Quotes about news
page 56

“Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Money, Books, Beauty, Music

“We are the new extremists, armed with a vision to see through the charade imposed upon us by the gatekeepers of consensus reality, who manage a mass hallucination we choose to reject.”

Nick Zedd (1958) American film maker

The Extremist Manifesto, 2013

Reality

“I've seen the future and it will be
I've seen the future and it works
If there's life after, we will see
So I can't go like a jerk
Systematic overthrow of the underclass
Hollywood conjures images of the past
New world needs spirituality that will last
I've seen the future and it will be.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

The Future
Song lyrics, Batman (1989)

Life, World, Jerk, Past

“[the authors in Justice Belied made a] compelling case that this system is not only flawed but produces serious and systematic injustice. One major theme pressed in a number of chapters is that the international criminal justice system (ICJS) that has emerged in the age of tribunals and “humanitarian intervention” has replaced a real, if imperfect, system of international justice with one that misuses forms of justice to allow dominant powers to attack lesser countries without legal impediment. No tribunals have been established for Israel’s actions in Palestine or Kagame’s mass killings in the DRC. Numerous authors in Justice Belied stress the remarkable fact of the ICC’s [International Criminal Court] exclusive focus on Africans, with not a single case of charges brought against non-Africans. And within Africa itself the selectivity is notorious – U. S. clients Kagame and Museveni are exempt; U. S. targets Kenyatta, Taylor, and Gadaffi are charged. […] The system has worked poorly in service to justice, as the authors point out, but U. S. policy has had larger geopolitical and economic aims, and underwriting Kagame’s terror in Rwanda and the DRC and directing the ICC toward selected African targets while ignoring others served those aims. Many of the statutes and much political rhetoric accompanying the new ICJS proclaimed the aim of bringing peace and reconciliation. But this was blatant hypocrisy as the exclusion of aggression as a crime, the selectivity of application, the frequency of applied victor’s justice, and the manifold abuses of the judicial processes have made for war, hatred, and exacerbated conflict. The authors of Justice Belied do a remarkable job of spelling out these sorry conditions and calling for a dismantling of the new ICJS and return to the UN Charter and nation-based attention to dealing with injustice.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman, review of Justice Belied: The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice, Z Magazine, January 2015.
2010s

War, Age, Peace, Justice

“The search for original cases and the "superior" rules that would emerge from them spread far outside legal practice. Wallace Donham, dean of the Harvard Business School from 1919 to 1942, was trained at the law school in the heady days of the case system's early and enthusiastic reception. Where law and business parted ways was in the contingent matter of the availability of ready- made cases — law faculty simply reached for their shelves, while professors of business needed to create a new literary species — the business case book.”

Peter Galison (1955) American physicist

Source: Image and Logic, 1997, p. 57

Books, School, Law, Way

“What particularly attracted me [in his painting 'Still-life with Musical instruments', 1908 – 1909].... was the materialization of this new space that I felt to be in the offing. So I began to concentrate on still-life's, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space... This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them. It was this space that particularly attracted me, for this was the first concern of Cubism, the investigation of space.... In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 41

Life, Music, Painting

“I ask the unanimous consent of the Convention to allow the delegates from New Mexico to record their votes for President and Vice President of the United States.”

Francisco Perea (1830–1913) Union Army officer

As quote in D. F. Murphy, Presidential Election, 1864 https://books.google.com/books?id=_SAQAAAAYAAJ. Proceedings of the National Union Convention (June 7-8, 1864) of the Republican party

“There are many examples in physics showing that higher precision revealed new phenomena, inspired new ideas, or confirmed or dethroned well-established theories.”

Wolfgang Paul

in Electromagnetic Traps for Charged and Neutral Particles, Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1989/paul-lecture.html, December 8, 1989.

Idea

“We have now reached the point where you can wander down Queen Street in Auckland and wonder if you are still in New Zealand or some other country.”

Winston Peters (1945) New Zealand politician

2005 speech on immigration policy, entitled "Securing Our Borders and Protecting Our Identity."'

Country

“I was walking down by the river. I lay down under a tree. I was broke. I felt pretty low. Then I looked up at the sky—all blue except for one little, white, fleecy cloud. The words came to me for the song—quicker than it's taking me to tell it to you. I got up—and I had new hope. That was the turning point in my life.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

On writing "The Little White Cloud That Cried", The Chicago Tribune (16 March 1952)

Life, Hope, Tree

“It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.”

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

From 'Address at Holy Cross' (25 June 1919), published in Have Faith In Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (2nd Ed.) http://www.archive.org/details/havefaithinmassa00cooluoft, Coolidge, Houghton Mifflin, p. 231. 1910s, Address at Holy Cross (1919)

“Ideologically, Pelosi is a far-left talking points machine. Tactically, she knows nothing else other than how to attack. Her worldview admits of no compromise and there seems to be no space in her imagination for new ideas. She has refashioned her dwindling caucus in her image, as the moderate, red-state Democrats have been steadily decimated, leaving nothing but the bicoastal liberals representing the inner city poor and the elite suburban gentry. She feels no pressure to change or to improve.”

Joel Pollak (1977) Politician, writer

Nancy Pelosi Is Leading Her Party into Oblivion http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/01/31/nancy-pelosi-leading-party-oblivion/ (January 31, 2017)

Feeling, Imagination, Idea, Change

“We are not building a new country. The Newfoundlanders and the Acadians have been here almost four centuries. The First Nations have been here almost forever. But we may be creating a new kind of country, where equality does not mean sameness but means respecting differences; and where freedom is intertwined with sharing.”

Romeo LeBlanc (1927–2009) Canadian politician

Source: Canada Day speech, Parliament Hill, 1 July 1998.

