Quotes about news
page 64

Joe Satriani photo
Henry Adams photo

“Shakespeare realised the thirteenth-century woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Josh Hawley photo
Ted Cruz photo
Richard Nixon photo
George Friedman photo
Robert M. Price photo
Amit Ray photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
Taslima Nasrin photo
Enoch Powell photo

“The clause is an example of one of the most prevalent and damaging fallacies in this whole subject—the fallacy of supposing that the consequences that are apprehended from the massive substitution, in various parts of the country, for the indigenous population of a population from overseas are either due to what is called physical deprivation, poverty, and so on, or can be in any way alleviated, avoided or foreclosed by material provision…It is by no means true that the areas of maximum New Commonwealth immigrant entry—the locations of what Lord Radcliffe many years ago called "the alien wedge"—are characteristically or specifically coincident with the areas of greatest poverty and desuetude in our cities. In some cases the two coincide. Sometimes, naturally, this happens in the central and rundown areas—run down because they are central—that because they are central it is in those areas that major immigrant populations are found…Over and over again this easy illusion has been propounded, and as often experience has disposed of it. It is not because people are poor, to the extent that they are poor, and it is not because they live in the streets of the inner cities, in which the indigenous population of this country has lived—gradually improving, and in some cases rapidly improving over generations—that we apprehend what will be the consequence when one-third of some of the major cities and industrial areas of our country is in New Commonwealth occupation. It is because of human differences. It is because of the clash and contrast between two populations which contend for the same territory.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1976/jul/08/report-on-resources in the House of Commons (8 July 1976)
1970s

“By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots.
On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible. There is a smell of power and danger on these people, and one may be horrified, exhilarated, disgusted or mesmerized by the awful possibilities they suggest, but never simply depressed.
Depression comes in the presence of depravity that makes no pretense about itself, a kind of depravity that says, "You and I, we are base, ugly, tasteless, cruel and beastly; let's admit it and have a good wallow."
That is how Times Square speaks. And not only Times Square. Few cities in the country lack the same amenities. Pornography, prostitution, massage parlors, hard-core movies, narcotics dealers — all seem to be inescapable and permanent results of an enlightened view of liberty which has expanded the American's right to choose his own method of shaping a life.
Granted such freedom, it was probably inevitable that many of us would yield to the worst instincts, and many do, and not only in New York. Most cities, however, are able to keep the evidence out of the center of town. Under a rock, as it were. In New York, a concatenation of economics, shifting real estate values and subway lines has worked to turn the rock over and put the show on display in the middle of town.
What used to be called "The Crossroads of the World" is now a sprawling testament to the dreariness which liberty can produce when it permits people with no taste whatever to enjoy the same right to depravity as the elegant classes.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Cheesy" (p.231)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Michele Bachmann photo
Ken Livingstone photo

“The next election will bring an influx of over 120 new MPs who will be overwhelmingly on the Left.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

The Guardian (23 September 1985)

Nico Perrone photo
Clement Attlee photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo

“I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal… work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

David Cross photo
Otto Neurath photo
Emma Thompson photo

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

William S. Burroughs photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“He knelt him down on the new-raised mound,
His face was bowed on the cold damp ground,
He raised his head, his tears were done,
The father had prayed o'er his only son!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Soldier's Funeral from The London Literary Gazette (16th November 1822)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Michael Bloomberg photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“After his death I did not attend any more lectures, although I paid for them. Schroeder was succeeded by Ernst Gottfried Baldinger, born in Gross Vargula, near Erfurt, 1738; and descended in a direct line, on his mother's side, from Doctor Martin Luther. He established a dispensary for poor patients, and gave medicine gratia, on condition of his being attended by about thirty pupils. Here it was that I first began to display the knowledge I had gained from my friend, the late Doctor Schroeder; and Baldinger, not seeing me attend his lectures, naturally supposing I was lazy and dull of comprehension, exclaimed, with astonishment, "What will become of this boy?" Whereupon, considering myself insulted by the Doctor, I wished to retire; when he embraced me, and said, good-humouredly, "No, no such a clever young fellow never came under my observation." From this time I became his best friend and daily visitor; I passed whole days and weeks in his valuable and extensive library, and almost in the constant society of his amiable, highly gifted, and accomplished wife; his confidence was so great, that he left the entire direction of his dispensary to me, and even entrusted me with the care of his own family when unwell. Having given up all connexion with my former friends, the students, I selected one Leisewitz, the author of "Julius de Tarent." We sympathised in each other's feelings, and became inseparable. His amiable qualities and inoffensive wit drew around us the best society; but, to our great regret, many of them belonged to a new school of freethinkers, whose principles we endeavoured, by the assistance of the pious Madame Baldinger, to eradicate from their minds; and thus it was thnt Providence brought me over again to the firm belief of the truth of our Divine religion.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Ernest Bevin photo
Gebran Tueni photo

