Quotes about nothing
page 46

“It's a big emotional thing to do, to challenge the leadership of your political party. There is nothing pleasant about it, there's nothing fun about it. It's quite a horrible gut-wrenching process.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode one: The Prime Minister and his Loyal Deputy (2006–09)

“When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 317

“The impact of space activities is nothing less than the galvanizing of hope and imagination for human life continuum into a future of infinite possibility.”

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

The Impact of Space Activities Upon Society (ESA Br) European Space Agency (2005)

Life, Hope, Imagination, Future

“The reason for his anguish, the intolerable burden which had broken him at last, was the simplest thing in the world: he loved his wife. He always had, and he always would. Nothing could change that, but that was what had made his agony bite so deep, the reason he couldn't forgive himself for not somehow making things "all right" again… and the reason he'd had to turn to someone else to rebuild himself when the collapse came. It had been cowardly of him, in many ways, but he simply could not have made himself dump his weakness, his collapse on her shoulders while she coped with everything God had already done to her.”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Echoes of Honor (1998)

Love, God, World, Way

“Nothing is natural, yet everything is as it is by nature.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

p 48
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

Nature

“Nothing could be of worse consequence, than that an officer of the Court should combine with a criminal to frustrate the sentence of the Court.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

Rex v. Beardmore (1759), 2 Burr. Part IV. 175.

“Seemingly, this society wants its children to know nothing; wants its queer children to conform or (and this is not a figure of speech) die; and wants not to know that it is getting what it wants.”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) American academic

Tendencies (Duke University Press, 1993), p. 3

Children

“Q: …would he possibly stand under a sign that says "Mission Accomplished" today as he did three years ago?
Scott McClellan: Well, Peter, I think that there are some Democrats that refuse to recognize the important milestone achieved by the formation of a national unity government. And there is an effort simply to distract attention away from the real progress that is being made by misrepresenting and distorting the past. And that really does nothing to help advance our goal of achieving victory in Iraq.
Q: Scott, simple yes or no question, could the President stand under a sign that says --
Scott McClellan: No, see, this is -- this is a way that --
Q: It has nothing to do with Democrats.
Scott McClellan: Sure it does.
Q: I'm asking you, based on a reporter's curiosity, could he stand under a sign again that says, "Mission Accomplished"?
Scott McClellan: Now, Peter, Democrats have tried to raise this issue, and, like I said, misrepresenting and distorting the past --
Q: This is not --
Scott McClellan: -- which is what they're doing, does nothing to advance the goal of victory in Iraq.
Q: I mean, it's a historical fact that we're all taking notice of --
Scott McClellan: Well, I think the focus ought to be on achieving victory in Iraq and the progress that's being made, and that's where it is. And you know exactly the Democrats are trying to distort the past.
Q: Let me ask it another way: Has the mission been accomplished?
Scott McClellan: Next question.
Q: Has the mission been accomplished?
Scott McClellan: We're on the way to accomplishing the mission and achieving victory.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060501-4.html, May 1, 2006

Way, Question, Thinking, Effort

“After three years spent in a small goldsmith factory, I had nothing left to learn. A colleague who was looking for a new job as goldsmith, tells me: look I went to a small shop, figured that they do not even use the electric drill, but they make holes with bows, like the primitives. I understood that this was the place for me.”

James Rivière (1949) Italian Jewellery and sculptor

Marta Bravi in : [s.n.] (2009). " Dalla bottega al Vaticano con i gioielli per il Papa http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/bottega-vaticano-i-gioielli-papa.html" in ilgiornale.it

Learning

“…and if you are common, you can dress up as a woman, show you behind or write poems: there’s nothing offensive about a naked behind if it’s everybody’s; each person will be mirrored in it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(463).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Personality

“People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

1980s
Source: Interview in Reason Magazine (1983).

People, Religion

“People have been marrying and bringing up children for centuries now. Nothing has ever come of it.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

Children, People

“Innocence has nothing to dread.”

