Quotes about nothing
page 44

“It might be argued that civilization is nothing else, that is to say: the tendency of personal authority to decline towards zero.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013) (original emphasis)

Personality

“A baby is shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently, the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the possession of such a small child.
The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical. … That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always so obviously wrong.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"Measure Your Mind", in Love Conquers All (1922)

Imagination, Lying, Appearance, Baby

“Dear friends, on 9 October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends, too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. And my dreams are the same. Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists. I do not even hate the Talib who shot me.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

UN speech, June 2013

Life, Hate, Education, Fear

“The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 9 (p. 136)

Hope, Music, Feeling, Sense

“Your honoured letter regarding suppression of the Jats has arrived. Allah is merciful, and it is hoped that he will crush the enemy. You should rest assured… You should forge unity with Musa Khan and other Muslim groups, and put to use this friendship and unity for facing the enemies. I hope for sure that on account of this unity among Muslims and their nobility, victory will be achieved.
The reason for the rise of enemies and the fall of Muslims is nothing except that, led by their lower nature, Muslims have shared their (Muslims’) concerns with Hindus. It is obvious that Hindus will not tolerate the suppression of non-Muslims. Being farsighted and practising patience are praiseworthy things, but not to the extent that non-Muslims take possession of Muslim cities, and go on occupying one (such) city every day… This is no time for farsightedness and patience. This is the time for putting trust in Allah, for manifesting the might of the sword, and for arousing the Muslim sense of honour. If you will do that, it is possible that winds of favour will start blowing. Whatever this recluse knows is this that war with the Jats is a magic spell which appears fearful at first but which, if you depend fully on the power of Allah and draw His attention towards this (war), will turn out to be no more than a mere show. Let me hope that you will keep me informed of developments and the faring of your arms…”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Taj Muhammad Khan Baluch Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 150-51.
From his letters

Friendship, War, Fear, Hope

“I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man. Harry [Hopkins] says he's not and that he doesn't want anything except security for his own country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Response to advice from Ambassador William C. Bullitt to pursue a containment policy against the Soviet Union (1943), quoted in his account in Life (23 August 1948)
1940s

World, Peace, Democracy, Thinking

“It was a great pleasure to make a movie again. Nothing is better; perhaps revolution, but there you have to succeed and be right, dangers which never attach themselves to making movies, and dreaming.”

Abraham Polonsky (1910–1999) American politician

as quoted in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson, page 689, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41128-3.

Pleasure, Dreams

“An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Ten Books," The Southern Review (Autumn 1935) [p. 9]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life, Death

“Nothing is impossible for a man with a strong will. The possible is in store only for a man who loves the future. There is no word "impossible" in the Korean language.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

"Unification of the fatherland is an act of supreme patriotism" (1970s), quoted in Kim Jong Il Handbook (2011) by International Business Publications USA

Love, Strong, Future

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

Art, Understanding, Thinking, Sense

“The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Who Can Replace a Man?” p. 19 (originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, June 1958)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

War

“This is the moment when it becomes clear that the images of madness are nothing but dream and error, and that if the unfortunate sufferer who is blinded by them invokes them, it is the better to disappear with them into the annihilation for which they are destined.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
History of Madness (1961)

Dreams, Error, Suffering, Madness

“On the way back we were constantly under heavy shell fire and I had to double time them to get them through safely.
There was nothing to be gained by having any more of them wounded or killed. They had surrendered to me, and it was up to me to look after them. And so I did.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York

Way, Time

““We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.”
“A church?” asked Alvin.
Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.”
“Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin.
“Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 7.

God, People

“He replaced the gray of the walls with a darker shade by closing his eyes. It felt good to shut out some of the light. Not all, but just some. Just enough so there was a gray without images or threatening corners. Not the blackness that gives birth to those sudden flashes of stinging light that slashes your eyes, or the velvety darkness that thickens and become animated and flows and somehow moves around and over you. Just a soothing gray. Nothing to see.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Birth, Light, Animals

“The main Roman contribution to the idea of property lay in the realm of law. Roman jurists were the first to formulate the concept of absolute private ownership, which they called dominium… Roman jurisprudence went to great lengths to stipulate every conceivable nuance of property rights: how acquired and how lost, how transferred, how sold. The rights implicit in dominium were so absolute that ancient Rome knew nothing of eminent domain.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 11

Law, Idea

“In the end, the desolate age always turns instinctively to Classicism, which if nothing else legislates against certain kinds of disappointment.”

