Quotes about nothing
page 75

“History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History

Law, History, Nature

“Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up. Move on with dignity and honor and respectability.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)
Variant: Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up. Move on with dignity and honor and respectability.

“In a commodity culture we have been conditioned to believe nothing carries intrinsic value. Instead, value is found only in a thing's usefulness to us, and tragically this belief has been applied to people as well.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

People

“He had brought nothing to read except The Tibetan Book of the Dead, hoping to find its exotic iconography ridiculous enough to purge any fantasies he might still cling to about consciousness continuing after death.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 3

Death, Books, Hope, Reading

“When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it.
No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Good Intentions (1942), Seeing Eye to Eye is Believing

People, Truth

“With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)

Optimism, Despair, Hope

“The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (November 25, 1892)
Letters

Fear, Hope, Personality

“After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: "Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." In fact, I said to them, confidently: "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Hunger, God, Faith, Food

“It is a commonplace that eternity is not an endless prolongation of time, has nothing to do with time. Eternity is a characteristic of the mystical experience. The word eternity doubtless meant originally endlessness of time, which must count, therefore, as its literal meaning. But in its religious and metaphysical use it is a metaphor for the characteristic of the experience. For in that experience time drops away and is no more seen.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 76.

Time

“…a man who sold meat but knew nothing of the poetry of the slaughterhouse…. Ted Arden was no ice-cream butcher.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. xxi

“There are so many films from which one leaves as stupid as one entered. I'd rather give you a migraine than nothing at all … I'd rather ruin your eyes than leave you indifferent.”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

Stupidity, Indifference

“There is nothing unscientific in the idea that, beyond the lines of force felt by the senses, the universe may be — as it has always been — either a supersensuous chaos or a divine unity, which irresistibly attracts, and is either life or death to penetrate. Thus far, religion, philosophy and science seem to go hand in hand. The schools begin their vital battle only there.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life, Death, School, Religion

“If there is sufficient aspiration, invoking, and soliciting, there is no doubt that even Gods apparently lost could come back again. They are there all the time. For nothing that has any truth in it can be destroyed. It merely goes out of manifestation; but it could reappear under propitious circumstances. So could the old Gods come to life again in response to new summons.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

The World As Revelation: Names of Gods (1980)

Life, God, Truth, Time

“[A]lthough you have a right to appoint me to the office… yet you have no right to expect me either to spend money to forward the election or to cheat any man's vote, and I shall do neither… a seat in the House can never bring me either honours or emoluments, nothing, in short, but labour and trouble - you cannot expect from me, so will not, in fact, receive from me, either flatteries, treats or bribes.”

Godfrey Higgins (1772–1833) British archaeologist

Letter circulated to various officials who wished to appoint Higgins to Parliament, 14 December 1832.

Money, Housing, Cheating

“In the mean time I paid the strictest attention to my profession, and was so completely successful, that there was no patient of any consequence in Gottingen that I was not called in to; but as I was not allowed to make up prescriptions, not having taken my degree, and in order to avoid a heavy penalty, I was accompanied in my professional visits by Doctor Tolle, a man who knew the lectures of Schroder by heart, but did not understand them. I dictated to him what to prescribe, he took the fee, and was content. I had nothing but the honour, and plenty of good dinners. At last I took my degree as Doctor of Medicine, and resigned my patients to the care of Dr. Strohmeyer, which was the means of introducing him into practice. I left Gottingen full of honour, with tears in my eyes, at leaving behind me so many dear friends. Puffed up with pride, I arrived in Celle, but was received with coldness and pity. This was too much for mc; I could not brook the insult; but said to myself, "How can I expect to be otherwise received, when I consider my former conduct, and look back on the heedless manner in which I passed my boyish years?"”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My consolation was, that "I should be soon as happy here as I was in Gottingen" in the choice of my friends.
My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Penalty, Understanding, Tear, Time

“I realized that democracy is indivisible, or rather, that freedom is indivisible. There are many clown-democracies in the Arab world, which have nothing to do with freedom.”

Walid Jumblatt (1949) Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon

Freedom

World, Democracy, Freedom

“569. All Women are good; viz. good for something, or good for nothing.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Women

“Hey, for many years I had nothing to thrust.”

