Quotes about objection (3858 quotes, page 20)

“System theory is basically concerned with problems of relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather than with the constant attributes of objects. In general approach it resembles field theory except that its dynamics deal with temporal as well as spatial patterns. Older formulations of system constructs dealt with the closed systems of the physical sciences, in which relatively self-contained structures could be treated successfully as if they were independent of external forces. But living systems, whether biological organisms or social organizations, are acutely dependent on their external environment and so must be conceived of as open systems”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Source: The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966), p. 22

Problem , Science , Dependency

“If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 23

Knowledge , Freedom

“Architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 2

Men , Pain , Knowledge

“Let us first examine that nightmare to many Americans, especially our friends in California, the growing population of Japanese on the Pacific slope. It is undoubtedly true that in the past many thousands of Japanese have legally or otherwise got into the United States, settled here and raised up children who became American citizens. Californians have properly objected on the sound basic ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population. If this had throughout the discussion been made the sole ground for the American attitude all would have been well, and the people of Japan would today understand and accept our decision.

Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. There are throughout the East many thousands of so-called Eurasians—men and women and children partly of Asiatic blood and partly of European or American blood. These Eurasians are, as a common thing, looked down on and despised, both by the European and American who reside there, and by the pure Asiatic who lives there.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Editorial for Macon Telegraph, April 30, 1925
1920s

Women , Men , Children , People

“Administration has to do with getting things done; with the accomplishment of defined objectives. The science of administration is thus the system of knowledge whereby men may understand relationships, predict results, and influence outcomes in any situation where men are organized at work together for a common purpose.”

Luther H. Gulick (1892–1993) American academic

Source: "Science, values and public administration," 1937, p. 189; cited in: Marshall W. Meyer (1985), Limits to Bureaucratic Growth, p. 18

Men , Understanding , Knowledge , Science

“I'm learning that a lot of people--on the left as well as the right--have a problem with Jews. It is not that they object to Jews as people. It's that they object to Jews as Jews.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/964228974422515712 (15 February 2018)
2018

People , Problem , Learning

“A system is a set of objects with relationships between the … in may be described generally as a complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a causal network, … Also, we are mainly interested in systems within which some process is continually going on, including an interchange with an environment across the boundary. It is generally agreed that when we deal with the more open system with a highly flexible structure, the distinction between the boundaries and the environment becomes a more and more arbitrary matter, dependent upon the purpose of the observer.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Cited in: Addison C. Bennett (1978) Improving management performance in health care institutions: a total systems approach.. p. 40
A methodology for systems engineering, 1962

Dependency

“One cannot help but be struck by the diversity that characterizes efforts to study the management process. If it is true that psychologists like to study personality traits in terms of a person's reactions to objects and events, they could not choose a better stimulus than management science. Some feel it is a technique, some feel it is a branch of mathematics, or of mathematical economics, or of the "behavioral sciences," or of consultation services, or just so much nonsense. Some feel it is for management (vs. labor), some feel it ought to be for the good of mankind — or for the good of underpaid professors.
But this diversity of attitude, which is really characteristic of all fields of endeavor, is matched by another and more serious kind of diversity. In the management sciences, we have become used to talking about game theory, inventory theory, waiting line theory. What we mean by "theory" in this context is that if certain assumptions are valid, then such-and-such conclusions follow. Thus inventory theory is not a set of statements that predict how inventories will behave, or even how they should behave in actual situations, but is rather a deductive system which becomes useful if the assumptions happen to hold. The diversity of attitude on this point is reflected in two opposing points of view: that the important problems of management science are theoretical, and that the important problems are factual.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 7-8
1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Behavior , Feeling , Game , Mathematics

