Quotes about nobody
page 15

“When they talk about drugs, they don't talk about all of them. They never mention coffee. The low end of the speed spectrum, I grant you, but there are coffee freaks. And they're walking around, nobody worrying about it.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

FM & AM (1972)

Coffee, Speed

“Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book III, Ch. 4
My Antonia (1918)

Men, Feeling, Home, Time

“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)

Money, Secret, Time

“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

Way, Knowledge

“I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't make any difference…. To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 9

Time, Help

““I — I don’t regret what I did. I think that you are a kind man, Mr. Poirot, and that possibly you might understand. You see, I’ve been so terribly afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Yes, it’s difficult for a gentleman to understand, I expect. But you see, I’m not a clever woman at all, and I’ve no training and I’m getting older — and I’m so terrified for the future. I’ve not been able to save anything — how could I with Emily to be cared for? — and as I get older and more incompetent there won’t be any one who wants me. They’ll want somebody young and brisk. I’ve — I’ve known so many people like I am — nobody wants you and you live in a one room and you can’t have a fire or any warmth and not very much to eat and at last you can’t even pay the rent on your room … There are Institutions, of course, but it’s not very easy to get into them unless you have influential friends, and I haven’t. There are a good many others situated like I am — poor companions — untrained useless women with nothing to look forward to but a deadly fear…””

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules (1967)

Women, People, Fear, Understanding

“"Death before dishonour." I always used to wonder, Hey, exactly how much dishonour are we talking about here? 'Cause I could handle quite a lot. I would, for instance, fellate a Smurf before I picked death. I'd cook him a little Smurf omelette as I was doing it, you know, I'd be perfectly happy doing that. Seasoning it with thyme, you know, listening to his happy satisfied Smurf lip smacks. But every man thinks about Smurfs. They don't say it, but they do. That's why I'm here—to be honest. Just once, you know, what would it be like? Nobody needs to know, you go away for the weekend. Just once, to have the blue salty bulb lolling on your tongue… if I don't say it, nobody else will."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On regimental mottos.
Monster (2004)

Death, Happiness, Thinking, Cooking

“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

Love

“Willow: Tell me a story.
Tara: Okay. Once upon a time, there was, um… a kitty. She was very little, and she was all alone, and nobody wanted her.
Willow: This is a very upsetting story.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

This Year's Girl [4.15]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Time

“Nobody can predict the future, but there is nobody in my generation who wants to be on the board of a symphony orchestra or an opera company and raise the kind of money that's needed. I think that the energy that in the 19th century went into opera is, in the 20th century, going into films. Films have that same over-the-top, overwhelming, high impact--all of the senses knocked out--and vast popular following, with stars who are larger than life. Well, that's what opera did in the 19th century.”

Peter Sellars (1957) American theatre director

Source: Mark Swed, "For L.A., History's Knocking", Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1996

Life, Money, Star, Thinking

“Nobody disputes, I believe, that our nuclear weaponry is negligible in comparison with that of Russia: if we could destroy 16 Russian cities, she could destroy practically every vestige of life on these islands several times over. For us to use the weapon would therefore be equivalent to more than suicide: it would be genocide – the extinction of our race – in the most literal and precise meaning of that much abused expression. An officer may, in the hour of his country's defeat and disgrace, commit suicide honourably and rationally with his service revolver; but in any collective context the choice of non-existence, of the obliteration of all future hopes, is insanity.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Downpatrick, County Down (31 May 1983), quoted in The Times (1 June 1983), p. 4
1980s

Life, Hope, Suicide, Time

“Nobody knows what dark matter is. It is another deep mystery waiting to be explored. We know only that it is there, and that it weighs more than the stuff that we can see.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Waiting

“There is nobody to wake up eternal seekers.”

Dejan Stojanovic book Circling: 1978-1987

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

“We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three Truck Drivers” (p. 50)

Men, War, Religion, Way

“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

Hate, Dogs, Problem, Appearance

“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

Painting

“Why have our standards fallen so low? Why do we have all these ugly things which nobody needs? Industrial manufacture and new materials have led to truly unlimited possibilities of forms. There are no longer any natural constraints which depend on materials such as wood and stone. We simply manufacture everything that is technically possible and lack new structures on which to base our decisions.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Nature, Decision, Dependency

“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)

Season

“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.

