Quotes about nothing
page 91

“The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"Mother Earth Mother Board," cover story in Wired, 4.12 (1996)

World, Communication, Time

“Gutenberg’s press flooded the market. In the early 1500s John Tetzel, the head pardoner for German territories, would sweep into a town with a collection of already printed indulgences, hawking them with a phrase usually translated as “When a coin a coffer rings / A soul for heaven springs.” The nakedly commercial aspects of indulgences, among other things, enraged Martin Luther, who in 1517 launched an attack on the Church in the form of his famous Ninety-five Theses. He first nailed the theses to a church door in Wittenberg, but copies were soon printed up and disseminated widely. Luther’s critique, along with the spread of Bibles translated into local languages, drove the Protestant Reformation, plunging the Church (and Europe) into crisis. The tool that looked like it would strengthen the social structure of the age instead upended it. From the vantage point of 1450, the new technology seemed to do nothing more than offer the existing society a faster and cheaper way to do what it was already doing. By 1550 it had become apparent that the volume of indulgences had debauched their value, creating “indulgence inflation”—further evidence that abundance can be harder for a society to deal with than scarcity. Similarly, the spread of Bibles wasn’t a case of more of the same, but rather of more is different—the number of Bibles produced increased the range of Bibles produced, with cheap Bibles translated into local languages undermining the interpretative monopoly of the clergy, since churchgoers could now hear what the Bible said in their own language, and literate citizens could read it for themselves, with no priest anywhere near. By the middle of the century, Luther’s Protestant Reformation had taken hold, and the Church’s role as the pan-European economic, cultural, intellectual, and religious force was ending.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Age, Way, Soul, Spring

“How the mother is to be pitied who hath handsome daughters! Locks, bolts, bars, and lectures of morality are nothing to them: they break through them all. They have as much pleasure in cheating a father and mother, as in cheating at cards.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. viii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Pleasure, Cheating, Daughters

“Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the National character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution.”

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

1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787) Source: Madison's notes (25 August 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_825.asp

“Nothing sells tombstones like a Girl Scout in uniform.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"Scouting for the Reaper," http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/summer/appel-scouting-reaper/ Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 2009)

Girl, Scouting

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

William Styron book Darkness Visible

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

People, Disease, School, Way

“In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself.
In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final. Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 152

War, Nature, Problem, Change

“It's basically [about] having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are.”

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

On celebrities supporting efforts to curtail climate change. source http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1795948,00.html

Way, Decision, Personality

“I believe that the main lesson of relativity and quantum theory is that the world is nothing but an evolving network of relationships.”

Lee Smolin book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)

World

“I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: (1845), p. 275

Money, Pain, World, Law

“Music and Poetry have ever been acknowledged Sisters, which walking hand in hand support each other; As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is a rise above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry. Both of them may excel apart, but sure they are most excellent when they are oined, because nothing is then wanting to either of their perfections.”

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell, ‎Edward Taylor (1843) in "Introduction" to, King Arthur: an opera in 5 acts, written by John Dryden. p. 3; Introduction; Cited in: James Anthony Froude, ‎John Tulloch (1852), Fraser's Magazine, Vol. 45, p. 198

Music, Support, Sister, Perfection

“There are only two choices: Either no one created everything out of nothing, or Someone - and intelligent, omnipotent, eternal First Cause - created everything out of nothing. Which makes more sense?”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Intelligence, Sense

“p>No suffering is self-caused.
Nothing causes itself.
If another is not self-made,
How could suffering be caused by another? If suffering were caused by each,
Suffering could be caused by both.
Not caused by self or by other,
How could suffering be uncaused?”

Nagarjuna (150–250) Indian philosopher

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 14.8–9
trans. Jay Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (1995), ISBN 0195093364

Suffering

“From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife,
what grain will be saved?My son, believe me, nothing remains,
Only adult toil,
the furrow of fate in the palm.
Only toil,
Nothing more.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Farewell" (1945)
Rescue (1945)

Life, Fate

“Several commentators have reflected on the fact that this may be one of the great political victories of all time. In terms of votes that may be true, but in terms of what a victory really is, a huge landslide margin means nothing at all unless it is a victory for America. It will be a victory for America only if, in these next four years, we, all of us, can work together to achieve our common great goals of peace at home and peace for all nations in the world, and for that new progress and prosperity which all Americans deserve.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Remarks on Being Reelected (1972)

World, Peace, Home, Time

“Except in a few metropolitan ghettos, my experience has been that few Negroes have any interest at all in this organization, much less give any allegiance to its pessimistic doctrines. The Black Muslims are a quasi-religious, sociopolitical movement that has appealed to some Negroes who formerly were Christians. For the first time, the Negro was presented with a choice of a religion other than Christianity. What this appeal actually represented was an indictment of Christian failures to live up to Christianity's precepts; for there is nothing in Christianity, nor in the Bible, that justifies racial segregation. But when the Negroes' genuine fighting spirit rose during 1963, the appeal of the Muslims began to diminish.”