Gina Barberi

Radio From Hell (April 30, 2007)

“Sitting in Baghdad, listening to the God-awful propaganda rhetoric of the Iraqis but watching the often promiscuous American and British air attacks, I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing to do with plans. Indeed, I suspect there is no real overall plan. Because I rather think that this war's foundations were based not on military planning but on ideology.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles202.htm, April 1, 2003 2003

God, War, Thinking

“There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.”

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

As quoted in the Introduction (by Siân Miles)
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), p. 35

Feeling, Exercises, Intelligence

“He soon found out that I was not "another mystic," and when for the sake of my own integrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all those of my opinions which I knew he most disliked, he replied that the chief difference between us was that I "was as yet consciously nothing of a mystic." I do not know at what period he gave up the expectation that I was destined to become one; but though both his and my opinions underwent in subsequent years considerable changes, we never approached much nearer to each other's modes of thought than we were in the first years of our acquaintance. I did not, however, deem myself a competent judge of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that he was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such, he not only saw many things long before me, which I could only when they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed out.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)
Context: I have already mentioned Carlyle's earlier writings as one of the channels through which I received the influences which enlarged my early narrow creed; but I do not think that those writings, by themselves, would ever have had any effect on my opinions. What truths they contained, though of the very kind which I was already receiving from other quarters, were presented in a form and vesture less suited than any other to give them access to a mind trained as mine had been. They seemed a haze of poetry and German metaphysics, in which almost the only clear thing was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which were the basis of my mode of thought; religious scepticism, utilitarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching any importance to democracy, logic, or political economy. Instead of my having been taught anything, in the first instance, by Carlyle, it was only in proportion as I came to see the same truths through media more suited to my mental constitution, that I recognized them in his writings. Then, indeed, the wonderful power with which he put them forth made a deep impression upon me, and I was during a long period one of his most fervent admirers; but the good his writings did me, was not as philosophy to instruct, but as poetry to animate. Even at the time when out acquaintance commenced, I was not sufficiently advanced in my new modes of thought, to appreciate him fully; a proof of which is, that on his showing me the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, his best and greatest work, which he had just then finished, I made little of it; though when it came out about two years afterwards in Fraser's Magazine I read it with enthusiastic admiration and the keenest delight. I did not seek and cultivate Carlyle less on account of the fundamental differences in our philosophy. He soon found out that I was not "another mystic," and when for the sake of my own integrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all those of my opinions which I knew he most disliked, he replied that the chief difference between us was that I "was as yet consciously nothing of a mystic." I do not know at what period he gave up the expectation that I was destined to become one; but though both his and my opinions underwent in subsequent years considerable changes, we never approached much nearer to each other's modes of thought than we were in the first years of our acquaintance. I did not, however, deem myself a competent judge of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that he was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such, he not only saw many things long before me, which I could only when they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed out. I knew that I could not see round him, and could never be certain that I saw over him; and I never presumed to judge him with any definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by one greatly the superior of us both -- who was more a poet than he, and more a thinker than I -- whose own mind and nature included his, and infinitely more.

Change

“There is, I am convinced, a sea of goodwill out in the country of people and places yearning to help. We need to tap into it. We need to make that connection. We need to come up with new ways and new ideas to make life better for those affected by this war, so that kids can go to school, incomes can be sustained, and homes can be both purchased and lived in for a long time. The truth is, we live in deeds, not days; in actions and thoughts and feelings, not heartbeats. If the untimely battlefield deaths of generations of American heroes have taught us nothing else, it should be this unalterable fact: what you do with your time here on earth is far more important than the time you had to do it. Those who live most are those who love most, who act the noblest and do their best.”

Michael Mullen (1946) U.S. Navy admiral and 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

From Op-Ed "Memorial Day" (26 May 2008)

Love, Life, Death, War

“The more and the more that he wrote, and the deeper and the deeper that he dived, Pierre saw the everlasting elusiveness of Truth; the universal lurking insincerity of even the greatest and purest written thoughts. Like knavish cards, the leaves of all great books were covertly packed. He was but packing one set the more; and that a very poor jaded set and pack indeed. So that there was nothing he more spurned, than his own aspirations; nothing he more abhorred than the loftiest part of himself. The brightest success, now seemed intolerable to him, since he so plainly saw, that the brightest success could not be the sole offspring of Merit; but of Merit for the one thousandth part, and nine hundred and ninety-nine combining and dovetailing accidents for the rest.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

Truth, Books, Universe, Success

“Morals: They’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!”