Feeling

“You have to have a good relationship with pleasure, Australians seem to, on the whole your approach seems to be to go, "What's that? Ahh, yeah, it's one of those" which is a lot healthier than the Irish one, which is to go, "What's that? That looks nice. I'll wait till everyone's asleep, then I'll steal it, so nobody will see me enjoy myself and then I won't have to feel ashamed. I can just let the guilt fester for the rest of my life and spend all my remaining years drunk."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On pleasure.
What It Is (2009)

Life, Pleasure, Feeling, Waiting

“[On book reviewing] I will only turn down a book if I know I won't be able to muster enough interest to read the bloody thing. Or if I realize that I despise the author, and that I'm just going to become hysterical in my dispraise. A couple of times in my life I've disobeyed my own rule, and later regretted it. […] It's a delicate business. All too often, if one writes a favorable notice, it's seen as a product of the old-boy network, and if one dispraises a book, it's seen as envy. Nobody seems able to accept that I review books as a book reviewer, not as a competing novelist. When I review, I'm being as honest as I can. And I'm saying to the reading public — the minuscule segment of the reading public that reads reviews — that this is my judgment.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Life, Books, Boy, Business

“Even if military advantages were not to be had by deliberately limiting attack to counterforce targets, I suspect that most governments would still prefer to observe such limits. Almost nobody wants to go down in history as the first man to kill 100,000 people.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

People, History

“He said, when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

When Pausch spoke of "when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gaveup." he was quoting an assistant coach of football coach James Graham
The Last Lecture (2007)

Love, Life

“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

Change

“O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?”

Frances Cornford (1886–1960) English poet

"To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train", from Poems (Hampstead: Priory Press, 1910) p. 20.

Love, Grass

“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)

Beauty, Bee

“The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.”

Albert Pierrepoint (1905–1992) English executioner

Executioner: Pierrepoint. Harrap 1974. p. 211.

Death, Penalty

“When a war starts people are forced to become soldiers. They carry guns and go to the front lines and have to kill soldiers on the other side. As many as they possibly can. Nobody cares whether you like killing other people or not. It's just something you have to do. Otherwise you're the one who gets killed." Johnnie Walker pointed his index finger at Nakata's chest. "Bang!"”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

he said. "Human history in a nutshell."
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 16

War, People, History

“"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

God, People, World, Family

“Prior to all overturns of XX century, without an exception, Russian opposition has accused authorities in "transferring funds to abroad". And in all cases in turned out to be void propaganda — from 1914-1917 to 1991. And money were transferred later, after the revolution, under brands of "people's power" and "won democracy". The only real way of plundering through "transfer of funds" is change of political system, which would transform into zeroing of all governmental promissory notes. As soon as Russia will become "Other Russia", all the property will turn out to be transferred, "nobody's". And people will be informed, that "previous power has eaten all".”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Money, People, Way, Democracy

“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)

“Everyone confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

"The Lady Who Does Her Own Work" in The Atlantic Monthly (1864).

People

“The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.”

Willa Cather book The Professor's House

Book I, Ch. 1
The Professor's thoughts on Lake Michigan
The Professor's House (1925)

Life, Sun

“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: 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.

People, Age, Way, Fashion

“The Vice-President's Chamber is adjacent to the Senate Chamber, and so small that to survive it is necessary to keep the door open in order to obtain the necessary cubic feet of air. When the vice-president is in the room [the Capitol Guides] go by with their guests, stop and point him out, as though he were a curiosity.I stood this for about as long as I could, and then went to the door one day, and said: "If you look on me as a wild animal, be kind enough to throw peanuts at me; but if you are really desirous of seeing me, come in and shake hands." In that way I think I restored myself to the position I have always desired to occupy; that of an American, who looks up to nobody, looks down upon nobody, but tries to keep a conscience clean enough that he can look everybody in the face.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter XVII

Way, Thinking, Animals

“But you could do extreme programming. In fact, I had a college buddy I did pair programming with. We took a compiler writing class together and studied all that fancy stuff from the dragon book. Then of course the professor announced we would be implementing our own language, called PL/0. After thinking about it a while, we announced that we were going to do our project in BASIC. The professor looked at us like we were insane. Nobody else in the class was using BASIC. And you know what? Nobody else in the class finished their compiler either. We not only finished but added I/O extensions, and called it PL 0.5. That's rapid prototyping.”