Jean Racine Phèdre

L'innocence enfin n'a rien à redouter.
Hippolyte, act III, scene VI.
Phèdre (1677)

“I suppose I remain.... a believer in Art for Art's sake rather than in Art for the sake of religion, of social justice or of national glory. Nothing is more alien to me than an art which sets out to serve other purposes than those implied in the work of art in itself..”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 107

Religion, Justice, Art

“But it never occurred to him to want to be a philosopher, or dedicate himself to Speculation; he was still too fickle for that. True, he was not drawn now to one thing and now to another – thinking was and remained his passion – but he still lacked the self-discipline required for acquiring a deeper coherence. Both the significant and the insignificant attracted him equally as points of departure for his pursuits; the result was not of great consequence – only the movements of thought as such interested him. Sometimes he noticed that he reached one and the same conclusion from quite different starting points, but this did not in any deeper sense engage his attention. His delight was always just to be pressing on; wherever he suspected a labyrinth, he had to find the way. Once he had started, nothing could bring him to a halt. If he found the going difficult and became tired of it before he ought, he would adopt a very simple remedy – he would shut himself up in his room, make everything as festive as possible, and then say loudly and clearly: I will do it. He had learned from his father that one can do what one wills, and his father’s life had not discredited this theory. Experiencing this had given Johannes indescribable pride; that there could be something one could not do when one willed it was unbearable to him. But his pride did not in the least indicate weakness of will, for when he had uttered these energetic words he was ready for anything; he then had a still higher goal – to penetrate the intricacies of the problem by force of will. This again was an adventure that inspired him. Indeed his life was in this way always adventurous. He needed no woods and wanderings for his adventures, but only what he possessed – a little room with one window.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Johannes Climacus p. 22-23
1840s, Johannes Climacus (1841)

Life, Way, Departure, Problem

“Power and money reign supreme in our nation today. Universities count for nothing, and scholarship and ideas count for even less. Love, truth, and sacrifice are meaningless concepts, while betrayal and collective amnesia are taken as a matter of course.”

Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist

No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Love, Money, Truth, Idea

“I understand that it is the wish of the Editor of this collection of essays that each contributor should describe his own system of philosophy. Were I to interpret this demand literally I could not contribute anything at all, for two excellent reasons. In the first place, I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no other philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower. If this be a defect I see no likelihood of its ever being cured. Secondly, if I had a system of my own, I should doubt the propriety of "pushing" my crude philosophical wares in competition with the excellent products of older firms with well-earned reputations.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From Critical and Speculative Philosophy (1924)

Faith, Understanding

“These modern productions are all very well,
But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,
That moment of mystery
When I made history
As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Gus: The Theatre Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

History

“Reading is exciting. Reading is fun. Reading is cool. There is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a book and being drawn into another world to meet new people and to discover their stories - it’s like making new friends”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

The Duchess of Cornwall to children <br class="br"> Reading is cool so please find the time, Camilla tells children The Evening Standard 1 March 2012 http://www.standard.co.uk/news/get-london-reading/reading-is-cool-so-please-find-the-time-camilla-tells-children-7498850.html

People, Books, World, Reading

“Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 193

Soul, Nature, Suffering, Personality

“The so-called conscientiousness of the great majority of painters is nothing but perfection laboriously applied to the art of being boring.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

25 January 1857 (p. 346)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Art, Perfection

“The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient;
the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing:
there is no pain as great as being alive,
no burden heavier than that of conscious life.”

Rubén Darío (1867–1916) Nicaraguan poet and writer

Fatalidad (Fatality).
Los Cisnes y Otros Poemas (The Swans and Other Poems) (1905)

Life, Pain, Happiness, Feeling

“A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

Life, Time

“I've been in contact with Marshal Badoglio. We agree that Italy must be saved from the abyss toward which Fascism is driving her. If we depose Mussolini, however, the new government should do nothing drastic to upset Hitler until we can secretly negotiate an armistice with the Allies.”

Ugo Cavallero (1880–1943) Italian general

Quoted in "Improbable Heroes" - by Carl L. Steinhouse - History - 2005 - Page 104

“If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It… prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intracacy?”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

God, Understanding, Universe

“Since the God of the Christians blessed and rewarded toil, there was nothing, surely, to prevent him from approving the effort of the bourgeois. True, the bourgeois' wealth was often far from being the product of his own labor, but he always liked be told that it was, and if he was to be made a Christian it was necessary to insist on this point.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 171

God, Effort, Wealth

“Nothing would prove more disastrous to our ideas, we contended, than to neglect the effect of the internal upon the external, of the psychological motives and needs upon existing institutions.”

