Quotes about nobody
page 15

George Carlin photo
Willa Cather photo

“The number one rule of today's marketing – the key secret of those who seek to control your beliefs and habits in order to take your money, your votes, your time or whatever else it is they desire from you – is to always keep in mind that nobody really believes they can be manipulated.”

Brian Vaszily (1970)

"The One Real Reason You Are Stressed Out, Overweight, Depressed or Angry" http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/04/05/the_one_real_reason_you_are_stressed_out_overweight_depressed_or_angry.htm, SixWise.com, undated (accessed 2006-06-23)

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke photo

“The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

As quoted in Treasury of Wisdom, Wit and Humor, Odd Comparisons and Proverbs (1891) by Adam Woolever

Agatha Christie photo
Dylan Moran photo
George Harrison photo

“I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (1968)
Lyrics

Amber Benson photo
Peter Sellars photo
Enoch Powell photo
Freeman Dyson photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“There is nobody to wake up eternal seekers.”

“Hegemonikon,” p. 27
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “Light Bugs”

Robert Sheckley photo
Roger Ebert photo

“It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when she's in scenes all by herself.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/picture-perfect-1997 of Picture Perfect (1 August 1997)
Reviews, Two star reviews

“Let's face it, nobody could paint eyes like El Greco, and nobody can paint eyes like Walter Keane.”

Walter Keane (1915–2000) American plagiarist

Referring to himself in the third person, page 39. Cited also in " The lady behind those Keane-eyed kids https://books.google.com/books?id=2FMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA56," LIFE 69, no. 21 (20 November 1970), p. 56; by Amy M. Spindler, " Style; An Eye for an Eye http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/23/magazine/style-an-eye-for-an-eye.html," The New York Times (23 May 1999); and by Jesse Hamlin, " Artist Margaret Keane hasn't lost wide-eyed enthusiasm for work http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Artist-Margaret-Keane-hasn-t-lost-wide-eyed-5955625.php," SFGate (14 Decembet 2014).
1965, Cited by Jane Howard

Arsène Wenger photo

“Nobody will finish above us in the league. It wouldn't surprise me if we were to go unbeaten for the whole of the season.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

Before the 2002-03 season commenced, (2002) http://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/may/18/newsstory.sport7
Arsenal (1996–present)

Ted Malloch photo

“When all benefits are promised by the state, nobody need feel grateful for them.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 28.

Dylan Moran photo
John Banville photo
Herman Kahn photo
Randy Pausch photo
Rajendra K. Pachauri photo

“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.”

Rajendra K. Pachauri (1940–2020) Indian academic

Rajendra K. Pachauri (2014), as cited in: Ganpat, Wayne G. (2014), Impacts of Climate Change on Food Security in Small Island Developing States. p. xxi

Billy Graham (wrestler) photo

“I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. There's nobody as beautiful or as powerful as me!”

Billy Graham (wrestler) (1943–2023) American professional wrestler, american football player, bodybuilder

Billy Graham, Tangled Ropes: Superstar Billy Graham (2006)

Haruki Murakami photo
Kent Hovind photo

“"Why not just kill all the bad people? Isn't that kind of cruel to destroy the whole world? After all, the penguins didn't sin." Well, we know that God destroyed the whole world. I think there are some things to consider about this flood. Number one, the Flood left evidence where a miracle would not. If God had just said, "Okay, I want everybody to die, except for Noah and his family", then what evidence would be left behind from that? The effects are here today for us to see and remember the judgment of God on sin. Plus, by God telling Noah to build the boat, that gave everybody warning time. Here is Noah out there for many years, some people say seven years, some people say a hundred and twenty years. The Bible doesn't say, but Noah is building this ark for a long time. People are watching him put this big boat together and said, "Noah, are you crazy? What are you doing?" He says, "Man, it's going to rain." Now keep in mind, I don't think you can prove this dogmatically, but it probably never rained before the Flood came. So Noah was preaching about something that had never happened. He said, "Hey guys, guess what. Rain is going to fall out of the sky." Everybody is looking around saying, "Yeah right, that's never happened." They thought that he was nuts. Hey, we're doing the same thing today as Christians. We're going around saying, "Hey, one of these days and angel is going to come down with the Lord and they're going to come through the clouds and blow a trumpet and the Southern Baptists rise first, (you know the dead in Christ go first) and then the rest of us are going to take off for heaven." And everybody is looking at us and saying, "Yeah right. Nobody has ever heard a trumpet blown from a cloud and seen people take off for the clouds. That's just never happened." We are preaching that something is going to happen that has never happened in the history of humanity. That's what Noah was doing. He was preaching something that was going to happen and what he was preaching about had never happened. So while he was preaching, this gave people a chance to repent.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Gleb Pavlovsky photo

