Quotes about nothing
page 63

“If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

As quoted in Behavior in Organizations : Understanding & Managing the Human Side of Work (1995) by Jerald Greenberg and Robert A. Baron, p. 371

“You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed. That has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Presidential address to the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Karachi (11 August 1947)

Religion, Business

“No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Variant: “You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somewhere?”
“No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.
Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 85

War, Sadness, Time

“It was when he saw the great walls looming above him that he began to run.
He ran as though to obey an order. And this was so, though he knew nothing of it. He ran in the acknowledgement of a law as old as the laws of his home, the law of flesh and blood. The law of longing. The law of change. The law of youth. The law that separates the generations, that draws the child from his mother, the boy from his father, the youth from both.
And it was the law of quest. The law that few obey for lack of valour. The craving of the young for the unknown and all that lies beyond the tenuous skyline.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 80 (p. 805)

Youth, Law, Home, Boy

“Arithmetic and geometry, according to Plato, are the two wings of the mathematician. The object indeed of all mathematical questions, is to determine the ratios of numbers, or of magnitudes; and it may even be said, to continue the comparison of the ancient philosopher, that arithmetic is the mathematician's right wing; for it is an incontestable truth, that geometrical determinations would, for the most part, present nothing satisfactory to the mind, if the ratios thus determined could not be reduced to numerical ratios. This justifies the common practice, which we shall here follow, of beginning with arithmetic.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Source: Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, (1803), p. 2

Truth, Mathematics, Question, Parting

“All I can say is if this is a hurricane then East Tennessee has one about every other week. Seriously. It's not that bad.Some minor wind and intermittent light to medium rain. Nothing bad at all yet.”

Stacey Campfield (1968) US politician

2012-08-27
Ron Paul and the Tampa hurricane convention.
Camp4U
http://lastcar.blogspot.com/2012/08/in-florida-and-ron-paul.html, quoted in * 2012-08-28
Blogging from RNC, Campfield Keeps Sensitive Side in Check
Jeff
Woods
Nashville Scene
http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/08/28/blogging-from-rnc-campfield-keeps-sensitive-side-in-check
Regarding the Republican National Convention being postponed because of Hurricane Isaac

Light

“Damien Hirst's Mother and Child Divided (1993) is a work which can at first glance be read as nothing more than two brutally severed carcasses. "A freak show" was how the art critic of the Sunday Telegraph responded to its presentation in the Turner Prize in 1995. For me, the undoubted shock, even disgust provoked by the work is part of its appeal. Art should be transgressive. Life is not all sweet.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

Life, Art, Reading, Parting

“You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Soul Singer in a Session Band
Cassadaga (2007)

“It is a new form of leadership of states, never encountered yet. I don't know what designation it will be given, but it is a new form. I think that it is based on this state of mind, this state of high national consciousness which, sooner or later, spreads to the periphery of the national organism. It is a state of inner light. What previously slept in the souls of the people, as racial instinct, is in these moments reflected in their consciousness, creating a state of unanimous illumination, as found only in great religious experiences. This state could be rightly called a state of national oecumenicity. A people as a whole reach self-consciousness, consciousness of its meaning and its destiny in the world. In history, we have met in peoples nothing else than sparks, whereas, from this point of view, we have today permanent national phenomena. In this case, the leader is no longer a 'boss' who 'does what he wants', who rules according to 'his own good pleasure': he is the expression of this invisible state of mind, the symbol of this state of consciousness. He does not do what he wants, he does what he has to do. And he is guided, not by individual interests, nor by collective ones, but instead by the interests of the eternal nation, to the consciousness of which the people have attained. In the framework of these interests and only in their framework, personal interests as well as collective ones find the highest degree of normal satisfaction.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

On the form of government he plans on creating.
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

People, Pleasure, World, Soul

“you're rich in love
you're great bed
you'll see the world
you'll knock 'em dead
and all the thick books that you've read
will count for nothing in the end”