Emma Goldman book Living My Life

Source: Living My Life (1931), p. 402

Motivation, Idea

“The US lost control of security on day one, with the outbreak of looting. Iraqis are a people that had known nothing but a surplus of security. To suddenly take all that away and say, in effect, you are on your own, was unforgivable. They felt that no one was in control. And when your whole world is being turned upside down, the feeling that no one is in control is terrifying, and consequently it is conducive of the most irrational forms of behavior.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Kanan Makiya speaks about Iraq 5 years later...", Washington Post (March 20, 2008)

People, World, Behavior, Feeling

“If the attractive virtue of the moon extends as far as the earth, it follows with greater reason that the attractive virtue of the earth extends as far as the moon and much farther; and, in short, nothing which consists of earthly substance anyhow constituted although thrown up to any height, can ever escape the powerful operation of this attractive virtue.”

Johannes Kepler book Astronomia nova

As quoted by Bryant, ibid.
Astronomia nova (1609)

“Nobody is entitled to someone else's money, that is the bottom line. People think they are entitled to it because they think they paid into it, nobody paid into anything, it was a fraud. Every single dollar that the gov collected in social security taxes, has already been spent, there is nothing there, there is no money, so the only money the government gets to make current payment is the money it can take from people who are still working. Its a transfer from the working poor in many cases to the retired rich. We don't have the money, I feel bad for the fact people made promises we can't keep, I feel bad for the people that invested with Bernie Madoff and lost their money, but its the same principle, its the same Ponzi scheme. We have to put an end to it, we have to find real solution to these problems because if we keep on denying that they exist and keep on spending money, we're going to destroy the value of everyone's benefits.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

RTC, Avon, CT, 10th May 2010

Money, People, Feeling, Fraud

“I cannot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good;
But sure I think that I can drink
With him that wears a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I nothing am a-cold;
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.”

William Stevenson

Poem Jolly Good Ale and Old.

Drink, Thinking

“…in this world, often, there is nothing to praise but no one to blame…”

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

“On Preparing to Read Kipling”, p. 135
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

World

“The only progress I can see is progress in organization. The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit by the experiences of others. Being both a father and teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing. We can transmit to them neither our knowledge of life nor of mathematics. Each must learn its lesson anew.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, Children, Mathematics, Knowledge

“But contrast the attitude of the Socialist Government towards their Bolshevist friends and their attitude to the great self-governing Dominions of the Crown. To the enemies of Britain, of civilization, of freedom, to those who deserted us in the crises of the war—smiles, compliments, caresses, cash. But for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, who sent their brave men to fight and die by scores of thousands, who never flinched and never wearied, who are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh—to them nothing but frigid repulsion. Our bread for the Bolshevist serpent; our aid for the foreigner of every country; our favours for the Socialists all over the world who have no country; but for our own daughter States across the oceans, on whom the future of the British island and nation depends, only the cold stones of indifference, aversion, and neglect. (Cheers.) That is the policy with which the Socialist Government confronts us, and against that policy we will strive to marshal the unconquerable might of Britain.”

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

Speech in Edinburgh (25 September 1924), quoted in The Times (26 September 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

Men, War, World, Smile

““That wasn’t very godly,” Alec calls up to him.
“And what has God to do with me?” Nicholas shouts back. “No voices speak to me out of any burning bush. No word at all. Hideous vacancy, monstrous indifference, and a senseless universe!”
“Well,” says Alec cautiously, “I would think that was a good thing. Shouldn’t you have grown out of this by now? What do you want meaning in the universe for, anyway? Nothing means anything! We’re just here to go along for the adventure.””

Kage Baker book The Sons of Heaven

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 23, Section 1 “Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Ten: The Awkward Years” (pp. 274-275)

God, Thinking, Universe, Indifference

“We are very blessed to call this nation our home. And that is what America is: it is our home. It’s where we raise our families, care for our loved ones, look out for our neighbors, and live out our dreams. It is my prayer, that on this Thanksgiving, we begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country, strengthened by a shared purpose and very, very common resolve. In declaring this national holiday, President Lincoln called upon Americans to speak with “one voice and one heart.” That’s just what we have to do. We have just finished a long and bruising political campaign. Emotions are raw and tensions just don’t heal overnight. It doesn’t go quickly, unfortunately, but we have before us the chance now to make history together to bring real change to Washington, real safety to our cities, and real prosperity to our communities, including our inner cities. So important to me, and so important to our country. But to succeed, we must enlist the effort of our entire nation. This historic political campaign is now over. Now begins a great national campaign to rebuild our country and to restore the full promise of America for all of our people. I am asking you to join me in this effort. It is time to restore the bonds of trust between citizens. Because when America is unified, there is nothing beyond our reach, and I mean absolutely nothing. Let us give thanks for all that we have, and let us boldly face the exciting new frontiers that lie ahead. Thank you. God Bless You and God Bless America.”