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

In reference to the Black Muslims who advocated Black Nacionalism. At his Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html 1960s

Religion, Failure, Time, Fight

“And then the wish to make compositions with figures. For this I had to make (quickly I thought; in passing), one or two studies from nature, just enough to understand the construction of a head, of a whole figure, and in 1935 I took a model. This study should take, I thought, two weeks and then I could realize my compositions…I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940…Nothing was as I imagined. A head, became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti in: Peter Selz, Alberto Giacometti. Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago [and others], distributed by Doubleday, 1965. p. 26

Imagination, Understanding, Nature, Study

“Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.”

William Least Heat-Moon book Blue Highways

Part Six, Chapter 9.
Blue Highways (1982)

Chance

“Allah's Apostle said, "In Paradise there is a pavilion made of a single hollow pearl sixty miles wide, in each corner of which there are wives who will not see those in the other corners; and the believers will visit and enjoy them. And there are two gardens, the utensils and contents of which are made of silver; and two other gardens, the utensils and contents of which are made of so-and-so (i. e. gold) and nothing will prevent the people staying in the Garden of Eden from seeing their Lord except the curtain of Majesty over His Face."”

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

Narrated Abdullah bin Qais, in Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 402
Sunni Hadith

People

““From the shape of a cloud I know that a man in a distant city will quarrel with his wife three seasons hence and a murderer will be hanged before I finish speaking. From the falling of a stone I know the number of maidens being seduced and the movements of icebergs on the other side of the world. From the texture of the wind I know where next the lightning will fall. So long have I watched and so much am I part of all things, that nothing is hidden from me.”
“You know where I go?”
“Yes.”
“And what I would do there?”
“I know that, too.”
“Then tell me if you know, will I succeed in that which I desire?”
“You will succeed in that which you are about, but by then it may not be what you desire.”
“I do not understand you, Morningstar.”
“I know that, too. But that is the way it is with all oracles, Jack. When that which is foreseen comes to pass, the inquirer is no longer the same person he was when he posed the question. It is impossible to make a man understand what he will become with the passage of time; and it is only a future self to whom a prophecy is truly relevant.””

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 6 (p. 62)

World, Way, Understanding, Question

“Indonesia is a country for which I have a great deal of respect and personal affection based on my own time in Indonesia. I want nothing, but the best for Indonesia, and I certainly want, Leigh, I certainly want the boats stopped and that is overwhelmingly in the interests of both our countries.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

abc.net.au http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3890402.htm. 2013

Time, Personality, Country

“In the "Alexandrian" explanation described above, the multiple from which evolution emerges is both secondary and sinful from its origin: it represents in fact (an idea that smacks of Manicheanism and the Hindu metaphysical systems) broken and pulverized unity. Starting from a very much more modern and completely different point of view, let us assert, as our original postulate, that, the multiple (that is, non-being, if taken in the pure state) being the only rational form of a creatable (creabile) nothingness, the creative act is comprehensible only as a gradual process of arrangement and unification, which amounts to accepting that to create is to unite. And, indeed, there is nothing to prevent our holding that union creates. To the objection that union presupposes already existing elements, I shall answer that physics has just shown us (in the case of mass) that experientially (and for all the protests of "common sense") the moving object exists only as the product of its motion.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

pp. 193–195 https://archive.org/stream/ChristianityAndEvolution/Christianity_and_Evolution#page/n191/mode/2up Christianity and Evolution (1969)

Idea, Sense

“The more a man thinks the better adapted he becomes to thinking, and education is nothing if it is not the methodical creation of the habit of thinking. Precisely. Theoretically, education is a mental training aiming at greater intellectual elasticity, but the question is whether education does not often strain, instead of train, a mind.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 61

Education, Question, Thinking, Training

“To be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of his contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a philautos, not a philosophos [a lover of self, not a lover of wisdom]. For this title of honor is well and wisely conceived precisely by its stating that one should love the truth earnestly and with one’s whole heart, and thus unconditionally and unreservedly, above all else, and, if need be, in defiance of all else. Now the reason for this is the one previously stated that the intellect has become free, and in this state it does not even know or understand any other interest than that of truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 21–22
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real

Love, Wisdom, Truth, Lovers

“The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?”

