Quotes about nothing
page 60

“I myself was not born a little Conservative. I was brought up as a Liberal, and afterwards as a Liberal Unionist. The fact that I am here, accepted by you Conservatives as your Leader, is to my mind a demonstration of the catholicity of the Conservative Party, of that readiness to cover the widest possible field which has made it this great force in the country and has justified the saying of Disraeli that the Conservative Party was nothing if it was not a National Party.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Caxton Hall, London (31 May 1937) upon his election as Conservative leader, quoted in The Times (1 June 1937), p. 18.
Prime Minister

Country

“[about public transport] It's unbelievable. People are so desperate to get home. The trains come very regularly, you see them, one minute, two minutes, three minutes… this means nothing to people. As soon as you get on the platform it's a level playing field. I don't care when you arrived, I'm getting on this train.”

Michael McIntyre (1976) British comedian

Live at the Apollo (November 26, 2007)

People, Home, Training

“Endless fascination with nature—nothing more and nothing less—is the key to enlisting people in the fight to save biodiversity.”

Reed Noss (1952)

p. xv https://books.google.com/books/about/Forgotten_Grasslands_of_the_South.html?id=9ZOaZZbukBwC&pg=PR15 Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural History and Conservation (2012)

People, Nature, Fight

“I've been a vegetarian for 21 years and a vegan plant-based athlete for 5 years. … Nothing takes the place of real plant-based nutrition.”

Jason P. Lester (1974) American triathlete and distance runner

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/n7OlTXNTcx/ (12 May 2014).

“The right-of-reply issue has nothing to do with fearing media nor with the 2010 elections. Rather, it has everything to do with imposing unnecessary restraints on media.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: I Stand by the Side of Freedom

Fear

“Now, my dear Lord, I am completely confused. I have tried to attract You, but I see I have nothing to attract You with. I am a pretender. I want Your kingdom, without You. I am a criminal who has tried to plead innocent, and now I have nowhere to hide, no presentations to make. What am I to do, dear Lord?
Then I heard the Lord say: “You have always been, and always will be dear to Me, but you do not believe it. Therefore you separate us by being an enemy to yourself. Come on, My child, and experience what it is to be fully dear to Me.””

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, The Beggar, Volume I: Meditations and Prayers on the Supreme Lord (Hari-Nama Press, 1994)

“I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Raimon to Regina. p. 23
All Men are Mortal (1946)

“I make the most outrageous demands on my imagination and leave aside everything else, theory and nature study, as other people understand them. This is the only way I can work, drawing on nothing but my own faculty of imagination with I feed without stint – except in working hours.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in Marc's letter to August Macke, 1910; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, pp. 127-28
1905 - 1910

People, Way, Imagination, Understanding

“It's in the fight, in the striving, in the mountains unclimbed that fulfillment lies, so if you have nothing to strive for, you have nothing to make you happy. When it comes to "for better" or "for worse," "for better" is often harder on a marriage.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Marriage, Happiness, Mountain, Fight

“Certainly, self-righteous anti-vivisection societies had been hollering, "Abolition! All or Nothing!" But that didn't help the laboratory animals, since while the anti-vivisection groups had been hollering, the number of animals used in United States laboratories had zoomed from a few thousand to over 70 million. That was a pitiful track record, and it seemed a good idea to rethink strategies which have a century-long record of failure.”

