Quotes about nothing
page 53

“When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.”

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

Introductory Epistle
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)

Death, Suffering, Universe, Change

“I’ve never found anything in occult literature that seemed to have a bearing. You know, the occult—very much like stories of supernatural horror—is a sort of game. Most religions, too. Believe in the game and accept its rules—or the premises of the story—and you can have the thrills or whatever it is you’re after. Accept the spirit world and you can see ghosts and talk to the dear departed. Accept Heaven and you can have the hope of eternal life and the reassurance of an all-powerful god working on your side. Accept Hell and you can have devils and demons, if that’s what you want. Accept—if only for story purposes—witchcraft, druidism, shamanism, magic or some modern variant and you can have werewolves, vampires, elementals. Or believe in the influence and power of a grave, an ancient house or monument, a dead religion, or an old stone with an inscription on it—and you can have inner things of the same general sort. But I’m thinking of the kind of horror—and wonder too, perhaps—that lies beyond any game, that’s bigger than any game, that’s fettered by no rules, conforms to no man-made theology, bows to no charms or protective rituals, that strides the world unseen and strikes without warning where it will, much the same as (though it’s of a different order of existence than all of these) lightning or the plague or the enemy atom bomb. The sort of horror that the whole fabric of civilization was designed to protect us from and make us forget. The horror about which all man’s learning tells us nothing.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“A Bit of the Dark World” (pp. 261-262); originally published in Fantastic, February 1962
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Life, God, World, Religion

“Better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing.”

Anacharsis Scythian philosopher

As quoted in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, as translated by C. D. Yonge, (1853), "Anacharsis" sect. 5, p. 48

“Nothing discourages a child so much as the impossibility of pleasing.”

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

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

“Life is everything and nothing all at once.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

From the Pisces Iscariot liner notes.

Life, Motivational, Deep, Success

“Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Pleasure, Feeling, Freedom, Appearance

“The cheapest form of pride however is national pride. For it reveals in the one thus afflicted the lack of individual qualities of which he could be proud, while he would not otherwise reach for what he shares with so many millions. He who possesses significant personal merits will rather recognise the defects of his own nation, as he has them constantly before his eyes, most clearly. But that poor blighter who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, latches onto the last means of being proud, the nation to which he belongs to. Thus he recovers and is now in gratitude ready to defend with hands and feet all errors and follies which are its own.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Die wohlfeilste Art des Stolzes hingegen ist der Nationalstolz. Denn er verrät in dem damit Behafteten den Mangel an individuellen Eigenschaften, auf die er stolz sein könnte, indem er sonst nicht zu dem greifen würde, was er mit so vielen Millionen teilt. Wer bedeutende persönliche Vorzüge besitzt, wird vielmehr die Fehler seiner eigenen Nation, da er sie beständig vor Augen hat, am deutlichsten erkennen. Aber jeder erbärmliche Tropf, der nichts in der Welt hat, darauf er stolz sein könnte, ergreift das letzte Mittel, auf die Nation, der er gerade angehört, stolz zu sein. Hieran erholt er sich und ist nun dankbarlich bereit, alle Fehler und Torheiten, die ihr eigen sind, mit Händen und Füßen zu verteidigen.
Kap. II
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

World, Error, Affliction, Personality

“There were certain things I didn't like, such as tipping. I thought we should be paid more, and not have to have any tips. But when I proposed that to the boss, I got nothing but laughter. She told everybody, "Richard doesn't want his tips, hee, hee, hee; he doesn't want his tips, ha, ha, ha." The world is full of this kind of dumb smart-alec who doesn't understand anything.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 1: "From Rockaway to MIT", "String Beans", p. 25
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

World, Understanding, Laughter

“Nothing that Shakespeare ever invented was to equal Lincoln's invention of himself and, in the process, us.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Lincoln and the Priests of Academe"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

“Scientific men get an awkward habit — no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit — of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Thomas Henry Huxley. "Lectures on Evolution Title: This is Essay# 3 from" Science and Hebrew Tradition." (1882); as cited in: William Trufant Foster, (1908) Argumentation and debating, p. 55
1880s