“When Humphries writes in propria persona his prose can scarcely contain its freight of cultivated allusions. He writes the most nutritiously rococo English in Australia today, but nobody will be able to inherit it. To know him would not be enough. You would have to know what he knows.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Approximately in the Vicinity of Barry Humphries'
Essays and reviews, Snakecharmers in Texas (1988)

Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Willa Cather photo
Ben Carson photo

“Nobody can hinder you from doing what you want, if that's what you set your mind to. You can always find a hook to hang excuses on, but they're only excuses. You don't have anyone to blame but yourself. Nobody else makes you fail.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 50

John Major photo

“John Major: What I don't understand, Michael, is why such a complete wimp like me keeps winning everything.
Michael Brunson: You've said it, you said precisely that.
Major: I suppose Gus will tell me off for saying that, won't you Gus?
Brunson: No, no, no … it's a fair point. The trouble is that people are not perceiving you as winning.
Major: Oh, I know … why not? Because…
Brunson: Because rotten sods like me, I suppose, don't get the message clear [laughs].
Major: No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that - well partly that, yes, partly because of S-H-one-Ts like you, yes, that's perfectly right. But also because those people who are opposing our European policy have said the way to oppose the Government on the European policy is to attack me personally. The Labour Party started before the last election. It has been picked up and it is just one of these fashionable things that slips into the Parliamentary system and it is an easy way to proceed.
Brunson: But I mean you … has been overshadowed … my point is there, not just the fact that you have been overshadowed by Maastricht and people don't…
Major: The real problem is this…
Brunson: But you've also had all the other problems on top - the Mellors, the Mates … and it's like a blanket - you use the phrase 'masking tape' but I mean that's it, isn't it?
Major: Even, even, even, as an ex-whip I can't stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not, and various things like that. But the real problem is…
Brunson: I've heard other people in the Cabinet say 'Why the hell didn't he get rid of Mates on Day One?' Mates was a fly, you could have swatted him away.
Major: Yeah, well, they did not say that at the time, I have to tell you. And I can tell you what they would have said if I had. They'd have said 'This man was being set up. He was trying to do his job for his constituent. He had done nothing improper, as the Cabinet Secretary told me. It was an act of gross injustice to have got rid of him'. Nobody knew what I knew at the time. But the real problem is that one has a tiny majority. Don't overlook that. I could have all these clever and decisive things that people wanted me to do and I would have split the Conservative Party into smithereens. And you would have said, Aren't you a ham-fisted leader? You've broken up the Conservative Party.
Brunson: No, well would you? If people come along and…
Major: Most people in the Cabinet, if you ask them sensibly, would tell you that, yes. Don't underestimate the bitterness of European policy until it is settled - It is settled now.
Brunson: Three of them - perhaps we had better not mention open names in this room - perhaps the three of them would have - if you'd done certain things, they would have come along and said, 'Prime Minister, we resign'. So you say 'Fine, you resign'.
Major: We all know which three that is. Now think that through. Think it through from my perspective. You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Brunson: They create a lot of fuss but you have probably got three damn good ministers in the Cabinet to replace them.
Major: Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there? What's the Lyndon Johnson, er, maxim?
Brunson: If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Major: No, that's not what I had in mind, though it's pretty good.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Andrew Culf, "What the `wimp' really said to the S-H-one-T", The Guardian, 26 July 1993.
'Off-the-record' exchange with ITN reporter Michael Brunson following videotaped interview, 23 July 1993. Neither Major nor Brunson realised their microphones were still live and being recorded by BBC staff preparing for a subsequent interview; the tape was swiftly leaked to the Daily Mirror.

Thomas R. Marshall photo
Larry Wall photo
Syed Ahmed Khan photo

“Would our aristocracy like that a man of low caste or insignificant origin, though he be a B. A. or M. A., and have the requisite ability, should be in a position of authority above them and have power in making laws that affect their lives and property? Never! Nobody would like it.”