Henry Spira (1927–1998) American activist

Idea, Failure, Help, Animals

“What has caused confusion and misunderstanding about his Hinduism is the concept of sarva-dharma-samabhAva (equal regard for all religions) which he had developed after deep reflection. Christian and Muslim missionaries have interpreted it to mean that a Hindu can go aver to Christianity or Islam without suffering any spiritual loss. They are also using it as a shield against every critique of their closed and aggressive creeds. The new rulers of India, on the other hand, cite it in order to prop up the Nehruvian version of Secularism which is only a euphemism for anti-Hindu animus shared in common by Christians, Muslims, Marxists and those who are Hindus only by accident of birth. For Gandhiji, however, sarva-dharma-samabhAva was only a restatement of the age-old Hindu tradition of tolerance in matters of belief. Hinduism has always adjudged a man’s faith in terms of his AdhAra (receptivity) and adhikAra (aptitude). It has never prescribed a uniform system of belief or behavior for everyone because, according to it, different persons are in different stages of spiritual development and need different prescriptions for further progress. Everyone, says Hinduism, should be left alone to work out one’s own salvation through one’s own inner seeking and evolution. Any imposition of belief or behaviour from the outside is, therefore, a mechanical exercise which can only do injury to one’s spiritual growth. Preaching to those who have not invited it is nothing short of aggression born out of self-righteousness. That is why Gandhiji took a firm and uncompromising stand against proselytisation by preaching and gave no quarters to the Christian mission’s mercenary methods of spreading the gospel.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Age, Faith, Religion, Behavior

“The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: 1980s, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987), p. 30

Life

“Love then screams in my own throat; I am the Jesuve, the filthy parody of the torrid and blinding sun.
I want to have my throat slashed while violating the girl to whom I will have been able to say: you are the night.
The Sun exclusively loves the Night and directs its luminous violence, its ignoble shaft, toward the earth, but finds itself incapable of reaching the gaze or the night, even though the nocturnal terrestrial expanses head continuously toward the indecency of the solar ray.
The solar annulus is the intact anus of her body at eighteen years to which nothing sufficiently blinding can be compared except the sun, even though the anus is night.”

Georges Bataille book The Solar Anus

The Solar Anus https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-the-solar-anus The Solar Anus (1927)

Love, Girl, Sun, Night

“Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don't know, and we don't really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Life, World

“The kingdom of God which is within us consists in our willing whatever God wills, always, in every thing, and without reservation; and thus His kingdom comes; for His will is then done as it is in heaven, since we will nothing but what is dictated by His sovereign pleasure.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 269.

God, Pleasure

“What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you — what a revelation.”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

“Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.... this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 31 October 1966; p. 58
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Life, Painting

“Stupid people can learn a language quiet and easy because there is nothing going on in there to keep it out.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Two Years Later: Mexico City Return
Queer: A Novel (1985)

People, Stupidity, Learning

“Doctors, lawyers and even accountants have always understood that they would have to stand firm, functioning as a solid group protecting its own expertise and hence its earning capacity, from the tendency of all merchants to buy cheap and sell dear. They made of their special knowledge a rare and valuable commodity, insisted on a mystique and protected each other by an immovable professional code. They were cynical enough to know that if they were once cast in the role of public martyrs, working harder and more generously than most other groups of workers, they would be left with nothing but masochism, exhaustion and despair to show for it. Like successful trade unions, who have always worked on the principle that the job is worth whatever you can force the employer to pay for it and not a penny more or less, they understood that nobody was going to pay them their fees out of gratitude, that if they left it to the man whose life they had saved to pay them what he thought fit, they would wind up with half an old penny.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

"'Unhelpful to the workers' cause'" [undated], p. 175
The Madwoman's Underclothes (1986)

Life, Knowledge, Success, Despair

“Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Enguerrand VII de Coucy, quoted on p. 570
A Distant Mirror (1978)

Death

“Ah! why do women condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorize between man and man? And why do they not discover, when, "in the noon of beauty's power", that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect. Confined, then, in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 4

Women, Beauty

“Today, after six years, there are… still many respectable people associated with German ‘dynamism’ who have not yet realized that their imagined national and racial rebirth amounts to nothing more than the adoption of the revolutionary system of ‘direct action’ as the fundamental principle of the carrying of the ‘mass revolt’ to completion. Direct action is defined as ‘direct integration by means of corporativism, militarism and myth;’ this is to replace democracy and parliamentarism.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 27

People, Democracy, Imagination

“Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"The Homeric Hexameter" (translated from Schiller) (1799)

“Is this the curse that is laid on the earth?
And must it ever be so,
That there can be nothing of human good
But must from some evil flow?...”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1832

Evil

“Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts. But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people's lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings. But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People, Confidence, Appearance

“Adam Warlock, a being who wished nothing more than to spend the rest of his days within the peaceful environment of the Soul Gem. He now possesses the Infinite Power and the responsibility that goes with it. While I, whose entire life was dedicated to the pursuit of power, now find myself scraping out a living from the soil. Irony worthy of the drama.
Yet strangely enough though, I envy not Adam Warlock.
Somehow I feel, that in the long run, Thanos of Titan came out ahead in this particular deal.”