Theodore Sturgeon book More Than Human

Source: More Than Human (1953), Chapter 3, p. 175

“My work has nothing to do with people, nothing to do with psychology. I am much more cerebral than Willink. I do not wish to be deep at all. I know that I don't hide anything at all in this work. When Carel Willink paints a naked lady in a street, I think: what is that lady doing there?... the house facades give me a lugubrious impression. So it is a lugubrious street. My work is not lugubrious. If you ask Willink: 'Why are those naked mistresses there', you do not receive an answer. With me you always get an answer when you ask: why..”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van M.C. Escher, in het Nederlands): Mijn werk heeft niets met de mens, niets met psychologie te maken. Ik ben veel cerebraler dan Willink. Ik wens helemaal niet diep te zijn. Ik weet dat ik in dit werk niets verberg. Als Carel Willink een naakte juffrouw in een straat schildert, denk ik: wat heeft die juffrouw daar te maken?.. ..de gevels maken op mij de indruk van iets lugubers. Het is dus een lugubere straat. Mijn werk is niet luguber. Als je Willink vraagt: waarom zijn die naakte juffrouwen daar, krijg je geen antwoord. Bij mij krijg je altijd antwoord als je vraagt: waarom..
1960's, M.C. Escher, interviewed by Bibeb', 1968

People, Thinking, Painting, Housing

“Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them and the jailer said as he put down the pipkin: ‘Our relations with the cow are not delicate-as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.’ … John said, ‘Thank heavens! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense. You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.’ ‘And pray, what difference is there except by custom?’ ‘Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 49
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Secret, Food, Dreams, Fools

“The rites were just the husks left over from deeper things, no pith remaining and no mystery, nothing to lift up the soul or go to the brain like wine. And, as generally happens, the more truth the ritual lost the more they bolstered it with significance. There is a saying among the Moi: The chief is clad in gold and purple, only the god dares to go naked.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part I “The Krarl”, Chapter 3 (p. 20)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

God, Truth, Soul, Wine

“Poetry, as nearly as I can understand it, is a statement in words about a human experience, whether the experience be real or hypothetical, major or minor; but it is a statement of a particular kind. Words are symbols for concepts, and the philosopher or scientist endeavors as far as may be to use them with reference to nothing save their conceptual content. Most words, however, connote feelings and perceptions, and the poet, like the writer of imaginative prose, endeavors to use them with reference not only to their denotations but to their connotations as well. Such writers endeavor to communicate not only concepts, arranged, presumably, either in rational order or in an order of apprehensible by the rational mind, but the feeling or emotion which the rational content ought properly to arouse.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

The Audible Reading of Poetry (1951)

Feeling, Imagination, Communication, Understanding

“Philosophy is nothing but discretion.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

Philosophy.
Table Talk (1689)

“… between Lon Nol's corrupt regime and the Khmers Rouges' serious one, the choice is obvious. If you were in my place, if you were a Cambodian patriot, if you were a Sihanouk who loves his own country more than anything else in the world, you'd say the same… It's only proper to congratulate the Cambodian communists and tell them: "Well done. You deserve power for ever, and no one must ever replace you. Not even Sihanouk. Sihanouk must not govern in your stead anymore, as he's been unable to do what you've achieved. He wanted to, and dreamed about it, but he couldn't do it. After all, Sihanouk counts for nothing. It's Cambodia that counts."”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 126.
Interviews

Love, World, Dreams, Country

“Nothing can save England, if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then, indeed, our story is told. If, while on all sides foreign nations are every day asserting a more aggressive and militant nationalism by arms and trade – if we remain paralysed by our own theoretical doctrines or plunged in the stupor of after-war exhaustion…indeed, all that the croakers predict will come true and our ruin will be certain and final.”