Men, Way

“Reporter: President Jiang, do you think it’ll be good for Mr. Tung to serve another consecutive term?
Jiang: That’ll be good!
Reporter: Does Central Government support him too?
Jiang: Of course yes!
Reporter: Recently European Union has published a report saying that Beijing will affect and influence the nomocracy of Hong Kong in some ways. What's your response to that?
Jiang: Never heard before.
Reporter: It’s Chris Patten who said that.
Jiang: You the media should always remember that Seeing is believing. You should judge by yourself after you have received the news, got it? In case you say these things out of thin air for him, you may share the responsibility in some way.
Reporter: Now in such an early time, you said that you supported Mr. Tung, will that give people the impression that there is already an internal decision or imperial appointment on Mr. Tung?
Jiang: There's no such implication whatsoever. Everything should be done in accordance with Hong Kong Basic Law and the election laws.
Reporter: But…
Jiang: Replying what you've just asked me, I could have said "No comment." But you guys wouldn't be happy. So what should I do?
Reporter: Then Mr. Tung…
Jiang: I did not say that imperially appointing him to serve the next term. You asked me whether I support him or not, I support him. I can tell you explicitly.
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: You all… My feeling is that you the media need to learn more. You are very familiar with the Western set of value, but after all you are too young. Do you understand what I mean? Let me tell you, I've been through hundreds of battles. I've seen a lot. Which country in the West have I not been to? Every time… You should know Mike Wallace in the US. He's way above you all. He and I talked cheerfully and humorously, which is why the media need to raise your intellectual level. Got it or not?
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: I'm anxious for you all truly. You really… I… You guys are good at one thing. Wherever you go to all over the world, you always run faster than Western journalists. But the questions you keep asking - are too simple, sometimes naive. Understand or not? Got it or not?
Reporter: But could you say why you support Tung Chee-hwa?
Jiang: I'm very sorry. Today I am speaking to you as an elder, not as a journalist. I am not a journalist. But I've seen too much. I have this necessity to tell you a bit of my life experience.
Jiang: I just wanted to… Every time… In Chinese we have saying, "Make a fortune quietly." If I had said nothing, that would have been the best. But I thought I've seen all of you so enthusiastic. If I said nothing, that wouldn't be good. So, a moment ago you just insisted… In spreading the news, if your reports are inaccurate, you must be responsible. I did not say giving an imperial appointment. No such meaning. But you insisted on asking me whether I supported Mr. Tung or not. He is still the current Chief Executive. How could we not support the Chief Executive?
Reporter: But if we talk about his serving another term…
Jiang: To serve another term, you must follow the law of Hong Kong. Of course, our right to make the decision is also very important, since the Hong Kong SAR belongs to the Central Government of the People's Republic of China. When it gets to the right time, we'll let you know our decision. Understand what I say? You all. Don't provoke an uproar. Don't make it a flash-news saying that "It has already been imperially appointed" and criticize me. You all! Naive! I'm angry! I just offend you today! Your behavior like this is annoying!”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

As quoted in "Former president Jiang Zemin unleashes a long tirade after a Hong Kong reporter asks him if Beijing had issued an "imperial order" to support Tung Chee-hwa in his bid to seek a second term as Chief Executive" https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/videos/10152728897091030 (October 2014), Facebook. 2000s, Hong Kong reporters make Jiang see red

Life, Happiness, People, World

“There’s a necessity for physical experience and a recourse to exemplary cases of bodily ascesis to understand and make understood a type of emptying of the mind, an emptying that is required if the mind is to think. This obviously has nothing to do with tabula rasa, with what Descartes (vainly) wanted to be a starting from scratch on the part of knowing thought.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: Thought Without a Body? (1994), p. 296

Understanding, Thinking, Parting

“Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part III “The Dark City”, Chapter 3 (p. 200)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Feeling, Understanding

“Lincoln was a man who created himself from nothing without any help from outside or other people. I followed his struggles. I see certain similarities between him and me.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

The Pittsburgh Press (3 August 1986) "Gadhafi, the man the world loves to hate" by Marie Colvin (UPI)

People, Help

“To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor to the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuse—it is so easy to have any of them in India—never to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim, but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of His ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time, and to feel that somewhere among these millions you have left a little justice or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a spring of patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenment, or a stirring of duty, where it did not before exist—that is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India. It is good enough for his watchword while he is here, for his epitaph when he is gone. I have worked for no other aim. Let India be my judge.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech at the Byculla Club in Bombay (16 November 1905) two days before he left India, quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 589-590.

Happiness, Justice, Feeling, Spring

“Good management are rarely overcompensated to an extent that makes any significant difference with respect to the stockholder's position. Poor management are always overcompensated, because they are worth less than nothing to the owners.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter XIV, Stockholders and Managements, p. 209

“The politics of rock 'n' roll, in England or America or anywhere else, is that a whole lot of kids want to be fried out of their skins by the most scalding propulsion they can find, for a night they can pretend is the rest of their lives, and whether the next day they go back to work in shops or boredom on the dole or American TV doldrums in Mom 'n' Daddy's living room nothing can cancel the reality of that night in the revivifying flames when for once if only then in your life you were blasted out of yourself and the monotony which defines most life anywhere at any time, when you supped on lightning and nothing else in the realms of the living or dead mattered at all.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"The Clash" (December 1977), p. 239
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Life, Moms, Reality, Time

“All the Fathers with one heart execrated, and with one mouth protested against, contaminating the word of God with the subtleties of sophists, and involving it in the brawls of dialecticians. Do they keep within these limits when the sole occupation of their lives is to entwine and entangle the simplicity of Scripture with endless disputes, and worse than sophistical jargon? So much so, that were the Fathers to rise from their graves, and listen to the brawling art which bears the name of speculative theology, there is nothing they would suppose it less to be than a discussion of a religious nature.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 22
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

God, Art, Nature, Heart

“My classmates were spinning their fantasies for the future: lawyer, ethnobotanist, Buddhist monk (it was a very progressive high school). Even the dumb, uninteresting ones who were there to provide “balance” looked forward to their marriages and their children. I knew I wasn’t going to have any of this because I knew I didn’t want it. But did that mean I would have nothing? I was the first person in the history of the school not to go to college.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Marriage, Children, School, History