Don Paterson (1963) Poet

Aphorisms in Poetry, vol. 187, n. 1, October 2005

Age, Disappointment

“A cat for a hat, or a hat for a cat. But nothing for nothing.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Taren Ferry saying
(15 October 1994)

Cats

“I was about five and a half or six when I converted [to vegetarianism] … I was brought up the first five years of my life in London, in the working-class part of the city, where the only animals that a child is liable to see are domestic animals, or cats, or pigeons, or horses, none of which one eats. Then I was evacuated onto a farm when the war came, and billeted with this family of farmers, and I got very friendly with a rabbit—George, the rabbit. Then one day, George the rabbit was George the lunch. For a farming family there was nothing obscene about that. They kill animals; they serve them up at table and say, "Hey, yes, that's the animal you were playing with yesterday!"—which is not abnormal. It was obscene to me as a child.”

Marty Feldman (1934–1982) British actor and comedian

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1979), p. 30.

Life, War, Family, Cats

“Philosophy is to be replaced by the logic of science -- that is to say, by the logical analysis of the concepts and sentences of the sciences, for the logic of science is nothing other than the logical syntax of the language of science.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Foreword
Logical Syntax of Language, 1934/1937

Science

“Because a cause was taken to be sufficient for its effect, nothing was required to explain the effect other than the cause. Consequently, the quest for causes was environment-free. It employed what we now call 'closed-system' thinking. Laws. —like that of freely falling bodies—-were formulated so as to exclude environmental effects.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1970s, Redesigning the future, 1974, p. 10.

Law, Thinking

“Is not the training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self — and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern — Truth; for, if Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me — is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected — that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

Life, Men, Truth, Art

“But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

People, Truth, Way, Thinking

“There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Miracle. Note (A), p. 88
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

Support, Nature, Dependency

“The dog had no name. For a dog to have a name someone must have him and someone must love him, and a dog must have someone. The dog had no one, and no one had the dog. The dog had only the silent empty countryside of the few houses. The dog had only the crumbs and cleaned bones he could pick up at the few houses. The dog had only himself, so the dog had nothing, and he was afraid.”

Meindert DeJong book Hurry Home

Hurry Home, Candy (1953)

Love, Dogs, Housing

“Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making; or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Art and Socialism (1884)

“According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is force, and the latter is produced by the will. As this will proceeds from an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material organs of human thought in it, being the superfine pure emanation of the highest divinity itself — (Plato's "Father") it proceeds from the beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

World, Law, Intelligence, Light

“If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power. For there is neither greater honor, nor greater obedience, to be given to kings or princes, than God hath commanded to be given unto father and mother. But the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in which he would slay his children. If the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till his frenzy be overpast: think ye, Madam, that the children do any wrong? It is even so, Madam, with princes that would murder the children of God that are subjects unto them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a very mad frenzy, and therefore, to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison, till they be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

John Knox interview with Queen Mary I, History of the Reformation in Scotland http://www.reformation.org/john-knox-interview.html. (Edited by William Croft Dickinson, D.Lit.). Philosophical Library, New York, 1950

God, Children, Thinking, Madness

“Right now I could take you in my jeep for a ride of any 25 miles through the streets of Hamburg and pay you dollar for every undamaged house you could point out. I don’t believe I would lose a five dollar bill in doing so. There is acre after acre of nothing but bricks and rubble. Particularly in the port and manufacturing area do you see nothing but twisted steel and shattered walls and broken bricks.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

Broadcast from liberated Hamburg (1945)

Housing

“This led me to extend my inquiry into the origin of all religions, and this again led to an enquiry into the origin of nations and languages; and ultimately I came to a resolution to devote six hours a day to this pursuit for ten years. Instead of six hours daily for ten years, I believe I have, upon the average, applied myself to it for nearly ten hours daily for almost twenty years. In the first ten years of my search I may fairly say, I found nothing which I sought for; in the latter part of the twenty, the quantity of matter has so crowded in upon me, that I scarcely know how to dispose of it.”