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

Speech to the Royal Society of St George (23 April 1933), Winston Churchill, Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches (A&C Black, 2013), p. 402
The 1930s

War, Faith

“Nothing had happened because nothing had changed.
Yet the General was rubbish in the end.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Change

“"General Meade has his son as adjutant." "That's different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield."”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Thomas Chamberlain and Joshua Chamberlain, Part I, CH 2: Chamberlain, p. 29
The Killer Angels (1974)

God

“They say that [martial law] would have cost my country less than the bloody anarchy which is there now. I can only reply that it is easy to play the prophet a posteriori and that a sovereign may not save his throne by shedding his compatriots' blood. A dictator can, because he acts, because he acts in the name of an ideology which he believes must triumph whatever the price. But a sovereign is not a dictator. There is an alliance between him and his people which he cannot break. A dictator has nothing to hand over. Power lies in him, and in him alone. A sovereign receives a crown and it is his duty to pass it on.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 182
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On himself

People, Law, Country

“If you really want to do it nothing and no one is going to stop you, if you don't really want to do it, nothing and no one is going to help you.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/100634

Help

“Yet it must be acknowledged that there is a fundamental difference between the sexual impulse in men and women. Her need is for a lover, a protector, a father for her children. His desire is for mastery, conquest, to be allowed to use her body for his own satisfaction. He feels like a bee, burying itself in a flower, apparently doing nothing for the flower but taking its sweetness. If he loves her, then his desire is mixed with a kind of pity.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

L'amour: The Ways of Love (1970)

Love, Women, Men, Children

“Reason is a free gift from God and politeness is acquisition. He who undertakes politeness has power over it. He who undertakes reason increases (himself) through that nothing but ignorance.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.1, p. 23.
Religious Wisdom

God

“Nothing divided people more deeply than how they felt about cats.”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

Source: Difficulties with Girls (1988), Ch. 19, p. 274

People, Cats

“Either God is a Mystery or He is nothing at all.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 8.

God

“The Sufism that survived and even prospered was tame and promised to subserve prophetism. Some great Sufi poets like Rumi and Attar convey a wrong impression of Islamic Sufism in general; they have been its show-pieces, not its representative figures. Mainstream Sufism has been represented by its silsilas like the Naqshbandiyya, Qadiriyya, Chishtiyya, Dervish, Marabout, Ribat, etc. They had no independent ideology of their own and they only served the spiritual-intellectual categories (manisha) of prophetic Islam; in fact, they became its most willing spokesmen. They never questioned its dogmas, not even its barbaric ideas about the kafirs, the jihad, the zimmis, the dar al-harb. There is nothing to show that they ever spoke against Islamic wars and oppression. On the other hand, as their history shows they were part and parcel of Islamic Imperialism, its enthusiastic sappers and miners and also its beneficiaries. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Dervish and Sufis have fought against the unbelievers in time of war. The devotees have accompanied the Shaikh or Murshid or Pir to the threatened frontiers. … In India, the sufis have been an important limb of Islamic Imperialism and expansion.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

War, History, Idea, Question

“From these biased studies come biased social policy. Hundreds of millions of dollars to enforce sanctions against fathers who don’t pay mothers; almost nothing to enforce sanctions against mothers who don’t allow fathers to see children.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Children, Study

“Twas on a sunny summer day
I trod a mighty city’s street,
And when I started on my way
My heart was full of fancies sweet;
But soon, as nothing could be seen,
But countenances sharp and keen,
Nought heard or seen around but told
Of something bought or something sold,
And none that seemed to think or care
That any save himself was there.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

An Incident http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/incident.html, st. 1 (1836).

Way, Thinking, Heart, Summer

“We call the wise age that in which men had a wonderful knowledge of science which we recognize without fail by certain signs, although without knowing who they were, or in what place, or when. …It has become a matter of common usage to call the barbarous age that time which extends from about 900 or a thousand years up to about 150 years past, since men were for 700 or 800 years in the condition of imbeciles without the practice of letters or sciences—which condition had its origin in the burning of books through troubles, wars, and destructions; afterwards affairs could, with a great deal of labor, be restored, or almost restored, to their former state; but although the afore-mentioned preceding times could call themselves a wise age in respect to the barbarous age just mentioned, nevertheless we have not consented to this definition of such a wise age, since both taken together are nothing but a true barbarous age in comparison to that unknown time at which we state that it [i. e., the wise age] was, without any doubt, in existence.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Géographie, in Les Oeuvres Mathématiques de Simon Stevin de Bruges (1634) ed. Girard, p. 106-108, as quoted by Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1968)

Men, War, Books, Age

“Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. … Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

" Billions and Billions of Demons http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/" in: The New York Review of Books, 9 January 1997, p. 31 Review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan Quote often taken out of context, see Lewontin on materialism http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Lewontin_on_materialism on evolutionwiki.org, and for example this example http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006325?q=Lewontin&p=par at Watchtower Online Library.