Freedom, Country

“It’s not right-wing populism that endangers Jewish survival in Europe and Canada; it’s the influx of Muslims. There’s nothing new in the Jewish leadership’s habit of kibitzing about the dangers to Jewish continuity from marauding Mormons (their sin is to convert dead Jews). Or, from Mel Gibson, whose movie “The Passion of the Christ” was supposed to unleash pogroms in Pittsburgh, as they falsely prophesied.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Islam, Not Trump, Is The Elephant In The Room, Threatening Jewish Survival" https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/02/23/islam-not-trump-is-the-elephant-in-the-room-threatening-jewish-survival-n2289643 Townhall.com, February 23, 2017 2010s, 2017

Passion, Christ, Falseness, Dead

“Well, if I did cooperate with Waheed, this country will go down the drain immediately. The people of this country elected a leader, and that was me. I have been removed forcefully and they want me back. But, I’m saying “Okay, let’s have new elections and see who the people want again”. If I step aside, if I join the Rebel Government, the people of this country will lose faith.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Quoted in an interview with Stephen Sackur on BBC News, Interview with Mohamed Nasheed: "Mohamed Nasheed: Unity government 'will not happen'" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9696560.stm, February 15, 2012.

People, Faith, Country

“Early in April, an international community of sustainability theorists and practitioners gathered in New York City at a special High Level Meeting at the United Nations… the larger purpose of the meeting was to articulate the elements of a new economic paradigm, and to issue a call to world leaders to adopt its fundamental precepts.”

Eric Zencey (1953–2019) American writer

Eric Zencey, " Toward a New Bretton Woods and a Sustainable Civilization http://steadystate.org/new-bretton-woods/," at steadystate.org, 2012.

World, Communication

“And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules; you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights; yes, you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement so that you have all knowledge; and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. You may even give your goods to feed the poor; you may bestow great gifts to charity; and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned and die the death of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history's greatest heroes; but if you have not love, your blood was spilt in vain. What I'm trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.”

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

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Love, Death, Men, Angels

“About staying in the south, even if it's more expensive — Look, we love Japanese painting, we've experienced its influence — all the Impressionists have that in common — and we wouldn't go to Japan, in other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan, the south? So I believe that the future of the new art still lies in the south after all. But it's bad policy to live there alone when two or three could help each other to live on little.”

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

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum Vincent was busy, trying to convince a. o. Paul Gauguin to come to Arles, and to settle there 1880s, 1888

Love, Art, Future, Help

“Bukharin, like Lenin, regarded the system of basing economic life on mass terror not as a transient necessity but as a permanent principle of socialist organization. He did not shrink from justifying all means of coercion and held, like Trotsky at the same period, that the new system called essentially for the militarization of labour – i. e. the use of police and military force to compel the whole population to work in such places and conditions as the state might arbitrarily decree. Indeed, once the market is abolished there is no longer any free sale of labour or competition between workers, and police coercion is therefore the only means of allocating "human resources". If hired labour is eliminated, only compulsory labour remains. In other words, socialism – as conceived by both Trotsky and Bukharin at this time – is a permanent, nation-wide labour camp.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 28-9
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Life, Time

“Every magnitude, every dimension, requires a new configuration.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 10.

“The movement of people and ideas is … more than useful; it is sacrosanct. It forms part of the process by which the whole human race becomes both one and diverse, and makes itself more godlike, by affirming in the individual as well as in the species, its preeminence over the particular social and cultural worlds that it builds and inhabits. Both the movement of people and the movement of ideas can unsettle and frighten us, driving us back into ourselves. They can also inspire us to reimagine and to remake our interests, our ideals, and even our identities, by beginning to detach them from the settings with which we habitually associate them. Each of them is therefore an invitation to open ourselves to the new, in a world in which every man and woman has a better chance to become the original that he imagines himself to be.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Free Trade Reimaginedː The World Division of Labor and the Method of Economics (2007), p. 210

People, World, Imagination, Idea

“The three basic mechanisms of averaging, feedback and division of labor give us a first idea of a how a CMM [Collective Mental Map] can be developed in the most efficient way, that is, how a given number of individuals can achieve a maximum of collective problem-solving competence. A collective mental map is developed basically by superposing a number of individual mental maps. There must be sufficient diversity among these individual maps to cover an as large as possible domain, yet sufficient redundancy so that the overlap between maps is large enough to make the resulting graph fully connected, and so that each preference in the map is the superposition of a number of individual preferences that is large enough to cancel out individual fluctuations. The best way to quickly expand and improve the map and fill in gaps is to use a positive feedback that encourages individuals to use high preference paths discovered by others, yet is not so strong that it discourages the exploration of new paths.”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

Source: Collective Intelligence and its Implementation on the Web (1999), p.265

Way, Idea, Problem, Strong

“On the question of the tariff, it may come as news to Professor DiLorenzo that the protective tariffs were first instituted by Jefferson and Madison, not by the Hamiltonian party. Hamilton tried to get the tariffs, but he was not successful. And the reason why, the protective tariffs first entered our system in the wake of Jefferson’s embargo, which put the New England shipping interests out of business. And so the first protective tariffs were put in, I think, under Madison’s administration, and supported by John C. Calhoun, who agreed that at that time it was owed to the New England people to give their infant industries protection because they had been put out of business by the embargo, and later by the War of 1812, conducted under Madison’s administration.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Rebuttal

War, People, Question, Business

“I follow the works of Iranian artists even now, sometimes in Paris or in New York and I am happy Iranian artists are still great. Whether they are men or women, they have always been great. Despite all the pressure and censorship inside the country, they haven't been able to stop the creativity of our artists. Some have to work underground, like in cinema, and sometimes their work has political messages, but the number of our artists now has definitely grown in comparison to the past.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Former queen of Iran on assembling Tehran's art collection http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/01/queen-iran-art-collection, The Guardian, (August 1, 2012). Interviews

Women, Men, Past, Country

“The stem cell debate was an introduction to a phenomenon I witnessed throughout my presidency: highly personal criticism. Partisan opponents and commentators questioned my legitimacy, my intelligence, and my sincerity. They mocked my appearance, my accent, and my religious beliefs. I was labeled a Nazi, a war criminal, and Satan himself. That last one came from a foreign leader, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. One lawmaker called me both a loser and a liar. He became majority leader of the U. S. Senate. In some ways, I wasn't surprised. I had endured plenty of rough politics in Texas. I had seen Dad and Bill Clinton derided by their opponents and the media. Abraham Lincoln was compared to a baboon. Even George Washington became so unpopular that political cartoons showed the hero of the American revolution being marched to the guillotine. Yet the death spiral of decency during my time in office, exacerbated by the advent of twenty-four-hour cable news and hyper-partisan political blogs, was deeply disappointing. The toxic atmosphere in American politics discourages good people from running for office.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 121

