Quotes about nothing
page 42

Michael Swanwick photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Herta Müller photo
Mike Malloy photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“… I must say, it [the Koran] is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite; — insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran … It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words … We said "stupid:" yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of Mahomet's Book; it is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into fit speech … The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart … we will not and cannot take him. Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men … Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling.”

Thomas Carlyle, "On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History" (1841), pg. 64-67
1840s

Robert Mayer photo

“With heartfelt conviction I say it: A sound philosophy must and can be nothing else than a propaedeutic to Christianity.”

Robert Mayer (1814–1878) German physicist

Kneller, Karl Alois. 1911. pp. 18. Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/18/mode/2up. London.
Variant translation: "From the bottom of my heart I say a true philosophy can and should be nothing but a propaganda for the Christian religion." (in Western Christian Advocate, Volume 77. 1911. Methodist Church
Original: Aus vollem Herzen rufe ich es aus: Eine richtige Philosophie darf und kann nichts anderes sein als eine Propädeutik für die christliche Religion. (As quoted in "Robert Mayer und das Energieprinzip, 1842-1942: Gedenkschrift zur 100. Wiederkehr der Entdeckung des Energieprinzips" (1942), p. 328

Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Lydia Canaan photo
Persius photo

“Is all your knowledge to go so utterly for nothing unless other people know that you possess it?”
Usque adeone<br/>scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?

Persius (34–62) ancient latin poet

Usque adeone
scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?
Satire I, line 26.
The Satires

Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Life Thoughts (1858)

Huldrych Zwingli photo

“Grace and peace from God to you, respected, honoured, wise clement, gracious and beloved Masters: An exceedingly unfortunate affair has happened to me, in that I have been publicly accused before your worships of having reviled you in unseemly words and, be it said with all respect, of having called you heretics, my gracious rulers of the State. I am so far from applying this name to you, that I should as soon think of calling heaven hell. For all my life I have thought and spoken of you in terms of praise and honour, gentlemen of Abtzell, as I do to-day, and, as God favours me, shall do to the end of my days. But it happened not long ago when I was preaching against the Catabaptists that I used these words: 'The Catabaptists are now doing so much mischief to the upright citizens of Abtzell and are showing so great insolence, that nothing could be more infamous. You see, gentle sirs, with what modesty I grieved on your account, because the turbulent Catabaptists caused you so much trouble. Indeed I suspect that the Catabaptists are the very people who have set this sermon against me in circulation among you, for they do many of those things which do not become true Christians. Therefore, gentle and wise sirs, I beg most earnestly that you will have me exculpated before the whole community, and, if occasion arise, that you will have this letter read in public assembly. Sirs, I assure you in the name of God our Saviour, in these perilous times you have never been our of my thoughts and my solicitious anxiety; and if in any way I shall be able to serve you I will spare no pains to do so. In addition to the fact that I never use such terms even against my enemies, let me say that it never entered my mind to apply such insulting epithets to you, pious and wise sirs. Sufficient of this. May God preserve you in safety, and may He put a curb on these unbridled falsehoods which are being scattered everywhere, which is an evidence of some great peril - and may He hold your worships and the whole state in the true faith of Christ@ Take this letter of mine in good part, for I could not suffer that so base a falsehood against me should lie uncontradicted.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Abtzell February 12, 1526 (vi., 473), ibid, p.250-251

Keiji Nishitani photo

“Previous ideals and values undermine themselves and collapse into nothing precisely as a result of the effort to make them consummate and exhaustive.”

Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990) Japanese philosopher

Source: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (1990), p. 104

George Eliot photo

““…Mas‘ud hunted through the country around Bahraich, and whenever he passed by the idol temple of Suraj-kund, he was wont to say that he wanted that piece of ground for a dwelling-place. This Suraj-kund was a sacred shrine of all the unbelievers of India. They had carved an image of the sun in stone on the banks of the tank there. This image they called Balarukh, and through its fame Bahraich had attained its flourishing condition. When there was an eclipse of the sun, the unbelievers would come from east and west to worship it, and every Sunday the heathen of Bahraich and its environs, male and female, used to assemble in thousands to rub their heads under that stone, and do it reverence as an object of peculiar sanctity. Mas‘ud was distressed at this idolatry, and often said that, with God’s will and assistance, he would destroy that mine of unbelief, and set up a chamber for the worship of the Nourisher of the Universe in its place, rooting out unbelief from those parts…
“Meanwhile, the Rai Sahar Deo and Har Deo, with several other chiefs, who had kept their troops in reserve, seeing that the army of Islam was reduced to nothing, unitedly attacked the body-guard of the Prince. The few forces that remained to that loved one of the Lord of the Universe were ranged round him in the garden. The unbelievers, surrounding them in dense numbers, showered arrows upon them. It was then, on Sunday, the 14th of the month Rajab, in the aforesaid year 424 (14th June, 1033) as the time of evening prayer came on, that a chance arrow pierced the main artery in the arm of the Prince of the Faithful…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Awadh (Uttar Pradesh), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