Amanda Palmer (1976) American punk-cabaret musician

"Straight" Live (2004)
Lyrics

Love, Books, World, Reading

“Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about a modern battlefield is the desolation and emptiness of it all…one cannot emphasize too much. Nothing is to be seen of war or soldiers--only the split and shattered trees and the burst of an occasional shell reveal anything of the truth. One can look for miles and see no human being. But in those miles of country lurk (like moles or rats, it seems) thousands, even hundreds of thousands of men, planning against each other perpetually some new device of death. Never showing themselves, they launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo and shell. And somewhere too (on the German side we know of their existence opposite us) are the little cylinders of gas, waiting only for the moment to spit forth their nauseous and destroying fumes. And yet the landscape shows nothing of all this--nothing but a few shattered trees and three or four lines of earth and sandbags, these and the ruins of towns and villages are the only signs of war anywhere visible. The glamour of red coats--the martial tunes of flag and drum--aide-de-camps scurrying hither and thither on splendid chargers--lances glittering and swords flashing--how different the old wars must have been!”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

letter to his mother, May 13, 1916
1910s

Death, Men, War, Truth

“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”

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

Letter to John Wyche (19 May 1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

People, Books, Time, Country

“Advanced Courses are the most valuable service on the planet. Life insurance, houses, cars, stocks, bonds, college savings, all are transitory and impermanent … There is nothing to compare with Advanced Courses. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

On his Operating Thetan Courses, in Flag Mission Order 375 (1970).

Life, Cars, Time, Housing

“I have often thought that i am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me…. Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria…I don't think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine…. she had… really nothing to say about the policy of the country. Now look at me. I have 400,000,000 people dependent on my judgement.”

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) Chinese empress

As attributed in The last empress: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of modern China, Hannah Pakula, 2009, Simon and Schuster, 391, 1439148937, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=4ZpVntUTZfkC&pg=PA39, This is redacted from the account of Princess Der Ling, Two Years in the Forbidden City (1911), p. 356 http://books.google.com/books?id=KdUMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA356

Life, People, Thinking, Dependency

“Nothing risqué nothing gained!”

Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress, singer, model

Source: On Being Blonde (2004), p. 78

“Nothing that rest on some contradictory basis shall succeed or last in the long run ("ne saurait réussir ou durer, à la longue", Fr.); all that involve (or imply…) a contradiction is fatally destined, early or late, to disintegrate and disappear.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 37.

“Over the past few weeks, as the world commemorates Nelson Mandela, an uncomfortable spotlight has been shone on Conservatives who branded the ANC as terrorists in the 1980s,” he says in an article on the UK ConservativeHome website. How will today’s crop of Conservative climate refuseniks explain themselves to future generations, in a world made hotter, nasty and poor by global warming? There is nothing Conservative about advocating for the destruction of the climate, and thus all we hold dear. This is not a credible Conservative standpoint: it is reckless and extreme.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Quoted on BBC News, "Mohamed Nasheed: climate denying Conservatives “risk irrelevancy”" http://www.rtcc.org/2014/01/14/mohamed-nasheed-climate-denying-conservatives-risk-irrelevancy/, January 14, 2014.

World, Past, Future

“Nothing should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935)

“You don't get something for nothing
You can't have freedom for free.
You won't get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dream might be.
-- Something for Nothing (1976)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Dreams, Sleep, Freedom

“The poetical character… is not itself — it has no self — it is every thing and nothing — It has no character — it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it fair or foul, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. — It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philospher, delights the camelion poet.”

John Keats Letter to Richard Woodhouse

Letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Light

“The next thing you can learn from the woman who was a sinner, something she herself understood, is that with regard to finding forgiveness she is able to do nothing at all. P. 155”

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

1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850

Forgiveness, Learning

“Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on. We do need to intervene, to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad governments, where people are suffering.
One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive actions — reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing else works.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

BuzzFlash interview (2004)

People, World, Way, Democracy

“When I look back upon the choices I made in making Mansfield Park, I feel they were pretty ballsy. I just thought there has to be a reason why I was doing a period piece. I wanted to say, "Look, we are rich because of slavery. We stole people and made them into slaves. Nothing comes for free."”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