Jim Starlin (1949) Comic creator

Thanos, in The Infinity Gauntlet (1991), Issue 6 : The Final Confrontation

Life, Peace, Feeling, Soul

“In persevering through my own darkness, I found, I call it my immortal soul, and sanctuary, who can survive whatever life throws at me. Life's so short. To get up every morning and take a good look around in a way that takes nothing for granted. Every day is a gift. Never treat life casually. Never let the bitterness and devilry steal your sweetness, happiness. DRA-2015.”

Linh Nga (1982) American-Vietnamese film director, film producer, actress, screenwriter, and news anchor

Vnexpress. Giai tri page http://giaitri.vnexpress.net/sao/nguyen-linh-nga-93701/tieu-su.html 2015

Life, Happiness, Way, Soul

“All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXX, Section 7, p. 353

Stupidity, Intelligence, Effort

“Though not as bad as most, he was going through that stage where he knew everything worth knowing and nothing his elders said—particularly if it bore any vaguely education hue—was worth hearing. He could not help that. It went with the age.
And I was my age and could not help saying things I knew would do no good.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 4 (p. 18)

Age, Education, Help

“Painting has nothing to do with thinking, because in painting thinking is painting. Thinking is language – record-keeping – and has to take place before and after. Einstein did not think when he was calculating: he calculated – producing the next equation in reaction to the one that went before – just as in painting one form is a response to another and so on.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Thinking, Painting

“Nothing is harder for Satan to bear than a person who recites the Qur’an by looking at the pages”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

of the Qur’an
Thawabul A’mal, Page 231
Shi'ite Hadith

Personality

“To be honest, I wasn't really a huge follower of Doctor Who before I got this part. I mean I knew it was huge, but … I was nothing like my mum, who's a proper diehard Whovian. She's got a Tardis money-bag, and Dalek bubble-bath. But having read the first episode I was utterly smitten, and with the character. Amy's a sassy lady, funny and passionate, and her relationship with the doctor has a really interesting dynamic.”

Karen Gillan (1987) Scottish actress and former model

As quoted in "Karen Gillan: Meet Doctor Who's new assistant" in The Guardian (14 March 2010)

Money, Passion, Reading, Parting

“Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
Is it possible that a theory of man is nothing more nor less than a theory of the speaking creatures?”

Walker Percy book The Message in the Bottle

The Message in the Bottle (1975)

Nature, Animals

“The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 10 (p. 161)

Time

“Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.”

Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766) king of Poland

No. 43.
Maxims and Moral Sentences

Sense, Science

“The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 4 The Running-Down of the Universe

Law, Hope, Nature, Thinking

“I want to write — I want to write — I want to write and never never never will. I know it and I am so unhappy and it seems as though nothing else mattered. Whatever I'm doing, it's always there, an ultimate longing there saying, "Write this — write that — write —" and I can't. Lack ability, time, strength, and duration of vision. I wish someone would tell me brutally, "You can never write anything.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

Take up home gardening!"
Bring Me a Unicorn (1971)

Home, Time

“Sometimes I try to think and nothing comes out of it; but it happens that I doze off and suddenly feel as though someone is rousing me. I am startled, open my eyes, and what my mind was looking for stands before me like an apparition - at once I seize my pencil to draw; the main thing has been done.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich, recorded by Vasily Zhukovsky, c. 1821; cited by Sigrid Hinz, Caspar David Friedrich in Briefen und Bekenntnissen; Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellchaft, Berlin ,1968 p. 239; as cited in 'The Phantasmatic in romantic subjective experience and aesthetics' - Master's Thesis http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1667795&fileOId=2224083 by Adrian Gerardo de Jong; Helsingborg Sweden, Sept. 2010, pp. 46-47 1794 - 1840

Feeling, Thinking, Drawing

“An anarchist does not want to rule others and does not want others to rule him. Nothing is so despicable as half-an-anarchist.”