Death, War, People, Disappointment

“The anagram 'Avida Dollars' was a talisman for me [referring to 'Divine Dali', so called by André Breton ]. It rendered the rain of dollars fluid, sweet and monotonous. Someday I shall tell the whole truth about the way in which this blessed disorder of Danae was garnered. It will be a chapter of a new book, probably my masterpiece: On the Life of Salvador Dali, considered as a Work of Art”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

never written
Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 35

Life, Truth, Books, Art

“This conference has a very weird atmosphere – it’s a different atmosphere. It’s an atmosphere of a superannuated student union. They’ve just stayed in the student union through a lifetime. Until we have the maturity and generosity to have a genuine understanding of New Labour our growth will be stunted. The present criminalisation and demonisation of Blair doesn’t help us get to that place.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

On the Labour Party conference in 2015 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-party-has-gravitated-towards-student-union-politics-under-jeremy-corbyn-says-maurice-glassman-a6671986.html

Understanding, Help

“In 2001, I first voted against the PATRIOT Act because much of it was simply an FBI wish list that included provisions allowing our government to go on fishing expeditions that collect information on virtually anyone. Today’s report indicates that the government could be using FISA in an indiscriminate way that does not balance our legitimate concerns of national security with the necessity to preserve our fundamental civil rights. This is deeply troubling. I hope today’s news will renew a serious conversation about how to protect the country while ensuring that the rights of law-abiding Americans are not violated.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

Following revelations that the National Security Agency was receiving phone records belonging to millions of Verizon customers on a daily basis, in [Terkel, Amanda, Watch The One Senator Who Voted Against The Patriot Act Warn What Would Happen (VIDEO), https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/russ-feingold-patriot-act-speech_n_3402878.html, 20 August 2018, The Huffington Post, June 7, 2013]
2013

Law, Hope, Way, Fish

“I have a new CD; it's in stores, and when you have a CD in stores, you have to do in-store appearances, and if nobody shows up, I just pretend like I'm shopping. That's how I shop; I sit behind a table with a pen.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

Appearance

“Good news travels slowly but arrives in the end, thank goodness. Bad news always arrives a day too soon.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Steinar's wife
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Travel

“Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.”

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

No. 247
Apophthegms (1624)

Way, Memory

“The right hon. Gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his great grief by his actions—who has retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam—and he has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1866/mar/13/adjourned-debate-second-night in the House of Commons (13 March 1866). 1860s

“Compilations, to me, are embarrassing. To bring out a compilation, to me, is to say, "Look. I've got no new material so please buy this. I need money to pay the rent." I think it's very embarrassing. And that is very annoying because the record company owns all those titles and they don't ask me for my advice. They just decide to release "the best of" compilations and they put out a lot of very bad quality music. There are a couple of good titles but the rest are just tracks to fill out the album. And they know very well that they can't rely on me promoting them because I won't promote such records.”

Amanda Lear (1939) singer, lyricist, composer, painter, television presenter, actress, model

http://amandalear_jukebox.tripod.com/indexnight_inteview.htm, NIGHT interview, Robert Henry Rubin, 2002, NIGHT, amandalear_jukebox.tripod.com, 1 June 2007

Money, Music, Thinking

“If Walter Bagehot was right that “one of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea,” Ken caused an extraordinary amount of pain. Both in his economic thinking and in his political activities, he was dedicated to resisting, and where possible overturning, what he famously called “conventional wisdom” (one of his many turns of phrase that have since become commonplace locutions). Rejecting the standard economic theory based on small, anonymous households and firms that autonomously engage in perfectly functioning markets, Ken instead saw an economic stage dominated by large, nameable actors: big business, big labor, big government. Sorting out their roles and respective power was central to his analysis, and the continually shifting tensions in the interplay among them—“countervailing power” in another of his deft phrases—was the real story of how an economy behaved.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Stephen A. Marglin, Richard Parker, Amartya Sen, and Benjamin M. Friedman, “John Kenneth Galbraith”, Harvard Gazette (February 7, 2008)
2000s

Wisdom, Pain, Idea, Business

“I’ve read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev’s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t generate pathos, but they’re flawed in a way that don’t come across as faults.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Fifteen: Whiskey, Torture, Turgenoev

Way, Lying, Fashion, Universe

“Personally, I never met Knut Wicksell. I saw him once when he delivered a lecture in Oslo, but being an unassuming student at the time, I did not have the courage to talk to him. So my knowledge of his theory came only through his writings. That, however, was a very intense and absorbing form of making his acquaintance. Already from my early student days, I read his writings (in German and Swedish) avidly. And I continued to do so later.
When I started my study on Wicksell, I found that his works were not easy reading. Often it was only at the third or fourth reading that I grasped his ideas. Invariably, each new reading made me more and more enthusiastic. Sometimes it happened that I thought I had finally caught him in an inconsistency or in unclear thinking. Every time this happened, it turned out, however, that the error was mine.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Frisch (1952) " Frish on Wicksell http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/om/tall-og-fakta/nobelprisvinnere/ragnar-frisch/published-scientific-work/Scan1.pdf" p. 654 1940-60s

Error, Idea, Courage, Knowledge

“Most post-mortems of these software disaster projects have indicated that their problems would have been avoided or strongly reduced if there had been an explicit early concern with identifying and resolving their high-risk elements. Frequently, these projects were swept along by a tide of optimistic enthusiasm during their early phases, which caused them to miss some clear signals of high risk issues which proved to be the project's downfall later.
Enthusiasm for new software capabilities is a good thing. But it needs to be tempered with a concern for early identification and resolution of a project's high-risk elements, so that people can get these resolved early and then focus their enthusiasm and energy on the positive aspects of their software product.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: Software risk management: principles and practices (1991), p. 32

People, Problem

“There is a day coming when all of the suffering, all of the maladies of this life are destroyed, when we, in our glorified bodies, will live in heaven, on the new earth, eternally fulfilling God’s ordained purpose for us.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 15