I didn't want to do another English dance party.
As quoted in "Patricia Rozema : The Mermaid's Song" interview with Patricia Rozema, in The View from Here : Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (2007) by Matthew Hays, p. 289

People, Feeling, Dance

“These people were worthy of love and admiration in their blind loyalty, in their blind strength and tenacity. With the exception of one small thing, one tiny little thing, they lacked nothing that the sage and thinker had, and that was the consciousness of the unity of all life.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Source: Siddhartha (1922), p. 90

Love, Life, People, Loyalty

“Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. IV (1928)

Learning

“If my history lesson has done nothing else, it should have reminded you that, during any given period in the evolving history of physics, the prevailing, main line, climate of opinion was likely as not to be wrong, as seen in the light of later developments. And yet, in those earlier times, with relatively few individuals involved, change did occur, but slowly… What is fundamentally different in the present day situation in high energy physics is that large numbers of workers are involved, with corresponding pressures to conformity and resistance to any deflection in direction of the main stream, and that the time scale of one scientific generation is much too long for the rapid pace of experimental discovery. I also have a secret fear that new generations may not necessarily have the opportunity to become familiar with dissident ideas.”

Julian Schwinger (1918–1994) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by Sameer Shah in "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em": Julian Schwinger's Conflicts in Physics. Directions in Cultural History, The UCLA Historical Journal, Volume 21, 2005-2006, p. 50

Secret, Fear, History, Idea

“Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

The Guest (1914)

Knowledge, Passion, Evil

“I’ve been good, I’ve been bad—nothing gets her attention. What am I supposed to do, sacrifice a goat?”
“Perhaps you should start a religion. You know—reveal your mother to the world.”
“How can I reveal her when I don’t know what she’s like?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“Use your imagination. Everybody else does.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 84)

World, Religion, Imagination

“He knew everything in theory, nothing in practice… He knew the moves, he'd never played the game.”

Graham Greene book Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock (1938)

Game

“Some of the Etudes in the first set, opus 10, were written by the time Chopin was twenty. It is with these pieces that Chopin's style was fully revealed in all its power and subtlety. Later works are sometimes more ambitious and, in a few cases, more audacious, but there were no radical changes of style, nothing to compare to the later revolutions we find in the careers of Haydn and Beethoven, or even in the shorter lives of Mozart and Schubert. Chopin's mastery was proven with the twelve Etudes of opus 10.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Change, Time

“Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their preconceptions.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"Sun of Helioscope", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Life, Knowledge, Sense, Learning

“It's all you deserve. You've got the cash,
what the hell do you care? You've got
nothing to lose. You are inheritors of a great
tradition. My country right or wrong!
You do what you're told to do. You don't
answer back the way Tommy Jeff did or Ben
Frank or Georgie Washing. I'll say you
don't. You're civilized. You let your
betters tell you where you get off. Go
ahead”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"Impromptu: The Suckers"
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)

Way, Hell, Country

“I am the one to whom you wrote in care of the Belgian Academy… Read no newspapers, try to find a few friends who think as you do, read the wonderful writers of earlier times, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, and the classics of other lands, and enjoy the natural beauties of Munich's surroundings. Make believe all the time that you are living, so to speak, on Mars among alien creatures and blot out any deeper interest in the actions of those creatures. Make friends with a few animals. Then you will become a cheerful man once more and nothing will be able to trouble you.
Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone — and necessarily so — and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere.
I shake your hand in heartfelt comradeship, E.”

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

Response to a letter from an unemployed professional musician (5 April 1933), p. 115
The editors precede this passage thus, "Early in 1933, Einstein received a letter from a professional musician who presumably lived in Munich. The musician was evidently troubled and despondent, and out of a job, yet at the same time, he must have been something of a kindred spirit. His letter is lost, all that survives being Einstein's reply....Note the careful anonymity of the first sentence — the recipient would be safer that way:" Albert Einstein: The Human Side concludes with this passage, followed by the original passages in German.
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Beauty, Nature, Thinking, Time

“The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-bucket-list-2008 of The Bucket List (10 January 2008) Reviews, One-star reviews