Frank Van Dun (1947) Belgian law philosopher

E-mail to LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/003291.html (2004-01-20).

“The excursus upon the origin of Odysseus’ scar is not basically different from the many passages in which a newly introduced character, or even a newly appearing object or implement, though it be in the thick of a battle, is described as to its nature and origin; or in which, upon the appearance of a god, we are told where he last was, what he was doing there, and by what road he reached the scene; indeed, even the Homeric epithets seem to me in the final analysis to be traceable to the same need for an externalization of phenomena in terms perceptible to the senses. Here is the scar, which comes up in the course of the narrative; and Homer’s feeling simply will not permit him to see it appear out of the darkness of an unilluminated past; it must be set in full light, and with it a portion of the hero’s boyhood. … To be sure, the aesthetic effect thus produced was soon noticed and thereafter consciously sought; but the more original cause must have lain in the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. Nor do psychological processes receive any other treatment: here too nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed. With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it. Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly: Polyphemus talks to Odysseus; Odysseus talks to the suitors when he begins to kill them; Hector and Achilles talk at length, before battle and after; and no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which express logical and grammatical connections are lacking or out of place.”

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 5

God, Feeling, Nature, Sense

“Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 4.

God, Way, Business, Nature

“The Buddha Fa” is an insight into all mysteries. It encompasses everything and leaves out nothing—from particles and molecules to the universe, from the even smaller to the even greater. It is an exposition of the characteristic of the universe, “Zhen-Shan-Ren,” (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance) expressed at different levels with different layers of meaning. It is also what the Tao School calls the “Tao,” or what the Buddha School calls the “Fa.””

Li Hongzhi (1951) Chinese religious leader and dissident

Truth, School, Universe

“Religion has nothing to tell scientists that can improve their trade. Indeed, the progress of science has required shedding all vestiges of religion, whether those be the beliefs themselves or religious methods for finding “truth.””

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

We do not need those hypotheses.
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 257

Truth, Religion, Science

“Without inspiration, which fills the soul with a healthy warmth, nothing great can ever be brought to pass.”

Adolph Freiherr Knigge (1752–1796) German writer and Freemason

Ohne Begeisterung, welche die Seele mit einer gesunden Wärme erfüllt, wird nie etwas Großes zustande gebracht.
As quoted in ‪30 Minuten für intelligente Schlagfertigkeit‬ (2004) by Stephané Etrillard, p. 55.

Soul

“It's not that everything needs to have substance, but when nothing does then you know we’re living in a bankrupt society, an artistically bankrupt society, and that’s not okay. I think there’s room for forms of entertainment that are very light and frivolous and fun, but when those forms of entertainment, forms of "art" if you will, become presented as something more than that, and are believed to be something more than that, then we’ve got a lot of problems.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Skinnie magazine, March 2010, p. 29

Art, Problem, Thinking, Light

“A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

“He was referring, of course, to the gentleman employed by Henry Luce and you will note, at once, the slightly unpleasant and combative tone of the salesman but there is also so much glee contained in it, an anticipation of the joys of a difficult battle, that even a person of fine scruples, sensitive to the vulgarity of the salesman type (such as yourself, Professor) need not be offended but rather challenged by the contradiction contained herein, i. e. that this crass aggression can co-exist with an ability to draw very fine moral distinctions and to see, very objectively, the damage his father's business was doing to the fauna of the country he loved and that, further - like real estate for instance - it was one of those great Australian enterprises that generate wealth while making nothing new.”

Peter Carey book Illywhacker

Page 561.
Illywhacker (1985)

Love, Business, Joy, Drawing

“I believe evolution is a dangerous theory for seven reasons. […] It's based on nothing but lies; and Satan is the father of lies. The Evolution theory removes all morality and all ways to discover how to have morality. It is the foundation for humanism, racism, Nazism, communism, and the New World Order.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

World, Way, Communication

“Come here my love
And I will lift my spirits high for you
I'd like to fly away and spend a day or two
Just contemplating the fields and leaves and talking about nothing
Just layin' down in shades of effervescent, effervescent odors
And shades of time and tide.”