“We are on the edge of a new era. It can be something completely positive for Lebanon, and it can be something completely dark for Lebanon. … That's why we are really at a turning point where anything can happen.”

Gebran Tueni (1957–2005) journalist

Associated Press interview, May 2000
This followed the withdrawl of Israeli troops from Lebanon.

Nigel Lawson photo

“Economic and monetary union…is incompatible with independent sovereign states with control over their own fiscal and monetary policies. It would be impossible…to have irrevocably fixed exchange rates while individual countries retained independent monetary policies…such a system could never have the credibility necessary to persuade the market that there was no risk of realignment. Thus EMU inevitably implies a single European currency, with monetary decisions…taken not by national Governments and/or central banks, but by a European Central Bank. Nor would individual countries be able to retain responsibility for fiscal policy. With a single European monetary policy there would need to be central control over the size of budget deficits and, particularly, over their financing. New European institutions would be required, to determine overall Community fiscal policy and agree the distribution of deficits between individual Member States…It is clear that Economic and Monetary Union implies nothing less than European Government…and political union: the United States of Europe. That is simply not on the agenda now, nor will it be for the forseeable future.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House (25 January 1989), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 910.

Louis de Broglie photo

“The actual state of our knowledge is always provisional and … there must be, beyond what is actually known, immense new regions to discover.”

Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) French physicist

Foreword of book by [David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Routledge, 1984, 0415174406, x]

François Gautier photo

“When I first went there I discovered an entirely new approach of looking at life. It was as if I had sudden awakened from deep slumber.”

François Gautier (1959) French journalist

On the ashram of Aurobindo, as quoted in "Content-wise, Indian fiction writers have little to offer" http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030810/spectrum/book6.htm, The Tribune (10 August 2003)

Lou Barletta photo

“Donald Trump’s voice is resonating with average Americans who feel their voice has been lost by their party, I believe this will become a new Republican Party, one that we should embrace. We should be the party of working men and women, the party of America first.”

Lou Barletta (1956) American politician

Lou Barletta, an immigration hard-liner in Congress, endorses Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/22/lou-barletta-an-immigration-hard-liner-in-congress-endorses-trump (March 22, 2016)

Sun Myung Moon photo
André Breton photo
William Luther Pierce photo

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts
1990s, 1990

Anthony Crosland photo

“Militant leftism in politics appears to have its roots in broadly analogous sentiments. Every labour politician has observed that the most indignant members of his local Party are not usually the poorest, or the slum-dwellers, or those with most to gain from further economic change, but the younger, more self-conscious element, earning good incomes and living comfortably in neat new council houses: skilled engineering workers, electrical workers, draughtsmen, technicians, and the lower clerical grades. (Similarly the most militant local parties are not in the old industrial areas, but either in the newer high-wage engineering areas or in middle-class towns; Coventry or Margate are the characteristic strongholds.) Now it is people such as these who naturally resent the fact that despite their high economic status, often so much higher than their parents’, and their undoubted skill at work, they have no right to participate in the decisions of their firm, no influence over policy, and far fewer non-pecuniary privileges than the managerial grades; and outside their work they are conscious of a conspicuous educational handicap, of a style of life which is still looked down on by middle-class people often earning little if any more, of differences in accent, and generally of an inferior class position.”