Godfrey Higgins (1772–1833) British archaeologist

Undated letter at Godfrey Higgins http://burghwallis.com/village/articles/higgins.htm biography.

Religion, Search, Parting

“There is nothing which rots morale more quickly and more completely than poor communication and indecisiveness - the feeling that those in authority do not know their own minds. And there is no condition which more quickly produces a sense of indecision among subordinates or more effectively hampers communication than being responsible to a superior who has too wide a span of control.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Source: 1950s, The pattern of management, 1956, p. 43; cited in: Colin Combe (2014), Introduction to Management, p.118

Feeling, Communication, Sense, Indecision

“They say gravity is the centre of attraction; I rather think that noise is. Nothing so soon assembles the inhabitants of a house as a loud and sudden noise : …”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Thinking, Housing

“As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture is notoriously unreliable, but as a means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

“I fly to Luxembourg on Berlusconi's usual twin engine, who accompanies us, glad to exhibit himself and exhibit his status in an international ceremony. The gold medal (but is it really gold?) is given to me by Gaston Thorn, head of the Luxembourg government. Berlusconi fills his notebook with addresses: of all the V. I. P.'s that he has met. He's a true climber that takes advantage of everything and throws nothing away.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Luxembourg, 23 may, from accounts with myself. [citation needed]
2000s - 2010s

Flying

“The last piece of advice I shall venture to offer the Liberal party is this, that they shall not dissociate themselves, even indirectly or unconsciously, or by any careless words, from the new sentiment of Empire which occupies the nation. To many the word "Empire" is suspect as indicating aggression and greed and violence and the characteristics of other empires that the world has known; but the sentiment that is represented now by Empire in these islands has nothing of that in it. (Cheers.) It is a passion of affection and family feeling, of pride and of hopefulness; and the statesman, however great he may be, who dissociates himself from that feeling must not be surprised if the nation dissociates itself from him.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Cheers
Speech at Chesterfield (16 December 1901), reported in The Times (17 December 1901), p. 10.

World, Family, Hope, Feeling

“I understand you are doing "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." I would love to do that for you. I will do it for nothing.”

Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) British conductor

During a chance meeting in a restaurant with Walt Disney. Stokowski's influence expanded the project and the idea eventually evolved into the landmark animation feature film Fantasia (1940), for which Stokowski had suggested the title, as one which indicates "a musical composition without a strict form"; quoted in Serious Business: The Art and Commerce of Animation in America from Betty Boop to Toy Story (2000) by Stefan Kanfer
Unsourced variant: I would like to conduct that for you.

Love, Understanding

“But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes no, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Love, Life, Men, God

“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 66.
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Men, Books, Search, Business

“We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer… Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader

“There has definitely been a significant bias from the local media like nothing like I have ever experienced, but I intend to have the last laugh when I win tomorrow.”

Karen Handel (1962) American politician

Karen Handel: ‘I Intend to Have the Last Laugh When I Win’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/19/exclusive-karen-handel-intend-last-laugh-win/ (June 19, 2017)

“[Footnote] At the age of twelve Nero had shown a lively interest in the arts, particularly music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Why was nothing done about this?”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Nero

Age, Art, Music, Painting

“Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

"Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8ihou10.txt (1909), ch. I: Venice, pt. II.