People, Suffering

“The deed is everything, the glory nothing.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Act IV, A High Mountain Range
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

“In the beginning of 1917, two solutions of the field equations for a homogeneous isotropic universe had been found, which I… call the solutions "A" and "B."… at that time only static solutions were looked for. It was thought that the universe must be a stable structure… In one of these solutions (B) the average density was zero, it was empty; the other one (A) had a finite density…. In B, to get the real universe, we should have to put in a few galactic systems, in A we should have to condense the evenly distributed matter into galactic systems. The universe A… has an average density, but no expansion. It is therefore called the static universe. B, on the other hand… expands, and it could only parade in the garb of a static universe because there is nothing in it to show the expansion. B is therefore called the empty universe. Thus we had two approximations : the static universe with matter and without expansion, and the empty one without matter and with expansion. The actual universe… has both matter and expansion… In 1917… the actual value of the density was still entirely unknown, and the expansion had not yet been discovered.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Universe, Time

“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the acting and story went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railway whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

On Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger
Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones (June 30, 1882).

Life, Night

“Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God’s person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.”

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

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xx

God, Problem, Thinking, Change

“Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Twelve Types (1903) Charles II

Men, Heart

“I want to know that I've done everything I could every day I think of all those people out there who are depending on us. I think about it. It does make me feel we need more work, more help. Get those spectators on the playing field, or out of the arena. Really, that is how I feel about it. I do what I can, and I do it the way I do everything… there's nothing part of the way for me.”

Tom Cruise (1962) American actor and film producer

Transcript of Tom Cruise on Scientology (January 16, 2008)

People, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“If Germany is going again to be a great armed camp, filled with a population about twice as great as that of any State in Europe; and if she is going again to pursue a policy of world domination, it will no doubt tax all the statesmanship of the rest of the world to prevent a repetition of the calamities from which we have been suffering. But the only radical cure for this is a change in the international system of the world—a change which French statesmen are doing nothing to promote, and the very possibility of which many of them regard with ill-concealed derision. They may be right; but if they are, it is quite certain that no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power, trembling at the nod of its great neighbours in the East, and depending from day to day on the changes and chances of a shifting diplomacy and uncertain alliances.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Memorandum, 'France's Fear of German Aggression' (28 March 1919), quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), pp. 204–205.

World, Suffering, Change, Chance

“I wish for nothing more than justice, either upon principle of merit or rank, and will at all times rest satisfied when your Excellency tells me I ought to be. I feel myself strongly attached to the cause, to the Continental Congress, and to your Excellency's person and I should consider it a great misfortune to be deprived of an opportunity of taking an active part in the support of the one, and the promotion of the other.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (May 1776)

Justice, Feeling, Support, Time

“Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Sonnet XXII from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)

Peace, Beauty

“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Give All to Love http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/give_all_to_love.htm, st. 1 1840s, Poems (1847)

Love, Heart

“Nothing moves except my eyes and my hand occasionally turning a page, and yet something not exactly defined by the word "text" unfurls, progresses, grows and takes root as I read. But how does this process take place?”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Reading Shadows, p. 28.
A History of Reading (1996)

Reading

“All the bloodshed caused by the warlike disposition of Napoleon is as nothing compared to the myriads of persons who have sunk into their graves through a misplaced confidence in the value of beef tea.”

John Milner Fothergill (1841–1888) British physician and medical writer

Quoted in Shall We Slay to Eat? https://books.google.it/books?id=WNQvAQAAMAAJ by John Harvey Kellogg, Good Health Publishing Company, 1899, p. 124.

Confidence, Tea, Personality

“Julia's original email says, "We have nothing to lose." But in the end they lost everything — their company, their lives, everything. And the ironic thing is, the procedure worked. The swarm actually solved the problem they had set for it.”

Michael Crichton Prey

Prey (2002)

Problem

“No, I've never really changed. Nothing's changed my mind. And by the way, you know, you have a huge group of people — I walk down the street, and people are screaming, "Please don't give that up." A lot of people are questioning his birth certificate. They're questioning the authenticity of his birth certificate. I've been known as being a very smart guy for a long time. I don't consider myself birther or not birther, but there are some major questions here and the press doesn't wanna cover it. The press just refuses to cover it. Now if that were somebody else, they would be covering it, and they'd be throwing people out of office. But they don't want to cover it. So it's interesting.”