Eugene Kennedy (1928–2015) American psychologist

Eugene Kennedy, cited in: Kathy Wagoner (2002) The Promise of Friendship. p. 284

Life, Friendship, Personality, Deep

“Cambodia only protests against the destruction of the property and lives of Cambodians. All I can say is that I cannot make a protest as long as I am not informed. But I will protest if there is any destruction of Khmer life and property.
Here it is - the first report about several B-52 bombings. Yet I have not been informed about that at all, because I have not lost any houses, any countrymen, nothing, nothing. Nobody was caught in those barrages - nobody, Cambodians.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Stated two months (May 13, 1969) after American bombings in Cambodia began, as quoted by Henry Kissinger (2000), Years of Renewal, page 498.

Life, Housing

“I can call nothing by name if that is not his name. I call a cat a cat, and Rollet a rogue.”

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

Je ne puis rien nommer si ce n'est par son nom ;
J'appelle un chat un chat, et Rollet un fripon.
Satire I, l. 51
Satires (1716)

Cats

“Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.”

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

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Waiting

“There was nothing like shared meals, so the experts at IBM claimed, for overcoming one's basic disbelief in the existence of other people.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

"Concepts".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

People

“God has given man thousands of years to try to solve his own problems and run the world and bring peace and happiness, and he has brought nothing but war and misery. God has given man his chance and he has done nothing but make a mess of the world. And now, finally, man is able to destroy it. And if God did not step in and intervene in this last hour of history, man could completely destroy it and totally annihilate himself.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

A More Sure Word of Prophecy (2 Peter 1:19)

God, War, Happiness, World

“Once it's been proved to you that you're descended from an ape, it's no use pulling a face; just accept it. Once they've proved to you that a single droplet of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow human beings and consequently that all so-called virtues and duties are nothing but ravings and prejudices, then accept that too, because there's nothing to be done.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1 Chapter 3 (page 14)
Notes from Underground (1864)

“The cultural clock runs mainly upon ruined fragments of matter. No matter to what hazardous lengths we let out our line they still withdraw again, and further, into the depths. … however, runs mainly upon ruined fragments of matter recovered from refuse heaps and graveyards, from abandoned cities and buried villages. Only the arts of material nature have survived; of music and dance, of talk and ritual, of all the arts of temporal expression practically nothing is known elsewhere than in the Mediterranean world, save through traditional survivals among remote groups.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 14.

World, Art, Music, Nature

“Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Quoted in Conversations with Willie (1978) by Robin Maugham

“I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

Minds, Brains and Programs (1980)

Cars, Understanding, Sense

“Already, we may truly say, we have an enormous body of exact and usable knowledge in the domain of administration. It would be easy to list thousands of volumes and articles on the subject, from the hands of high competence. I have seen this body of literature grow from a few items in 1898 to an enormous mass in 1939. During this period I have seen the number of research workers increase from a mere handful to hundreds. This is a fact also, at least for informed and competent persons. During this period the opportunities for life work in administration have multiplied many times. I dare say, though I shall not try to prove it, that the body of exact literature in administration is many times larger than the body of exact literature in natural science when Bacon, Galileo, and Newton, began the revolution in natural science three hundred years ago. During this same period I have seen the number of societies and organizations among administrators, local and general, increase from nothing to fifty or sixty.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Source: Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939), p. 662

Life, Literature, Nature, Knowledge

“But middle-class Americans, friends of mine, composites of friends of mine, of a liberal bent, nice people, OK people, see nothing wrong with bilingual education. In fact, they wish their own children to be bilingual. In fact, they send their kids to French schools. In fact, they ask if I know of a housekeeper who might inadvertently teach their children Spanish while she dusts under the piano. Nope.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Children, People, Education, School

“The representation of an object, in itself (the objectivity as the aim of the representation), is something that has nothing to do with art, although the use of representation in a work of art does not rule out the possibility of its being of a high artistic order. For the Suprematist, therefore, the proper means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless to him; and the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless. Feeling is the decisive factor.... and thus art arrives at non-objective representation – at Suprematism.”

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

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 452
1921 - 1930

Art, Feeling, Idea, Decision

“It is nothing special to see women, it is a matter of being accustomed, it does not excite the fantasies of a man.”

Regina Jonas (1902–1944) rabbi

Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?

Women

“The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988)
General sources

Law

“Memory. — It is a mirror, that retains, and retains forever. Nothing is lost in it, nothing is erased. But it can be tarnished. And then one sees nothing in it.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Memory

“They found me in the gutter. The night was the only thing I had left and not much of it at that. I heard the car stop, the doors open and shut and two voices talking. A pair of arms jerked me to my feet and held me there.
"Drunk," the cop said.
The other one turned me around into the light. "He don't smell bad. That cut on his head didn't come from a fall either."
"Mugged?"
"Maybe."
I didn't give a damn which way they called it. They were both wrong anyhow. Two hours ago I was drunk. Not now. Two hours ago I was a roaring lion. Then the bottle sailed across the room. No lion left now.
Now was a time when I wasn't anything. Nothing was left inside except the feeling a ship must have when it's torpedoed, sinks and hits bottom.”