“I have been attracted to Freemasonry of my own freewill and accord, because it is an International Brotherhood with worldwide interests and its spirit appears as comprehensive and embracing as the globe itself. This brotherhood represents an idealism in which national and racial boundaries find no place. Freemasonry places the fact of God, the Great Architect of the Universe, the Creator of all things in the forefront of its teaching. It recognizes no specific religion, but emphasizes the Universality of all religious faiths. From the limited experience, I have had of my formal admission to the Fraternity this evening, I see that there is a religious spirit underlying the whole symbolic teaching of Masonry. It seems to me that apart from the rituals and symbols peculiar to it, the object of Masonry is generally to make the world a better, brighter and happier place to live in. These are some of the more important and characteristic features of the institution, which have had the greatest appeal to me and that is how I find myself to be one with you from now onwards.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In his address to the members of the Masonic Fraternity on the occasion of his joining as member of the Masonic Lodge. Article # 14 Initiate responds to his Toast R.W.Bro. Jaya Chamaraja Wadeyar http://masonicpaedia.org/showarticle.asp?id=14

God , World , Faith , Religion

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

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

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life , Men , Truth , Age

“The complete closed world consists of three parts-substratum, phenomenal world, and observer. By our experiments we drag up activities from the substratum into the phenomenal world of space and time, but there is no clear line of demarcation between subject and object, and by performing observations on the world, we alter it, much as a fisherman dragging up fish from the depths of the seas disturbs the waters and also damages the fish.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

World , Fish , Water , Time

“We have persistent objects, they're called files.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

Plan 9 fortune file (1992)

“The followers of Heraclitus insisted the Immortal Principle was change and motion. But Parmenides' disciple, Zeno, proved through a series of paradoxes that any perception of motion and change is illusory. Reality had to be motionless.
The resolution of the arguments of the Cosmologists came from a new direction entirely, from a group Phædrus seemed to feel were early humanists. They were teachers, but what they sought to teach was not principles, but beliefs of men. Their object was not any single absolute truth, but the improvement of men. All principles, all truths, are relative, they said. "Man is the measure of all things."”

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

These were the famous teachers of "wisdom," the Sophists of ancient Greece.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Wisdom , Men , Truth , Feeling

“I remain a skeptic about Donald Trump. Trump fans look at us skeptics with incredulity that we could possibly object to their man… Yet I see people comparing Trump to Reagan. Donald Trump has been a conservative for about ten minutes.”

Jim Geraghty (1975) American journalist

"The Corner" http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420996/trump-2008-bush-evil-talk-iran-obama-cannot-do-worse-bush-jim-geraghty (2015), National Review

People

“The particular conception of ideology operates primarily with a psychology of interests, while the total conception uses a more formal functional analysis, without any reference to motivations, confining itself to an objective description of the structural differences in minds operating in different social settings. The former assumes that this or that interest is the cause of a given lie or deception. The latter presupposes simply that there is a correspondence between a given social situation and a given perspective, point of view, or apperception mass. In this case, while an analysis of constellations of interests may often be necessary it is not to establish causal connections but to characterize the total situation. Thus interest psychology tends to be displaced by an analysis of the correspondence between the situation to be known and the forms of knowledge.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Lie , Motivation , Knowledge

“The schools, having found the object of their long, blind searching, shall teach directness, simplicity, naturalness: they shall protect the young against palpable illusion. They shall teach that, while man once invented a process called composition, Nature has forever brought forth organisms. They shall encourage the love of Nature that wells up in every childish heart, and shall not suppress, shall not stifle, the teeming imagination of the young.
They shall teach, as the result of their own bitter experience, that conscious mental effort, that conscious emotionality, are poor mates to breed from, and that true parturition comes of a deep, instinctive, subconscious desire. That true art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life.
That Nature is strong, generous, comprehensive, fecund, subtile: that in growth and decadence she continually sets forth the drama of man's life.
That, thro' the rotating seasons, thro' the procession of the years, thro' the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.”