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

Quoted from After a Century it is time to revisit Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s legacy https://www.myind.net/Home/viewArticle/after-a-century-it-is-time-to-revisit-sir-syed-ahmad-khans-legacy Avatans Kumar Jan 27, 2018 . Also in A Tale of Two Revolts by Rajmohan Gandhi

Leszek Kolakowski photo

“The proletariat thus shared its dictatorship with nobody. As to the question of the "majority", this never troubled Lenin much. In an article "Constitutional Illusions" (Aug. 1917; Works, vol. 25, p. 201) he wrote: "in time of revolution it is not enough to ascertain the ‘ will of the majority’ – you must prove to be stronger at the decisive moment and at the decisive place; you must win … We have seen innumerable examples of the better organized, more politically conscious and better armed minority forcing its will upon the majority and defeating it." (pg. 503) Trotsky, however, answers questions [in The Defence of Terrorism] that Lenin evaded or ignored. "Where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just your party that expresses the interests of historical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action." Trotsky replies: "This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open character; and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S. R. s [Socialist Republics] … and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us" (p. 101). This is one of the most enlightening theoretical formulations of Bolshevism, from which it appears that the "rightness" of a historical movement or a state is to be judged by whether its use of violence is successful. Noske did not succeed in crushing the German Communists, but Hitler did; it would thus follow from Trotsky’ s rule that Hitler "expressed the interests of historical development". Stalin liquidated the Trotskyists in Russia, and they disappeared – so evidently Stalin, and not Trotsky, stood for historical progress.”

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

pg. 510
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Marjaneh Bakhtiari photo

“You truly are an extraordinary man, Mr Sandeen. Nobody I know counts weeks. That is absolutely marvelous.”

Kalla det vad fan du vill, Finland 2005, p. 85

Lewis H. Lapham photo

“The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 7, Descent Into The Mirror, p. 181

Bill Maher photo
Lewis H. Lapham photo

“Nobody wants to say, at least not for publication, that we live in a society that cares as much about the humanities as it cares about the color of the rain in Tashkent.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 1, The Gilded Cage, p. 20

Meir Kahane photo
John Steinbeck photo

“There's nobody as lonely as an all-married man.”

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XXI

Adolfo Bioy Casares photo

“He thought he understood for the first time why some said life is a dream: If one lives long enough, facts about your life, just like your dreams, become impossible to communicate, because nobody cares about them.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"Creyó por primera vez entender porqué se decía que la vida es sueño: si uno vive bastante, los hechos de su vida, como los de un sueño, su vuelven incomunicables porque a nadie interesan."
Diario de la Guerra del Cerdo, 1969.

Vangelis photo
Larry Wall photo

“Oh, get ahold of yourself. Nobody's proposing that we parse English.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Henry Miller photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Tom Petty photo

“If we don't get to a higher place and
Find somebody, can help somebody,
Might be nobody no more.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

A Higher Place
Lyrics, Wildflowers (1994)

Paul Krugman photo
Bertie Ahern photo
Jef Raskin photo
William Moulton Marston photo

“Women now fly heavy planes successfully; they help build planes, do mechanics' work. In England they've taken over a large share of all material labor in fields and factories; they've taken over police and home defence duties. In China a corps of 300,000 women under the supreme command of Madame Chiang Kai-shek perform the dangerous function of saving lives and repairing damage after Japanese air raids. This huge female strong- arm squad is officered efficiently by 3,000 women. Here in this country we've started a Women's Auxilary Army and Navy Corps that will do everything men soldiers and sailors do except the actual fighting. Prior to the First World War nobody believed that women could perform these feats of physical strength. But they're performing them now and thinking nothing of it. In this far worse: war, women will develop still greater female power; by the end of the war that traditional description the weaker sex" will be a joke-it will cease to have any meaning.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

As interviewed by Richard, Olive, "Our Women are Our Future": Sylvia Family Circle, (Aug 14, 1944) 14-17, 19 as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.7 in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda", in Containing Wonder Woman: Fredric Wertham's Battle Against the Mighty Amazon by Craig This, p.32.