Hastings Banda photo

“Douglas Brown: Dr Banda, what is the purpose of your visit?
Hastings Banda: Well, I've been asked by the Secretary of State to come here.
Brown: Have you come here to ask the Secretary of State a firm date for Nyasaland's independence?
Banda: I won't tell you that.
Brown: When do you hope to get independence?
Banda: I won't tell you that.
Brown: Dr Banda, when you get independence, are you as determined as ever to break away from the Central African Federation?
Banda: Need you ask me that question at this stage?
Brown: Well, this stage is as good as any other stage. Why do you ask me why I shouldn't ask you this question at this stage?
Banda: Haven't I said that enough for everybody to be convinced that I mean just that?
Brown: Dr Banda, if you break with the Central African Federation, how will you make out economically? After all, your country isn't really a rich country.
Banda: Don't ask me that, leave that to me.
Brown: In which way is your mind working?
Banda: Which way? I won't tell you that.
Brown: Where do you hope to get economic aid from?
Banda: I won't tell you that.
Brown: Are you going to tell me anything?
Banda: Nothing.
Brown: Are you going to tell me why you've been to Portugal?
Banda: That's my business.
Brown: In fact you're going to tell me nothing at all.
Banda: Nothing at all.
Brown: So it's a singularly fruitless interview?
Banda: Well, it's up to you.
Brown: Thank you very much.”

Hastings Banda (1898–1997) First president of Malawi

BBC Training "Interviews from hell" http://www.bbctraining.com/modules/2604/hell2.html. BBC INFAX http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/programme/SX+28015_9
BBC Interview, 21 June 1962

Edward Hopper photo

“The man's the work. Something does not come out of nothing.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Hopper's answer to journalists -quoted by Avis Berman in 'Hopper, the Supreme American Realist of the 20th Century' Smithsonian Magazine June 2007
1941 - 1967

Jean Ingelow photo

“There is nothing so unreasonable as infancy, excepting the maturer stages of life.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

Fated to be Free (1875)

Aram Manukian photo

“In these conditions, our people can make miracles. I have often had the opportunity to realize that the sense of duty of our villagers is authentic. It is a sign of awareness. One call by the National Council is enough for him to leave his home and to rush to arms, when there is nothing that compels him to do so. At the time, the mobilization by the Russian government was always executed on the force of terror.”

Aram Manukian (1879–1919) Armenian revolutionary, politician and general who managed and led the Van Resistance and instrumented the …

On January 5, 1918, on the eve of Armenian Christmas. Attributed without citation in [Death of Aram Manoukian - January 29, 1919, http://thisweekinarmenianhistory.blogspot.com/2013/01/death-of-aram-manoukian-january-29-1919.html, thisweekinarmenianhistory.com, 29 January 2013, 15 March 2014]

Thomas Jefferson photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“Contrary to earlier prejudices, there is nothing inherently progressive about evolution.”

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 7 “Constructive Evolution” (p. 178)

Van Morrison photo
Margaret Cho photo
Joseph Heller photo

“Nothing fails like success.”

God Knows (1984)

Samuel Beckett photo
Michael Flanders photo
Pu Songling photo

“How foolish men are, to see nothing but beauty in what is clearly evil! […] Heaven's Way has its inexorable justice, but some mortals remain foolish and never see the light!”

Pu Songling (1640–1715) Chinese writer

"The Painted Skin" from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740), as translated by John Minford in Strange tales from a Chinese studio (2006), p. 521

Tim O'Brien photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Gene Simmons photo
Thomas Gray photo

“Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

A Long Story; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

James Thurber photo

“In America nothing dies easier than tradition.”

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

"A Little Bones Trouble," The New York Times (1991-05-14)

Wesley Clark photo

“Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a war based on false claims.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Conference of Military Reporters and Editors (October 2003)

Oswald Spengler photo
Tad Williams photo

“Nothing is without cost. There is a price to all power, and it is not always obvious.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 10, “King Hemlock” (p. 142).