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

A Thanksgiving Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUnv6Kb7syQ (23 November 2016) <br class="br">2010s, 2016, November

Love, God, People, Lie

“In fact the only times we could read funny books was when my father was in the Navy. Nothing would infuriate him more than to catch us browsing through Captain Marvel or Plastic Man. Men, after all, didn’t waste their time reading funny books. Men, he’d tell us, took life seriously. Nothing could be learned from books that were funny.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 75.

Life, Men, Books, Learning

“Out whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretense of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more. And nothing was left them but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

World, Heart, Christ, Despair

“The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

Heart

“Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase “missional church” lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 155

Future

“For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

of deserting his post
VII, 45
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Death, Men, Truth, Thinking

“It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III

Books

“We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“I wanted to be a novelist and a newspaper man… I went to Antioch College and majored in English, at least in the beginning, with the intention of doing something like that…. Antioch had a co-op program so I went to work for the New York Post as a copyboy when I decided I didn't want to be a newspaper man; it was fun, but it wasn't practical. After a while I shifted into philosophy as a major, but I never had any undergraduate training at all in anthropology and, indeed, very little social science outside of economics. I had a lot of economics but nothing else. Anthropology wasn't even taught at Antioch then, although it is now. And except for a political science course or two and lots of economics, I didn't have any social sciences. So I was in literature for at least half the time I was there, the first couple of years, and then I shifted to philosophy, partly because of the influence of a terrific teacher and partly because in a small college you can run out of courses. 'Men I got interested in the same sort of thing I'm interested in now: values, ideas, and so on. Finally, one of my professors said, "Why don't you think about anthropology?"”

Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) American anthropologist

That was the first time I had thought seriously about being an anthropologist, and then I began to think about it and I went to Harvard and so on.
"Clifford Geertz on Ethnography and Social Construction", 1991

Men, Literature, Idea, Thinking

“Classical music is a perennially flowing river and nothing can affect its flow. No one needs to worry about Indian music. It is forever.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Source: Staff Reporter, "Mangalampalli can't wait to come home".

Music

“Am I the only one who thinks that David Beckham should film a sex scene with Brad Pitt? I don't know who's in charge of casting in Hollywood, but get it done before one of them is past their prime. Can you imagine those two making love? If there is not a man in here who's junk doesn't even wiggle at the thought of it, and this has nothing to do with your homophobic beliefs. At that level, it's art, you monkey! You should feel privileged that you get to breathe the same air as those Greek gods!”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Love, God, Making love, Art

“You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short you come from nothing and are going to nowhere.”

Randy Alcorn (1954) American Protestant author

Quoted in Dinesh D'Souza, What's so Great About Christianity (Regnery, 2007), p. 15

Death, Nature, Universe, Chance

“In the last few decades, a terribly pernicious rumor has been circulated by the press. It claims, exhibiting a level of stupidity heretofore considered impossible, that a human being could crawl through the arteries of a blue whale. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. I do not know why this deleterious rumor has been systematically repeated, but its very existence is an ugly cancer upon the face of science.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973)

Truth, Stupidity, Science

“Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan,
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Daisy http://www.bartleby.com/103/26.html (1893), st. 15.

Pain

“The learning process is endless. We must read, we must observe, we must assimilate, and we must ponder that to which we expose our minds. I believe in the evolution of the mind, the heart, and the soul of humanity. I believe in improvement. I believe in growth. There is nothing quite as invigorating as being able to evaluate and then solve a difficult problem, to grapple with something that seems unsolvable and then find a resolution.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

Soul, Problem, Learning, Reading

“The peak of my school experience of Shakespeare came in my senior matriculation year; the set play was "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and it was taught by a solemn donkey who understood nothing but the political organization of fairyland. I well remember him dictating a long note which began, "The fairies live in fairyland full stop. They have a king comma and a queen."”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Shakespeare over the Port (1960)