Life, God, Suffering

“That from the outset they expect or even impose all the properties of finite numbers upon the numbers in question, while on the other hand the infinite numbers, if they are to be considered in any form at all, must (in their contrast to the finite numbers) constitute an entirely new kind of number, whose nature is entirely dependent upon the nature of things and is an object of research, but not of our arbitrariness or prejudices.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

Letter to Gustac Enestrom, as quoted in Georg Cantor : His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (1990) by Joseph Warren Dauben ~ ISBN 0691024472

Question, Nature, Dependency

“I can tell you, and tell you now, that I am prepared to veto any bill that has as its purpose a Federal bailout of New York City to prevent a default.… It encourages the continuation of "politics as usual" in New York, which is precisely not the way to solve the problem.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Remarks at the National Press Club (29 October 1975)
1970s

Way, Problem

“A mightier force than ever followed Grant or Lee has leveled both their hosts, raised up an united Nation, and made us all partakers of a new glory. It is not for us to forget the past but to remember it, that we may profit by it. But it is gone; we can not change it. We must put our emphasis on the present and put into effect the lessons the past has taught us.”

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

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Change, Past, Forgetting

“There is reason for this shift of emphasis from any actual price to a hypothetical 'equilibrium' price. It is usually more interesting to know where a train is going than to know exactly where it is at any moment. The 'equilibrium' position of any price, wage, firm, industry, or system is the position toward which it is tending. The importance of equilibrium analysis, then, is that it enables us to discuss the directions of change. If a train is in New- York and its 'equilibrium' position is in Chicago, we are reasonably confident that the general direction of its motion will be westward, even if it unaccountably decides to travel north for the first hundred and fifty miles.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 637-638 (rev. ed. 1947); cited in Macroeconomische theorie ingeleid en voortgezet. Kluwer, 2006. p. 3

Travel, Confidence, Change, Training

“The truth is always in the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because as a rule the minority is made up of those who actually have an opinion, while the strength of the majority is illusory, formed of that crowd which has no opinion — and which therefore the next moment (when it becomes clear that the minority is the stronger) adopts the latter's opinion, which now is in the majority, i. e. becomes rubbish by having the whole retinue and numerousness on its side, while the truth is again in a new minority.”

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

1850
1850s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1850s

Truth

“Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Sun

“It is only through the discovery of History — more precisely by the awakening of the historical consciousness in Judaeo-Christianity and its propagation by Hegel and his successors — it is only through the radical assimilation of the new mode of being represented by human existence in the world that myth could be left behind. But we hesitate to say that mythical thought has been abolished. As we shall soon see, it managed to survive, though radically changed (if not perfectly camouflaged). And the astonishing fact is that, more than anywhere else it survives in historiography!”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Source: Images and Symbols (1952), p. 113.

World, History, Change

“At one stage, Venkataraman had agreed to become prime minister but he never told me this directly…. Once the news of his being in touch with the dissidents was leaked out, he was offered the presidency and that was the end of it.”

Zail Singh (1916–1994) Indian politician and former President of India

On being asked if R. Venkataraman showed any interest in becoming prime minister. In: K.R. Sundar Rajan "Presidential Years:Zail Singh's posthumous defence of his controversial tenure".

“O the refuge of those without refuge, O the destroyer of the fear of those who bow down [to you], O the remover of the earth's burden, O the paramour of the daughter of the earth, O the cause of pleasure in devotees, O the nourisher of the dynasty of the sun, O the one with feet as delicate as the lotus, O the redeemer of the wife of the Brahmin (Ahalyā), O the nourisher of the three worlds, O the slayer of the clan of demons, O the bearer of sharp arrows, O the destroyer of Rāvaṇa in battle, O the new cloud for the Cātaka bird in the form of the descendant of Bhṛgu (Paraśurāma), O Rāma, O the ornament of devotees, take pleasure in my mind with Sītā. ॥ 20.13 ॥”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

aśaraṇaśaraṇa praṇatabhayadaraṇa
dharaṇibharaharaṇa dharaṇitanayāvaraṇa
janasukhakaraṇa taraṇikulabharaṇa
kamalamṛducaraṇa dvijāṅganāsamuddharaṇa ।
tribhuvanabharaṇa danujakulamaraṇa
niśitaśaraśaraṇa dalitadaśamukharaṇa
bhṛgubhavacātakanavīnajaladhara rāma
vihara manasi saha sītayā janābharaṇa ॥
Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam

Pleasure, World, Fear, Bird

“Have you heard
It was on the news
Your child can read you like a bedtime story
Like a magazine
Like a has-been out to grass
Like afternoon T. V.
Why is my life going by so fast?”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

"Hello (I Love You)" was a created as a musical collaboration between Howard Shore and Waters for the film The Last Mimzy (2007). At PR-inside http://www.pr-inside.com/waters-records-film-tune-with-oscar-winning-r37315.htm, Waters is quoted as saying: "I think together we've come up with a song that captures the themes of the movie — the clash between humanity's best and worst instincts, and how a child's innocence can win the day." Video and full lyrics online http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eK6FY4Hykc

Life, Grass, Reading

“No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness, as that which declares that the world as made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.”

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

" Wild Wool http://books.google.com/books?id=LcIRAAAAYAAJ&pg=P361", Overland Monthly, volume 14, number 4 (April 1875) pages 361-366 (at page 364); modified slightly and reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 1 1870s

Men, World, Way, Understanding

“It is not unreasonable nor derogatory to the attributes of Omnipotence, to imagine that some general laws may be observed in the creation of new worlds; and if man could witness the birth of such worlds, he might reason by induction upon the origin of his own. But in the absence of such data, an attempt has been made to fancy some analogy between the agents now employed to destroy, renovate, and perpetually vary the earth's surface, and those whereby the first chaotic mass was formed, and brought by supposed nascent energy from the embryo to the habitable state.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 13
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

World, Law, Imagination, Birth

“No love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning.”