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

2010s, 2012

People, Way, Guy, Birth

“They think the privateer’s life one of nothing but adventure, violence, evasion, and escape. But, between letters of marque, bills of lading, rosters, inventories, and plunder contracts, it involves, in fact, more paperwork than any thing else.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 9, “Fleur de Lys” (p. 135)

Life, Thinking

“Take the actions of our nearest friends, and how little do we know of the hopes that instigated, or of the fears that prevailed! We sometimes cannot avoid owning that we ourselves have committed a fault, but how we gloss it over—how we take temperament and temptation into account, till at length it appears to be a thing inevitable redeemed by the regret it has occasioned, and the lesson it has given. Not so do we reason for others—then we look to the isolated fact, not to the causes: the error shuts out the excuse. The truth is, we know nothing of each other excepting by the aid of philosophy and of poetry; philosophy, that analyzes our thoughts, and poetry that expresses our feelings.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Truth, Fear, Hope, Error

“The populace is a true museum of all the stupidities of the ages: it swallows everything, it admires everything, it preserves everything, it defends everything, it understands nothing.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

145
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Age, Stupidity, Understanding

“Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Attributed without source
Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975)

Money, People

“Many will recall with pain what we went through in the Reagan administration in 1983, when the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut—241 Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed. We immediately got an intercept from NSA [National Security Agency], a total smoking gun from the foreign ministry of Iran, ordering the murder of our Marines. Nothing was done to retaliate. Instead, we did exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do, which was to withdraw. Osama bin Laden has cited this as one of his dawning moments.”

John Lehman (1942) American banker and government official

Ibid.

Pain

“It may be that there is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.”

Edmund Wilson book Memoirs of Hecate County

Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) [New York Review Books Classics, 2004], Ch. 4, p. 136

“The prototypical act of the modern intellectual is his abstracting himself from the life of the family. It is an act that has something about it of ritual thaumaturgy—at the beginning of our intellectual careers we are like nothing so much as those young members of Indian tribes who have had a vision or a dream which gives them power on condition that they withdraw from the ordinary life of the tribe. By intellectuality we are freed from the thralldom to the familial commonplace, from the materiality and concreteness by which it exists, the hardness of the cash and hardness of getting it, the inelegance and intractability of family things. It gives us power over intangibles and imponderables such as Beauty and Justice, and it permits us to escape the cosmic ridicule which in our youth we suppose is inevitably directed at those who take seriously the small concerns of the quotidian world, which we know to be inadequate and doomed by the very fact that it is so absurdly conditioned—by things, habits, local and temporary customs, and the foolish errors and solemn absurdities of the men of the past.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

“George Orwell and the politics of truth,” The Opposing Self (1950), p. 163
The Opposing Self (1950)

Life, Men, Youth, World

“the old place of the Quoyles, half ruined, isolated, the walls and doors of it pumiced by stony lives of dead generations. The aunt felt a hot pang. Nothing would drive them out a second time.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 47

Time, Dead

“Nothing matters if we aren't safe… The world has never been more dangerous than it is today.”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

As quoted in "America's Next Top Fearmonger: The presidential candidates compete to scare the daylights out of the U.S. public." http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america%E2%80%99s-next-top-fearmonger-12954 (22 May 2015), by Robert Golan-Vilella, National Interest. 2010s, 2015

World

“I wasn’t sure if we were still engaged.”
“After everything we’ve been through? After true love conquered all?” Emily shook her head. “Being dead had done nothing to alleviate your obtuseness, Mr. Stanton.”
“Being dead allowed me to learn the heart’s deepest secret,” he said. “That sometimes love—even true love—isn’t enough.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

”But it’s a start,” Emily said.
Source: The Hidden Goddess (2011), Chapter 25, “Lyakhov’s Anodyne” (p. 353)