School, Dreams, Night

“John Randolph had only been a Senator for a few days when he gave an extraordinary speech denouncing John Quincy Adams. 'It is my duty,' said Randolph, 'to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration…. They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted… deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring.' John Randolph said this in 1826. This was a time, writes de Tocqueville, when the presidency was almost invisible. If we cannot say this and more today, when the presidency is dictator to the world, we are not authentic conservatives and libertarians. Indeed, we are not free men.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency"
1990s

Men, World, Music, Time

“Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Last words, to his niece, according to A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison (1865) by Paul Jennings, p. 20; his testimony on his death reads:
:: I was present when he died. That morning Sukey brought him his breakfast, as usual. He could not swallow. His niece, Mrs. Willis, said, "What is the matter, Uncle Jeames?" "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear." His head instantly dropped, and he ceased breathing as quietly as the snuff of a candle goes out.
Variant:
I always talk better lying down.
Last words, according to a listing of "Last Words of Famous Americans" in A Conspectus of American Biography (1906) edited by George Derby, p. 276; no prior publication of such an attribution has been located; in recent years, without any sources cited, the two divergent accounts of his last words have sometimes been combined into the form: "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear. I always talk better lying down."
1830s

Change

“When you see me now, I'm nothing but a big overgrown tough mama's boy. And I speak that with glee because the problem with society is we don't have enough mama's boys.”

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

Attributed

Boy, Problem

“Unless the person is aiming upward, there is nothing you can do about their situation. And this seems to be about that initial choice between good and evil. Once someone comes to therapy, they've already done something. They've already said: I have a problem, conceivably I can fix it, and I need to do something about it. And so half the work is already done before they show up, because they've already said that 'things aren't as good as they could be, and I want to do something about it.' The question is, can you do anything about that person who is not at that state? You can't. All you can do is serve by example. But until the person has decided, on their own, that they're wrong (that's why they're suffering – there's something wrong about what they are doing) and that they want to fix it… I think that hammering against their situation often makes it worse. That's part of free will. I do not think that people can learn unless they admit that they're wrong.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

People, Question, Problem, Thinking

“Q: Radiohead fans tend to be extremely devoted to the band - they seem to connect with your music and ideals. What do you see as the major aspects of your music which people connect with so well?
A: To be really truthful I don't see it myself. When we play something new, we don't know how people will react. If I show an idea to the rest of the band I'm terrified if they will respond or not. They are the same. It always amazes me how complex this remains. There was a time when we could make the correct moves and the required response. And that was the time when the shine started to fade. Do people connect with our ideals? I dont know, surely encouraging people to make informed decisions is more useful? ignorance is the biggest problem isnt it? we are no purer than anyone else, no smarter. Equally we are not little rag dolls you play with but say nothing and go back in the box when you're finished with us.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

source http://www.spinwithagrin.com/answer.asp?show=all

People, Truth, Music, Idea

“I didn’t come from a background that had any idea about what contemporary art was, it was not anti or pro, it had nothing to do with it. I do remember something my mother said when I was sixteen. I was going off to college, and I said, “I think I’m going to be an artist, not a professor of philosophy.” They all assumed I would be a professor because I’m good at logic, and she looked at me and she said, “Lawrence, you’ll break your heart.” And I said, “Why?””

Lawrence Weiner (1942) American artist

And she said, “Art is for rich people and women.” <br class="br">Lawrence Weiner in: Thessaly La Force, " STUDIO VISIT Lawrence Weiner http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/02/14/lawrence-weiner/," at theparisreview.org/blog, February 14, 2011.

Women, People, Art, Idea

“Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Soul

“In response to Leibniz's ontological query "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Morgenbesser answered "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!"”

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

“Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice," lines 37–42, from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

Smile, Flowers, Time, Sea

“If… the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature, and could not be eternal, since … nothing violent is eternal …. It follows, therefore, that the earth is not moved with a circular motion.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Commentaria in libros Aristotelis de caelo et mundo

Nature

“Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Spin

Source: Spin (2005), p. 59

Truth, Color

“Revolution or civil war is the only outcome of the present irreconcilable attitude of Australian political parties. The methods of "democracy," far from providing a means of solving the industrial problem, have proved entirely inadequate to the task. Political organization has been mistaken for political education; the party system has accentuated and added to our industrial difficulties. Democracy has done nothing to help society to unanimity, nothing to aid the individual to a sense of social function.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 44; Cited in: Wood & Wood (2004, 78).