Eleanor Farjeon book Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)

Love, World, Lovers

“When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news. If they aren't, that's news too.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"The Students Take Over," The Nation (1960); later printed as "Beginnings of a New Revolt" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/newrevolt.htm, Assays (1961)

“Hamilton doubted the cohesive force of the Constitution to make a nation. He was so far right, for no constitution can make a nation. That is a growth, and the vigor and intensity of our national growth transcended our own suspicions. It was typified by our material progress. General Hamilton died in 1804. In 1812, during the last war with England, the largest gun used was a thirty-six pounder. In the war just ended it was a two-thousand pounder. The largest gun then weighed two thousand pounds. The largest shot now weighs two thousand pounds. Twenty years after Hamilton died the traveler toiled painfully from the Hudson to Niagara on canal-boats and in wagons, and thence on horseback to Kentucky. Now he whirls from the Hudson to the Mississippi upon thousands of miles of various railroads, the profits of which would pay the interest of the national debt. So by a myriad influences, as subtle as the forces of the air and earth about a growing tree, has our nationality grown and strengthened, striking its roots to the centre and defying the tempest. Could the musing statesman who feared that Virginia or New York or Carolina or Massachusetts might rend the Union have heard the voice of sixty years later, it would have said to him, 'The babe you held in your arms has grown to be a man, who walks and runs and leaps and works and defends himself. I am no more a vapor, I am condensed. I am no more a germ, I am a life. I am no more a confederation, I am a nation.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Life, War, Fear, Travel

“He (the photographer) has practically created a new thing out of materials gathered from nature; upon a foundation of fact he has allowed his imagination to build up an entirely fictitious scene, and the truth of the effect will depend upon how far his perceptions have been trained by studying nature at various times, so as to know how things might look under certain circumstances.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 78

Truth, Imagination, Nature, Study

“I was surprised by photography, which we all use so massively every day. Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art. It had no style, no composition, no judgment. It freed me from personal experience. For the first time, there was nothing to it: it was pure picture. That's why I wanted to have it, to show it - not use it as a means to painting, but use painting as a means to photography.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Art, Way, Time, Painting

“For Lillian Gish, My Favorite Actress. On the occasion of her 1st visit to New York of which this book is a practical guide. From Her Chattel, F. Scott Fitzgerald”

Lillian Gish (1893–1993) American actress

F. Scott Fitzgerald's letter to Gish, written within a copy of Tender is the Night http://gothamist.com/2013/01/29/fitzgerald_pens_letter_to_favorite.php About

Books

“Lord Goschen tells you that France only takes 2 per cent. of its corn from abroad, that it is self-sufficient, and that Germany only takes 30 per cent., whereas, he says, we take four-fifths. That is not a comforting reflection…it is not a comforting reflection to think that we, a part of the British Empire that might be self-sufficient and self-contained, are, nevertheless, dependent, according to Lord Goschen, for four-fifths of our supplies upon foreign countries, any one of which, by shutting their doors upon us, might reduce us to a state of almost absolute starvation. … the working man has to fear the result of a shortage of supplies and of a consequent monopoly. If in time of war one of the great countries, Russia, Germany, France, or the United States of America, were to cut off its supply, it would infallibly raise the price according to the quantity which we received from that country. If there were no war, if in times of peace these countries wanted their corn for themselves, which they will do, or if there were bad harvests, which there may be in either of these cases, you will find the price of corn rising many times higher than any tax I have ever suggested. And there is only one remedy for it. There is only one remedy for a short supply. It is to increase your sources of supply. You must call in the new world, the Colonies, to redress the balance of the old. Call in the Colonies, and they will answer to your call with very little stimulus or encouragement. They will give you a supply which will be never failing and all sufficient.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Newcastle (20 October 1903), quoted in The Times (21 October 1903), p. 10.
1900s

War, World, Fear, Peace

“The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course…. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being…. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind…. Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant's endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour….”

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

July, 1918
India's Rebirth

Pain, Age, Birth, Failure

“[written when news was received that a vast French invasion fleet had appeared off the south coast of England ] MA CHERE AMIE, … I awake to fears of invasion, to noise, faction, drums, soldiers, and care the whole town has now but two employments - the learning of French, and the exercise of arms - which is highly political, in my poor opinion, for should the military fail of success, which is not impossible- why, the ladies must take the field, and scold them to their ships again.”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 32: 25 Aug 1779, to Mrs C___ ).

Fear, Exercises, Learning, Appearance

“And as you know, this whole Hillary e-mail scandal brought Anthony Wiener back into the news. Now here's a question nobody has asked. Anthony Wiener is Jewish, right? Right? So does this scandal make him a Hebrew National Wiener?”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Guest monologue on The Tonight Show http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jay-leno-takes-jimmy-fallons-867267, 31 October, 2016 The Tonight Show

Question

“There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.”

I. F. Stone (1907–1989) American investigative journalist and author

I.F. Stone's Weekly (1954-03-15)

War, Peace, Way, Idea

“In recent times the rainbow (albeit with some different colors) has come to represent something far different. To many people it means freedom, love, pride, a new era, and, specifically, the LGBTQ movement… But the rainbow itself wasn’t designed to be a symbol of freedom, love, pride, or the LGBTQ movement. God created this beautiful, colorful phenomenon and designated it as a sign of His covenant with Noah and his descendants forever. Sadly, people ignore what God intended the rainbow to represent and proudly wave rainbow-colored flags in defiance of God’s command and design for marriage. Because of this, many Christians shy away from using the rainbow colors. But the rainbow was a symbol of God’s promises before the LGBTQ movement—and will continue to be after that movement has ended. As Christians, we need to take the rainbow back and teach our young people its true meaning.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Rainbow Lights at the Ark https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2016/12/20/rainbow-lights-at-ark/, Around the World with Ken Ham (December 20, 2016) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Love, God, Marriage, People

“Merchants and Revolution, dedicated to Stone, comprehensively overturns that judgement. Its author, Robert Brenner, belongs to that rare group of historians who have given their name to a whole literature – the ‘Brenner Debate’ on the origins of agrarian capitalism in Europe recalling the ‘Pirenne Thesis’ of old. His new book, in which the name of Marx is never mentioned but his spirit is omnipresent, transforms the landscape of the English Revolution. Merchants and Revolution is distinguished by three achievements, any one of which would be impressive enough. Together, their combination is an extraordinary feat.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 12. "Civil War, Global Distemper, Robert Brenner" (1993; 2005)

Books, Literature

“We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. … Our goal is stability, not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country. It's time.”