“To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries — this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, it the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation

Wisdom, Color, Way, Future

“But as long as we know what comprises our vital interests and our long-range goals, we have nothing to fear from negotiations at the appropriate time, and nothing to gain by refusing to take part in them. At a time when a single clash could escalate overnight into a holocaust of mushroom clouds, a great power does not prove its firmness by leaving the task of exploring the other's intentions to sentries or those without full responsibility. Nor can ultimate weapons rightfully be employed, or the ultimate sacrifice rightfully demanded of our citizens, until every reasonable solution has been explored. "How many wars," Winston Churchill has written, "have been averted by patience and persisting good will! …. How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands!"”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address at the University of Washington

War, Fear, Time, Parting

“I determined there was a great future in the mail-order business, and I landed a job that brought me to the head of a large department. About this time our daughter Joan was born.
Having a good job and every prospect for advancement, I decided to go into business for myself, with harrowing results. I had no capital when I started and less when I got through. At this time the mail-order company offered me an excellent position if I wanted to come back If I had accepted it, I would probably have been fixed for life with a good living salary. Yet the chances are that I would never have written a story, which proves that occasionally it is better to do the wrong thing than the right.
When my independent business sank without a trace, I approached as near financial nadir as one may reach. My son, Hulbert, had just been born. I had no job, and no money. I had to pawn Mrs, Burroughs' jewelry and my watch in order to buy food. I loathed poverty, and I should have liked to have put my hands on the man who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it. To be poor is quite bad enough. But to be poor without hope … well, the only way to understand it is to be it.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

Life, Money, Food, Hope

“Those with wholeness of understanding will be primarily motivated towards Watchfulness by their coming to see clearly that only perfection and nothing else is worthy of their desire and that there is no worse evil than the lack of and removal from perfection. For after this has become clear to them, as well as the fact that the means to this end are virtuous deeds and traits, they will certainly never permit themselves to diminish these means; nor will they ever fail to make use of their full potential. For it would already have become clear to them that if these means were reduced in number or not employed with complete effectiveness, with all of the energy that they called for, true perfection would not be attained through them, but would be lacked to the extent that sufficient exertion was lacking in relation to them.”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 4

Motivation, Understanding, Evil, Perfection

“Each one of those ['Ellipsoids'] took at least three months [each]. I was starting those, when I was still at the Düsseldorf Academy. There was a very nice man in the workshop there who was very helpful in the process of making them. And they were extremely complicated – to get the shape right and everything. I mean one could get them sent to a factory, and have them produced according to these computer drawings, but somehow I didn’t really want to do this at the time – and also I did not have the money to do that anyway. Once I tried to have one fabricated in this way, but when it came back there was nothing there somehow. It was not like the ones that were made in the workshop”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Money, Way, Time, Help

“The icing on the cake is where I had to take second fiddle to Yaxeni Oriquen Garcia 2005 Ms Olympia that was a big stab in the back at the time we were instructed to reduce 20% in the muscularity round.. I normally compete at 160-162 that year being the embassador of the sport I must lead by example, which I did. I competed at 155lbs still same conditioning, shape etc…. Lord behold second fiddle to Yaxeni.. It looked as if Yaxeni had did the opposite of what the current ruling stated and she was being rewarded.. Come on we have two different body types! I have a small tapered waist line, fine detail flowing through out my body, nice harmony and she's displaying nothing but BIG. When someone refers to Yaxeni body they say she's a big girl.. She has great confidence about herself on stage, which is an EXCELLENT tool and having that can always gain you a few points, but to flat out win is RIDICULOUS and not possible… Anyhow, Yaxeni was more surprised then I when hearing her name announced victoriously. And believe it or not annoucing the winner that year was Lenda Murray, so she was probably soaking up every second of me losing as a mild way of payback. I was always told when going after the champ you have to completely knock the champ "OUT."”

Iris Kyle (1974) American bodybuilder

Anything close should not cause you a win.
2012-02-05
An Exclusive Interview With the Ms. Olympia Champion Iris Kyle
RX Muscle
Internet
http://www.rxmuscle.com/rx-girl-articles/female-bodybuilding/4986-an-exclusive-interview-with-the-ms-olympia-champion-iris-kyle.html
Sourced quotes, 2012

Way, Confidence, Girl, Sport

“Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (2) “Yonderboy”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Religion, Girl

“The Opera House is a splendid edifice, and I wish to take nothing away from it, but my heart belongs to the Harbour Bridge. It's not as festive, but it is far more dominant – you can see it from every corner of the city, creeping into frame from the oddest angles, like an uncle who wants to get into every snapshot. From a distance it has a kind of gallant restraint, majestic but not assertive, but up close it is all might. It soars above you, so high that you could pass a ten-storey building beneath it, and looks like the heaviest thing on earth. Everything that is in it – the stone blocks in its four towers, the latticework of girders, the metal plates, the six-million rivets (with heads like halved apples) – is the biggest of its type you have ever seen. This is a bridge built by people who have had an Industrial Revolution, people with mountains of coal and ovens in which you could melt down a battleship. The arch alone weighs 30,000 tons. This is a great bridge.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Pages 80-81
In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