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

Come Here My Love
Song lyrics, Veedon Fleece (1974)

Love, Time, Flying

“Question Period is not part of the legislative process, and has nothing to do with it. It is a means of monitoring the Executive that the Government cannot evade.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 9, The House of Commons Functions, p. 122

Question, Parting

“I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead ofnearer to it — at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Love, Men, People, Dreams

“Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The Critic

Act II, sc. i.
The Critic (1779)

“I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be governed by the wise; to be guided in the right path by those who know it better than they. This is the first "right of man;" compared with which all other rights are as nothing.”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

“It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Money, Education, Family, Daughters

“President Bush and thousands of others, politicians and preachers, are making speeches and lying in their teeth, all agreeing that they can't explain such tragedies, but they're just certain a loving God had nothing to do with the massacre. They say, evil did it, like Star Wars, some evil force.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, Virginia Tech Massacre: God's Wrath (2007)

Love, God, War, Star

“Whether a person is aware of it or not, he is assaulted constantly by misleading and hostile voices within the mind. They speak both through you and to you. Everyone is their target, but because of their extreme cunning, few people ever detect and dismiss them. So the only problem is a lack of information about these foreign voices. The curing facts are as close as your desire for them. It is extremely important for you to remember the following truth: these hurtful voices are not you, and they do not belong to you, but merely speak through your psychic system. Don't take them as being your own voices, any more than you take radio voices as being your own. They simply use unaware human beings. Your true nature has nothing to do with them. When finally dismissing these sinister speakers you make room for spiritual health and true life.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Solved:The Mystery of Life

Life, Hostility, People, Health

“By contrast, Galileo, the other legendary scientific figure of the era, not only published the most compelling critique of Aristotelian scholasticism in his Dialogues on the Two Chief World Systems, but in the process turned the issue of the epistemic authority of theology versus the epistemic authority of empirical science into a hallmark of modern times. Although Newton clearly sympathized with Galileo, he wrote virtually nothing critical of the Aristotelian tradition in philosophy, and the immense effort he devoted to theology was aimed not at challenging its epistemic authority, but largely at putting it on a firmer footing. Newton made no direct contributions to philosophy of a similar magnitude. Indeed, from his extant writings alone Newton has more claim to being a major theologian than a major philosopher.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

Source: The Cambridge Companion to Newton, 2002, p. 1

World, Effort, Science, Time

“For no one's authority ought to rank so high as to set a value on his words and terms even though nothing clear and determinate lies behind them.”

George Berkeley book De Motu

Paragraph 1.
De Motu (1721)

“Hayek may still have lessons to teach us. The policies he recommended during the Great Depression may have been badly flawed but his insight that prosperity cannot be restored by unending expansion of debt may have some value at a time when the limits of “Keynesian” quantitative easing are becoming clear. It is in any case far from obvious that Keynes would have supported a continuation of QE once a disastrous collapse had been averted. “Keynesianism” is a confection of Keynes’s more mechanical disciples, not an indication of how this mercurially brilliant mind would have responded to our present dilemmas. Again, Hayek’s claim that nothing can be done to mitigate the impact of free markets on social cohesion was dangerously misguided. But he was right to point out that capitalism cannot be remodelled to fit some conception of an ideally fair distribution of resources. Whether any kind of social democracy can be reconciled with the anarchic energies of global markets is an open question.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Friedrich Hayek I knew, and what he got right - and wrong (2015)

Democracy, Question, Support, Time

“I have twice seen Macready act; once in Macbeth and once in Othello. I astounded a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not like him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is, the stage-system altogether is hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do them justice. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on William Macready. Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, (by Clement King Shorter) (1896)

Justice, Imagination, Fashion, Failure

“I don’t know nothing, I think. And glad of it.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1982)

Thinking

“The truth of a proposition has little or nothing to do with its psychodynamics. The notion that ‘truth will prevail’ is merely a pious wish; history doesn’t show it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah’s Children (p. 606)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Truth, History

“The lesson Buddha and Marcus Aurelius had taught centuries earlier: "Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2005), p. 25.