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

2010s, 2016, December Source: Speaking at U.S. Bank Arena, as reported by Washington Examiner, December 1, 2016 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-new-foreign-policy-we-will-stop-looking-to-topple-regimes/article/2608687

Learning, Time, Past, Country

“The three major Middle Eastern religions are significantly different in their relations with the state and their attitudes to political power. Judaism was associated with the state and was then disentangled from it; its new encounter with the state at the present time raises problems which are still unresolved. Christianity, during the first formative centuries of its existence, was separate from and indeed antagonistic to the state with which it only later became involved. Islam from the lifetime of its founder was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Faith, Religion, History, Problem

“As a race of scientists and thinkers,” she concluded, “we cannot claim with absolute certainty that Teot Yon’s personality is now beyond Heaven’s gates or inside Satan’s stewpot or about to enter the embryo of a bull. Some of us subscribe to the Afterworld Hypothesis, some to less cheerful views. We all know that as an empirical event Teot Yon’s existence is over, and it is time for his molecules to become air and ash and after that—where will his drifting pieces go and what new things will they help to form? Let the transformation begin!”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 19 (p. 234)

Time, Help, Personality

“In daily practical experience, try to concentrate for a while upon seemingly subordinate abilities, ones that you think of as latent. If you do so consistently, using your imagination and will, then those abilities will become prominent in your present. The current beliefs will reprogram and alter past experience. It is not simply that past, forgotten, unconsciously perceived events will be put together in a new way and organized under a new heading, but in that past (now not perceivable), the entire bodily response to seemingly past events will change.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. 359

Way, Imagination, Thinking, Change

“I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.... I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Quote of Braque, late 1908; as cited in The wild men of Paris, Gelett Burgess, https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf in 'The Architectural Record', p. 405, May 1910; as cited in Braque, by Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 34 1908 - 1920

Women, Beauty, Art, Nature

“The basic insight of the finance conception was that such a firm could be more tightly controlled by strict accounting. This progression does not imply, however, that one conception of control caused the emergence of its successor. New conceptions of control evolved out of key interactions among firms and between firms and the state.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 16

“In 1957, James Vicary, a market researcher, conducted a six week test in a New Jersey movie theatre. A high-speed projector repeatedly and subliminally flashed the slogans ‘drink Coke’ and ‘eat popcorn’ over the film. I thought I’d make my own cinema ad to try something similar. According to Vicary, popcorn sales went up by 57.5% and Coke sales by 18.1%… Whether Vicary’s results were due to the subliminals can never be shown and the experiment has become shrouded in urban myth. This is the Genesis Cinema in East London, which kindly agreed to include our ad amongst the trailers for a screening of Ocean's Twelve, a carefully chosen film which, if the ad works, the audience will not be able to remember. Not a bad thing.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Drink, Speed

“The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of the United States over many years, in all parts of the world.
I believe that it will do this not only to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American administration is now a blood-thirsty wild animal.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

Referring to the 9/11 attacks, in "The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/12/11/do1101.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2002/12/11/ixopinion.html, The Telegraph (12 November 2002), published version of speech made upon accepting an honorary doctorate from University of Turin in 2002.

World, Animals, Parting

“There is no conceivable reason why all colored people should not be treated according to the merits of each individual. It is not only the plain duty, but also the interest of us all, to have every colored man take the place for which he is best fitted by education, character, ability, manners, and culture. If others insist on keeping him in any lower and poorer place, it is not only his injury, but our universal loss. Yet which of our white congregations would take a colored pastor? How many of our New England villages would like to have colored postmasters, or doctors, or lawyers, or teachers in the public schools? A very slight difference in complexion suffices to keep a young man from getting a place as policeman, or fireman, or conductor, even on the horse cars. The trades-unions are closed against him, and so are many of our stores; while those which admit him are obliged to refuse him promotion on account of the unwillingness of white men to serve under him.”

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

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Men, People, Education, School

“My father was in the wholesale tea, coffee, and cigar business, with a firm called Bennett-Sloan and Company. In 1885 he moved the business to New York City, on West Broadway, and from the age of ten I grew up in Brooklyn. I am told I still have the accent. My father's father was a schoolteacher. My mother's father was a Methodist minister. My parents had five children, of whom I am the oldest. There is my sister, Mrs. Katharine Sloan Pratt, now a widow. There are my three brothers — Clifford, who was in the advertising business; Harold, a college professor; and Raymond, the youngest, who is a professor, writer, and expert on hospital administration. I think we have all had in common a capability for being dedicated to our respective interests.
I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being. In 1895 the Duryeas, who had been experimenting with motor cars, started what I believe was the first gasoline-automobile manufacturing company in the United States. In the same year I left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a a BS. in electrical engineering, and went to work for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, later of Harrison, New Jersey. The Hyatt antifriction bearing was later to become a component of the automobile, and it was through this component that I came into the automotive industry. Except for one early and brief departure from it, I have spent my life in the industry.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 37

Life, Children, Age, Cars

“Changing and inventing new things is great. That's what we like to do.”