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect

Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)

Love , Life , School , Art

“Object-oriented methods tend to focus on the lowest-level building block: the class and its objects.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 152

“Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

6 December 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Strong , Time

“The great object of government is to restrict, control and punish man ‘in the pursuit of happiness.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 180

Happiness

“What do I care? 'I don't come here to please anybody. I come because there are antiques and models to teach me, that is all. Do I object to your figures, made of butter and honey [to Alfred Boisseau]?”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet, c. 1839; as cited by biographer , in Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, transl. Helena de Kay; publ. Macmillan and Co., London, 1881, p. 54
Boisseau criticized Millet on making his own plan; he was one of the master's pets of art-teacher Paul Delaroche in Paris, that time
1835 - 1850

“Orientation of members toward others [is] a cognitive and affective orientation toward the objects of work, which is manifested in a person's interpersonal style.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 7

Personality

“That dissociated selves were an everyday part of life in antiquity and the Middle Ages is a much-denied fact of historians, just as anthropologists deny that their subjects are dissociated personalities who live in an animistic world full of alters inhabiting animals, objects, and dead ancestors.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 9, pp. 381-382.

Life , Age , World , Animals

“For if society lacks the unity that derives from the fact that the relationships between its parts are exactly regulated, that unity resulting from the harmonious articulation of its various functions assured by effective discipline and if, in addition, society lacks the unity based upon the commitment of men's wills to a common objective, then it is no more than a pile of sand that the least jolt or the slightest puff will suffice to scatter.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Émile Durkheim (1903/1961, p. 102); Quoted in: Kenneth Allan (2012). Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World: Seeing the Social World p. 151

Men , Parting

“Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose… that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Death , Intelligence , Science

“The most remarkable feature of Bell's work was undoubtedly the possibility it offered to determine experimentally whether or not Einstein's ideas could be kept. The experimental tests of Bell inequalities gave an unambiguous answer: entanglement cannot be understood as usual correlations, whose interpretation relies on the existence of common properties, originating in a common preparation, and remaining attached to each individual object after separation, as components of their physical reality.”

Alain Aspect (1947) French physicist

"Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution" (2004)

Idea , Reality

“And is there no possibility that there was a period, and several periods, when man existed, and yet was not an organic being — therefore could not have left any vestige of himself for exact science? Spirit leaves no skeletons or fossils behind, and yet few are the men on earth who doubt that man can live both objectively and subjectively. At all events, the theology of the Brahmans, hoary with antiquity, and which divides the formative periods of the earth into four ages, and places between each of these a lapse of 1,728,000 years, far more agrees with official science and modern discovery than the absurd chronological notions promulgated by the Councils of Nice and Trent.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter IX

Men , Age , Science

“What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will itself.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 102
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

God , Feeling

“The aesthetic is the sine qua none for art: if a work is not aesthetic, it is not art by definition... We feel through the senses, and everyone knows that the content of art is feeling; it is the creation of an object for sensing that is the artist’s task; and it is the qualities of this object that constitute its felt content.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), p. 38

Art , Feeling , Sense

“When someone says his conclusions are objective, he means that they are based on prejudices which many other people share.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

People

“The struggle against arbitrariness, as violence and as deception, requires people to build a society that is less hostage to itself. No central aspect of its arrangements must be left invisible or immune to challenge in the normal course of our routines of conflict and exchange. Objectivity is achieved not by holding fast to a given structure, resolutely contrasted to the hell of force and fraud, but by rendering the structure insubstantial—by turning it, increasingly, into the structure of no structure. This is the realistic next best to the visionary ideal of a circumstance in which all hierarchies and divisions have fallen down forever. The next best consists in the circumstance in which these hierarchies and divisions are repeatedly dragged out into the light of struggle and revision.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 45-46

People , Hell , Fraud , Light

“Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.”