Happiness, Thinking

“It looks as if the war in Europe is rapidly moving towards a conclusion. Probably I am wrong about that but I can't see how it can be otherwise. It seems clear that the Allies are outclassed on mechanical equipment, and it is foolish to talk about modernizing their Armies in times like these, they ought to have thought of that five years ago. There is no excuse for them not thinking of that except for the unintelligent, in fact, stupid, narrow-minded and selfish leadership which the democracies of the world are cursed with.
It is all very well as everybody is in the same position, but when some other system develops stronger leadership, works hard and long, and intelligently and aggressively—which are good traits—and, superimposed upon that, develops the instinct of a racketeer, there is nothing for the democracies to do but fold up. And that is about what it looks as if they are going to do.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (June 1940) cited in: David Farber (2003). Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors. p. 225

War, Stupidity, World, Democracy

“In a vision I beheld the fullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole creation, that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else. And in everything that I saw, I could perceive nothing except the presence of the power of God, and in a manner totally indescribable. And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: "This world is pregnant with God!" Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of creation -- that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else -- but the power of God fills it all to overflowing.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, pp. 169-170

God, World, Soul, Sea

“Poor bloody Dale, Sharpe thought, to be betrayed in his first battle. If he survived he would be invalided out of the army. His broken body, good for nothing, would be sent to Lisbon and there he would have to rot on the quays until the bureaucrats made sure he had accounted for all his equipment. Anything missing would be charged to the balance of his miserable wages and only when the account was balanced would he be put onto a foul transport and shipped to an English quayside. There he was left, the army's obligation discharged, though if he was lucky he might be given a travel document that promised to reimburse any parish overseer who fed him while he traveled to his home. Usually the overseers ignored the paper and kicked the invalid out of their jurisdiction with an order to go and beg somewhere else. Dale might be better off dead than face all that.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Richard Sharpe, commenting on the fate of a wounded Soldier, p. 105
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Travel, Home, Dead

“Nothing—believe me—nothing is more satisfying to me personally than getting a great idea and then beatin' it to death.”

David Letterman (1947) American comedian and actor

Late Night with David Letterman (5 March 1993).

Death, Idea, Personality

““Kristin, nothing ever does change.” I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. “You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves. You’ll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don’t get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules themselves, they’ll send people like Trepp and me to do it. That’s the truth, Kristin. It’s been the truth since I was born a hundred and fifty years ago, and from what I read in the history books, it’s never been any different. Better get used to it.””

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Epilogue (p. 524)
Altered Carbon (2002)

People, Truth, Books, Jerk

“Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Tourists in Paris, from Outside: Selected Writings (1984).

Freedom, Change

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Life, Men, Happiness, Beauty

“In these days, under the rule of capitalism, a government, even if it is full of philanthropy and animated by the best of intentions, can do nothing of real value to our cause. One must keep free from illusions.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Animals

“Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

"Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka"
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Understanding, Reality

“The clash of civilizations is nothing but a clash of different myths.”

Subhash Kak (1947) Indian computer scientist

The Loom of Time (2016)

“[Haile Selassie] died a natural death, as far as I know. I can't deny that there were many of my men who would have been glad to kill him with their bare hands to avenge the fathers and brothers they had lost due to him. The doctor looking after him told me nothing about any deterioration in his health, so there was no way I could personally ascertain what happened.”

Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia

As quoted in Riccardo Orizio, Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, (Walker and Company, 2003), p. 145

Death, Men, Health, Way

“Well, I knew I was an artist the moment I woke up in my mother's belly and, as an artist, I shouldn't have to give interviews.... in some parts of the world, you get scrutinized for saying the wrong thing about art and in other regions, you get scrutinized for saying nothing at all.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)

World, Art, Parting

“Nothing, I suppose, could better demonstrate than the Suez crisis the extent to which the United Nations had remained a central factor in our foreign policy. Our problem was, and is, one of long standing, how to bring about a creative peace and a security which will have a strong foundation. It remained my conviction that there could never be more than a second-best substitute for the UN in preserving the peace. Organizations such as NATO were necessary and desirable only because the UN was not effective as a security agency. UNEF was a step in the right direction in putting international force behind an international decision. The birth of that force had been sudden and had been surgical. The arrangements for the reception of the infant were rudimentary, and the midwives had no precedents or genuine experience to guide them.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume Two
Source: NB: ghost-written post-mortem by Munro and Inglis