People, Mountain, Heart, Housing

“What could be more fascinating than discovering life that had evolved entirely independently of life here on Earth? Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we are not entirely alone in this vast cold cosmos. But I hope that our Mars probes will discover nothing. It would be good news if we find Mars to be completely sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sands would lift my spirit.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

Where Are They? Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing https://nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf (2008)

Life, People, Hope, Learning

“‘ Win or lose, we achieve nothing in the world that we understand […]’‘ But then the world does not matter.’‘ Indeed it does not […] It is good to understand that.’”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 10

World, Understanding

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

Women, People, Imagination, Understanding

“What did you do today?
—Went to the grocery store and Xeroxed a box of English muffins, two pounds of ground veal and an apple. In flagrant violation of the Copyright Act.
—You had your nap, I remember that—
—I had my nap.
—Lunch, I remember that, there was lunch, slept with Susie after lunch, then your nap, woke up, right?, went Xeroxing, right?, read a book not a whole book but part of a book—
—Talked to Happy on the telephone saw the seven o’clock news did not wash dishes want to clean up some of this mess?
—If one does nothing but listen to the new music, everything else drifts, frays. Did Odysseus feel this way when he and Diomedes decided to steal Athene’s statue from the Trojans, so that they would become dejected and lose the war? I don’t think so, but who is to know what effect the new music of that remote time had on its hearers?
—Or how it compares to the new music of this time?
—One can only conjecture.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The New Music”, opening
Great Days (1979)

War, Happiness, Books, Music

“False men and shams talk big and do nothing.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Men, Falseness

“She tried out the chamber pot, although she really had nothing to contribute.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

“The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“Characters,” p. 306
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Success

“Nothing is more certain than that whatever has to court public favor for its support will sooner or later be prostituted to utilitarian ends. The educational institutions of the United States afford a striking demonstration of this truth. Virtually without exception, liberal education, that is to say, education centered about ideas and ideals, has fared best in those institutions which draw their income from private sources. They have been able … to insist that education be not entirely a means for breadwinning. This means that they have been relatively free to promote pure knowledge and the training of the mind. … In state institutions, always at the mercy of elected bodies and of the public generally, and under obligation to show practical fruits for their expenditure of money, the movement toward specialism and vocationalism has been irresistible. They have never been able to say that they will do what they will with their own because their own is not private. It seems fair to say that the opposite of the private is the prostitute.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), pp. 136-137.

Money, Truth, Education, Idea

“Undoubtedly, such expressions as, 'Turn yourselves,' &c. relate to the free power which every man has to will; but if Pelagius had half an eye, he might see that God, in giving the precept which directs us to turn unto him, influences also the human will, and excites it to action; not, indeed, in opposition our free choice, but the reverse, as I have all along maintained. Hence it is written, 'Without me ye do nothing.' And again, 'I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which with me.' And lastly, 'I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and shall be clean; and I will cleanse you from your idols. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will put within you; and I will take away the stony heart, and will give you a heart of flesh.”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

De causa Dei contra Pelagium

God, Water, Heart, Housing

“In fact, as we shall see in the next section, most attempts to explicitly measure military power are mere tabulations of forces of various sorts: the numbers of men underarms, the number of weapons of a given type, etc. This is in itself an evasion of the problem since it says nothing about the actual capabilities of the forces of one country to deal with another.”

Andrew Marshall (1921–2019) the director of the United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment

Problems of Estimating Military Power (August 1966)

Men, Problem, Country

“Had Congress undertaken to guarantee religious freedom, or any particular species of it, they would then have had a pretense to interfere in a subject they have nothing to do with. Each state, so far as the clause in question does not interfere, must be left to the operation of its own principles.”

James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

July 30, 1788, p. 172.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)

Question, Freedom

“(Gordon Mitchell) weighed 220 pounds when he did these muscle pictures, and he went down to 160 pounds for this movie, like nothing.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

“This is what the Son of God desires of you: that he might be able to embellish, perfect and gain you lustre with the fullness of his gifts. Since he is so taken by your Beauty, which flows and gushes from him to you, as I have said, what he desires of you is that he might have the supreme pleasure of an eternity enjoying you and his gifts. Thus, everyone who proceeds to live in a way that is contrary to his own self, lives in God; his whole being is God-orientated; he sees nothing but God and himself.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, A Letter to a Religious

God, Pleasure, Beauty, Way

“Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth.
But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise.”

René Descartes book La Géométrie

First Book
La Géométrie (1637)

Pleasure, Problem, Science, Training

“I had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Surely “cowardice“ had nothing to do with his decision. Surely he had nothing so primitive and unmilitary as a will to live.”

Joe Haldeman book The Forever War

Source: The Forever War (1974), Chapter 20 (p. 107)

Decision

“The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 139
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Housing

“You cannot imagine how taxation has increased. Yet everyone is afraid to complain about it. The new State loans are nothing but confiscation of private property, because no one believes that the Government will ever make repayment, not even pay interest after the first few years.”