Mickey Spillane book The Girl Hunters

The Girl Hunters (1962)

Cars, Jerk, Way, Feeling

“Nothing's fair when we lose without a moment to say goodbye.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

How Come the World Won't Stop
Freak of Nature (2001)

“It was in vain. I brought my hardest right angle into violent collision with the Stranger, pressing on him with a force sufficient to have destroyed any ordinary Circle: but I could feel him slowly and unarrestably slipping from my contact; no edging to the right nor to the left, but moving somehow out of the world, and vanishing to nothing. Soon there was a blank. But still I heard the Intruder's voice.

SPHERE. Why will you refuse to listen to reason? I had hoped to find in you — as being a man of sense and an accomplished mathematician — a fit apostle for the Gospel of the Three Dimensions, which I am allowed to preach once only in a thousand years: but now I know not how to convince you. Stay, I have it. Deeds, and not words, shall proclaim the truth.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 17. How the Sphere, Having in Vain Tried Words, Resorted to Deeds

Truth, World, Hope, Feeling

“What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearranging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, diving? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed — since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Life, Universe

“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Feeling

“Everything in the Universe was as the Creator willed it — nothing superfluous, nothing lacking — a harmony.”

Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi

Genesis I, 31 (p. 5)
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (one-volume edition, 1937, ISBN 0-900689-21-8

Universe

“Oh, so you're one of those sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig; how's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig? You got nothing better to do than to put me down, you piece of garbage? You got nothing to do today? Go eat a sausage, and choke on it. Get trichinosis. Now do we have another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today? Put another, put another sodomite on… No more calls? …I don't care about these bums; they mean nothing to me. They're all sausages.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2003-07-07 Radio (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMtrpHjD2is) 2003

Business, Night

“There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.”

Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American writer

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124.

Communication

“"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

Fools

“There is nothing, at any time, in any circumstance, to worry over why this to me?”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Time

“Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 30, p. 68.

Way, Thinking

“Let a man get once fairly possessed of any peculiar notion, whether it be on religion, political economy, morals, politics, arts, or anything else, and he sees little beside his beloved principle, which he is at all times ready to advance, defend, demonstrate, or expatiate on. Nothing can be simpler than the two great dogmas of Christianity, which are so plain that all can both comprehend them and feel their truth. They teach us to love God, the surest way to obey him, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Any one can understand this; all can see how just it is, and how much of moral sublimity it contains. It is Godlike, and brings us near the very essence of the Divinity, which is love, mercy, and truth. Yet how few are content to accept the teachings of the Saviour in this respect, without embarrassing them with theories that have so much of their origin in human fancies.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XVI

Love, God, Truth, Religion

“I think people don't expect a lot from me. I'm trying to think at what age I noticed it was more about how I looked and less about what I do, but to me that was never the interesting part about me. I had nothing to do with my looks.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

Allure magazine (2007)

People, Age, Thinking, Parting

“When we were first playing, even though it was derivative, playing music was the best, there was nothing better. And then by the second album (Freak Show) we were like, playing music makes me angry, and by the third album (Neon Ballroom) I was like, I need to play music cos life sucks. And now all of a sudden there's this really youthful enthusiasm in the band, everyone around us, there's this real positivity and everyone's vibing off the music.”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

Kerrang! magazine, April 2002
Interviews

Life, Youth, Music

“There is, then, a logical priority about the arrangements, and logic has nothing to do with time.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 3, Quantified Insight, p. 74.

Time

“Do not look too far for you will see nothing.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Here and There,” p. 76
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “What After”

“And when I say the world is governed by nothing but demons, who will continue to be demons until they have destroyed the world, I am not using profanities; on the contrary, demon is a scientific term, a formula covering a specific chemical composition without connotations from politics, religion, or moral philosophy.... Here among us on the lowest rung of the world of life, no attention is paid to books unless they are written by chemically analyzed demons, or at least for them. Poets and philosophers are respected in proportion to the contempt and disgust they feel for the creation of life. Give this day our daily war is the prayer of those who govern countries. Kill, kill, said the outlaw Skuggasveinn...”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Dr. Sýngmann
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Life, War, Books, World

“There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty. Arren found himself unwilling to stay on these cold summits. He said after a little while, “I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are innocent; they kill because they must.”
"That is why nothing else can resist us. Only one thing in the world can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it.””