Emily Dickinson photo
Van Morrison photo

“Got a home on high
Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world
I'm nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Astral Weeks
Song lyrics, Astral Weeks (1969)

Lorin Morgan-Richards photo

“Primarily, they (ideas) come from daydreaming or every day occurrences. I try to get out and about, especially new places to let the environment inspire me. I start an illustration of a building I see and then the elements of different characters will populate in my mind like a set and actors on a stage. If nothing comes up I continue to draw until something unfolds.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding how he comes up with ideas for his comic strips The Goodbye Family and The Noodle Rut (1 June 2017).
Source: Lorin Morgan-Richards Newsletter #2, Us6.campaign-archive2.com, 2017-06-26 http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=51e751ef352e602deca0ecdc7&id=2e82f26313,

Carl von Clausewitz photo
Francine Prose photo
Theo Walcott photo

“He is potentially brilliant, and he is going to be exciting, but potential is nothing unless you can produce it. I would think he's way, way, way, miles away from international World Cup football.”

Theo Walcott (1989) English association football player

Bobby Robson, former manager of England, 2006 ( Source http://www.cnn.com/2006/SPORT/football/05/08/england.gamble/index.html)
About

Plutarch photo
Edmund Hillary photo
James Taylor photo
George W. Bush photo
Charles Bukowski photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Martin Joseph Routh photo

“It will lead to nothing, I fear, sir”

Martin Joseph Routh (1755–1854) Classical scholar and college head

Remarked to William Palmer, on the eve of his 1840-1 journey to Russia to improve Anglican-Orthodox relations. The trip reaped little success; quoted in Notes of a Visit to the Russian Church in the Years 1840, 1841, by William Palmer, 1882, p. 10.

William Hague photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.”

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

Song lyrics, Self Portrait (1970), Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“Wellesley's success…appears to have been nothing more than an affair of a rear-guard, and is ridiculously magnified.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to Lord Grenville (25 May 1809) on the Duke of Wellington's successes in the Peninsular War, quoted in Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 (Yale University Press, 1996), p. 94.
1800s

Joseph Joubert photo
Rebecca West photo
Larry Niven photo
Max Stirner photo

“Do we want to put pedagogy into the hands of the philosophers? Nothing less than that! They would behave themselves awkwardly enough. It shall be entrusted only to those who are more than philosophers, who are in that respect more even than humanists or realists.”

Wollen wir etwa die Pädagogik den Philosophen in die Hände spielen? Nichts weniger als das! Sie würden sich ungeschickt genug benehmen. Denen allein werde sie anvertraut, die mehr sind als Philosophen, darum aber auch unendlich mehr als Humanisten oder Realisten.
Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 19

René Guénon photo
Douglas William Jerrold photo

“He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of famine would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks.”

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer

Douglas Jerrold's Wit, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Henry James photo
Jane Austen photo

“He seems a very harmless sort of young man, nothing to like or dislike in him — goes out shooting or hunting with the two others all the morning, and plays at whist and makes queer faces in the evening.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

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

Noam Chomsky photo

“In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U. S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U. S. military doctrine is that U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U. S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U. S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Responding to the question, "what did the United States have to gain by intervening in Somalia?", regarding Operation Provide Relief/Operation Restore Hope/Battle of Mogadishu.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

Eddie Vedder photo

“You kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. In the end, it does nothing. Nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

This quote was taken from the Synergy's Echoes page ( December, 1991 Houston, Texas, KLOL FM Echoes of Exposure with David Sadoff ).

Gore Vidal photo

“Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"The State of the Union," The Nation (13 September 2004)
2000s

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?”

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

Speech to the Birmingham Artisans' Association at Birmingham Town Hall (5 January 1885), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain At Birmingham.’, The Times (6 January 1885), p. 7.
1880s

A.E. Housman photo
John Heywood photo

“Who hopeth in Gods helpe, his helpe can not starte:
Nothing is impossible to a willyng hart,
And will maie wyn my herte, herein to consent,
To take all thinges as it cometh, and be content.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Who hopes in God's help, his help can not start:
Nothing is impossible to a willing heart,
And will may win my heart, herein to consent,
To take all things as it comes, and be content.
Part I, chapter 4.
Proverbs (1546)

Ray Bradbury photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Giordano Bruno photo

“I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" - Theosophy Vol. 26, No. 8 (June 1938) http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/bruno.html

Chester W. Nimitz photo

“The enemy of our games was always Japan, and the courses were so thorough that after the start of World War II, nothing that happened in the Pacific was strange or unexpected.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

On his training for warfare in the Pacific at the Naval War college in 1922, as quoted at The American Experience (PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX90.html

Jeanette Winterson photo
Joe Strummer photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Henry James photo
Paul Bloom photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Bob Black photo
M. K. Hobson photo
Newt Gingrich photo

“The president of the United States, the most radical president in American history, has now thrown down the gauntlet to the American people. He has said, "I run a machine, I own Washington, and there's nothing you can do about it."”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Now, that's where we are.
Coverage of Southern Republican Leadership Conference, CSPAN, 2010-04-08
2010-04-09
Gingrich: Obama is "the most radical president in American history"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004090011
2011-03-30
2010s