be as gracious and merciful then as Thou hast hitherto been, now that I am about to enter a new stage of existence. Teach me, I beseech Thee, to strengthen in my soul the cultivation of Thy truth, the recollection of the uncertainty of life, the greatness of the objects for which I was created. Revive those delightful religious impressions which in early days I felt more strongly than now; and as Thou hast been pleased lately to permit me to look to a way of life to which formerly I dared not to do, let the leisure I shall enjoy enlarge my warmth of heart towards Thee. Make every branch of study which I may pursue strengthen my confidence in Thy ever-ruling providence, that, undeceived by views of false philosophy, I may ever in singleness of heart elevate my mind from Thy works unto Thy divine essence. Keep from me a vain and overbearing spirit; let me- ever have a thorough sense of my own ignorance and weakness; and keep me through all the trials and troubles of a transitory state in body and soul unto everlasting life, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.”

James David Forbes (1809–1868) Scottish physicist and glaciologist

"Completing my Twenty-first Year" (1839), a prayer written by Forbes on April 20th, 1830. Life and letters of James David Forbes p. 450.

Life , God , Truth , Youth

“They tell me thou art rich, my country: gold
In glittering flood has poured into thy chest;
Thy flocks and herds increase, thy barns are pressed
With harvest, and thy stores can hardly hold
Their merchandise; unending trains are rolled
Along thy network rails of East and West;
Thy factories and forges never rest;
Thou art enriched in all things bought and sold!

But dost thou prosper? Better news I crave.
O dearest country, is it well with thee
Indeed, and is thy soul in health?
A nobler people, hearts more wisely brave,
And thoughts that lift men up and make them free,—
These are prosperity and vital wealth!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

America's Prosperity (October 1, 1916).

Men , People , Health , Art

“As it had been explained to David long ago, genetic diversity was very, very important. The more diverse the human gene pool was, the better were humanity’s chances of adapting to any new and unexpected conditions it might encounter, now that it was beginning to push outward into Space, to say nothing of surviving any unexpected natural disasters such as polar shifts or meteor strikes on Earth.
Unfortunately, humanity had been both unlucky and foolish. Out of the dozens of races that had once lived in the world, only a handful had survived into modern times. Some ancient races had been rendered extinct by war. Some had been simply crowded out, retreating into remote regions and forced to breed amongst themselves, which killed them off with lethal recessives.
That had been the bad luck. The foolishness had come when people began to form theories about the process of Evolution. They got it all wrong: most people interpreted the concept of “survival of the fittest” to mean they ought to narrow the gene pool, reducing it in size. So this was done, in genocidal wars and eugenics programs, and how surprised people were when lethal recessives began to occur more frequently! To say nothing of the populations who died in droves when diseases swept through them, because they were all so genetically similar there were none among them with natural immunities.”

Kage Baker book The Machine's Child

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 29, “Still Another Morning in 500,000 BCE” (p. 330)

War , Bad luck , People , World

“I was a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq, a strategic blunder made worse by slapdash execution. As we have seen, this star-crossed action took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, breathed new life into a moribund al Qaeda, and enhanced Iranian influence in this critical region - all outcomes which damaged both the United States and our ally Israel.”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

How to Secure Israel: Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement (April 2008)

Life , Star , Decision

“George Washington's long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone. He once wrote, "My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." President Washington believed that the success of our democracy would also depend on the virtue of our citizens. In his farewell address to the American people, he said, "Morality is a necessary spring of popular government." Over the centuries, America has succeeded because we have always tried to maintain the decency and the honor of our first President. His example guided us in his time; it guides us in our time, and it will guide us for all time.”

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

President Bush Visits Mount Vernon, Honors President Washington's 275th Birthday on President's Day http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070219.html (February 19, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Life , War , People , World

“The untransacted destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent — to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean — to animate the many hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward — to set the principle of self-government at work — to agitate these herculean masses — to establish a new order in human affairs — to set free the enslaved — to regenerate superannuated nations — to change darkness into light — to stir up the sleep of a hundred centuries — to teach old nations a new civilization — to confirm the destiny of the human race — to carry the career of mankind to its culminating point — to cause stagnant people to be re-born — to perfect science — to emblazon history with the conquest of peace — to shed a new and resplendent glory upon mankind — to unite the world in one social family — to dissolve the spell of tyranny and exalt charity — to absolve the curse that weighs down humanity, and to shed blessings round the world!
Divine task! immortal mission! Let us tread fast and joyfully the open trail before us! Let every American heart open wide for patriotism to glow undimmed, and confide with religious faith in the sublime and prodigious destiny of his well-loved country.”