The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland
The Future of Socialism (1956)

Benjamín Netanyahu photo

“We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn't be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem. I can only imagine what would happen if someone suggested Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

"Israel rejects U.S. call to halt Jerusalem project" in USA Today (19 July 2009) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-07-19-israel-jerusalem_N.htm
2000s, 2009

“Of course I don't want the old religious dope. But I don't want just the new science dope either. I want the truth.”

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter VI Birth-pangs of a Personality

Emmitt Smith photo

“History has never seen Emmitt Smith. I don't care what has come before me. That's why they call it history you create new history.”

Emmitt Smith (1969) American football player and sports broadcaster

Rick Gosselin (August 10, 2003) "Making another rush at history - Smith shooting for 1,000-yard season", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, p. C8.

Sri Aurobindo photo
George W. Bush photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“New discord has arisen in Europe of late years from the fact that Germany is not satisfied with the result of the late War. I have indicated several times that Germany got off lightly after the Great War. I know that that is not always a fashionable opinion, but the facts repudiate the idea that a Carthaginian peace was in fact imposed upon Germany. No division was made of the great masses of the German people. No portion of Germany inhabited by Germans was detached, except where there was the difficulty of disentangling the population of the Silesian border. No attempt was made to divide Germany as between the northern and southern portions which might well have tempted the conquerors at that time. No State was carved out of Germany. She underwent no serious territorial loss, except the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, which she herself had seized only 50 years before. The great mass of the Germans remained united after all that Europe had passed through, and they are more vehemently united to-day than ever before. You may talk of the War indemnity; what has happened there? I suppose that the Germans paid, in round terms, £1,000,000,000. But they had borrowed £2,000,000,000 at the same time, and there are no signs of their paying back.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/apr/13/adjournment-easter-1#column_2790 in the House of Commons (13 April 1933)
The 1930s

A. R. Rahman photo
Lester B. Pearson photo

“When I came back to Ottawa I found myself faced with a very difficult parliamentary situation… I think it is fair to say that Mr St Laurent, on the basis of private discussions with the Opposition leaders, did not expect any serious division in the House of Commons over our policies on Suez. However, bitter division there was, and we were condemned strongly for deserting our two mother countries. The Conservative attack was led by Howard Green (who in June 1959 was to become Secretary of State for External Affairs). Green accused us of being the "chore boy" of the United States, of being a better friend to Nasser than to Britain and France, and claimed that our government "by its actions in the Suez crisis, has made this month of November 1956, the most disgraceful period for Canada in the history of this nation," and that it was "high time Canada had a government which will not knife Canada's best friends in the back." Any feeling of exaltation and conceit or euphoria at our success in avoiding a general war in the Middle East (if in fact we had avoided it by our actions) was dissipated for me by the vigour of the assaults on my conduct, my wisdom, my rectitude, my integrity, and my everything else by an embattled Conservative Opposition. It was a very vigorous debate reflected in the general election of the next year. But I have always believed, and I think the great weight of Canadian opinion strongly approved what we had done. Further, I am absolutely certain and will remain certain in my own mind that the New Commonwealth would have soon shattered over the issue had the British not backed down.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume Two

Alberto Manguel photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Now, if your boss is a sadist, then you have a big problem. In that case, fire your boss and get a new job.”

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

Trump: How to Get Rich (2004)
2000s

Francesco Petrarca photo

“With Death at my side I seek new counsel for my life, and I see the better but I lay hold on the worse.”

Co la morte a lato
cerco del viver mio novo consiglio,
et veggio 'l meglio, et al peggior m'appiglio.
Canzone 264, st. 8
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Death