“Yes, I'm complacent now, with my well enough paid job, with a wife I can almost talk to, with a three-year-old son all dark eyes and tousled hair and endearing clumsiness. We go driving on Sunday afternoons, through suburbs just like our own, past houses just like our own, an endlessly recurring, mesmerising daydream under the flawless blue sky. And I whistle an old song of yours, even if I never dare let the words past my lips:There's nothing wrong with The Family
That a flame-thrower can't fix
And there's nothing wrong with the salt of the Earth
That couldn't be cured with a well-aimed BRICK.</blockquote”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Worthless http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/worth.htm, published in the anthology In Dreams (1992) Fiction

Family, Past, Housing

“I wish, I were big enough, like Einstein, to do what he did on one occasion. A hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner was organised for him to speak, and leaders of America in all fields, particularly in the field of science, were invited to hear the great man. When his turn came, he rose and said:'I've nothing to say,' and sat down. You can imagine the consternation, quite apart from the wasted cost of the dinner! Realising the frightful effect his remarks had on the audience, Einstein got up again and said: 'When I've something to say, I'll let you know.”

J. R. D. Tata (1904–1993) Indian businessman

Address to the Lions Club of Jamshedpur, August 22, 1963.
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

Imagination, Science

“One of the things that we can learn [from] the Cubans is that they are highly politically conscientized. …they understand what constitute progress and what constitute the enemy. And they have come to appreciate that they are in the situation they are because of the choice they have made, of not wanting to follow what the big brother America says they must do. And they know that if it was not [for the] illegal embargo imposed on them, they were actually going to be a much much more better country. Look at them, they have succeeded, the better education, better healthcare, the illiteracy levels are extreme low, under difficult circumstances. [The] quality of education, the quality of primary healthcare [of some country's without embargoes] is nothing compared to a country [Cuba] which is suffering from a serious economic embargo. So we can learn from the Cubans through their determination, through their appreciation that they are a unique nation, and have chosen their path, and they will lead by their conviction. [Interviewer Bryce-Pease asks Malema about Cuba's socialist-democratic model, lack of human rights, lack of freedom of association or freedom of speech among the opposition, and whether South Africa should take those as lessons. ] Malema: …if they think that their model works for them I am not the one to impose on them what should be the type of political systems in Cuba. They are the ones who can chose which direction they want to take. [Bryce-Pease: Do you see a model like Cuba existing in South Africa? ] When we can do actually much better, our democratic system is intact, it is working […] but there are a lot of things to learn from Cuba [for instance] inculcating the history of the revolution in our education system, so that everybody else is conscientized… Of course there will be some few elements who are not happy. … [Castro] is bound to commit mistakes but generally we are more than happy with the type of work he has done for the Cubans and for the Africans as well, having contributed to the decolonization of Africa and the defeat of apartheid in southern Africa…”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

In Cuba, after paying his respects at Fidel Castro's funeral, Julius Malema in Cuba for Castro's funeral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQy8ALs-aIo, SABC News (5 December 2016)

Happiness, Education, History, Understanding

“Tell me why I feel so bad, honey
Fighting left me plenty of money
But didn't keep the promise of memory lapses
Like a building that's been slated for blasting
I'm the proof that nothing is lasting
Counting to eleven as it collapses”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Video" · Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPG9_01srI Song lyrics, The Forgotten Arm (2005)

Money, Feeling, Memory, Fight

“The more you try to describe a dream the further it eludes your grasp, retreating before the advance of the words, growing cooler and cooler and paler and paler, until, when you have recorded it all, there is nothing of what it was really like left in your memory.”

Michael Frayn book The Tin Men

The Tin Men (London: Collins, 1965) p. 59.

Dreams, Memory

“There's nothing worse than a violent beating from an unremarkable person. Physical violence with someone is too much like shagging them. Too much id involved.”

Irvine Welsh book The Acid House

A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Associates as Opiates" (Chapter 3).
The Acid House (1994)

Personality

“I do not see to what purpose we exercise a superintendency over all inferior jurisdictions, unless it be to inspect their proceedings, and see whether they are regular or not. I have often heard it said that nothing shall be presumed one way or the other in an inferior jurisdiction.”

John Pratt (1657–1725) English judge and politician

Rex v. Cleg (1722), 1 Stra. 476.