Life, God, Health, World

“ Why am I anti-Islam? Well, for the simple reason that Islam is anti-me, and it's anti every fundamental value I hold… People say, "Well, you only focus on the bad things about Islam", and yes, I have to admit that if you ignore the bad things — the aggressive separatism, supremacism, and social intolerance, the relentless special pleading and phony grievance mongering, the psychopathic level of misogyny, the honor killing and genital mutilation (sanctioned by the Prophet, incidentally), the rabid gay and Jew hatred, the intimidation and censorship, and the constantly present threat of violence over social issues — well, there isn't much wrong with Islam, it's perfectly kosher (if you'll pardon the expression). The trouble is, when you take these things away, there's nothing left.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"It's good to be anti-Islam" (23 April 2014) https://youtube.com/watch?v=jIaGWURONRU 2014

People

“Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
Nothing ain't worth nothing but it's free”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Song lyrics, Me and Bobby McGee (1969)

Freedom

“Men will not commonly steal women that are nothing worth.”

Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1554–1625) English politician

Bruton v. Morris (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 182.

Women, Men

“There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Secret

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

"The Dehumanization of Art"
The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

Fate, Art, Personality, Forgetting

“Despite efforts to disguise his hatred of Israel in Islamic terms… Khamenei is more influenced by Western-style anti-Semitism than by classical Islam's checkered relations with Jews. His argument about territories becoming "irrevocably Islamic" does not wash, if only because of its inconsistency. He has nothing to say about vast chunks of former Islamic territory, including some that belonged to Iran for millennia, now under Russian rule. Nor is he ready to embark on Jihad to drive the Chinese out of Xinjiang, a Muslim khanate until the late 1940s. Israel, which in terms of territory accounts for one per cent of Saudi Arabia, is a very small fry. Khamenei's shedding of tears for "the sufferings of Palestinian Muslims" are also unconvincing. To start with, not all Palestinians are Muslims. And, if it were only Muslim sufferers who deserved sympathy, why doesn't the "Supreme Guide" beat his chest about the Burmese Rohingya and the Chechens massacred and enchained by Vladimir Putin, not to mention Muslims daily killed by fellow-Muslims across the globe?”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Ayatollah's Plan for Israel and Palestine http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6263/khamenei-israel-palestine, Gatestone Institute (July 31, 2015)

Tear, Effort, Suffering

“What I am after is 'bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth'... I do not seek truth before bravura, I seek it on the other side. Naturally it is a basic risk to run, the internal insecurity, where nothing is measurable, no solid standard exists any longer, and one can hardly discern the difference between commercial bravura and true trapdoor, but it is the only way of escaping good taste and narrow certification. The light of ambivalence is a heavenly one.”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

Source: 1965 - 1995, Bravura', Per Kirkeby, (1982), chapter 'Synopsis', p. 83

Truth, Way, Nature, Light

“In the old days, the navigators used magic to make themselves strong, but now, nothing; they just pray. Before they leave and at sea, they pray. But I, I make myself strong by thinking—just by thinking! I make myself strong because I despise cowardice. Too many men are afraid of the sea. But I am a navigator.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

The Last Navigator (1987)

Men, Thinking, Strong, Sea

“To call these riots infantile and imbecilic is to give them a dignity they don't deserve. They can only be described as Islamic. Let me get this straight. We're supposed to show tolerance and respect for a religion that doesn't know the meaning of either word and goes out of its way to prove it every day? We're supposed to amend our values to accommodate a religion that accommodates nothing and nobody? Dream on, people. It's not going to happen, because with Islam it's always a one way street. We've learned that lesson the hard way. We can't afford any more tolerance and respect. We've been sucked dry. And we've become weary of manufactured Islamic grievance. It's such a bore that now when we hear some bearded buffoon or some bag-headed bimbo telling us how offended they are we can't even be bothered to laugh any more.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"A Word To Rioting Muslims" (20 September 2012) http://youtube.com/watch?v=GCXHPKhRCVg · transcript http://dotsub.com/view/72457cbc-fe18-4053-ae3f-6c7639cf4e79/viewTranscript/eng 2012