Love, Secret, Learning, Heart

“There is a great difference between being raised to an office and descending to one; which is my case. There is also a great difference between serving where you have a fair prospect of honor and laurels, and where you have no prospect of either, let you discharge your duty ever so well. Nobody ever heard of a Quarter-master in history, as such, or in relating any brilliant action. I engaged in this business as well out of compassion to your Excellency as from a regard to the public. I thought your task too great, to be Commander-in-chief and Quarter-master at the same time. Money was not my motive. For you may remember I offered to serve a year unconnected with the accounts, without any additional pay to that which I had as Major-General. However, this proposition was rejected as inadmissible. Then I told the Committee that I would serve upon the same terms that Mr. Cox and Mr. Pettit could be engaged upon; and I have nothing more now, although I have a double share of duty, and am held responsible for all failures.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

Money, History, Motivation, Failure

“In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law — in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"The Day the Gods Stopped Laughing," unpublished article written in the late 60's, quoted in To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989) by Gregg Rickman

Law, Knowledge, Science

“Other sorrows soften the heart, — poverty hardens it. Nothing like poverty for chilling the affections and repressing the spirits. Its annoyances are all of the small and mean order; its regrets all of a selfish kind; its presence is perpetual; and the scant meal, and the grudged fire, are repeated day by day, yet who can become accustomed to them?”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Heart, Selfishness

“I believe nothing. I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdoms of ages, and from the so-called great teachers of all time, and perhaps because of that isolation I am given to bizarre hospitalities. I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for beliefs. But I accept, with reservations that give me freedom to ridicule the statement at any other time, that showers of an edible substance that has not been traced to an origin upon this earth, have fallen from the sky, in Asia Minor.”

Charles Fort book Lo!

Pt 1, Ch. 3 http://www.resologist.net/lo103.htm; part of this has sometimes been misquoted as: "I cannot accept that the products of the mind are subject-matter for belief." Lo! (1931)

Wisdom, Age, Freedom, Teachers

“What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything.
Then his mind's eye looked up and caught his own image and realized where he was and what he was seeing and…I don't know what really happened…but the slippage that Phædrus had felt earlier, the internal parting of his mind, suddenly gathered momentum, as do the rocks at the top of a mountain. Before he could stop it, the sudden accumulated mass of awareness began to grow and grow into an avalanche of thought and awareness out of control; with each additional growth of the downward tearing mass loosening hundreds of times its volume, and then that mass uprooting hundreds of times its volume more, and then hundreds of times that; on and on, wider and broader, until there was nothing left to stand.
No more anything.
It all gave way from under him.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20

Religion, Way, Mountain, Knowledge

“Losing hope is easy
When your only friend is gone
And every time you look around
Well, it all, it all just seems to change
But hanging on is easy
When you've got a friend to call
When nothings making sense at all
You're not the only one that's afraid of change”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Losing Hope
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Hope, Sense, Change, Time

“Drugs don’t work. They don’t even make you forget – only momentarily, because if something’s that painful, nothing’s going to make you forget it. You think they’ll fill the hole, but the hole just gets deeper… It’s like trying to fill in a hole without a spade.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

The Sunday Times, May 14, 2006
Drugs

Pain, Thinking, Forgetting

“In this city I must visit the abodes of sorrow: but as yet no way has opened: no person offered to go along with me, which has made me determine to do nothing but what connot be avoided of a public nature. O that my little labour of love were finished, and comfortably completed to the joy of such who might hail me a welcome stranger on Zion's happy Coast, where my mansion of bliss awaits me, after all the storms of life are past.”