Ishirō Honda photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo

“To approach Bach, one has to realize that 100 years after Bach’s death, Bach and his music totally had been forgotten. Even while he was still alive, Bach himself believed in the polyphonic power and the resulting symmetric architectures of well-proportioned music. But this had been an artificial truth - even for him. Other composers, including his sons, already composed in another style, where they found other ideals and brought them to new solutions. The spirit of the time already had changed while Bach was still alive. A hundred years later, it was Mendelssohn who about 1850 discovered Bach anew with the performance of the St. Matthew Passion. Now a new renaissance began, and the world learned to know the greatness of Bach. To become acquainted with Bach, many transcriptions were done. But the endeavors in rediscovering Bach had been - stylistically - in a wrong direction. Among these were the orchestral transcriptions of Leopold Stokowski, and the organ interpretations of the multitalented Albert Schweitzer, who, one has to confess, had a decisive effect on the rediscovery of Bach. All performances had gone in the wrong direction: much too romantic, with a false knowledge of historic style, the wrong sound, the wrong rubato, and so on. The necessity of artists like Rosalyn Tureck and Glenn Gould - again 100 years later - has been understandable: The radicalism of Glenn Gould pointed out the real clarity and the internal explosions of the power-filled polyphony in the best way. This extreme style, called by many of his critics refrigerator interpretations, however really had been necessary to demonstrate the right strength to bring out the architecture in the right manner, which had been lost so much before. I’m convinced that the style Glenn Gould played has been the right answer. But there has been another giant: it was no less than Helmut Walcha who, also beginning in the 1950, started his legendary interpretations for the DG-Archive productions of the complete organ-work cycle on historic organs (Silbermann, Arp Schnitger). Also very classical in strength of speed and architectural proportions, he pointed out the polyphonic structures in an enlightened but moreover especially humanistic way, in a much more smooth and elegant way than Glenn Gould on the piano. Some years later it was Virgil Fox who acquainted the U. S. with tours of the complete Bach cycle, which certainly was effective in its own way, but much more modern than Walcha. The ranges of Bach interpretations had become wide, and there were the defenders of the historical style and those of the much more modern romantic style. Also the performances of the orchestral and cantata Bach had become extreme: on one side, for example, Karl Richter, who used a big and rich-toned orchestra; on the other side Helmut Rilling, whose Bach was much more historically oriented.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Susan B. Anthony photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
David Dinkins photo

“So it's a mistake for someone to think that they bailed New York out. They did assist us, for which we are grateful, but it's a mistake to say we bailed New York out by giving them a grant of money to help those poor people who throw it away on welfare.”

David Dinkins (1927) former mayor of New York City

On New York as the capital of the world. Quoted in an interview by PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/series/interview/dinkins.html

Peter Greenaway photo
Kent Beck photo
Howard Dean photo
Robert Moses photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Vitruvius photo

“Every hot spring has healing properties because it has been boiled with foreign substances, and thus acquires a new useful quality.”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter III, Sec. 4

Piet Mondrian photo
Yrjö Kallinen photo
Leonard Mlodinow photo
Akio Morita photo

“…without an organisation that can work together, sometimes over a very long period, it's difficult to see new projects to fruition.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 170.

James Comey photo
Tom Petty photo
Edward Heath photo

“This is the new imperialism, and I am against the new imperialism. It is not our job to go throwing our forces around the world and saying 'This is an evil man and so on.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Remarks on the Gulf War on ITV, On the Record (3 February 1991), quoted in The Times (4 February 1991), p. 5.
Post-Prime Ministerial

George W. Bush photo
Imre Lakatos photo

“Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.”

Imre Lakatos (1921–1974) Hungarian mathematician, philosopher

Source: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, 1970, p. 119.

Nick Bostrom photo

“Sister, look ye,
How, by a new creation of my tailor's
I've shook off old mortality.”

John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist

The Fancies, Chaste and Noble Act I, sc. iii. (1635-6)

Isidore Isou photo

“There is no "worst" in what is new. Everything that has existed is bad, or else no one would have improved upon it by revolution and change.”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

James Howard Kunstler photo
Nikolai Berdyaev photo
Jane Austen photo

“Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1813-09-23) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

“Leonard D. White's desire "to organize his own knowledge" reminds us of how much hacking away at a jungle has to be done at such an early stage in the study of and reporting on a new field.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

John M. Gaus, 1958. "Leonard Dupee White—1891–1958." Public Administration Review 18(2): p. 233

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Carl Hayden photo

“I'd call Congress together, have the House elect a new speaker, and then I'd resign and let him become president”

Carl Hayden (1877–1972) American federal politician

Hayden's reply when he was asked, what he would do if ever succeeded Presidency. Hayden was twice, as President pro tempore of the Senate, second in the Presidential line of succession (first time between death of House Speaker Sam Rayburn and election of new Speaker John W. McCormack, and later after President's Kennedy assassination, when Lyndon B. Johnson, new President, had no Vice President until next election. Normally president pro tem is the third in line
Others