War, Education, Democracy, Problem

“There is nothing as energizing, as confidence-building, as sustaining as the power of love. How substantial is its influence on the human mind and heart! How great and magnificent is its power in overcoming fear and doubt, worry and discouragement!”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes, Times Books. . (2000).

Love, Fear, Confidence, Heart

“As you might imagine, for Barack, running for president is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother, Craig.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, Democratic National Convention speech (2008)

Imagination, Game

“I felt so unbelievably ugly for years. It was hideous. It affected my selfworth, everything. It was the bane of my life from 13 to 29. I grew my hair long just so I could cover my face. I tried everything, saw everyone, had years of antibiotics and nothing helped. Then, when I was 29, I was at the end of my tether. I went on Accutane, which is very strong. Your sebaceous glands dry up, you can't exercise, and you have very dry lips. But it was a miracle and it worked.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

Regarding Woodall's acne condition; as quoted in "Acne, alcohol … and non-stop sex" by Lynda Lee-Potter in The Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=229872&in_page_id=1879 (6 September 2003)

Life, Exercises, Strong, Help

“I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Interview in the San Francisco Examiner (26 August 1928)

Life, Men, Religion, Soul

“No, nothing short of the creative principle of imagination gives the fine arts their specific quality—the principle that creates for the sake of creating, for the sake of giving free course to that imagination which is not only an essential but the guiding factor in the supersensible being of man, and which not only founds for him the world of religion and of science, as well as that of art, but is the constructive and developing principle of the universe itself.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.206

World, Religion, Art, Imagination

“The Apocrypha… ought to be bound up with all your Bibles; it contains much that is beautiful and wise, and there is in history nothing finer than the description of Eleazar's end.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

New Fragments (1892)

Beauty, History

“Laughing at mankind is rather weary rot, I think. We shall never meet with anyone nicer. Nature, whom I used to be keen on, is too unfair. She evokes plenty of high & exhausting feelings, and offers nothing in return.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 57, to Arthur Cole, 7 July 1905
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Feeling, Nature, Thinking

“So many read good books and get nothing, because they read them over cursorily, slightly, superficially.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Mute Christian Under the Rod

Books, Reading

“Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Change, Personality

“"Nothing," chorused Clary, Simon, Alec, Magnus, and Jace, in a surprising and probably never-to-be-repeated unison.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Clary, Simon, Alec, Magnus, and Jace, pg. 243
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“The two motor driven "mobiles" which I am exhibiting [August, 1933] are from among the more successful of my earliest attempts at plastic objects in motion. The orbits are all circular arcs or circles. The supports have been painted to disappear against a white background to leave nothing but the moving elements..”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

Support, Success, Painting

“Before it can be said, then, that human freedom and the absolute definiteness of God as Supreme Reason are really reconciled, we must have found some way of harmonising the eternity of the human spirit with the creative and regenerative offices of God. The sense of their antagonism is nothing new. Confronted with the race-wide fact of human sin, the elder theology proclaimed this antagonism, and solved it by denying to man any but a temporal being; quite as the common-sense of the everyday Philistine, absorbed in the limitations of the sensory life, proclaims the mere finitude of man, and is stolid to the ideal considerations that suggest immortality and moral freedom, rating them as day-dreams beneath sober notice, because the price of their being real is the attributing to man nothing short of infinity. "We are finite! merely finite!" is the steadfast cry of the old theology and of the plodding common realist alike; and, sad to say, of most of historic philosophy too. And the old theology, with more penetrating consistency than the realistic ordinary man or the ordinary philosophy, went on to complete its vindication of the Divine Sovereignty from all human encroachment by denying the freedom of man altogether.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.330-1

Life, God, Sadness, Dreams

“One cannot create an art that speaks to me when one has nothing to say.”

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

L'espoir [Man's Hope] (1938)

Art

“1964. If thou wilt have no Difference with thy Friends; sell them not Horses, nor Goods; and buy nothing of them.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Horse

“"Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him.
"Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth. And the mastery of Man ever the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works.
"And how will this come to pass?" He paused and lowered his voice. "In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world."”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 20
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

Death, Men, Truth, Age

“If we have a thousand bamboo spears, there's nothing to worry about a war with the Soviet Union.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "Sugamo Diary" - Page 30 - by Yoshio Kodama - 1960

War

“The theology taught by Milton was dear to the Puritan heart. It was accepted by New England, and it poisoned the souls and ruined the lives of thousands. The genius of Shakespeare could not make the theology of Milton poetic. In the literature of the world there is nothing, outside of the “sacred books,” more perfectly absurd.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

Books, World, Soul, Literature

“The bias against the show is purely elitist. We’re all like the people on the show – the difference is that some of us speak better, or were born richer. There’s nothing that happens on my show that rich people don’t experience.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

Interview with Rebecca Hardy, Daily Mail ‘Weekend’ magazine, 27th June 2009; he commenting here on The Jerry Springer Show.