People, Religion, Dreams, Way

“Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Development Hypothesis (1852)

“There was nothing left between me and the void. I must have spent several minutes lying on my stomach with my eyes closed to resist its almost invincible attraction.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964)

Lying

“Oblige people never so often, and, if you deny them on a single point, they remember nothing but that refusal.”
Quamlibet saepe obligati, si quid unum neges, hoc solum meminerunt quod negatum est.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 4, 6.
Letters, Book III

People

“And I don't care what it takes my friend
I will never go hungry, go hungry again
Oh, and I don't care what I have to pretend
I will never go hungry, go hungry again
And the phoenix she rises, she is sure to descend
She will never go hungry, go hungry again
And you're looking to me more and more like a godsend
We will never go hungry, go hungry again
And we owe each other nothing, there's no one left here to offend
We will never go hungry, go hungry again”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

"Never Go Hungry"
Song lyrics, Nobody's Daughter (2010)

“In the past, both sexes were anxious about sex and pregnancy. Now the pill minimizes her anxiety and condoms increase his. Now the pimple faced boy must still risk rejection while also overcoming his own fear of herpes and AIDS and reassuring her there is nothing to fear. He must still do the sexual risk-taking, but now he can be put in jail if he takes risks too quickly or be called a wimp if he doesn’t take them quickly enough.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 168.

Fear, Sex, Boy, Past

“In that privileged place, reality and the sublime dimension almost come together. My mystical paradise begins in the plains of the Empordà, is surrounded by the Alberes hills, and reaches plenitude in the bay of Cadaqués. This land is my permanent inspiration. The only place in the world, too, where I feel loved. When I painted that rock that I entitled 'The Great Masturbator', I did nothing more than render homage to one of the promontories of my kingdom, and my painting was a hymn to one of the jewels of my crown.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from Wikipedia: The Great Masturbator
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

Love, World, Feeling, Reality

“In 1925, Mussolini adopted the term [totalitarian] and assigned it a positive meaning. He defined Fascism as ‘totalitarian’ in the sense that it politicized everything ‘human’ as well as ‘spiritual’: ‘Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 243

Sense

“We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.”

Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) Leftist journalist and writer

"Press Clips", The Village Voice (21 January 1980).

God, People, World, Art

“The stakes are nothing less than the future of liberal democracy. We are engaged in a new war of ideas, not communism versus capitalism, but authoritarianism versus democracy and representative government.”

Adam Schiff (1960) American politician

Open Letter to the Committee Hearing Re: FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers

War, Democracy, Communication, Idea

“The true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of an original once enjoyed by someone else of whom we have heard. It cannot but be a major tragedy in the life of any man to live in a church from childhood to old age and know nothing more real than some synthetic god compounded of theology and logic, but having no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no heart to love.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

citation needed

Love, Life, God, Age

“I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism. Despite the general pessimistic attitude in the world today, I am nothing but an optimist.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 119
1960s

World, Optimism, Understanding, Painting

“Sometimes the conscience makes demands that are non-negotiable. Courage has nothing to do with it. We weren’t here because we were brave. We were here because we had to be here.”

Robert Charles Wilson book The Chronoliths

Source: The Chronoliths (2001), Chapter 15 (p. 189)

Courage

“All men strive and hope for nothing other than eternal life in their human nature. For this they instituted purgations of souls and sacred rites, in order to be better adapted in their nature to that eternal life.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Life, Men, Hope, Soul

“I am not insensible to natural beauty, but my emotional joys center on the improbable yet sometimes wondrous works of that tiny and accidental evolutionary twig called Homo sapiens. And I find, among these works, nothing more noble than the history of our struggle to understand nature—a majestic entity of such vast spatial and temporal scope that she cannot care much for a little mammalian afterthought with a curious evolutionary invention, even if that invention has, for the first time in some four billion years of life on earth, produced recursion as a creature reflects back upon its own production and evolution. Thus, I love nature primarily for the puzzles and intellectual delights that she offers to the first organ capable of such curious contemplation.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Prologue, p. 13
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Love, Life, Beauty, History