Dorothy Ripley (1767–1832) missionary

Letter to Abigail Eames (14 October 1805), p. 204
The Bank of Faith and Works United (1819)

Love, Life, Happiness, Way

“…in his case it went further and became indifference to social distinction. Never once in forty years of intimacy did his son notice in him a trace of snobbishness. He was one of the exceedingly small number of Americans to whom an English duke or duchess seemed to be indifferent, and royalty itself nothing more than a slightly inconvenient presence. This was, it is true, rather the tone of English society in his time, but Americans were largely responsible for changing it, and Mr. Adams had every possible reason for affecting the manner of a courtier even if he did not feel the sentiment. Never did his son see him flatter or vilify, or show a sign of envy or jealousy; never a shade of vanity or self-conceit. Never a tone of arrogance! Never a gesture of pride!”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Jealousy, Feeling, Change, Time

“There is nothing perfectly true for man; I mean in human opinions. Just like there is nothing perfectly round.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“Now one of the interesting facts here with respect to intermarriage, and our time is just about up and we will conclude in a moment, is this; that historically, whenever you have had two peoples close together, and one in a position of power and the other in a position of either slavery or inferiority, it takes only a very short time for the two races to merge, no matter how great the hatred between them. Thus, when the Normans took England, there was nothing more hateful to the Anglo Saxon peoples of England than a Norman. And yet, because they were of comparable ability, in spite of that intense hatred, they did merge, ultimately. But when you find two peoples of very different intellectual and cultural levels close together, they can be together generation after generation, and the amount of merging is very slight. So that there is no disappearing of one as against the other. This is why the Negro did not disappear in the South. Had the slaves been, say of another racial group, it would not have taken more than a hundred years of slavery for the two groups to have merged. But you had a couple of hundred years of slavery in the south, and the Negro did not disappear. So this is the remarkable fact. As a result, when you hear stories told about how the Negro women were exploited and so on, these stories tend to be exaggerations. As a matter of fact, the truth was usually the other way, it was very difficult to raise children in the south, or to rear children in the south, because one way of promotion was to capture the interest of a white boy or a white man. Now this goes counter to the Marxist thesis, but when you study the history of the west you discover that one of the best things that ever happened incidentally to the morality of the upper classes was modern inventions which abolished the need for servants in the home. Because one of the major problems that existed was the seduction of the boys and the men in a household by servant girls.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Women, Men, Hate, Children

“There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.”

Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis (1850–1933) American publisher

Quoted in "The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right" - Page 39 - by William P. Martin - Reference - 2004

Men

“Content is nothing but the sum of organized tensions. From this point of view one can discover the basic identity of the rules of composition in all arts – always accepting that the arts can only represent their object materially by means of organised reactions.... already today one can safely assume that the roots of laws of composition are the same for art as they are for nature.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from: 'Analysis of the Primary Elements of Painting', W. Kandinsky, 1928
1920 - 1930

Law, Art, Nature

“My background has been pretty abusive, nothing extreme, mainly psychological. There have been a few times when I have been slapped by partners and I have slapped back. I have enormous sympathy for those affected by violence. We need to progress beyond violence towards women and not cancel it out by saying women are also violent towards men.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Mansfield, Karl. "The 5-Minute Interview: Stella Vine: 'There have been a few times" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n15873617, The Independent, (2005-11-28) On backing the Amnesty International charity.

Women, Men, Time

“Nothing is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural pace.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Capping a Success
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri

Nature

“We possess nothing certainly except the past.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 3, start of chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Past

“For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing.”

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

Summa Contra Gentiles II, 18.2 (see also Summa Theologica I, q. 45, art. 3 ad 2)

Way, Understanding, Change, Dependency

“The symbol for the Environment Ministry is the eye of a tortoise, for the long view—the understanding that nothing comes cheap or quickly without a hidden cost.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 121

Understanding

“How abundantly do spiritual beings display the powers that belong to them! We look for them, but do not see them; we listen to, but do not hear them; yet they enter into all things, and there is nothing without them.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

“Your kisses are thieves which leave me wanting nothing.”

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

"Your Kisses Are Thieves"
Rewards of Passion (Sheer Poetry) (1981)

Kiss

“Tomas stopped and looked at the three Oankali. “Do you believe in spirits?”
“We believe in life,” Ahajas said.
“Life after death?”
Ahajas smoothed her tentacles briefly in agreement. “When I’m dead,” she said, “I will nourish other life.”
“But I mean—”
“If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.”
“…it would?”
“Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That’s what we believe in.”
“Nothing more?””