Douglas Coupland photo
Kid Cudi photo

“I've got some issues that nobody can see and all of these emotions are pouring out of me I bring them to the light for you it's only right”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

- Soundtrack 2 My Life
Music

Nicole Richie photo

“I don’t trust valets, waiters — nobody. I don’t waste my time anymore trying to figure out who leaks things to the press.”

Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author

Source: [Richie, Nicole, Nicole Richie, Excerpts from Nicole Richie’s UK Marie Claire interview, Richiefan (Nicole Richie fansite), 2008, http://www.richiefan.com/excerpts-from-nicole-richies-uk-marie-claire-interview/, html, 2008-03-06]

Margaret Thatcher photo

“I'm absolutely amazed when some people say I am either hard or uncaring, because it's so utterly untrue. I can't say it because, if you say you are caring, it's like saying, ‘I'm a very modest person.’ Nobody believes you.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for Daily Express (19 February 1986) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106219
Second term as Prime Minister

James Branch Cabell photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Roberto Clemente photo
William Carlos Williams photo
Béla H. Bánáthy photo

“When it comes to the design of social and societal systems of all kinds, it is the users, the people in the system who are the experts. Nobody has the right to design social systems for someone else. It is unethical to do so. Design cannot be legislated, it should not be bought from the expert, and it should not be copied from the design of others. If the privilege of and responsibility for design is "given away," others will take charge of designing our lives and our systems. They will shape our future.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 128; Cited in: Roberto Joseph et al. (2002) " Banathy's Influence on the Guidance System for Transforming Education http://www.indiana.edu/~syschang/decatur/reigeluth_pubs/documents/95_banathy_influence_on_gste.pdf". World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 58(5/6) 379-394

Frederik Pohl photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285
1920s

Linus Torvalds photo

“Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there's only one of me.”

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git
YouTube
Google
2007.
2000s, 2007

Donald J. Trump photo
Andrew Sega photo
John Lyon (poet) photo

“It’s a cauld barren blast that blaws nobody good.” - title of poem.”

John Lyon (poet) (1803–1889) Scottish Latter Day Saint poet and hymn writer

The Harp of Zion (1853)

Bill Maher photo
David Davis photo

“Nobody has ever pretended that this will be easy. I have always said that this negotiation will be tough, complex and, at times, confrontational.”

David Davis (1948) British Conservative Party politician and former businessman

During his statement on the progress of EU exit negotiations made in the House of Commons http://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2017-09-05/debates/A33568F2-9C8A-448C-8042-B6F69D3227E3/EUExitNegotiations (5 September 2017). Previous contradictory statements on the ease of leaving the EU, by his colleagues in government and fellow leave campaigners, include:
The day after we vote to leave we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.
Michael Gove http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/michael-gove/michael-gove-vote-leave_b_9728548.html (9 April 2016)
There will continue to be free trade, and access to the single market.
Boris Johnson http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/i-cannot-stress-too-much-that-britain-is-part-of-europe--and-alw/ (26 June 2016)
Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation.
John Redwood http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2016/07/17/getting-out-of-the-eu-can-be-quick-and-easy-the-uk-holds-most-of-the-cards-in-any-negotiation/ (17 July 2016)
To me, Brexit is easy.
Nigel Farage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-37416831/nigel-farage-outlines-three-easy-outcomes-for-brexit (20 September 2016)
The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history.
Liam Fox https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/20/liam-fox-uk-eu-trade-deal-after-brexit-easiest-human-history (20 July 2017)
On Brexit

Northrop Frye photo
Charles Fort photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“I hate nobody except Hitler — and that is professional.”

Churchill to John Colville during WWII, quoted by Colville in his book The Churchillians (1981) ISBN 0297779095
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Roberto Clemente photo

“In Puerto Rico, we like to laugh and talk before a game. Then we go out and play as hard as we can to win. Afterwards, we laugh and talk again. But in America, baseball is much more of a business. Play well and you get pats on the back and congratulations. Play bad and no pats and maybe nobody talks to you.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Roberto Clementeː Pounder from Puerto Rico" by John Devaney, in Baseball Stars of 1964 (1964), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 149
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Robert Silverberg photo
Emil Nolde photo

“Nobody had made the same full use of the properties of acids and metal in this way before. Having drown on the copper-plate and left areas of it bare, I laid it in the bath of acid and achieved effects that astonished even me, full of subtle nuances.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

quote c. 1906-07; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 78
Nolde is explaining his technique of surface-etching to the other Brücke-artists
1900 - 1920

Flavor Flav photo

“Well let me tell you something, I can't be nobody but myself. Ya know what I'm saying? The thing that makes the world love Flav is Flav being himself. So honestly man, to tell you the truth: it was not hard to be myself. It was real easy.”