“There's nothing that tastes of death more than the summer sun, the powerful light, exuberant nature. You sniff the air and listen to the woods and know that the plants and animals don't give a damn about you. Everything lives and consumes itself. Nature is death…”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The devil in the hills (1949), Chapter 7, p. 311

Death, Nature, Light, Sun

“The history of organization theory contrasts with the history of managerial thought. When people began to compose texts about organized activities, between 2,000 and 3,000 years before the Christian era (BCE), they focused on managerial practices rather than on organizations as such. Several writers proposed general principles for managerial practice before 1000 BCE, so one can say that theories about managing have existed for at least 3000 years. However, these writings often said nothing about the organizational contexts in which managing was to occur. When the writers did make statements about organizations, they did not generalize. They wrote about specific organizations.”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

Source: "The Origins of Organizational Theory," 2005, p. 143

People, History

“I thought I was going to die a few times. On the Freedom Ride in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7th, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a State Trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of nonviolence.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Academy of Achievement web site http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/lew0pro-1 (url accessed on October 22, 2008)

Death, Question, Freedom, Time

“Gsell: What astonishes me, is that your way is so different from that of other sculptors. They prose the model. Instead of that, you wait till a model has instinctively or accidentally taken an Interesting pose, and thon you reproduce It. Instead of your giving orders to the model, the model gives orders to you.
Rodin: I am not at the model's orders; I am at Nature's. Doubtless my confreres have their reasons for proceeding as they do. But when one constrains Nature in that way and treats human beings as mannikins, one runs a risk of getting nothing but dead, artificial results. A hunter of truth and a trapper of life. I am careful not to follow their example. I seize upon the movements I observe, but I don't dictate them. when a subject requires a predetermined pose, I merely Indicate It. For I want only what reality will afford without being forced. In everything I obey Nature. I never assume to command her. My sole ambition Is a servile fidelity.
Gsell : And yet, you take liberties with nature. You make changes.
Rodin : Not at all. I should be false to myself if I did.
Gsell : But you finished work is never like the plaster sketch
Rodin : That is so, but the sketch is far less true than the finished work. It would Impossible for a model to keep a living attitude during all the time it takes to shape the clay. Still, I retain a general idea of the pose and require the model to conform to it. But this is not all. The sketch reproduces only the exterior. I must next reproduce the spirit, which is every whit as essential a part of Nature. I see the whole truth — not merely the fraction of it that lies upon the surface. I accentuate tho lines that best express the spiritual state I am Interpreting.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Life, Truth, Way, Idea

“I believe anyone who supports feminism is anti-woman even if they are not conscious of it. Feminism and "female empowerment" has led to a generation of the least happy women in history. They are lost and are being told that they are the EXACT same as men and should be able to compete at the same level in all fields of life. How sad to always fail at something you are supposed to be equal in. How sad to be led astray to never get married then hit a wall where you wish for nothing more than a family but cannot have it… simply because you bought into this false notion of feminism that promised happiness and fulfillment. The reality is women are biologically different and different things will make them happy.”

Lauren Southern (1995) Canadian libertarian commentator

AMA on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4zlf89/lauren_southern_ama/d6wtbfx/ (August 25, 2016)

Life, Women, Men, Happiness

“Elin wondered, sitting in the sweat bath, what that had to do with passion or desire, and decided – nothing. It was justification. They had murdered the men and must prove, on the helpless bodies of the women, that they were truly stronger. Prove it to exhaustion… not even pleasure was in it for them”

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Women, Men, Pleasure, Passion

“There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

A Guide for the Bedevilled
Books

Age

“You must do over the same subject ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must appear accidental, even a movement.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

Art, Appearance, Time

“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”

Neil Gaiman book American Gods

Source: American Gods (2001), Ch. 6

Lie, World, Way, Travel

“The eating of meat without doubt focuses the physical mechanism closely to the physical system. There is nothing wrong with this. If you are trying to develop inner abilities however, and if you wish to allow yourself a mobility of focus, then moderation in this respect must be used.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 185, Page 247
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

“The 18 years since 1987 brought us nothing but bad leadership and bad governance.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Address to the conference of the Fiji Labour Party, Lautoka, 31 July 2005

“Yes you see boys and girls, you see we came from a dot and that dot came from nothing. Now they call that Science and put it in a Science book? I’d call that a fairy tale and put it in the garbage.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

Books, Girl, Boy, Science

“In practice, a good deal of the outcomes produced by the market reflect nothing more than luck - good or bad.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 1, Equality and Efficiency, p. 16

“I love nice long walks, inspirational novels of influential people. I'm reading Kennedy - An Unfinished Life at the moment. And nothing beats listening to music and having tea with friends.”