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 3, "Hort Town" (Arren and Ged)

Men, World, Hope, Thinking

““Sex,” Kiu said thoughtfully. “And Fear. Get that big old devil behind them with a stick, and my radiant beauty in front of them, and they’ll run right off a cliff, if I ask.”
“I’m a firm believer in Guilt, personally,” said Labienus.
“Works well on individuals,” Kiu conceded.
“Nothing like it for subtle motivation. Plant it deeply enough into a mortal’s psyche and it twists them endlessly.” Labienus sighed. “Get it in there young enough and it’ll do all your work for you. You’ll have only to prod the mortal along with a suggestion now and then.””

Kage Baker book The Children of the Company

Source: The Children of the Company (2005), Chapter 5, “The Angel of the Bottomless Deep” (p. 227)

Fear, Beauty, Sex, Motivation

“I have a Defined Goal - A Dream - and I am trying to get there. Wholeheartedly, Yes, I leave nothing out. I Believe - The Regrets in Life are the Risks not taken.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

AarinZz Blog http://aarinzz.blogspot.com/

Life, Dreams

“I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 114

Life, Children, Truth, Family

“The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 2.

Life, Death, Way, Revenge

“Did [Franz von] Papen really see nothing in National Socialism but its nationalism, could he have overlooked its revolutionary ‘dynamism,’ its restless and boundless revolutionary energy? That is exactly what happened… the monarchist elements imagine that they would easily put those attractive young men in their place. But there was another motive, the fear of the masses and of a revolution of the Left, the fear that the National Socialist masses might go over to the extreme Left.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 9

Men, Fear, Imagination, Motivation

“Powell described British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) as "if there be a conflict between the call of country and that of party, the call of country must come first" and went on to say: Curiously, it so happens that the question 'Who governs Britain?' which at the moment is being frivolously posed, might be taken, in real earnest, as the title of what I have to say. This is the first and last election at which the British people will be given the opportunity to decide whether their country is to remain a democratic nation, governed by the will of its own electorate expressed in its own Parliament, or whether it will become one province in a new European superstate under institutions which know nothing of the political rights and liberties that we have so long taken for granted.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to an audience of around 1,500 people on 23 February 1974 about British membership of the EEC. (Collings, Rex, ed. (1991), Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell, P. 454).
1970s

People, Communication, Question, Country

“Here comes Jesus, and sees the man, and shows to him, in the light of faith, that He is according to His Godhead immeasurable and incomprehensible and inaccessible and abysmal, transcending every created light and every finite conception. And this is the highest knowledge of God which any man may have in the active life: that he should confess in this light of faith that God is incomprehensible and unknowable. And in this light Christ says to man’s desire: Make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy house. This hasty descent, to which he is summoned by God, is nothing else than a descent through desire and through love into the abyss of the Godhead, which no intelligence can reach in the created light. But where intelligence remains without, desire and love go in. When the soul is thus stretched towards God, by intention and by love, above everything that it can understand, then it rests and dwells in God, and God in it. When the soul climbs with desire above the multiplicity of creatures, and above the works of the senses, and above the light of nature, then it meets Christ in the light of faith, and becomes enlightened, and confesses that God is unknowable and incomprehensible. When it stretches itself with longing towards this incomprehensible God, then it meets Christ, and is filled with His gifts. And when it loves and rests above all gifts, and above itself, and above all creatures, then it dwells in God, and God dwells in it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/asm/index.htm Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, Life, God, Faith

“In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media's) treatment of the game — 60 Minutes in particular. I've never watched that show after Ed Bradley's interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

GameSpy interview, Pt. I (15 August 2004)

Death, Children, Way, Game

“Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book II, Ch. 12
Attributed

Forgetting

“I don't think of my work as calligraphic. Critics also describe Jackson and De Kooning as calligraphic painters but calligraphy has nothing to do with us. It's interesting that the Oriental critics never say this. The Oriental idea of space is an infinite space; it is not painted space, and ours is. In the first place, calligraphy is writing and I am not writing. People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote, (1958)
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

People, Idea, Thinking, Painting

“Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.”

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) British literary critic

A Last Scrap Book (London: Macmillan, 1924) p. 42

God

“Nothing but the infinite Pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life.”