People

“I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something…. I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"The Children’s Hour" in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

Thinking, Housing

““I thought I would be safe here.”
“You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.”
“Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter V (p. 386)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Books, Idea, Time

“If Christian mysticism and its goal, ecstasy, is the contact of man with God through a leap from human nature to divine nature, national mysticism is nothing other than the contact of man and crowds with the soul of their race through the leap which these forces make from the world of personal and material interests into the outer world of race. Not through the mind, since this anyone can do, but by living with their soul.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Religion

God, World, Soul, Nature

“Nothing is more unmannerly than to reflect on any man's profession, sect, or natural infirmity. He who stirs up against himself another's self-love, provokes the strongest passion in human nature.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Love, Nature, Passion

“Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

China, Past and Present (1972) Ch. 1

People

“Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"On the Art of Fiction" (1920)
Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

Food, Art, Search, Business

“I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

World, Nature, Fight

“Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

1951; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory' <br class="br">1950s

Art

“In the Renaissance there is much light, yes, and there is much in it with which Italians may share national pride. But there is much darkness. For the Renaissance is also the age of individualism, that through the splendid visions of poetry and art brought the Italian nation to the indifference, skepticism, and distracted cynicism of those who have nothing to defend, not in their family, their Fatherland, or in the world where every human personality conscious of its own value and personal dignity invest itself.”

Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher and politician

Che cosa è il fascismo: Discorsi e polemiche (“What is Fascism?”), Florence: Vallecchi, (1925) pp. 13-16

Age, World, Family, Art

“When sending his Short Treatise to his Amsterdam friends he begs of them to be sure that nothing but the good of their neighbours will ever induce them to communicate its doctrines to others.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

A. Wolf, from the introduction to Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (1910)
S - Z

Communication

“It has been said that there is nothing more uncommon than common sense.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Natural Theology (1836), Bk. II, Ch. III : On the Strength of the Evidences for a God in the Phenomena of Visible and External Nature, § 15; though provided without attribution of author, the saying "There is nothing more uncommon than common sense" has since become misattributed to particular people, including Frank Lloyd Wright.

Sense

“Canned laughter: After some supposedly funny or witty remark you can hear the laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself - here we have the exact counterpart of the Chorus in classical tragedy; it is here that we have to look for 'living Antiquity.' That is to say, why this laughter? The first possible answer - that it serves to remind us when to laugh - is interesting enough, because it implies the paradox that laughter is a matter of duty and not of some spontaneous feeling; but this answer is not sufficient because we do not usually laugh. The only correct answer would be that the Other - embodied in the television set - is relieving us even of our duty to laugh - is instead laughing for us. So even if, tired from a hard days stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the other, we had a really good time.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

33
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Stupidity, Feeling, Laughter, Time

“There is one thing that makes life mighty in its veriest trifles, worthy in its smallest deeds, that delivers it from monotony, that delivers it from insignificance. All will be great, nothing will be overpowering, when, living in communion with Jesus Christ, we say as He says, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me."”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 120.

Life, Christ

“Religious faith is the only area of discourse where immunity through conversation is considered noble. It's the only area of our lives where someone can win points for saying, "There's nothing that you can do to change my mind and I'm taking no state of the world ultimately into account in believing what I believe. There's nothing to change about the world that would cause me to revise my beliefs."”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "The View From The End Of The World" (9 December 2005)
2000s

World, Faith, Change

“There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book I, Ch. 1
My Antonia (1918)

Tree, Country

“What is needed is scientific analysis and convincing argument. Dogmatic criticism settles nothing. We are against poisonous weeds of all kinds, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower. Together with the masses of the people, we must learn to differentiate carefully between the two and to use correct methods to fight the poisonous weeds.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

VII: On "Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Content" and "Long Term Coexistence and Mutual Supervision"
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

People, Flowers, Learning, Fight