Way, Exercises

“Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does “culture” become necessary as a veneer to cover over the void. Culture can at best appreciate the monuments of earlier faith; it cannot produce them.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 280.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Faith

“The physicist needs a facility in looking at problems from several points of view. The exact analysis of real physical problems is usually quite complicated, and any particular physical situation may be too complicated to analyze directly by solving the differential equation. But one can still get a very good idea of the behavior of a system if one has some feel for the character of the solution in different circumstances. Ideas such as the field lines, capacitance, resistance, and inductance are, for such purposes, very useful. … On the other hand, none of the heuristic models, such as field lines, is really adequate and accurate for all situations. There is only one precise way of presenting the laws, and that is by means of differential equations. They have the advantage of being fundamental and, so far as we know, precise. If you have learned the differential equations you can always go back to them. There is nothing to unlearn.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume II; lecture 2, "Differential Calculus of Vector Fields"; section 2-1, "Understanding physics"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Law, Way, Behavior, Feeling

“I think cynicism is the worst thing because it kills everything. There’s no more honesty, no more poetry, no more freshness. Cynicism is the worst thing — a kind of smart person who’s got all the answers. This is death. It kills creation. There’s no love, no tenderness, nothing at all left. There’s no hatred even, nothing. Equally dangerous is the detached attitude that says, “Everything is fun!””

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 38

Love, Death, Thinking, Personality

“The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

“So the HP guy comes up to me (at the Melbourne conference) and he says, 'If you say nasty things like that to vendors you're not going to get anything'. I said 'no, in eight years of saying nothing, we've got nothing, and I'm going to start saying nasty things, in the hope that some of these vendors will start giving me money so I'll shut up'.”

Theo de Raadt (1968) systems software engineer

Quoted in

Money, Hope, Guy

“My hope is that Casino Royale has not only re-invented James Bond, but made him relevant for the 21st century. The target audience has shifted. Although there's nothing in Casino Royale that will exclude teenagers, this 007 is aimed squarely at adults. The November release date is also perfect — the film is almost too dark and serious for the kind of lighthearted, mindless fun we associate with summer blockbusters. In recent years, I have come to each new James Bond movie with a series of ingrained expectations. For the most part, the Brosnan films met them across the board. Casino Royale defies many of them, and I couldn't be happier.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=769 of Casino Royale (2006). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Hope, Summer, Parting, Perfection

“In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.”

Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian

Women, War, Children, Peace

“People do want to be young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they're getting older they look at each other's face a little ashamed. It's clear they want to say, Excuse me, I didn't mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn't want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life. To which, most of the time, the friend's eyes will courteously reply, My dear, it's nothing at all. I hardly noticed.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"Friends"

Life, People, Beauty, Time

“I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people's accomplishments; the front page nothing but man's failures.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

As quoted in Sports Illustrated (22 July 1968)
Variants:
I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As quoted in Best Sports Stories : 1975 (1976) by Irving T. Marsh
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As quoted in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) by George Plimpton, p. 470
1960s

People, Failure, Sport

“There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Act V, sc. 1.
The Drummer (1716)

Business

“The other night at a neighborhood restaurant the waiter, after mentioning he had read my books, said about himself, “I’m white, I’m nothing.” But that was what I wanted, you see, growing up in America—the freedom of being nothing, the confidence of it, the arrogance. And I achieved it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Books, Confidence, Freedom, Reading

“It's not like people don't know that horrible things are happening. But at the same time, because so many horrible things are happening, it can feel exhausting and insurmountable. … That can make you feel like there's nothing we can do--that the people in charge are all powerful. But at the same time, people don't forget the experience of struggle--and that there are victories along the way, amid the defeats. … There are some victories even amid the setbacks.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (1950) American academic and author

The fight against racism doesn't stop here (2013)

People, Way, Feeling, Time

“Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say that religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now. There is, after all, nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 90-91

Religion, Nature, Past

“Soon there will be nothing left except the lying dreams of history, the miserable wreckage of our museums and picture-galleries, and the carefully guarded interiors of our aesthetic drawing-rooms, unreal and foolish, fitting witnesses of the life of corruption that goes on there, so pinched and meagre and cowardly, with its concealment and ignoring, rather than restraint of, natural longings; which does not forbid the greedy indulgence in them if it can but be decently hidden.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Signs of Change (1888), The Aims of Art