Joseph Henry Shorthouse book John Inglesant

John Inglesant (1881)

Life

“If I conceive God as existing separately from the world my ideal will be likewise; but if God is nearness to the world I will stay at my post. My spiritual life will then consist in continually relating my particular personality to the centre of all personalities. The world is not everything, but neither is it nothing, it is a multiplicity of finite beings for whom God is absolute nearness.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Life, God, World, Personality

“You know what I want to become temporarily today: a painter? No. A simple and common designer. But a biting one. I would like to deride humanity, nothing less. And this with the simplest means, in black and white. At the same time - oh blasphemy - I would like to attack our Lord adequately.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote in a letter to his friend de:Hans Bloesch, 1898; as cited in Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (The early works 1888-1922), Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1979, p. 47
Klee originally aspired to become a satirist, not a painter.
1895 - 1902

Time

“We get Bergdahl who was a traitor, and they get five of the greatest killers that they've wanted for eight years. We get Bergdahl — I call it the five for one trade. For the Iran deal, where we get nothing, we get nothing. They get ultimately, they have the path, beautiful path, they'll get way, way earlier than that. They'll get nuclear weapons, so if you get Trump you're going to see a lot of changes to that deal. That'll happen fast.”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Beauty, Way, Change

“One man I know, and one only, who can be praised for his achievements in this science. Of discourses and battles of words he takes no heed: he follows the works of wisdom, and in these finds rest. What others strive to see dimly and blindly, like bats in twilight, he gazes at in the full light of day, because he is a master of experiment. Through experiment he gains knowledge of natural things, medical, chemical, indeed of everything in the heavens or earth. He is ashamed that things should be known to laymen, old women, soldiers, ploughmen, of which he is ignorant. Therefore he has looked closely into the doings of those who work in metals and minerals of all kinds; he knows everything relating to the art of war, the making of weapons, and the chase; he has looked closely into agriculture, mensuration, and farming work; he has even taken note of the remedies, lot casting, and charms used by old women and by wizards and magicians, and of the deceptions and devices of conjurors, so that nothing which deserves inquiry should escape him, and that he may be able to expose the falsehoods of magicians. If philosophy is to be carried to its perfection and is to be handled with utility and certainty, his aid is indispensable. As for reward, he neither receives nor seeks it. If he frequented kings and princes, he would easily find those who would bestow on him honours and wealth. Or, if in Paris he would display the results of his researches, the whole world would follow him. But since either of these courses would hinder him from pursuing the great experiments in which he delights, he puts honour and wealth aside, knowing well that his wisdom would secure him wealth whenever he chose. For the last three years he has been working at the production of a mirror that shall produce combustion at a fixed distance; a problem which the Latins have neither solved nor attempted, though books have been written upon the subject.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Tertium

Bridges assumes that Bacon refers here to Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt. Source: Opus Tertium, c. 1267, Ch. 13 as quoted in J. H. Bridges, The 'Opus Majus' of Roger Bacon (1900) Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=6F0XAQAAMAAJ Preface p.xxv

Wisdom, Women, War, Books

“If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at least in the sense of this work — is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Preface
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

Truth, Secret, Religion, Nature

“You must not make the mistake of thinking that because nothing lasts, nothing matters.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 35

Thinking

“Physics is by no means "finished". But the part of it that explains almost everything in the universe—including us—is finished, and much of it has been finished for a century or more. This includes the physics that we are going to need. Nothing at the unsettled frontiers of physics challenges the parts we're going to make use of. What's more, the physics we need is easy to understand, certainly far easier than quantum mechanics, general relativity, or string theory.”

Alexander Rosenberg (1946) American philosopher

The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)

Understanding, Universe, Parting

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

István Küzmics (1723–1779) Hungarian translator

Men, World, Light, Housing

“Like men in his position throughout history, Kingsley Pryor did nothing as events swept him to their conclusion; simply waiting and praying that a magical third option would spring from nowhere.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Naked God (1999)

Men, History, Spring, Waiting

“Punishment of cadets had been artfully crafted. In the early nineteenth century, West Point officials deemed manual labor an inappropriate punishment for a cadet: It would have been an ungentlemanly task for a future officer. But they could make him do something that was tiring, embarrassing, and, most excruciating, accomplished nothing. So cadets ever since have been awarded "Area tours," each representing an hour- two hours on Friday afternoon, and then three on Saturday- walking in our dress gray uniforms with rifles across the Area. As my bemused father explained to me, the Area does not make you smarter, braver, or more expert; even trench digging would offer some tangible benefit. At the academy, where we hoarded free minutes, walking the yard meant wasted hours.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 14-15

Future

“So seeing that there is nothing further to say, I shall go right on talking about The Circle, thus proving that I am a born reviewer of plays. p. 256”