Sangeeta Niranjan Fijian businesswoman

Interview with the Fiji Times, 18 September 2005

Love, Life, People, Music

“Today that rarely happens. Most often the songs are used as a relief. They have nothing to do with the film per say. And all look almost the same. Just replace the central characters and a step here and there…choreography remains the same in most cases. So does the beat. We have so many classical dances and folk dances in the country but nobody seems to be using them.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

Dance, Country

“Two things a master commits to his servant's care — the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, "Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost." Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. "Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little. care and thought about it."”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 560.

God, Soul, Clothes

“In my view, I’m most fascinated by constitutional law. How to work the constitution is far more important than how to write it. It is much easier to write the constitution. I recall when the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh came to visit me, (to draft the Bangladesh Constitution). I was the Additional Solicitor General then. We gave them ideas and drafts were exchanged, but it didn’t last for more than a couple of years. Writing a constitution is simpler; borrowing ideas from everywhere is nothing great. How to work the constitution is a grave challenge and it’s fascinating.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

Conversation with the living legend of law - Fali Sam Nariman

Law, Idea

“The two men who lived there were father & son – that his name was Maretts [perhaps Maritz] … We gave him some tracts which he received with great pleasure – observing this we asked if he had a bible, he feelingly answered no, and that when he was last in the Cape about two years ago he was about purchasing a bible, but he found he had not as many dollars with him as would pay for it. Mr. Moffat immediate brought his octavo bible from which he preached and presented it to him. He hugged the bible in his arms with the apparent affection as if it has been his own child. I mentioned that it would show him the way to heaven, which he said he believed it would do. Nothing which I witnessed on the journey delighted me more than the manner in which the father and son acted towards this copy of the scriptures. After the evening worship was over they carried the treasure in triumph to their home.”

John Campbell (missionary)

Campbell's recollection in 1819 after a visit to Swellendam, quoted in Die Wêreld van Susanna Smit, 1799–1863, Schoeman (1995)

Men, Pleasure, Way, Home

“The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

As quoted in Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry (trans. Robert Kerr, 1790), Preface, p. xiv.

Art

“Winning isn't everything, but losing is nothing.”

Red Symons (1949) Australian broadcaster and musician

Attributed quotes

“I wish that I wasn't seen differently. I wish that people looked at me and just saw that I was a good person with a good heart. And that wants to make people laugh. And that's who I am. I also happen to be gay. And I would love to have the same rights as everybody else. I would love, I don't care if it's called marriage. I don't care if it's called, you know, domestic partnership. I don't care what it's called. I mean, there are couples that have been together, 30 years, 40 years. And all of a sudden, they lose their house, you know, the taxes kill them, because it's different because they're not married. Everything is taken away just because. You know, with Sept. 11, there are a lot of people that lost their partner and didn't get the same benefits. It's not fair. And at the same time I know there are people watching right now saying, you know, it's sick it's wrong, it's this. And it's like, I can't convince them that I'm not sick or wrong, that there's nothing wrong with me. You know, I can live my life and hope that things change, and hope that we're protected as any other couples”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen Degeneres talking about being gay with Stone Phillips in an interview for Dateline NBC, Nov. 8, 2004

Love, Life, Marriage, People

“The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

1944. Fest, Joachim. Plotting Hitler's Death, p. 236.

Men, World, History, Decision

“I was in the middle of shooting the last few weeks of Blazing Saddles somewhere in the Antelope Valley, and Gene Wilder and I were having a cup of coffee and he said, I have this idea that there could be another "Frankenstein." I said not another — we've had the son of, the cousin of, the brother-in-law, we don't need another Frankenstein. His idea was very simple: What if the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever. He was ashamed of those wackos. I said, "That's funny."”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

On the initial inspiration for his film Young Frankenstein, in "The Sunday Conversation: Mel Brooks on his 'Young Frankenstein' musical" in The Los Angeles Times (1 August 2010) http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/01/entertainment/la-ca-conversation-20100801

Family, Law, Coffee, Idea