Life, Dreams, History, Lying

“There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

107
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Love, Friendship, Forgiveness, Freedom

“"Why do you fight?"… He kept his wife, his kid, from dying. That was nothing. Less than nothing. If he had had money, if he could have left it to them, he would have been free to go and get killed. As if the universe had not treated him all his life with kicks in the belly, it now despoiled him of the only dignity he could ever possess — his death.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)

Life, Death, Money, Universe

“This day says nothing different to me than to you.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

“There was a time not long ago when Vicksburg could have been easily captured, but it is now a second Gibraltar, and the navy alone could do nothing toward capturing it.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 122

Time

“Without my family I’m nothing, they kept me in the right place, I believe that I’m the luckiest person in the country when I’m with them.”

S. S. Rajamouli (1973) Indian film director

The suspense element isn’t 'Baahubali 2's USP, says Rajamouli http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/ss-rajamouli-interview-without-my-family-im-nothing/article18251500.ece (27 April 2017), The Hindu. Retrieved 8 September 2017.

Family, Personality, Country

“Where's the meat? This sandwich is full of weeds! I ain't eatin' nothing I don't understand!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Quotes from acting

Understanding

“You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius….”

Margot Asquith (1864–1945) Anglo-Scottish socialite, author and wit

Quoted in Jack Fishman's My Darling Clementine, the biography of Winston Churchill's wife. (p. 131).

“Remember this central truth. Your enemy is there because he, too, has weighed the consequences of failure and accepts them. Play always to win, because nothing else matters”

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Truth, Failure

“. never in my life I have seen such a truly sad thing [an atmosphere at Wolfheze ]. A mother heartbroken about the loss of her only child is nothing compared to this. A broad streak or strip in front of you, which becomes blacker and blacker towards the horizon. a mysterious ticking and hissing of rain drops which keep hanging halfway the heather plant on each twig and sprout..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) ..zoo iets waar droevigs [een atmosfeer bij nl:Wolfheze ] heb ik nimmer gezien. Een diepbedroefde moeder over het verlies van haar eenige kind is er niets bij. Een breede streep of strook vóór u, welke naar de horizon toe langer hoe zwarter wordt. een geheimzinnig getik en gesis van regendroppels welke halverwege de hei plant aan elk takje en uitspreitseltje blijft hangen..
In a letter of Anton Mauve to Willem Maris, 1860's; as cited in Anton Mauve, (exhibition catalog of Teylers Museum, Haarlem / Laren, Singer), ed. De Bodt en Plomp, 2009, p. 33
1860's

Life, Sadness, Loss

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore (2002)

World, Change, Time

“It was the waste of a trip. She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead." I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss and Buttercup (p. 386)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Pain, Stupidity, Cats, Tear

“It was Italian playwright and screenwriter Ennio Flaiano who first spoke to Fellini of Fernando Pessoa during their collaboration on I Vitelloni (1953). Fellini claimed, however, that it was not until he lunched with Anthony Burgess in the mid 1970s (when the British writer owned a country house in Bracciano north of Rome) that he began reading the Portuguese poet in earnest. This is not to suggest that Pessoa influenced Fellini in any direct way but simply to note a genial coincidence embedded within two autobiographical masterpieces. The first quotation is from Pessoa’s O Livro do desassossego: ‘These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say.’ The second is from Fellini’s Otto e mezzo (1963) during the crucial night scene at the base of the scaffolding when Guido confesses to Rosella, “I have really nothing to say in my film. But I want to say it anyway.” Suddenly, the disparate obsessions of these two great Mediterranean minds seem to fold into one another, if only for an instant, like the sounds of vibrating wires touched simultaneously. Whatever the ultimate significance may be, it amuses me to think that textual coincidences of this nature are proof of the brotherhood of artists.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini and Fernando Pessoa
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Way, Nature, Thinking, Reading

“Lacan is a tyrant who must be driven from our shores. Narrowly trained English professors who know nothing of art history or popular culture think they can just wade in with Lacan and trash everything in sight.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 213

Art, History, Thinking, Training

“We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

The Birthgrave (1975)
Source: Book Two, Part V “Tower-Eshkorek”, Chapter 3 (p. 303)

Men, People, Mountain, Parting

“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Funeral Blues (1936)

Star, Sun

“Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U. S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations.
Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 6.