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

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 5: 1922

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Courageous

“Torture is not tolerated by this country on the battlefield or off. Anyone who tortures or abuses a detainee tarnishes the service of every honorable student and soldier in this room today. The President has said this, and I will say it again: those who commit torture in the name of the United States government will be prosecuted. In any discussion of Guantanamo, detainees and military commissions, I think that one final fact helps put things in perspective — and that is the fact that members of al Qaeda are not merely common criminals. Some critics around the world have argued that they are “just” criminals, that their crimes somehow do not amount to war crimes. But here are the facts: al Qaeda seeks to employ weapons of mass slaughter as a means of achieving political goals against both the civilian and military capacity of the United States, Europe, and our allies throughout the world. Its members continue to fight our Armed Forces on battlefields around the world, and they will continue to do so until we stop them. Al Qaeda has committed acts on a scale that transcends mere crime, as recognized by NATO immediately after the attacks of September 11th. Their crimes are therefore nothing less than war crimes. Given the magnitude of the atrocities al Qaeda has committed, there can be no comparison between the crimes of its members and that of common civilian criminals.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

War, World, Thinking, Help

“There was nothing for it but to pace through just behind or ahead of the spooling present that was never there, caught in the nonexistent interval between the nonexistent past and the nonexistent future.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 282

Past, Future

“The reasons why the adoption of a system of central planning necessarily produces a totalitarian system are fairly simple. Whoever controls the means must decide which ends they are to serve. As under modern conditions control of economic activity means control of the material means for practically all our ends, it means control over nearly all our activities. The nature of the detailed scale of values which must guide the planning makes it impossible that it should be determined by anything like democratic means. The director of the planned system would have to impose his scale of values, his hierarchy of ends, which, if it is to be sufficient to determine the plan, must include a definite order of rank in which the status of each person is laid down. If the plan is to succeed or the planner to appear successful, the people must be made to believe that the objectives chosen are the right ones. Every criticism of the plan or the ideology underlying it must be treated as sabotage. There can be no freedom of thought, no freedom of the Press, where it is necessary that everything should be governed by a single system of thought. In theory Socialism may wish to enhance freedom, but in practice every kind of collectivism consistently carried thought must produce the characteristic features which Fascism, Nazism, and Communism have in common. Totalitarianism is nothing but consistent collectivism, the ruthless execution of the principle that 'the whole comes before the individual' and the direction of all members of society by a single will supposed to represent the 'whole.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

" Planning, Science and Freedom http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v148/n3759/abs/148580a0.html", Nature 148 (15 November 1941), also available as " Planning, Science, and Freedom https://mises.org/library/planning-science-and-freedom," Mises Daily (Auburn, AL: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 27 September 2010) 1940s–1950s

People, Communication, Nature, Freedom

“As I grew I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles. For example, in the matter of abortion, I am pro-choice, but by personal choice would have nothing to do with an abortion of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Popes come and go, and John XXIII has been the only one I felt affection for. Their dictums strike me as lacking in the ability to surprise. They have been leading a holding action for a millennium.”

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

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

God, Way, Question, Reality

“St. Jerome, whose heir methinks I am in the endurance of foul slander, says in his letter to Nepotanius: "The apostle says: 'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' He no longer seeks to please men, and so is made Christ's servant" (Epist. 2). And again, in his letter to Asella regarding those whom he was falsely accused of loving: "I give thanks to my God that I am worthy to be one whom the world hates" (Epist. 99). And to the monk Heliodorus he writes: "You are wrong, brother, you are wrong if you think there is ever a time when the Christian does not suffer persecution. For our adversary goes about as a roaring lion seeking what he may devour, and do you still think of peace? Nay, he lieth in ambush among the rich."
Inspired by those records and examples, we should endure our persecutions all the more steadfastly the more bitterly they harm us. We should not doubt that even if they are not according to our deserts, at least they serve for the purifying of our soul. And since all things are done in accordance with the divine ordering, let every one of true faith console himself amid all his afflictions with the thought that the great goodness of God permits nothing to be done without reason, and brings to a good end whatsoever may seem to happen wrongfully. Wherefore rightly do all men say: "Thy will be done." And great is the consolation to all lovers of God in the word of the Apostle when he says: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. viii, 28). The wise man of old had this in mind when he said in his Proverbs: "There shall no evil happen to the just" (Prov. xii, 21). By this he clearly shows that whosoever grows wrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departed from the way of the just, because he may not doubt that these things have happened to him by divine dispensation. ///Even such are those who yield to their own rather than to the divine purpose, and with hidden desires resist the spirit which echoes in the words, "Thy will be done," thus placing their own will ahead of the will of God. Farewell.”

Peter Abelard (1079–1142) French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician

Source: Historia Calamitatum (c. 1132), Ch. XV

Love, Men, God, Hate

“There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach — it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Speech to the Young Men's Hebrew Association in New York (20 December 1914).