Günter Reimann (1904–2005) German economist

Source: The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, 2014, p. 7 (letter from a German businessman)

Imagination

“When they carried Jack in, Hill threw his coat over Jack's head, and I held his head to throw the coat over it. It wasn't repulsive to me for one moment — nothing was repulsive to me”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

“There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Hope, Sense

“Stability is not everything, but without stability, everything is nothing.”

Karl Schiller (1911–1994) German scientist and politician

[Hanke, Steve H., The Great Destabilizer, https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/great-destabilizer, Cato Institute, 30 August 2018, 2014]

“It was selfish and nothing more. The same way a child doesn't want to share her favorite toy. I understand that secrecy is part of, well, an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity. And when you deprive your friends, or someone like your son Gunner, of experiences like I had, you're basically stealing from them. You're depriving them of something they have a right to. Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mae, to Bailey; p. 303
The Circle (2013)

Way, Behavior, Understanding, Knowledge

“Sinbad is produced in accordance with the fine old Shubert precept that nothing succeeds like undress. p. 6”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 1: 1918

“A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), pp. 51-52

God, Pleasure, Fear, Nature

“Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism… professor Noam Chomsky decides to leave that central question open. We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden's claim of responsibility, he states, than we would have to believe Chomsky's own claim to have won the Boston Marathon… Nothing serious," as Chomsky puts it, "has been provided since.".. So is one to assume that he [Chomsky] has pored through the completed findings of the 9/11 Commission? Viewed any of the videos in which the 9/11 hijackers are seen in the company of Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Read the transcripts of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker"? Followed the journalistic investigations of Lawrence Wright, Peter Bergen, or John Burns, to name only some of the more salient? Acquainted himself with the proceedings of associated and ancillary investigations into the bombing of the USS Cole or indeed the first attempt to bring down the Twin Towers in the 1990s?”

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

2010s, 2011

World, Question, Reading, Personality

“The insufficiency of defining goodness as not hurting others is clearly demonstrated by the general assessment of the behavior of most Germans under the Nazis. According to this definition, most Germans during the Holocaust were good people, since they did not hurt anyone. Yet most of us do not consider such Germans good people, clearly indicating that we recognize the impossibility of defining a good person as one who does not hurt anyone.
You do not have to do something bad in order to do bad; you only have to do nothing.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Source: 1980s, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism (1986), p. 43

People, Behavior, Hurt, Personality

“Since becoming a journalist I had often heard the advice to "believe nothing until it has been officially denied."”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Page 190
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

“The prophecy of Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, that the occupation would corrupt us through and through and turn us into a people of exploiters and secret-service-men, has come awfully true. Nothing has remained of the "beautiful Eretz Israel " but a cloying nostalgia, of which Naomi Shemer was a standard-bearer. A small and gallant state, progressive and (relatively) egalitarian, respected by the world, has become an occupying and looting state, hostage to delirious settlers, full of internal violence and "swinish capitalism" (a phrase coined by Shimon Peres, one of those most responsible for this situation). Throughout the world, the idea of boycotting Israel is gaining ground.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

Death of a Myth (May 12, 2005)

Men, People, Secret, World

“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“And you know the sun's settin' fast
And just like they say nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover.
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town?
Goodnight.”

Iris DeMent (1961) American singer and songwriter

Our Town
Song lyrics, Infamous Angel (1992)

Lovers, Kiss, Sun, Heart

“For, for aught we know, or for aught that the new science can say to the contrary, the gods which play the part of fate to the atoms of our brains may be our own minds. Through these atoms our minds may perchance affect the motions of our bodies and so the state of the world around us. To-day science can no longer shut the door on this possibility; she has no longer any unanswerable arguments to bring against our innate conviction of free-will. On the other hand, she gives no hint as to what absence of determinism or causation may mean. If we, and nature in general, do not respond in a unique way to external stimuli, what determines the course of events? If anything at all, we are thrown back on determinism and causation; if nothing at all, how can anything ever occur? As I see it, we are unlikely to reach any definite conclusions on these questions until we have a better understanding of the true nature of time.”

James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe

Source: The Mysterious Universe (1930), p. 29-30 of 1930 ed.

God, Fate, World, Way

“I speak of the war as fruitless; for it is clear that, prosecuted upon the basis of the proclamations of September 22d and September 24th, 1862, prosecuted, as I must understand these proclamations, to say nothing of the kindred blood which has followed, upon the theory of emancipation, devastation, subjugation, it cannot fail to be fruitless in every thing except the harvest of woe which it is ripening for what was once the peerless republic.”

Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) American politician, 14th President of the United States (in office from 1853 to 1857)

Address to the Citizens of Concord, New Hampshire (4 July 1863).