Justice, Support

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 About

Life, People, School, Family

“This is the establishment, chiefly upon Kant's foundations, of a new idealistic philosophy, in extension and fulfilment of Kant's own, though also taking impulse from the views of Aristotle and of Leibnitz. This new idealism seeks to rehabilitate the moral individual in his proper autonomy by seating him in the eternal world; that is, in the self-active, and therefore absolutely real, or noumenal, order of being. It thus stands opposed (1) to the current Monism, whether of Naturalism (Spencer, Haeckel, etc.) or of Absolute Idealism (Hegel and the Neo-Hegelians), and (2) to the older Monotheism, with its dualism (the eternal Creator, the temporal creation) of literal production out of nothing, by miracle”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix A: The Essays in their Systematic Connexion, p.383

World, Nature

“There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Speech, Opening of Parliament (January 29, 1828), reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 221.

Age, Country

“I'm not a criminal. I did nothing wrong. I was helping my kids. We desperately need medical marijuana in this country..”

Brownie Mary (1922–1999) American medical cannabis activist

Herscher, E. (1992, August 5). "'Brownie Mary' Is Cheered During Testimony at City Hall". San Francisco Chronicle, p. A1.

Help, Marijuana, Country

“Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

Interview with Nick Harper in The Guardian (28 November 2003).

Time

“Nothing is part of everything.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Sign and Its Children

"While the Sign Sleeps," p. 17
The Sign and Its Children (2000), Sequence: “The Sign and Nothing”

Parting

“Remember, however, before all else, to strip things of all that disturbs and confuses, and to see what each is at bottom; you will then comprehend that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear.”
Illud autem ante omnia memento, demere rebus tumultum ac videre quid in quaque re sit: scies nihil esse in istis terribile nisi ipsum timorem.

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

Alternate translation: You will understand that there is nothing dreadful in this except fear itself. (translator unknown).
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Line 12

Fear

“Thus he occupied me all that night, and on the morn till it was about prime day. And anon they were all gone, and all passed; and they left nothing but stench, and that lasted still awhile; and I scorned him.
And thus was I delivered from him by the virtue of Christ’s Passion: for therewith is the Fiend overcome, as our Lord Jesus Christ said afore.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 69

Passion, Christ, Night

“They sat around accessing media all day and talking about it, and nothing ever seemed to get done.”

William Gibson book All Tomorrow's Parties

Source: All Tomorrow's Parties‎ (2003), Ch. 7 : Sharehouse, p. 33

“The learned counsel has very properly avoided all political discussions unconnected with the subject, and I shall follow his example. Courts of justice have nothing to do with them.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Trial of John Vint and others (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 640.

Justice, Learning

“I think there is a predisposition among Christians that Hollywood is anti-Jesus or anti-Christianity. I was warned I'd have to fight to maintain the freedom to express my beliefs. It's an unfair stereotype, and so far that's been the farthest from the truth. While everyone I work with may not share my beliefs, I have been surrounded by nothing but support.”

Clay Aiken (1978) singer-songwriter, actor, record producer

—Clay Aiken - Today's Christian Magazine On Christianity Source: Today's Christian, November/December 2005 http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2005/006/7.19.html retrieved April 16, 2006

Truth, Support, Thinking, Freedom

“I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.”