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

As quoted in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tribute (1972), and in Chambers Dictionary of Political Biography‎ (1991) by John Ransley, p. 345

“It was no accident that I found my way to Götz at the time [c. 1960-62]. This 'Informal' element runs through every picture I've painted, whether it's a landscape, or a family painted from a photograph, or the Colour Charts or a Grey picture. And so now it is a pursuit of the same objectives by other means... As I now see it, all my paintings are 'Informal'.... except for the landscapes, perhaps... The 'Informal' is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism – the age of kings, of clearly formed hierarchies.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 42, note 45 : quote on his period of Informal art

Age , Family , Way , Time

“Put a lot of paint & a wooden ball or other object on a board. Push to the other end of the board. Use this in a painting.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

ruler on board.
Book A (sketchbook), p 52, c 1964: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 58
1960s

Painting

“If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists. This norm is not at all a punishment or a discrimination against the divorced and remarried, but rather expresses an objective situation that of itself renders impossible the reception of Holy Communion: '… If these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Letter to bishops, Sept. 14, 1994
1990s

God , Marriage , People , Faith

“The Human Behavior School: This approach to the analysis of management is based on the central thesis that, since managing involves getting things done with and through people, the study of management must be centered on interpersonal relations. Variously called the "human relations," "leadership," or "behavioral sciences" approach… This school concentrates on the "people" part of management and rests on the principle that, where people work together as groups in order to accomplish objectives, "people should understand people."”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

Source: "The Management Theory Jungle," 1961, p. 178

People , School , Behavior , Understanding

“To take what might seem an "objective", macro-economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities—as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. Or if there is a demand for sugar in England, and enslaving millions is the easiest way to acquire labor to produce it, then it is inevitable that some will enslave them.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 314

World , Way , Behavior , Nature

“All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (14 August 1819), quoted in Karl W. Schweizer and John W. Osborne, Cobbett and His Times (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), p. 18.

Life

“The development of design principles based on objective visual tests, experience, and logic; the pursuit of research in the physiological and psychological effects of color; and investigations in perceptibility and readability in typography are being carried on in other fields… such a movement in cartography cannot fail to materialize”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Source: The Look of Maps (1952), p. 13-14; As cited in: Clifford H. Wood, C. Peter Keller (1996) Cartographic design: theoretical and practical perspectives. p. 21

Color

“This consideration must alter the form of our proposed inquiry; for the question being thus at least partly decided, since it is ascertained that we have rays of heat which give no light, it can only become a subject of inquiry whether some of these heat-making rays may not have a power of rendering objects visible, superadded to their now already established power of heating bodies. This being the case, it is evident that the onus probandi [burden of proof] ought to lie with those who are willing to establish such an hypothesis, for it does not appear that Nature is in the habit of using one and the same mechanism with any two of our senses. Witness the vibration of air that makes sound, the effluvia that occasion smells, the particles that produce taste, the resistance or repulsive powers that affect the touch—all these are evidently suited to their respective organs of sense.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared.

Lie , Question , Nature , Sense

“The idea of objectivity in the evaluation of pictures introduces the concept of rational and scientific assessment. There are some sciences involved in the making and in the study of pictures, but the art itself is finally not a science and will not submit to scientific regimentation because its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown. It is simply an avoidance of the interesting difficulty to subject the inexplicable to the process of rational explanation. For since the real pleasures of painting and the reality of its meaning exist in the part of its structure which cannot be explained, all suggestions and pretensions at explanation must lead us away from the area of greatest interest. This is to say that such analysis as purports to lay bare the machinery which makes a painting work — makes it a good painting — not only leaves out the most important factor, the element of mystery, but actively denies the reality which is the justification for the art at all.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life , Pleasure , Art , Idea

“The object of this paper is fivefold. The first objective is to derive a practical system of demand equations which possess properties usually considered desirable from the standpoint of elementary economic theory. The second is to consider the statistical problems involved in applying the system of equations. The third is to analyse the pattern of demand for consumers' goods in terms of this system on the basis of annual data relating to the United Kingdom over the years 1920-38. The fourth is to compare the results of this system, and systems like it, with the actual state of demand in 1900. Finally, the fifth is to compare the post-war structure of demand with what might be expected from the inter-war relationshipp under free-market condition.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Stone, Richard. " Linear expenditure systems and demand analysis: an application to the pattern of British demand http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2227743?uid=3738736&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104302232953." The Economic Journal (1954): 511-527.