War, Understanding

“Since all preceding schools of painting have proved that the spirit of beauty does not lie in nature but in the 'I', now that painting in all its various expressions from Giotto to Cézanne has demonstrated that all beauty is in the 'I', that the 'I' is all emotion and that beyond the 'I' nothing can exist because all being exists only in relationship with the 'I', now the time has come to develop from this 'I' a new style. As soon as this 'I' becomes the general, universal 'I' instead of the individualistic or the rationalistic one, the new style will be a general style.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

from his article: 'The new style in painting', in the Dutch journal 'De Avondpost', 2 May 1916
this quote of Van Doesburg is announcing more or less De Stijl movement as a general modern art style
1912 – 1919

Lie, School, Beauty, Nature

“There's nothing much I can tell you about this war. It's like all wars, I suppose. The undertakers are winning it. Oh, the politicians will talk a lot about the "glory" of it, and the old men'll talk about the "need" of it—the soldiers, they just want to go home.”

James Lee Barrett (1929–1989) Tony Award winner, screenwriter and United States Marine

Shenandoah (1965)

War, Home

“There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In response to a question regarding the possibility of payroll tax increases under a McCain presidency, 27 July 2008 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25932581/ 2000s, 2008

“Nothing is known for certain, Isarda. All knowledge is illusion—purpose is a meaningless word, a mere sound, a reassuring fragment of melody in a cacophony of clashing chords. All is flux—matter is like these jewels. (She throws a handful of gleaming gems upon the golden surface; they scatter. When the last jewel has ceased to move, she looks up at him.) Sometimes they fall into a rough pattern, usually they do not. So as this moment, a pattern has been formed—you and I stand here speaking. But at any moment that which constitutes our beings may be scattered again.”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Prologue (p. 321)
Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

Knowledge

“Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Source: Taken Care Of (1965), Ch. 19

Reality

“By Suprematism, I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in the pictorial arts. From the Suprematist point of view, the appearances of natural objects are in themselves meaningless; the essential thing is feeling – in itself and completely independent of the context in which it has been evoked. Academic naturalism, the naturalism of the impressionists, of Cézannism, of Cubism, etc., are all so to speak nothing but dialectic methods, which in themselves in no way determine the true value of the work of art.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in: Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 451
Malevich valued Cezanne's art as a temporarily necessary but still 'provincial art' in the long developing line of modern art
1921 - 1930

Art, Way, Feeling, Nature

“Nothing in the universe can hold down that rare individual who clearly realizes that he or she dosen't know what's in the way of his or her happiness, but who is willing to find out.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

Freedom From the Ties that Bind

Happiness, Way, Universe

“Sing, sweet nightingale,
Sing me a song of a night never-ending,
Sing, sweet nightingale,
And I'll try to pretend
That tomorrow's nowhere near
And there's nothing to fear.”

Tom Springfield (1934) English musician, songwriter and record producer

Song Morning Please Don't Come.

Fear, Singing, Night

“Barack has lead by example. When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test—for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.”

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

Speech to the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City (June 2008), quoted in "Did Michelle say Barack born in Kenya?" http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/136769/ by Jerome R. Corsi, WND.com (5 April 2010). Michelle says Barack's Home country is Kenya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJihJBePcs (YouTube video) 2000s

Home, Country

“Nothing penetrates the liberal's sense of moral outrage.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

Afterburner with Bill Whittle https://web.archive.org/web/20090225020338/http://www.pjtv.com/page/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/127/ ()

Sense

“Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

In an interview with The Idler (1896), as quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 309

“Until always and forever. Now in 1944. After all the hours lived through. The vectors continue in their original direction. Nothing stops them. With no more knowledge than live emotion. With no other wish than to go on until they meet. Slowly. With great unease, but with the certainty that all is guided by the "golden section". There is cellular arrangement. There is movement. There is light. All centers are the same. Folly doesn’t exist. We are the same as we were and as we will be. Not counting on idiotic destiny.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote of Frida Kahlo, from her letter to Diego Rivera (1944), as cited in The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait; ed. Carlos Fuentes & C. Fuentes; Abrams, Harry N. Inc. 2005
1925 - 1945

Knowledge, Light

“I do not want to suffer, I do not have a christian concept of suffering. They tell us that suffering elevates the spirit; no suffering is something that hurts and that's all, it elevates nothing. And therefore I fear suffering. Because with regards to death, I, who in everything believe to be moderate, am absolutely radical. If we have a right to life, we have also a right to death. It rests on us, and it must be regognized the right to choose the when and the how of our own death.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

cited in la Repubblica, 25 April 2002.
2000s - 2010s

Life, Death, Fear, Suffering

“If you have to help a person die, say nothing. Let the police do their own sleuthing.”

Derek Humphry book Final Exit

"Beware of the Law", p. 18
Final Exit

Help, Personality

“Lead your child by the hand to the great scenes of nature; teach him on the mountain and in the valley. There he will listen better to your teaching; the liberty will give him greater force to surmount difficulties. But in these hours of liberty it should be nature that teaches rather than you. Do not allow yourself to prevail for the pleasure of success in your teaching; or to desire in the least to proceed when nature diverts him; do not take away in the least the pleasure which she offers him. Let him completely realize that it is nature that teaches, and that you, with your art, do nothing more than walk quietly at her side. When he hears a bird warble or an insect hum on a leaf, then cease your talk; the bird and the insect are teaching; your business is then to be silent.”