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

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

Books, Thinking, Study

“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

Law

“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

Men, War, Idea, Question

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

Marjaneh Bakhtiari (1980)

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

“Years ago I heard such a nice saying that the soul travels at the speed of horseback riding. At the moment, of course, nobody travels on a horse, but it seems to me that I am always somewhere in the middle of my travels between Poland and the Netherlands. As soon as I reach one destination, my soul still has not left the other place for good, and then back again – everything is mixed up. Of course, I'm formed in Kraków. For me, Kraków is the source of all inspiration. But my home, my family is in Utrecht.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

There is no threat. Weapons and colour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfjr78Pyfs, video, Galeria Olympia, 23 November 2017 (in Polish)

Family, Travel, Home, Soul

“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

World, Light

“I thought this election was an adult discussion on how best to protect ourselves in the face of terrorism, but apparently it was a referendum on boys kissing. I didn't know that, nobody.. told me that. But when homophobia trumps terrorism in America, wow.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

This country needs to get laid.
I'm Swiss (2005)

Boy, Kiss, Country

“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

Color

“The question is as follows: if the Arabs settle among us and make enough children to become a majority, will Israel continue to be a Jewish state? Do we have to accept that the Arab majority will decide? Obviously, nobody in Israel can accept this. Because to accept this would amount to being anti-Zionist!”

Meir Kahane (1932–1990) American/Israeli political activist and rabbi

G-d's Law: an Interview with Rabbi Meir Kahane https://web.archive.org/web/20090219141224/http://kahane.org/meir/interview.htm

Children, Question

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

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

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

“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.

Life, Dreams, Communication, Time

“The demand for equality and identity arises precisely in order to avoid that fear, that feeling of inferiority. Nobody is better, nobody is superior, nobody feels challenged, everybody is "safe." Furthermore, if identity, if sameness has been achieved, then the other person's actions and reactions can be forecast. With no (disagreeable) surprises, a warm herd feeling of brotherhood emerges. These sentiments -- this rejection of quality (which ineluctably differs from person to person) -- explain much concerning the spirit of the mass movements of the last two hundred years. Simone Weil has told us that the "I" comes from the flesh, but "we" comes from the devil.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 5

Fear, Feeling, Personality

“On the 2004 Summer Olympics: "Nobody proposed me anything to do with the Olympics. Nothing. Maybe the Olympics have become too much of a supermarket now. The other athletics events have more of the spirit of the Olympics."”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2005

Summer

“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

“Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Way, Help

“The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down.”

Philip K. Dick book Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)

Hell, Reading

“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)

Help

“Nobody can credibly promise to bring the old jobs back; what you can promise — and Mrs. Clinton did — are things like guaranteed health care and higher minimum wages. But working-class whites overwhelmingly voted for politicians who promise to destroy those gains.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

The New York Times Columns, The Populism Perplex (November 25, 2016)

Health

“The public are entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, their officials and above all of Ministers. They need to know that they are under financial obligations to nobody.”

Bertie Ahern (1951) Irish politician, 10th Taoiseach of Ireland

Dáil Éireann transcript, December 1996

“It's absolutely ugly, but unfortunately quite true of the world today; the more money you make, the more people tend to listen to you. If you're not quoted in Fortune or Forbes or the Wall Street Journal, then nobody listens. If you say something that makes a lot of money, whether what you said is true or not, people listen.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

Programmers At Work (1986)

Money, People, World, Quotes

“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.

Women, Men, War, World

“Nobody has ever been happy in a job they obtained by first handing in a resumé.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Happiness

“What is very important to me is two points: A theory should be internally consistent and it should have some contact with observation. Well, I’m told by all the experts that this theory [String theory] is internally consistent, although they think up new interpretations every time I turn my back. But contact with reality? Nobody’s given me anything. I just watch. I’m somewhat unhappy that so many people are working on it. To me, as a physicist, it’s sort of sad that so many people at the same time work at something that doesn’t seem to have any contact with experiment. But that, to some extent, is due to the fact that we don’t have any great experimental puzzle to be thinking about. We have to supply the puzzles, and there aren’t that many puzzles right now.”

Valentine Telegdi (1922–2006) American physicist

Telegdi, Valentine L. Interview by Sara Lippincott. Pasadena, California, March 4 and 9, 2002. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives. Retrieved January 11, 2010 from the World Wide Web: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Telegdi_V

People, Sadness, Thinking, Reality

“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

Light

“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]

Time

“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

People, Personality

“Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain with electing for peculiarity among one's fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.
Even Coth saw that.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Book Five : "Mundus Vult Decepi", Ch. XXVII : Fond Motto of a Patriot
The Silver Stallion (1926)

People, World

“Lord Peter Wimsey: The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it – that is at the bottom of the ψευδῆ λέγειν ὡς δεῖ.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Gaudy Night (1936)
Source: From Aristotle's Poetics: the right way to tell lies.