War , Problem

“What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 3, 79

Dogs , Literature

“A full definition of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 32, p.  94.
Collected Works

Truth

“At bottom, knowledge of God in faith is always this indirect knowledge of God, knowledge of God in His works, and in these particular works in the determining and using of certain creaturely realities to bear witness to the divine objectivity. What distinguishes faith from unbelief, erroneous faith and superstition is that it is content with this indirect knowledge of God.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

God , Faith , Knowledge , Reality

“An object which is used to create instances, i. e., a template, description, pattern, or "blueprint" of a category or collection of very similar items. Among other things, a class describes the interface the these items will present to the outside world, i. e., the available and appropriate methods, constants, and exceptions. A class represents an abstraction of the items. A class may itself be parameterized (i. e., it actually represents a family of very closely related classes), in which case we refer to it as a parameterized class. Class is a recursive concept. Specifically, we may define classes as being composed of other classes (i. e., heterogeneous composite classes and homogeneous composite classes), in terms of itself (a recursively defined class), as inheriting characteristics from one or more other classes (i. e., the superclasses of the class), and as providing characteristics to other classes (i. e., the subclasses of the class). In some places, classes are defined as "the set of all instances of a type," and the term "type" is given the above definition for class.”

Edward V. Berard

Source: Essays on object-oriented software engineering (1993), p. 328

World , Family

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us…. And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?

It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Men , Faith , Way , Soul

“Pascal suggests that people avoid looking inwards and keep running in the vain hope of escaping a face-to-face encounter with their predicament, which is to face up to their utter insignificance whenever they recall the infinity of the universe. And he censures them and castigates them for doing so. It is, he says, that morbid inclination to hassle around rather than stay put which ought to be blamed for all unhappiness. One could, however, object that Pascal, even if only implicitly, does not present us with the choice between a happy and an unhappy life, but between two kinds of unhappiness: whether we choose to run or stay put, we are doomed to be unhappy. The only (putative and misleading!) advantage of being on the move (as long as we keep moving) is that we postpone for a while the moment of that truth. This is, many would agree, a genuine advantage of running out of rather than staying in our rooms—and most certainly it is a temptation difficult to resist. And they will choose to surrender to that temptation, allow themselves to be allured and seduced—if only because as long as they remain seduced they will manage to stave off the danger of discovering the compulsion and addiction that prompts them to run, screened by what is called “freedom of choice” or “self-assertion.””

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

But, inevitably, they will end up longing for the virtues they once possessed but have now abandoned for the sake of getting rid of the agony which practicing them, and taking responsibility for that practice, might have caused.
Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 37.

Life , People , Truth , Hope

“The men in the laboratory… cannot be said to observe the actual objects of their curiosity at all. …The sense data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. …What is directly observable is only a sign of the "physical fact"; it requires interpretation to yield scientific propositions.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Philosophy in a New Key (1942)

Men , Sense , Science , Parting

“We often fool ourselves that we are concentrating because we fix our attention on wavering objects”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 13

Fools

“If we can build something that is capable of taking people and equipment to Mars, such that it can service a transportation infrastructure for humanity becoming a multi- planet species - which I think is a very, very important objective - then I would consider the mission of SpaceX successful, at that point.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People , Thinking , Success

“!-- Most of the effects described in classical magical tradition I believe I can duplicate with art, possibly drugs – or some other means of integrating myself more deeply with that sort of reality, that sort of consciousness – I believe I could do most of the things that are described in traditional magic. This opens up wider possibilities. It also enables me to understand myself on a deeper level. -->By accepting the idea of endless pantheons of gods, I somehow accept these creatures as being distinct and separate from me, and not as being, to some degree, higher functions of me. Iain Sinclair was asking me about this: he asked me ‘do you think they are inside you, or outside you?’ The only answer I could come up with was, the more I think about it the inside is the outside. That the objective world and the non-objective world are the same thing, to some degree. Ideaspace and this space are the same space. Just different ends of the scale. That’s not a very good explanation, but the best I can come up with so far.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

God , World , Art , Idea

“We are the subject of all that we have yet to realize, and the object of all that we have realized.”