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer

Diary entry (1774-02-15)

Pleasure, Art, Mountain, Business

“He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VIII, 58
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

Life, Death, Fear, Feeling

“Every time I've done something in the community, each of the people that I've met, they're an inspiration to me. Their spirits are so high. What I'm going through on the field is nothing compared to what they're going through. Their issue is a matter of life and death. Just being able to put one moment of happiness in their life, that's something that I really cherish doing.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

Quoted here http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/092108acj.html

Life, Death, Happiness, People

“On a certain day I packed my things and went to Oosterbeek [c. 1834-36]. I saw a man lying out of the window somewhere. Farmer! are there rooms for rent nearby? - Yes sir, even here. - I went in, saw a beautiful, suitable painting room; that satisfied me, I ask for nothing more. One hundred fifty guilders was the rent [per year]. I offered a hundred sixty when he also worked the garden and planted a lot of red cabbage, because I like to see that.”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders, in Nederlands): Ik pakte mijn rommeltje en ging op een goeden dag naar [c. 1834-36]. Daar zag ik ergens een man uit het venster liggen. Boer! zijn hier in de buurt ook kamers te huur? - Jawel meneer, hier zelfs. - Ik ging naar binnen, zag een mooie, geschikte schilderkamer; dat was mij genoeg, ik vraag naar niets meer. Honderdvijftig gulden was de huur [per jaar]. Ik bood honderdzestig als hij dan ook den tuin bewerkte en vooral veel roode kool plantte, want die zie ik graag.
p. 78
1880's, Johannes Warnardus Bilders' (1887/1900)

Beauty, Lying, Painting

“What do I say to them in the dressing-room? Nothing really. Most of the time I don't even know what they are going to do myself.”

Kenny Dalglish (1951) Scottish association football player and manager

On managing Liverpool FC ( Source http://imdb.com/name/nm0197910/bio)

Time

“Experience is, in fever and anguish, the putting into question (to the test) of that which a man knows of being. Should he in this fever have any apprehension whatsoever, he cannot say: “I have seen God, the absolute, or the depths of the universe”; he can only say “that which I have seen eludes understanding”—and God, the absolute, the depths of the universe are nothing if they are not categories of the understanding.

If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 4

God, Understanding, Question, Decision

“I am nothing — a will-o'-the-wisp at your service — a clod of vivified dust whom its progenitors christened Amos Midwinter. I have no possession but my name, and no calling but that of philosopher. Naked I came from the earth, and naked I will return to it.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. I

“Each one of these bodies [art-works which Arp made] certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 383

Art, Change

“Harry Dresden: Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.
But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002)

People, Way, Travel, History

“We have erased segregation in those areas of national life to which Federal authority clearly extends. So doing in this, my friends, we have neither sought nor claimed partisan credit, and all such actions are nothing more -- nothing less than the rendering of justice. And we have always been aware of this great truth: the final battle against intolerance is to be fought -- not in the chambers of any legislature -- but in the hearts of men.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Address at the Hollywood Bowl http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/quotes.html (19 October 1956) 1950s

Life, Men, Truth, Justice

““Time to get up,” he informed her. “Don’t you hear the Almighty bellowing in the living room?”
“What’s he saying?” Marsha murmured crossly.
“Nothing in particular. Repent or suffer eternal damnation. The usual tribal tub-thumping.””

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 8 (p. 103)

Suffering, Time

“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 4, "Good Infection"
Mere Christianity (1952)

Christ

“Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Cæsar and his fortunes in your boat.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Parallel Lives, Caesar

Fear

“Nothing new was to be done or learned there, and the world hurried on to its telephones, bicycles, and electric trams. At past fifty, Adams solemnly and painfully learned to ride the bicycle.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

World, Learning, Past

“When we framed the Constitution, we adopted the British model. Therefore, the President acts as the crown. You see, Britain has no written constitution. So, there is nothing unconstitutional there. But in India we have a Constitution and any legislation even by Parliament contrary to the Constitution is void. As the Constitution now exists, the President has to follow the British precedent in many matters. Unfortunately, there is no British precedent in this matter.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

The Rediff Interview/R Venkataraman

“What we are pursuing is beauty, nothing but beauty. It's not true beauty if we didn't create it. Creating beauty with beauty is not true beauty either; real beauty is achieved by transforming the ugly into the beautiful.”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter Four, Section V

Beauty

“There isn't one specific way of teaching. It varies with each student and his/her ability to grasp what is being imparted. Every student has a different purpose for learning. Some think they will get a chance to perform if they learn from a senior musician. Some even ask me to recommend them to sabhas. But I don't. I firmly believe that opportunities should come on their own. But rarely do we get students who are only interested in learning and expect nothing else. One should be passionate about the art if one is to scale heights.”

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

Source: Interview by Prince Rama Varma "There's no one way to teach".

Art, Way, Thinking, Learning

“Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.”