Anthony Kiedis (1962) American singer

Australia, 2002

Change

“First we've got population. Now, the world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that (forecast) by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent, but there we see an increase of about 1.3”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

per year
TED, February 2010

People, Health, World

“When these barbarians replicated with Steven what they did with Foley, who is from New Hampshire, they somehow think that it's going to lessen US resolve, frighten us, intimidate us. But if they think the American people will be intimidated, they don't know us very well. We came back after 9/11, we dusted ourselves off and we made sure that Osama Bin Ladin would never ever again threaten the American people. We came back Boston strong, blaming no one, but resolve to be certain that this didn't happen again. Today America may be still grieving from Jim Foley, a native from New Hampshire as I said he grew up in Rochester, but the American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand. As a nation, we are united. And when people harm Americans, we don't retreat, we don't forget, we take care of those grieving. And when that's finished, they should know [that] we follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Joe Biden Speech Transcript: We Will Follow Them to the Gates of Hell http://www.crossmap.com/news/joe-biden-speech-transcript-we-will-follow-them-to-the-gates-of-hell-11970#ixzz3R6YDaKKw (September 3 2014) 2000s

People, Justice, Hell, Understanding

“Treatises may be didactic in tone, but essentially they lack the conclusiveness of an instruction which could be asserted, like doctrine, by virtue of its own authority. … Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. For by pursuing different levels of meaning in its examination of one single object it receives both the incentive to begin again and the justification for its irregular rhythm.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels [Origin of the German Mourning Play] (1925), p. 28

Way, Thinking

“One of the crucial yardsticks by which we shall have to judge the results of the new abortion law combined with the voluntary sterilisation law will be whether it tends to raise or lower the total quality of our population. We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two. Intelligent application of these laws can help reduce the distortion that has already set in. Until the less educated themselves are convinced and realise that they should concentrate their limited resources on one or two to give their children the maximum chance to climb up the educational ladder, their children will always be at the bottom of the economic scale. It is unlikely that the results will be discernible before five years. Nor will the effect be felt before fifteen to twenty years. But we will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic.”

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

Abortion Bill (As reported from Select Committee), 29 Dec 1969. Singapore Parliament Reports http://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/topic.jsp?currentTopicID=00054060-ZZ&currentPubID=00069213-ZZ&topicKey=00069213-ZZ.00054060-ZZ_1%2Bid015_19691229_S0003_T00031-bill%2B 1960s

Children, Education, Law, Intelligence

“In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, 'Then why not me?' In the era of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of a time to a higher standard of humanity.”

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

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

World, Question, Freedom, Suffering

“Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. … The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

"The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity" in Philosophical Magazine (September 1902)

Change

“When things don't change any longer, that's the end result of entropy, the heat-death of the universe. The more things go on moving, interrelating, conflicting, changing, the less balance there is—and the more life. I'm pro-life, George. Life itself is a huge gamble against the odds, against all odds! You can't try to live safely, there's no such thing as safety. Stick your neck out of your shell, then, and live fully! It's not how you get there, but where you get to that counts. What you're afraid to accept, here, is that we're engaged in a really great experiment, you and I. We're on the brink of discovering and controlling, for the good of all mankind, a whole new force, an entire new field of antientropic energy, of the life-force, of the will to act, to do, to change!”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 9 (Haber)

Life, Death, Universe, Change

“I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers.
I believe that every answer to these contradictions can really satisfy the condition of helping man to overcome the sense of separation and to achieve a sense of agreement, of unity, and of belonging.
I believe that in every answer to these contradictions, man has the possibility of choosing only between going forward or going back; these choices, which are translated into specific actions, are means toward the regressing or toward the progressing of the humanity that is in us.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Credo (1965)

Search, Nature, Sense, Help

“Newspaper men, therefore, endlessly discuss the question of what is news. I judge that they will go on discussing it as long as there are newspapers. It has seemed to me that quite obviously the news-giving function of a newspaper cannot possibly require that it give a photographic presentation of everything that happens in the community. That is an obvious impossibility. It seems fair to say that the proper presentation of the news bears about the same relation to the whole field of happenings that a painting does to a photograph. The photograph might give the more accurate presentation of details, but in doing so it might sacrifice the opportunity the more clearly to delineate character. My college professor was wont to tell us a good many years ago that if a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Men, Beauty, Communication, Question

“A man and a woman who, in their young days, agree to have done with sentimental life thereby renounce the search for adventure, the intoxication of new encounters, and the amazing refreshment produced by falling in love again. Their most vital source of energy is cut off; they are doomed to premature insensibility. Their life, scarcely begun, is finished. Nothing can break the monotony of an existence made up of burdens and duties. No further hope, no surprises, no conquests. Their one love will soon be tainted by the cares of housekeeping and the children's education. They will reach old age without ever having known the joys of youth. Marriage destroys romantic love which alone could justify it.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Love, Life, Marriage, Children

“I'm glad to tell you Mr President that our relations with our neighbors is improved very well with Turkey, with Syria, with Iran with the Arab countries. The relation is normal now and we have no problem with any of those countries. In contrary, many many new ambassadors are coming to our country from Arab countries.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

Statement made to U.S. President George W. Bush at a meeting at the White House — reported in Agence France-Presse staff (September 10, 2008) "Talabani: Iran, Syria pose 'no problem' for Iraq", Agence France-Presse,

Problem, Country

“Pop art is neither an American invention nor an import, yet the terms and names were coined in the US, where they were popularised much faster than in Germany. This kind of art has evolved organically and independently over here, yet at the same time it becomes an analogy to American pop art due to certain psychological, cultural and economical preconditions that are the same in Germany as they are in the US.... For the first time we are showing paintings in Germany that relate to those terms, representing pop art, junk culture, imperial or capitalistic realism, new figuration, naturalism, German pop and other comparable terms.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from Richter's letter to 'Neue Deutsche Wochenschau', 29 April 1963; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Art' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/art-1 1960's

Art, Nature, Time, Painting

“You just think about supporting a wife and children on a dollar and ninety cents a day. Most of us work on Sundays; poor people can’t afford to rest on the Sabbath in a great city like this. Sometimes when I do have a Sunday off I go to church and take my wife and the children. It seems respectable, somehow, to go. And then the minister gets up and talks about the gratitude we ought to feel to God for all the blessings he gives us, and how thankful we ought to be that we live through his mercy. It may be very true as far as he is concerned, but I often think—and I don’t mean to be ungrateful or irreverent—that most people in this world have very little to be thankful for, and very little reason to thank God for life at all. Nine tenths of the people in New York find scarcely a moment in their lives which they can call their own, and see mighty little but misery from one year’s end to the other.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)

Life, God, Children, People

“The nature of the infant is not just a new permutation-and-combination of elements contained in the natures of the parents. There is in the nature of the infant that which is utterly unknown in the natures of the parents.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921)

Nature, Parent

“Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in.
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Five Years
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

Guy, Lying, Cry

“[The engineer] must identify the significant and critical problems, but in his education, problems have been predetermined and assigned. He must develop the judgment to know what solutions to problems are possible, but in school the problems encountered are known to have answers. He should be excited by new and unsolved challenges, but for 20 years he has lived in an educational system where he knows he is repeating the work of last year's students.”