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

Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom

“The first colours which made a strong impression on me were light juice green, white, crimson red, black and yellow ocher. These memories go back to the third year of my life. I saw these colours on various objects [houses and roofs, in Russia] which are not as clear in my mind as the colours themselves.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 9

Life , Light , Strong , Memory

“It is the social issues which unremittingly demand that I make a responsible personal effort and which also lay increasing claims on my physical and mental powers. For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me. I have written about this on many occasions but, sad to report, all that I said before applies equally today. I am no professional politician — which is perhaps why I am continually obsessed by the question as to the purpose served by the work done by my friends and myself, as well as its final result. I tend to believe that only moral criteria, coupled with mental objectivity, can serve as a sort of compass in the cross-currents of these complex problems.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel autobiography (1975)

Lie , Sadness , Family , Question

“In the United States of America, satire is protected speech, even if the object of the satire doesn’t get it.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

As quoted in "The Trump Era Is Al Franken’s Time to Shine" by Graham Vyse, in New Republic (2 February 2017) https://newrepublic.com/article/140342/trump-era-al-frankens-time-shine

“In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Declaration of Sentiments

Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention (July 19-20, 1848).

“When Sulla died in the year [78 B. C. ], the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. it was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs…There were… the numerous and important classes whom the sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whom the political or private interest it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in [89 B. C. ] as merely an installment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedman, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations - whether they, like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arrentines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people..”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

People , Secret , Nature , Reality

“In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness (1943), p. 237, 1998 edition

Life

“Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Advertisement, N.Y. Herald Tribune (August 19, 1946)

“We don’t believe this because we want to! And why would we want to? We believe it because we can prove it really is true, and that applies to everyone whether you want to believe it or not. We’re not just saying you’ve descended from primates either; we’re saying you are a primate! Humans have been classified as primates since the 1700s when a Christian creationist scientist figured out what a primate was –and prompted other scientists to figure out why that applied to us. It wouldn’t be this way if different “kinds” of life had been magically-created unrelated to anything else; not unless God wanted to trick us into believing everything had evolved. Because the phylogenetic tree of life is plainly evident from the bottom up to any objective observer who dares compare the anatomy of different sets of collective life forms. But it can be just as objectively confirmed from the top down when re-examined genetically. This is why it is referred to as a “twin-nested hierarchy”. But there’s still more than that because the evident development of physiology and morphology can be confirmed biochemically as well as chronologically in geology and developmentally in embryology. Why should that be? And how do creationists explain why it is that every living thing fits into all of these daughter sets within parent groups, each being derived according to apparently inherited traits? They don’t even try to explain any of that, or anything else. They won’t because they can’t, because evolution is the only explanation that accounts for any of this, and it explains it all.”

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

"10th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNuc, Youtube (June 5, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Life , God , Way , Parent

“The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had m astered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Plato's Pharmacy
Dissemination (1972)

Game , Thinking , Decision , Chance

“There are benefits to be gained from the ambiguities of scientific discourse. Of the four previously identified functions served by ambiguity, two remain outside the boundaries of scientific work. The function of attaining enlightenment through the intuition of indeterminacy belongs to mysticism, or perhaps to philosophy and poetry, not to the disciplined activity of science. And the protection of one's meanings and intentions through ambiguously opaque utterance, while perhaps useful as a protective ploy in scientific competition, cannot be sanctioned as appropriate conduct for a scientific enquirer. Through its two other functions, however — the evocative representation of complex meanings and the bonding of a community through diffuse symbols — ambiguity has long served and will continue to serve the general objectives of scientific activity. It is useful for scientific formulations to express an abundance of meanings, for these can ignite a cluster of insights that in turn lead to novel explorations.”