Ben Horowitz (1966) American businessman

Forbes: "5 Obstacles That Inspired Me To Innovate" https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/06/28/5-obstacles-that-inspired-me-to-innovate/#8f06bb42b77f (28 June 2018)

Wisdom

“One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change of my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was "say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one."”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Adams (11 January 1817), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 48–49 1810s

Life, Men, God, World

“I have nothing against the people. I don’t hate Muslims. But Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It rules every aspect of life — economics, family law, whatever. It has religious symbols, it has a God, it has a book — but it’s not a religion. It can be compared with totalitarian ideologies like Communism or fascism. There is no country where Islam is dominant where you have a real democracy, a real separation between church and state.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Who Says Islam Is Totalitarian?, National Review Online (2009 interview with Jeff Jacoby), 19 October 2010 http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/250189/who-says-islam-totalitarian-andrew-c-mccarthy?page=3, 2000s

Life, God, Hate, People

“Oh, than to enjoy a storm like this
There's nothing I would rather,
Don't dive between the blankets, Miss!
Or else leave room for Father.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), A Watched Example Never Boils

“People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.”

Rem Koolhaas (1944) Dutch architect (b.1944)

From Bauhaus to Koolhaas Interview in Wired magazine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas.html (4 July 1996)

People, Truth, Beauty, Thinking

“Sharpe had no thought of deserting now, for now he was about to fight. If there was any one good reason to join the army, it was to fight. Not to hurry up and do nothing, but to fight the King's enemies, and this enemy had been shocked by the awful violence of the close-range volley and now they stared in horror as the redcoats screamed and ran toward them.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 33
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Fight

“Nothing is made,
Nothing disappears.

The same changes,
At the same places,
Never stopping.

The foundation and the roof
With the world between
Dreaming.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"Hush," p. 61
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Big Chamber”

World, Dreams, Change

“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface; of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

1963 - 1967
Source: Andy, My true Story 3, Gretchen Berg, Los Angeles Free Press (17 March 1967); as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, New York and Boston Museum of modern Art & Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 67

Painting

“The force that had been lent my father he honorably expended in manful well-doing. A portion of this planet bears beneficent traces of his strong hand and strong head. Nothing that he undertook to do but he did it faithfully and like a true man. I shall look on the houses he built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound to the heart all over his little district.”

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

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Strong, Heart, Housing

“Nothing is more characteristic of the Hegelian system of knowledge than the fact that upon its highest pinnacle, where it becomes knowledge of knowledge, i. e. knowledge knowing of itself, it is impossible for it to have any other content but simply the history of philosophy, the account of its continuing self-exposition, in which all individual developments, coming full circle, can only be stages along the road to the absolute philosophy reached in Hegel himself. But that which knowledge is explicitly upon this topmost pinnacle as the history of philosophy, the philosophy completed in Hegel, it is implicitly all along the line: the knowledge of history and the history of knowledge, the history of truth, the history of God, as Hegel was able to say: the philosophy of History. History here has entered so thoroughly into reason, philosophy has so basically become the philosophy of history, that reason, the object of philosophy itself, has become history utterly and completely, that reason cannot understand itself other than a sits own history, and that, from the opposite point of view, it is in a position to recognize itself at once in all history in some stage of its life-process, and also in its entirety, so far as the study permits us to divine the whole. It is a matter of the production of self-movement of the thought-content in the consciousness of the thinking subject. It is not a matter of reproduction! The Hegelian way of looking is the looking of a spectator only in so far as it is in fact in principle and exclusively theory, thinking consciousness. Granting this premise, and setting aside Kierkegaard’s objection that with it the spectator might by chance have forgotten himself, that is the practical reality of his existence, then for Hegel it is also in order (only too much in order!) that the human subject, whilst looking in this manner, stands by no means apart as if it were not concerned. It is in this looking that the something seen is produced. And the thing seen actually has its reality in the fact that it is produced as the thing seen in the looking of the human subject. Man cannot participate more energetically (within the frame-work of theoretical possibility), he cannot be more forcefully transferred from the floor of the theatre on to the stage than in his theory.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Karl Barth Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl, 1952, 1959 p. 284-285
Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl 1952, 1956

Life, God, Truth, Way

“The migration of peoples destroys Europe, but it also ruins the Third World. The shovelling of money that has lasted for half a century into a bottomless well called Africa has led to nothing but increasing misery. Half a century of cultural enrichment in Europe has led to nothing but ghettos and the unprecedented popularity of extreme right-wing parties — perhaps surprisingly, exactly where the culture has been most enriched. I believe that removing this misery is really not the objective, which would for example force the Africans to survive on their own and to strike back at their dictators, who live on “development cooperation”. The Western intellectual zeitgeist is dependent on the misery in Africa. An intellectual needs someone to pamper, because that’s what makes the intellectual necessary. The thought of an independent but truly different African is, to him, intolerable, because only a miserable, helpless and dependent (but of course, similar enough to be understandable and lovable) African offers him a chance to be “good.””

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

He can be “good” only if there is a rising mass of “evil” that is tired of the apathy and begging of the Third World. Jussi Halla-aho (2012), published in the blog Gates of Vienna Then the Darkness Will Begin http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.fr/2012/08/then-darkness-will-begin.html, August 16, 2012. (Note: J.H-A has never published anything in the G.o.V. Translations, publications and quotations have been made by other people) 2010 -

Money, People, World, Understanding

Quotes about nothing page 53

Quotes about nothing
page 53