Wilkie Collins book Armadale

Armadale - Vol. II [Collier, 1886] ( p. 130 https://books.google.com/books?id=v7sBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA130) Also in Literature and Religion in Mid-Victorian England: From Dickens to Eliot by Carolyn Oulton [Springer, 2002, ISBN 0-230-50464-7] ( p. 136 https://books.google.com/books?id=abuADAAAQBAJ&pg=PA136)

People, Books

“When confidence in the power to create is obscured, greed sets in, for greed is nothing but the loss of confidence in one’s own ability to create.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

State of the Art (2000)

Confidence, Loss

“One of feminism’s irritating reflexes is its fashionable disdain for “patriarchal society,” to which nothing good is ever attributed. But it is patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men and freely acknowledge what treasures their obsessiveness has poured into culture.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 37

Men, Books, Fashion

“Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. III (p. 104).

“All, all of a piece throughout:
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
'Tis well an old age is out,
And time to begin a new.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Lines 86–91.

War, Age, Lovers, Time

“If we ask what it is he [ George Orwell] stands for, … the answer is: the virtue of not being a genius, of fronting the world with nothing more than one’s simple, direct, undeceived intelligence, and a respect for the powers one does have. … He communicates to us the sense that what he has done any one of us could do. Or could do if we but made up our mind to do it, if we but surrendered a little of the cant that comforts us, if for a few weeks we paid no attention to the little group with which we habitually exchange opinions, if we took our chance of being wrong or inadequate, if we looked at things simply and directly, having in mind only our intention of finding out what they really are, not the prestige of our great intellectual act of looking at them. He liberates us. He tells us that we can understand our political and social life merely by looking around us; he frees us from the need for the inside dope. He implies that our job is not to be intellectual, certainly not to be intellectual in this fashion or that, but merely to be intelligent according to our own lights—he restores the old sense of the democracy of the mind, releasing us from the belief that the mind can work only in a technical, professional way and that it must work competitively. He has the effect of making us believe that we may become full members of the society of thinking men. That is why he is a figure for us.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

“George Orwell and the politics of truth,” The Opposing Self (1950), pp. 156-158
The Opposing Self (1950)

Life, Men, World, Way

“Doing nothing is not the absence of a policy; it is, in fact, the adoption of one. "Neutrality" favors the side with the biggest arsenal. "Nonintervention" is a form of interference. If you will the end—and President Barack Obama has finally said that Qaddafi should indeed go—then to that extent you will the means…The immediate task is therefore to limit the amount of damage Qaddafi can do and sharply minimize the number of people he can murder. Whatever the character of the successor system turns out to be, it can hardly be worsened if we show it positive signs of friendship and solidarity…I am sure I am not alone in feeling rather queasy about being forced to watch the fires in Tripoli and Benghazi as if I were an impotent spectator. Indifference of this kind to the lives of others can have a coarsening effect. It can lower one's threshold of sympathy. If protracted unduly, it might even become brutalizing.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2011-03-07
American Inaction Favors Qaddafi
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/03/american_inaction_favors_qaddafi.html: On the 2011 Libyan civil war
2010s, 2011

Friendship, People, Feeling, Indifference

“Don't say nothing bout the old house. Cos I burned it to the ground. And when the darkness comes, I lie awake. Playing lost and found”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

All At Once
Song lyrics

Lie, Housing

“Jean Jacques Rousseau," he answered, "is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey…. For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

J.-J. Rousseau, répondit-il, n'est à mes yeux qu'un sot, lorsqu'il s'avise de juger le grand monde; il ne le comprenait pas, et y portait le cœur d'un laquais parvenu... Tout en prêchant la république et le renversement des dignités monarchiques, ce parvenu est ivre de bonheur, si un duc change la direction de sa promenade après dîner, pour accompagner un de ses amis.
Vol. II, ch. VIII
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Fools, Understanding, Heart, Joy

“I am a Southern man and a slaveholder. A kind and merciful one, I trust, and none the worse for being a slaveholder. I say, for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality, one inch of what belongs to us as members of this republic! What! Acknowledged inferiority! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority!”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Speech in the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20070123074414/http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.667/pub_detail.asp (19 February 1847) 1840s

Life

Quotes about nothing page 44

Quotes about nothing
page 44