Secret

“Yes, that new world, through the golden gates of which they had passed together, which is the old, old world after all, and nothing else. The same old and new world it was to our fathers and mothers as it is to us, and shall be to our children — a world clear and bright, and ever becoming clearer and brighter to the humble, and true, and pure of heart, to every man and woman who shall live in it as the children of the Maker and Lord of it, their Father. To them, and to them alone, is that world, old and new, given, and all that is in it, fully and freely to enjoy. All others but these are occupying where they have no title; "they are sowing much, but bringing in little; they eat, but have not enough; they drink, but are not filled with drink; they clothe themselves, but there is none warm; and he of them who earneth wages earneth wages to put them into a bag with holes." But these have the world and all things for a rightful and rich inheritance; for they hold them as dear children of Him in whose hands it and they are lying, and no power in earth or hell shall pluck them out of their Father's hand.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 50, the concluding lines of the novel
The verses quoted are from the Bible: Haggai 1:6

Children, World, Lying, Hell

“We learn nothing by being right.”

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) writer, actress; Romanian princess

Haven (1951)

Learning

“What is introductory goes for nothing, but it is in order to explain the evidence.”

John Pratt (1657–1725) English judge and politician

16 How. St. Tr. 181.
Layer's Case (1722)

“Let me tell you something; I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish. (When accused of being a self-loathing Jew; Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 2, Episode 3, "Trick or Treat")”

Larry David (1947) American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer

Hate, Season

“How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at the age of thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a fragile barrier separates him from his youth. He is forever hearing with the utmost clarity the sounds of this neighboring domain, but there is no way to penetrate the barrier.”

Yukio Mishima book Runaway Horses

Runaway Horses (1969), as translated by Michael Gallagher (1973).

Youth, Age, Way, Feeling

“In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life. (It has always struck me as strange, by the way, that Alfred Nobel did not institute a philosophy prize, or for that matter that he instituted a physics prize but not a mathematics prize, to say nothing of a music prize - music is, after all, more universal than literature, which is bound to a particular language.) The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Dagens Nyheter http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/an-exclusive-interview-with-j-m-coetzee interview with David Attwell (December 8, 2003)

Life, Music, Way, Feeling

“[about how people in the 90's used "awesome" wrongly]
Webster's dictionary defines awesome as "anything that leaves you in awe and wonder." Like winning the lottery—twice. That's awesome. Getting a call from the IRS saying you've been audited and they owe you $50,000—that would be awesome. Ladies, you wake up tomorrow morning and the newspaper reads, "Scientists have discovered a way for men to experience childbirth." That would be awesome. Getting invited to the Playboy Mansion—on trampoline night, that would be awesome. And I started thinking, ladies and gentlemen, what would be awesome for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be, if I left this stage tonight and I went back to my hotel room, and Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said, "Have a good time!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

THAT would be AWESOME! It ain't gonna happen—but that would be awesome.
Now That's Awesome (2000)

Men, People, Way, Thinking

“Very ironic things have happened, but nothing to match this — giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is sort of like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Fleet.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Upon receiving the Linus Torvalds Award at Linuxworld, (1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE 1990s

“I would like to be able with authority to present the case for believing in God, but I would far rather be an authoritative argument for believing in God. The saints are the best argument for Christianity. They have the highest authority in the world for they coerce us and yet our coercion is a willing one. They drive us along the way which in our best moments we want to go. When we read their lives, and even more when we touch their lives with our own in day-to-day living, we meet Christianity’s unanswerable argument. We know, with an authority nothing can resist or overcome, that Christianity changes lives and that if Jesus Christ were given a chance he would change the world.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.63

God, World, Way, Change

“The art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Burke's description of poetry, quoted from his conversation in Prior's Life of Burke
Undated

Art

“I was lying in an easy-chair, in front of a garden. I saw that the spiritual power was still active in me: I could go on with occult experiments in spite of the illness. I used to concentrate on things and persons and circumstances and wanted to see if the power worked. It worked very well on the mental and vital planes. Then I broadened the field of activity. I could go on doing my work in various parts of France and America and other places. I could clearly see the faces of the persons worked upon. They could be made to do what they by themselves could not. These were controlled experiments … I could see that nothing could stop the work: even without my body the work could go on … Wherever the call was, I could attend.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Her notings in the diary when she was very ill in April 1915, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo", also in Chapter 10 Return to France http://www.motherandsriaurobindo.org/Content.aspx?ContentURL=_staticcontent/sriaurobindoashram/-00%20e-library@@@/-03%20disciples/k%20r%20srinivas%20iyengar/On%20The%20Mother/-12_Return%20to%20France.htm, p. 136

Lying, Parting, Personality

“When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 January 1820). Often misquoted as "God is an essence that we know nothing of" and attached to a part of his 22 January 1825 letter to Thomas Jefferson.
1820s

Wisdom, God

Quotes about nothing page 91

Quotes about nothing
page 91