Peace, Birth, Problem, Decision

“There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Easy/Lucky/Free
Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)

“For this was the great power of the Lords of the Dark Empire, that they valued nothing on all the Earth, no human quality, nothing within or without themselves. The spreading of conquest and desolation, of terror and torment, was their staple entertainment, a means of employing their hours until their spans of life were ended. For them, warfare was merely the most satisfactory way of easing their ennui…”

Michael Moorcock book The Sword of the Dawn

Book 1, Chapter 1 “The Last City” (p. 259)
The Sword of the Dawn (1968)

Life, Way

“When one has nothing more to lose, the heart is inaccessible to fear.”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

First Journal of Travel (1840)

Fear, Heart

“Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Southey's Colloquies on Society (1830)

People, Birth, Drink, Reading

“As for 'racism', the modern BNP opposes mass immigration and multi-culturalism on the grounds that human biocultural diversity is being exterminated by global capitalism. It demands for every single people and culture on planet Earth the right to self-preservation which it seeks for its own. Such a position is clearly out of step with the extermination-through-assimilation model of multi-culturalism promoted by the dominant ideology of the USA, but it equally clearly has nothing to do with 'hate' or wishing to harm others.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, Civil liberty – the indivisible right.

Hate, People

“Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Eros http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2933.html, st. 1 (1899). Poetry

Love, Youth, Art, Flowers

“When confronted on the street by the police, a common emotion for a person to feel is fear. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it's quite healthy, but do not show it to the cop. If the cop realizes you are afraid of him, he will take full advantage of the situation and play on your fear. This doesn't mean act belligerently, and, for God's sake, do not be a high school or college lawyer, and explain to the cop what he can and cannot do. He can do anything, he's got the gun.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

"Postscript", p. 154.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

God, Fear, School, Feeling

“The flow of information it promotes is free in one respect only. The flow is expected to be freely admitted to all the spaces that its providers desire to transmit to. Otherwise there is nothing free about the information. Quite the contrary. Information and message flows are already, and will continue to be, priced to exact the highest revenues extractable.”

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Two, Visions Of Global Electronic Mastery, p. 85

“books—there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.”

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

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

People, Books, Idea, Reading

“True love goes ever straight forward, not in its own strength, but esteeming itself as nothing. Then indeed we are truly happy. The cross is no longer a cross when there is no self to suffer under it.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 396.

Love, Happiness, Suffering

“Our first rule is, then,
Know What You Want To Say. The second rule is,
Say It.
That is, do not begin by saying something else, which you think will lead up to what you want to say. I remember, when they tried to teach me to sing, they told me to "think of eight and sing seven." That may be a very good rule for singing, but it is not a good rule for talking, or writing, or any of the other things that I have to do. I advise you to say the thing you want to say. When I began to preach, another of my Nestors said to me, "Edward, I give you one piece of advice. When you have written your sermon, leave off the introduction and leave off the conclusion. The introduction seems to me always written to show that the minister can preach two sermons on one text. Leave that off, then, and it will do for another Sunday. The conclusion is written to apply to the congregation the doctrine of the sermon. But, if your hearers are such fools that they cannot apply the doctrine to themselves, nothing you can say will help them."”

Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) American author and Unitarian clergyman

In this advice was much wisdom. It consists, you see, in advising to begin, at the beginning, and to stop when you have done.
Thirdly, and always,
Use Your Own Language.
I mean the language you are accustomed to use in daily life.
How To Do It (1871)

Life, Wisdom, Fools, Thinking

“Poor devils! Where do these unfortunate creatures come from? On what butcher's block will they meet their end? What reward does municipal munificence allot them for thus cleaning (or dirtying) the pavements of Paris? At what age are they sent to the glue factory? What becomes of their bones (their skin is good for nothing)?”