Truth

“The Latin American player doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. Neither does the Negro player, unless he does something spectacular, like Willie Mays. We have self-satisfaction, yes. But after the season is over, nobody cares about us. Zoilo Versalles was the Most Valuable Player in the American League, but how many times has he been asked to make appearances at dinners or meetings during the winter? Juan Marichal is one of the greatest pitchers in the game, but does he get invited to banquets? … I am an American citizen … but some people act like they think I live in the jungle someplace. This is a matter of sports, of a man’s ability and his accomplishments. What matters what language he speaks best?”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Waves Banner for Spanish-Speaking Players: Don't Get Due Recognition" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KyMhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1mUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4684%2C5055151 by Dick Couch (AP), in The Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Tuesday, August 23, 1966), p. 15 Other, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

People, Game, Thinking, Sport

“To tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about — if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me. However, what I do write and allow to survive I always feel is worth while and that nobody else has ever come as near as I have to the thing I have intimated if not expressed. To me it's a matter of first understanding that which may not be put to words. I might add more but to no purpose. In a sense, I must express myself, you're right, but always completely incomplete if that means anything.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

To Harriet Monroe (14 October 1913), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 26
General sources

Truth, Feeling, Understanding, Sense

“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

People, Future

“I delighted his fussy little soul, because by adding what I remembered of Navy protocol to what he was able to teach me of Army routine, we came up with as snarled a mass of red tape as any field-grade officer in the whole history of all armed forces had been able to accumulate. Oh, I tell you, nobody sneezed in New York without a report being made out in triplicate, with eight endorsements.
Of course there wasn’t anybody to send them to, but that didn’t stop the Major. He said with determination: “Nobody’s ever going to chew me out for noncompliance with regulations—even if I have to invent the regulations myself!””

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

The Knights of Arthur (p. 394)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Soul, History

“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

Truth, Error, Support

“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

Time, Perfection

“France isn't France anymore. We're not going. And so many people are saying that. Look at what's going on with Germany. Look at what's happening with Germany. Look at the crime; look at the problems. We have enough problems in our country right now. We don't need additional problems, folks. We don't need additional problems. And for all we know, this could be the great Trojan Horse. This could be. We don't know who these people are. … We have to get smart, folks. We don't need the problems — and we've already got those problems, just so you understand. Because they're coming into the country, they're being put where nobody even knows where they are. It's like, if I were the enemy, I would say, I can't believe they're that stupid. They're taking my people and they're putting them all over the place, because you have great military right here.”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

People, Stupidity, Understanding, Problem

“There may not be a high-level purpose for humanity, but that doesn't mean we can't find inspiration in the world. I think there is a combination of psychological and environmental factors that combine to create various urges in humanity -- most importantly the urge to create, to contribute something to the world, to express your personal worldview and see how the world responds. Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and if it were only for personal gain then nobody would ever release music to the public. The process changes you, and also changes the world itself, creating ripples of inspiration which flow between the artist and the listener.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

World, Art, Music, Thinking

“Socialism, whether it's the 'soft tyranny' of the EuroAmerican management state or the murderously repressive forms taken by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, is all about disindividuation, a steady, relentless erasure of the individual differences among us, everything that makes us who we are. 'Everybody in, nobody out!' is the marching mantra of militant collectivized medicine, but it accurately describes all other aspects of collectivism, as well. No alternatives allowed, no choices, no individualism, no individuality, and ultimately, no individuation.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Back to the Trees!"

“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)

“I kid the Republicans, with love. I feel bad for them. They got nobody for next time. Who are they gonna run? Sarah Palin, reading off her hand. Did you see that? You saw this? She wrote "tax cuts" on her hand. A Republican so stupid she has to be reminded of the one thing– Tax cuts! This is like if you saw the coyote's paw and it said "Road Runner".”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

But I'm Not Wrong (2010)