Flavor Flav (1959) American rapper

[Casey, Cisneros, http://media.www.collegian.com/media/storage/paper864/news/2005/01/27/VervetheDishLive/Flavor.Flav.Interview-1705943.shtml, Flavor Flav interview, The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University, 27 January 2005, 2008-03-05]

Bertolt Brecht photo

“People will observe you to see
How well you have observed.
The man who only observes himself however never gains
Knowledge of men. He is too anxious
To hide himself from himself. And nobody is
Cleverer than he himself is.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Speech to Danish working-class actors on the art of observation" [Rede an dänische Arbeiterschauspieler über die Kunst der Beobachtung] (1934), from The Messingkauf Poems, published in Versuche 14 (1955); trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, pp. 235-236
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”

Source: The Marble Faun (1860), Chapter IV: The Spectre of the Catacomb

Bobby Fischer photo

“I was in Japan a couple of months ago, I saw a preview for the movie Pearl Harbor. And they showed the Japanese airplanes coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor, and I applauded. Nobody else in the theater applauded.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_3.MP3
2000s

Steve McManaman photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Plowboy: In your opinion, what are mankind's prospects for the near future?
Asimov: To tell the truth, I don't think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years—that it will still be flourishing in 2010—are less than 50 percent.
Plowboy: What sort of disaster do you foresee?
Asimov: I imagine that as population continues to increase—and as the available resources decrease—there will be less energy and food, so we'll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person's only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I'm going to choose me.
Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
And this absolute chaos is going to develop—even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice—if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Gertrude Stein photo
Elon Musk photo
Bernard Hopkins photo
Tarkan photo

“It feels wild, you know, because in the beginning I never thought it was going to really happen. It's all in Turkish, you know, and nobody understands a word. But I think it's a groove. It's the kisses that are universal.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Tarkan finds his moves take him across borders, CNN Worldbeat, August 9, 1999 http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9908/09/tarkan.wb/index.html,
About his hit single Şımarık

Aldous Huxley photo
John Steinbeck photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 147

Francisco De Goya photo

“I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, c. 1789; from: Francisco Zapater y Gomez : Goya; Noticias biograficas, Zaragoza, 1868, La Perse Verencia; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 182
1780s

“To change the subject, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot.”
“What about?”
“Free will.”
“Free will?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying not to fidget, a weird feeling in his head. “I reckon free will is bullshit.”
“You need to get some sleep, Spider.”
“No, no, I feel okay, more or less.”
“Free will,” she said, shaking her head.
“It’s an illusion. That’s all it is. Everything is already sorted out, every decision, every possibility, it’s all determined, scripted, whatever.”
Iris was looking at him as if she was worried. “Where’d all this come from?”
“I’ve been to the End of bloody Time, Iris. From that perspective, everything is done and settled. Basically, everything that could happen has happened. It’s all mapped out, documented, diagrammed, written up in great big books, and ignored.”
“You’re a crazy bastard, you know that, Spider?”
“Maybe not crazy enough,” he said.
Iris was still struggling for traction on the conversation. “You think everything is predetermined? Is that it? But what about—”
“No. You just think you have free will.”
“So, according to you,” Iris said, looking bewildered, “a guy who kills his wife was always going to kill her. She was always going to die.”
“From his point of view, he doesn’t know that, and neither does she, but yeah. She was always a goner, so to speak.”
“There is no way I can accept this,” she said. “It’s intolerable. It robs individual people of moral agency. According to you nobody chooses to do anything; they’re just following a script. That means nobody’s responsible for anything.”
“I said free will is an illusion. We think we’ve got moral agency, we think we make choices. It’s a perfect illusion. It just depends on your point of view.”
“It’s a bloody pathway to madness, I reckon,” Iris said.
“I dunno,” he said. “Right now, sitting here, thinking about everything, I think it makes a lot of sense. Kinda, anyway.””

“Think you’ll find that’s just an illusion,” she said, and flashed a tiny smile.
Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 22 (pp. 271-272)

Joe Higgins photo