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) French Romantic composer

Pauvres diables!... D'où sortent ces malheureux êtres ?... À quel Montfaucon vont-ils mourir ?... Que leur octroie la munificence municipale pour nettoyer (ou salir) ainsi le pavé de Paris ?... À quel âge les envoie-t-on à l'équarrissage ?... Que fait-on de leurs os ? (leur peau n'est bonne à rien.)
Les Grotesques de la Musique (Paris: A. Bourdilliat, 1859) p. 89; Alastair Bruce (trans.) The Musical Madhouse (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003) pp. 54-56.
Of critics

Age

“The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

Christ, Wealth

“Once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.”

Geddy Lee (1953) vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush

Global Bass interview (2000)

Soul, Search, Parting

“Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie
y adentro de las casas tampoco?Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas.
Si no tienes dònde dormir
toca una puerta y te abrirán,
te abrirán hasta cierto punto
y verás que hace frío adentro,
que aquella casa está vacía,
y no quiere nada contigo,
no valen nada tus historias,
y si insistes con tu ternura
te muerden el perro y el gato.
Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).

Dogs, Cats, Sleep, Housing

“The less you think you are, the more you bear. And if you think you are nothing, you bear everything.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Cuanto menos uno cree ser, más soporta. Y si cree ser nada, soporta todo.
Voces (1943)

Thinking

“To most, death is an incredibly scary and taboo idea. Hospice provides a shoulder to lean on… and the important duty of easing the fears and doubts that naturally reside in our minds as we approach the end of our lifetime. There is nothing I am more proud or passionate about than being a part of this work. It is a life-long commitment for me. A passion that I find to be more gratifying than anything I have ever known. My hope is to inspire others to join me in this fulfilling journey.”

Torrey DeVitto (1984) actress, model, violinist

Quoted in the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) website https://web.archive.org/web/20120720131254/http://www.caringinfo.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3494 (2012).

Life, Death, Fear, Hope

“God brought to my mind that I should sin. And for pleasance that I had in beholding of Him, I attended not readily to that shewing; and our Lord full mercifully abode, and gave me grace to attend. And this shewing I took singularly to myself; but by all the gracious comfort that followeth, as ye shall see, I was learned to take it for all mine even-Christians: all in general and nothing in special: though our Lord shewed me that I should sin, by me alone is understood all.
And therein I conceived a soft dread. And to this our Lord answered: I keep thee full surely. This word was said with more love and secureness and spiritual keeping than I can or may tell.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 37

Love, God, Learning

“It seems to me that if a little flower could speak, it would tell simply what God has done for it without trying to hide its blessings. It would not say, under the pretext of a false humility, it is not beautiful and without perfume, that the sun has taken away its splendor and the storm has broken its stem when it knows that all this is untrue. The flower about to tell her story rejoices at having to publish the totally gratuitous gifts of Jesus. She knows that nothing in herself was capable of attracting the divine glances, and His mercy alone brought about everything that is good in her.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Source: Story of a Soul (1897), Ch. I: Alençon, 1873–1877. As translated by Fr. John Clarke (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1976), p. 15.

God, Beauty, Flowers, Sun

“now I lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine) something which nobody may keep.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

44
73 poems (1963)

Dreams, Imagination

“The terrible burden of having nothing to do.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Le pénible fardeau de n'avoir rien à faire.
Epistle 11

“The theorists of scientific management seem to think that the most subtle methods are indispensable for physical measurements, but for psychological inquiry nothing but a kind of intuition is necessary.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Source: Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913), p. 53

Thinking

“Many Christians who agree that harming a dog or cat is wrong think nothing of harming cows, pigs, chickens, fish and other creatures. We need to understand that if we’re eating meat, we are paying people to be cruel to animals. For the simple reasons that all animals are creatures beloved by God and that God created them with a capacity for pain and suffering, we should adopt a vegetarian diet.”

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

Christianity and Vegetarianism (1990)

God, Pain, People, Dogs

“I came from nothing; but from where
Come these undying thoughts I bear?”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Opening lines of Song of Derivations" https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-song-of-derivations/"A. In Poems (London: John Lane, 1896) this poem is titled "The Modern Poet: A Song of Derivations". In later editions of Poems, it is titled "A Poet's Fancies VIII: A Song of Derivations".

Quotes about nothing page 60

Quotes about nothing
page 60