Octavia E. Butler book Imago

Ahajas became smooth enough with amusement to reflect firelight. “No, Lelka. Nothing more.”
Source: Imago (1989), Chapter II, “Exile” section 12 (pp. 662-663)

Life, Death, World, Way

“Many people think there are no transitional species because the only fossil forms they’re aware of at all are a handful of plastic pieces in a prehistoric play set. They’ve no idea how rich the fossil record is! We know of several hundred species just within dinosaurs, to say nothing of the thousands of examples of each of hundreds more taxa apart from that. Experts estimate that all the collective genera still roaming around now only amount to about 1% of all the species that have ever lived. Practically everything there ever was ain’t no more. Every species living today has definite relatives both extant and extinct, and evident in the fossil record. And in one sense, all of them, even the things still alive, count as transitional species.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

People, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“Falling in love indicated that your genes were complementary to those of the loved one. It told you nothing about when your personalities and sexualities were compatible.”

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 3 “Spectral Lines” (p. 40)

Love, Personality

“.. I want a lovely life; in order for it to be, harmony and style are necessary. I avow mine to the key of aesthetic sentiment – the constant permanent creation everywhere and in every one. All is false there, all is true. The truth is the desire to see falsely. I do not want the naked truth; it is the principle of my life. It is that which makes my life one which is artistic and complete. Feelings, events, people and things, such as they are, are nothing to me. I wish them invented, illusory, false in so far as true life and in so far as art.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Love, Life, People, Truth

“Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article III, p. 874.

“To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Death, Stupidity, Feeling

“I was seized with a strong desire to write poetry, so strong, in fact, that in imagination I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears –"Write! Write"I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself– "I know nothing about poetry."”

William McGonagall (1825–1902) weaver, actor, poet

"The Autobiography of Sir William Topaz McGonagall".
Other works

Imagination, Strong, Cry

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Preface to The First Forty-Nine Stories (1944)

“[The] Pope's coming to Washington, New York and Philly to shoot his mouth off about stuff he knows nothing about. He's got one reform after another. Everything liberal he's for. I don't know what they have a church for. Isn't the object of a church to tell you you're no good and you're not doing the right thing? What do you need a church for if telling you everything you do is OK? Everything is OK to this guy! Nothing's – marijuana, whatever you want – abortion, divorce, it's all good. It's all good.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-09-09
Radio, 23:52
2015

Guy, Marijuana

“Today I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters —... But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept walking - The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and some times sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it -. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at — the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon. Well I just sat there and had a great time by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind —... I wondered what you were doing - It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldn't tell which house was home - I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas (September 11, 1916), pp. 183-184
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Love, Way, Home, Tree

“The inconsistency of first explaining matter by atoms and then explaining atoms by matter was only slowly realised, and it is only comparatively recently that we have come to see that there is nothing paradoxical in the fact that an atom or an electron, which are not matter, may have properties different from those of matter, and must be allowed to do things that a material particle could not do.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

“I can't waste time so give me the moment
I realize nothing's broken
No need to worry about everything I've done
Lived every second like it was my last one.”

Jordin Sparks (1989) American singer, winner of 2007 American Idol

Tattoo

Time

“The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none deny, there is a God, but those, for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Atheism
Essays (1625)

God, Fools, Heart

“To my mind when a great Judge, a master of the whole subject, thinking it necessary for the decision of the case to carefully examine into and to state the practice, it is nothing to say as against that, that it was not necessary for the decision.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

Ex parte Bell Cox (1887), 57 L. J. (N. S.) Q. B. 103.

Thinking, Decision

“For nothing can be greater than seduction itself, not even the order that destroys it.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Seduction (1990)
1990s

“Write as if thou wert alone in the universe and hadst nothing to fear from the jealousies and prejudices of the people. Otherwise thou wilt miss thy purpose.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) French physician and philosopher

Preface, Oeuvres philosophiques de Monsieur de La Mettrie (1764) as quoted by Paul Carus, The Mechanistic Principle and the Non-mechanical (1913) p. 102. https://books.google.com/books?id=wGNRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA102

People, Fear, Jealousy, Universe