Love, Stupidity, Feeling, Time

“There's nothing like the waiting room of any office of the governmentor its allies to remind you of how lucky you are. You enter a nonplace, nontime. You sit on battered chairs in murky blues and greens that nobody ever names as their favorite color. You stare at the signs that have no bearing on you, nonspecific communiqués from the land that punctuation forgot. You wait until the waiting loses all sense of direction or purpose, until you become like a stone deposited in a field millenia ago by a careless glacier. You are here. This is all you have ever known. In the meantime you are stripped of any sense of individuality, of the idea that you might be different from anyone else in the room except by virtue of your particular problem; and so you become the problem, defensively, accepting it as identity, until it swells and suppurates and becomes all you are. As a species we'll tolerate being close to others, but not so close, and not in those circumstances and when we feel so small: we become rows of dry, fretting eyes, hating everyone around us and sincerely wishing our neighbor dead so we can move up one place in the line.Or maybe it was just me.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 5

Hate, Color, Feeling, Idea

“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

Time

“"Remember that, Carter. Nobody double-crosses Archie Costello and gets away with it. When you least expect it, revenge will come." Without a further word, Archie stepped across the driveway, in front of the car, under the spotlight, and up to his front door. Then he was gone into the house. He left Carter there, shaken, not only by the prospect of Archie's revenge sometime in the future but what he had almost done. He'd almost turned traitor against Obie. Which meant being a traitor a second time. Not once but twice. Christ, he thought, what have I become?”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 209

Cars, Revenge, Time, Future

“Nobody seriously thinks of television as a viewer's mode of perception…No matter how much he wants people to look at his product, the advertiser doesn't realize that television is [the viewer's] way of looking at him, & not his way of reaching them.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 95-6

People, Way, Thinking

“I have taken the stand that nobody can be always wrong, but it does seem to me that I have approximated so highly that I am nothing short of a negative genius.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Source: Wild Talents (1932), Ch. 27

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

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

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

Hate

“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>

Game, Business

““This isn’t just consulting work, Haig. It means going into politics.”
“So?”
“What do I need it for?”
“Nobody needs anything except a little food and water now and then. The rest is preferences.””

Robert Silverberg book The Stochastic Man

Source: The Stochastic Man (1975), Chapter 8 (p. 33)

Food, Water

“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

Way

“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]

Love, Truth, World

“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)

Men, People, Knowledge

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Marble Faun

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

“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

“Well? You just repeat yourself all the time, don't you? Ian, how bad is it in this goal? Look, space. Who's picking Philipp Lahm up? Nobody, nobody. The crowd venting their anger, yet again.”

Steve McManaman (1972) English footballer

2010s, 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil v. Germany (2014)

Time, Anger

“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)

Life, War, People, Truth

“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Four in America (1933)

Understanding

“"People tend to think like, 'Why should electric vehicles have a subsidy,' but they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel-burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidised by the cost—the environmental cost—to Earth, but nobody's paying for it… We are going to pay for it, obviously—in the future we'll pay for it. It's just not paid for now."—Elon Musk”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

interview with Joe Rogan, published 2018-09-06

People, Thinking, Future

“I've never ducked anyone. Bernard Hopkins has beaten people that nobody else wanted to fight — Winky Wright, Antonio Tarver. I knocked out Felix Trinidad easily, Oscar de la Hoya with a body shot, I had world title 20 defences.”

Bernard Hopkins (1965) American boxer

As quoted in "Hopkins turns up heat on Calzaghe"at BBC News (14 November 2007)
2000s, 2007

People, World, Fight

“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

Feeling, Understanding, Kiss, Thinking

“The masses on the contrary, have just reached the point where the ancestors of today's scientists were standing two generations back. They are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole and that therefore the world is without meaning or value. But nobody likes living in such a world. To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Hunger, World, Communication, Reality

“Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody — to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men (1937), Ch. 4, p. 72

Books, Guy

“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

“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

Life, Dance, Painting, Personality

“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.””

K. A. Bedford book Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait

“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)

People, Books, Smile, Way

“The overall agenda here is quite simply the ruling classes, or the classes of Europe intend to stride on to the world stage as a powerful economic entity. And they want to be as powerful as the US, meaning they want a stronger foreign policy and a military wing to back them up. But I can assure the Government that the debate will be a very intensive debate, a very vigorous debate and I think the benefit perhaps this time is that certain distractions that were raised the last time would be set aside, and therefore we can concentrate on the more fundamental issues. […] Take for example this notion that Irish youth would be conscripted into an army. The only people I heard that from was Government ministers in the course of the campaign who said this is being said. Nobody here raised any such red herring. These were the so-called concerns that were being addressed. But the major concerns as to what the Treaty was really about has not been changed one iota.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

breakingnews.ie http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eykfojojqlkf/

People, Youth, World, Thinking

Quotes about nobody page 15

Quotes about nobody
page 15