Gloria E. Anzaldúa photo
Marshall McLuhan photo
Russell Crowe photo
Jack LaLanne photo

“I was a whole new human being, he said of this transformation. I liked people, they liked me. It was like an exorcism, kicking the devil outta me!”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times"

Orson Welles photo
John the Evangelist photo

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Jesus in John 13:34-35 NRSV
Gospel of John

Henry L. Benning photo

“My next proposition is that the North is in the course of acquiring this power to abolish slavery. Is that true? I say, gentlemen, the North is acquiring that power by two processes, one of which is operating with great rapidity-that is by the admission of new States. The public territory is capable of forming from twenty to thirty States of larger size than the average of the States now in the Union. The public territory is peculiarly Northern territory, and every State that comes into the Union will be a free State. We may rest assured, sit, that that is a fixed fact. The events in Kansas should satisfy every one of the truth of that. If causes now in operation are allowed to continue, the admission of new States will go on until a sufficient number shall have been secured to give the necessary preponderance to change the Constitution. There is a process going on by which some of our own slave States are becoming free States already. It is true, that in some of the slave States the slave population is actually on the decrease, and, I believe it is true of all of them that it is relatively to the white population on the decrease. The census shows that slaves are decreasing in Delaware and Maryland; and it shows that in the other States in the same parallel, the relative state of the decrease and increase is against the slave population. It is not wonderful that this should be so. The anti-slavery feeling has got to be so great at the North that the owners of slave property in these States have a presentiment that it is a doomed institution, and the instincts of self-interest impels them to get rid of that property which is doomed. The consequence is, that it will go down lower and. lower, until it all gets to the Cotton States-until it gets to the bottom. There is the weight of a continent upon it forcing it down. Now, I say, sir, that under this weight it is bound to go down unto the Cotton States, one of which I have the honor to represent here. When that time comes, sir, the free States in consequence of the manifest decrease, will urge the process with additional vigor, and I fear that the day is not distant when the Cotton States, as they are called, will be the only slave States. When that time comes, the time will have arrived when the North will have the power to amend the Constitution, and say that slavery shall be abolished, and if the master refuses to yield to this policy, he shall doubtless be hung for his disobedience.”

Henry L. Benning (1814–1875) Confederate Army general

Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)

Seneca the Younger photo

“What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.”
Quid ergo? non ibo per priorum vestigia? ego vero utar via vetere, sed si propiorem planioremque invenero, hanc muniam. Qui ante nos ista moverunt non domini nostri sed duces sunt. Patet omnibus veritas; nondum est occupata; multum ex illa etiam futuris relictum est.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIII

“Imaginization is about improving our abilities to see and understand situations in new ways.”

Gareth Morgan (1943) Organizational theorist

Source: Imaginization (1993), p. 2

James A. Garfield photo
Frederick Lewis Allen photo

“It is easier to tear down a code than to put a new one in its place.”

Frederick Lewis Allen (1890–1954) American historian and editor of Harper's Magazine

Only Yesterday http://books.google.com/books?id=cdmXVzZ5xOsC&q=%22It+is+easier+to+tear+down+a+code+than+to+put+a+new+one+in+its+place%22&pg=PA102#v=onepage, ch. 5, (1931)

Hillary Clinton photo

“On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. […] The internet can help bridge divides between people of different faiths. As the President said in Cairo, freedom of religion is central to the ability of people to live together. And as we look for ways to expand dialogue, the internet holds out such tremendous promise. […] We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get to the people who need them in local languages, and with the training they need to access the internet safely. The United States has been assisting in these efforts for some time, with a focus on implementing these programs as efficiently and effectively as possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom. We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics, to build global support for President Obama's goal of a world without nuclear weapons, to encourage sustainable economic development that lifts the people at the bottom up.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

"Remarks on Internet Freedom", The Newseum, Washington, DC, January 21, 2010 http://web.archive.org/web/20100123145341/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Bill Clinton photo
Jack McDevitt photo

“New worlds are always hard on old ideas.”

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 33 (p. 367)