Jay Wright Forrester (1918–2016) American operations researcher

Source: Engineering Education and Engineering Practice in the Year 2000 (1967), p. 134-135 as cited in: Ben. F. Barton (1981) The nature and treatment of professional engineering problems: The technical writing teacher's responsibility. p. 19

Education, School, Problem

“The basic mistake in eyery case is made by those women who consider 'freedom of abortion' as one of their civil rights. We need new fighters - they built this life, we need people.”

Nikolai Krylenko (1885–1938) Russian revolutionary, politician and chess organiser

On penalizing abortion in 1936. Quoted in Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936. Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, 1993

Life, Women, People, Freedom

“If you want to take drugs and drink alcohol and smoke, that's your business. But if you want me to pay for it when you get sick, that's my business. If we're going to have universal health care, why don't we have universal auto care? I mean, if you run your car into a tree, the government buys you a new car. You back into somebody in the parking lot and scratch it. Hey, that's OK. The government will fix it. You blow up your engine 'cause you forgot to change the oil. That's OK. The government will fix it. Why don't we have universal house care? See, if you've ever owned a house and rented it out to somebody else, you will understand. How many know what I'm talking about? Renters just don't look at it the same way owners do, do they? And when it's your responsibility to take care of your health, you'll take care of it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Health, Alcohol, Cars, Way

“As queen, Farah achieved almost immediate popularity. She had several features that pleased the Iranians: she was 'fully Iranian' and also worthy of honour because she descended from the family of the Prophet. She was a brunette with deep black eyes of the kind most Persians cherish. (The Shah's outlandish taste for blondes was not shared by his compatriots.) Farah appeared to be slightly taller than the Shah, but this could not be held against her. The new queen's athletic physique and her well-publicised love of sports disconcerted some religious circles, but even the more conservative Iranians now understood that times were changing.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love, Family, Sport, Appearance

“One day I attempted to reach silence directly, with greater resignation, surrendering to the fate that governs any profound struggle. My millions of furious clawings became millions of grains of dust, of sand... A new geo-graphy lit my way, carrying me from surprise to surprise: suggestions of unusual combinations and molecular structures, of atomic phenomena, of the world of galaxies or of images in a microscope. The symbolism of dust — 'to be one with dust, here lies the profound identity, that is, the inner profundity between man and nature' (Tao Te Ching) —, of ashes, of the earth from whence we come and to which we return, of the solidarity born when we realise that the differences among ourselves are like those between one grain of sand and the next..”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

Fate, World, Way, Nature

“… we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.' In rich countries, that time has already arrived. The old industries have been exported to the developing world. At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era. Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised. A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up. Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex. The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless. Industrialisation created the working class. Now it has made the working class obsolete. Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone.”

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

Non-Progress: An Irony of History (p. 160)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World, Religion, Sex, Home

“Four years ago, when the first edition of this book was written, information retrieval was beginning to crystallize out as a unified discipline. The process has gone further today. Several other books… have also offered a general survey, although each has contributed its own special emphasis. Many conferences on the subject have been held, and a constant stream of new articles has appeared, both in documentation journals and in those in the data processing field.
Information retrieval is now recognized as a discipline, and further advances in theory are being made, What I described in the first edition as the key operation in retrieval — the subject description of documents — is being explored theoretically and experimentally, although we are still a long way from reducing this operation to rule (Chapter 3). There has been less new work on the design of descriptor languages, although ideas on the display of descriptor relations through thesauri and 'semantic maps' have been developed (Chapter 4). Access to files has been examined, particularly by those experienced in data processing.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Preface to second edition (1965). p. v.
On Retrieval System Theory (1961)

Books, Way, Idea, Appearance

“I’ve been carrying the corpus of my grandfather — to change the famous saying—with me all my life. I was given very early two volumes of his sermons; and I never go anywhere without them. … He actually took his parish out of the Unitarian Church. As he put it, “They have defrocked not only me, but my church.” For thirty years he and the church, the New Bedford parish, were in the wilderness. Then the Unitarians, about 1890, caught up with him and embraced him. By this time he was president of the Free Religious Association and was lecturing all over the country on the necessity for a religion without dogma.
And this inheritance has been my guiding light: I regard myself simply as a continuance of my grandfather, and primarily, therefore, as a teacher and preacher, and a distributor, in poetic terms, of the news of the world, by which I mean new knowledge. This is gone into at some length in Ushant. And elsewhere I have said repeatedly that as poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry’s office.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The Paris Review interview (1963)

Life, World, Religion, Knowledge

“It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter VIII.
Early career years (1898–1929)

“What a disgrace to live at the beginning of the 20th century. … One is always influenced by one's own time. And ours is that of Sarah Bernhardt and Rostand. Things will be much better in another ten years. You will see a new art born, new and beautiful. You will see that, but I shall not. I shall be dead. But … Sarah Bernhardt will live forever, and go on playing L'AIGLON forever!”

Renée Vivien (1877–1909) British poet who wrote in the French language

Quoted in Mercure de France, I-XII (1953), trans. Jeannette H. Foster (1977)

Beauty, Art, Time, Dead

“I have invented [c. 1915-1916] a new series of verses, verses without words, or sound poems, in which the balancing of the vowels is gauged and distributed according to the value of the initial line... With these sound poems we should renounce language, devastated and made impossible by journalism. We should withdraw into the innermost alchemy of the word, and even surrender the word, thus conserving for poetry its most sacred domain. We should refuse to make poems second-hand; we should stop taking over words (not to mention sentences) which we did not invent entirely anew for our own use. We should no longer be content to achieve poetic effects which, in the final analysis, are but echoes of inspiration..”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

as quoted by Carol Rumens in her article 'Poem of the week: 'Gadji beri bimba' by Hugo Ball' https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/aug/31/hugo-ball-gadji-beri-bimba in 'The Guardian', Monday 31 August 2009 1916

Gauge

Quotes about news page 56

Quotes about news
page 56