William Gilpin

Address to the U.S. Senate (2 March 1846); quoted in Mission of the North American People, Geographical, Social, and Political (1873), by William Gilpin, p. 124.

Love , People , World , Family

“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean”

Najib Razak (1953) Malaysian politician

Quoted on BBC News, "Flight MH370 'crashed in south Indian Ocean' - Malaysia PM" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26716572, March 24, 2014.

Sadness

“We — mankind — stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device — our consciousness of the crisis — as our unique contribution.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 3

“The fourth phase which commenced with the coming of independence proved a boon for Christianity. The Christian right to convert Hindus was incorporated in the Constitution. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who dominated the scene for 17 long years, promoted every anti-Hindu ideology and movement behind the smokescreen of a counterfeit secularism. The regimes that followed continued to raise the spectre of ‘Hindu communalism’ as the most frightening phenomenon. Christian missionaries could now denounce as a Hindu communalist and chauvinist, even as a Hindu Nazi, any one who raised the slightest objection to their means and methods. All sorts of ‘secularists’ came forward to join the chorus. New theologies of Fulfilment, Indigenisation, Liberation, and Dialogue were evolved and put into action. The missionary apparatus multiplied fast and became pervasive. Christianity had never had it so good in the whole of its history in India. It now stood recognized as ‘an ancient Indian religion’ with every right to extend its field of operation and expand its flock. The only rift in the lute was K. M. Panikkar’s book, Asia and Western Dominance, published from London in 1953, the Niyogi Committee Report published by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1956, and Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 1978.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

Books , Religion , History , Communication

“A few months after Khieu Samphan’s now famous “admission” that his regime was responsible for the deaths of about one-sixth of the population of Cambodia, Indonesian Prime Minister Adam Malik admitted that 50-80,000 people, close to the same percentage of the population, had been killed in East Timor in the course of what the Indonesia propaganda ministry and the New York Times called the “civil war” – that is, the U. S. backed Indonesian invasion and massacre – though one would not have discovered that fact from the U. S. media. While Khieu Samphan’s “admission” was concocted by the media and scholarship on the basis of remarks that quite possibly were never made, Malik’s admission, by contrast, was clear and explicit. A comparison of media reaction to the actual admission by Malik and the concocted “admission” by Samphan gives some insight into what lies behind the machinations of the Free Press.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 177.

Death , War , People , Time

“The process which we see is the process of an upset which forces the gradual learning of how to become unattached from everything which seemed divine and holy, the collapse of zeal for the Lord of hosts. At the same time it leads to an apprenticeship in listening to the still, small voice, and the reinvention of a new type of zeal.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 31.

Learning , Time

“She's Beyoncé, and I'm [Jay-Z's] new protégée. When we see each other we say hi. We're not enemies, but we're not friends friends.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

Allure magazine, January 2008.

“A review of our party's seventy-plus-year history elicits an important conclusion. Our party earned the people's support during the historical periods of revolution, construction and reform because it always represented the requirements for developing China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. The party also earned popular support because it fought tirelessly to realize the fundamental interests of the country and the people by formulating a correct line, principles and policies. Today, humanity once again stands at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium. How our party can better effectuate the Three Represents under the new historical conditions is a major issue all Party comrades, especially high-ranking party cadres, must consider deeply.”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

Three Represents (25 February 2000).
2000s

People , History , Support , Country

“The explosion of financial innovation unaccompanied by credible systemic regulation has made the financial system vulnerable. The resulting crisis of confidence threatens global prosperity in the increasingly interdependent world in which we live. There is, therefore, a need for a new international initiative to bring structural reform in the world's financial system with more effective regulation and stronger systems of multilateral consultations and surveillance. This must be designed in as inclusive a manner as possible.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On the financial crisis of 2007–08, as quoted in "Full text of Manmohan Singh's speech at UN General Assembly" http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/full-text-of-manmohan-singh-s-speech-at-un-general-assembly/article1-340789.aspx, Hindustan Times (27 September 2008)
2006-2010

World , Confidence

Quotes about news page 48

Quotes about news
page 48