Donald N. Levine (1931–2015) sociologist

Donald N. Levine (1988), The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. p. 218; Partly cited in: David L. Sills, ‎Robert King Merton (2000), Social Science Quotations: Who Said What, When, and Where. p. 129-130

Communication , Science

“We knew that by closing the Gulf of Aqaba it might mean war with Israel. [If war comes] it will be total and the objective will be to destroy Israel.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) second president of Egypt

As quoted in the Washington Post (27 May 1967)

War

“The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)

Past , Childhood

“These organizational processes result in our perceptions being structured into units corresponding to objects and properties of objects. It is these larger units that may be stored and later assembled into images that are experienced as quasi-pictorial, spatial entities resembling those evoked during perception itself…. It is erroneous to equate image representations with mental photographs, since this would overlook the fact that images are composed from highly processed perceptual encodings.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 19

“It is not my aim and object to paint a cow for the cow's sake or a tree for the tree's, but by means of the whole to create a beautiful and huge impression which nature sometimes creates, also with most simple means. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Het is mijn doel niet eene koe te schilderen om de koe, noch een boom om den boom; het is om door het geheel een indruk te weeg te brengen, dien de natuur somtijds maakt, een grootschen, schoonen indruk, ook door de eenvoudigste middelen.
Quote of Gerard Bilders in his letter c. 1861-1864; as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

Beauty , Nature , Tree , Painting

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

As quoted in Totalitarian Temptation http://www.friesian.com/gonzalz2.htm#note-9 (1976).
1970s

Secret , History , Falseness

“The control of an undertaking consists of seeing that everything is being carried out in accordance with the plan which has been adopted, the orders which have been given, and the principles which have been laid down. Its object is to point out mistakes in order that they may be rectified and prevented from recurring.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Henri Fayol (1916) cited in: Ralph Currier Davis (1951) The fundamentals of top management. p. 157. This quote was already cited in multiple sources in 1938.

“When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly.”

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) Italian philosopher

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 205

Sense

“I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei, interview in “ Change http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/episode-change,” Episode 1, Season Six, Art: 21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, PBS, April 2012.
2010-, 2012

Beauty , Time , Perfection

“What particularly attracted me [in his painting 'Still-life with Musical instruments', 1908 – 1909].... was the materialization of this new space that I felt to be in the offing. So I began to concentrate on still-life's, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space... This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them. It was this space that particularly attracted me, for this was the first concern of Cubism, the investigation of space.... In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 41

Life , Music , Painting

“ENGLAND has invited the civilized world to meet in its great commercial centre; asking it, in friendly rivalry, to display for the common advantage of all, those objects which each country derives from the gifts of nature, and on which it confers additional utility by processes of industrial art.
This invitation, universally accepted, will bring from every quarter a multitude of people greater than has yet assembled in any western city: these welcome visitors will enjoy more time and opportunity for observation than has ever been afforded on any previous occasion. The statesman and the philosopher, the manufacturer and the merchant, and all enlightened observers of human nature, may avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by their visit to this Diorama of the Peaceful Arts, for taking a more correct view of the industry, the science, the institutions, and the government of this country. One object of these pages is, to suggest to such inquirers the agency of those deeper seated and less obvious causes which can be detected only by lengthened observation, and to supply them with a key to explain many of the otherwise incomprehensible characteristics of England.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. v-vi: Preface

People , World , Peace , Art

“This book is not for the engineer content with hardware, nor for the biologist uneasy outside his specialty; for it depicts that miscegenation of Art and Science which begets inanimate objects that behave like living systems. They regulate themselves and survive: They adapt and they compute: They invent. They co-operate and they compete. Naturally they evolve rapidly.
Pure mathematics, being mere tautology, and pure physics, being mere fact, could not have engendered them; for creatures to live, must sense the useful and the good; and engines to run must have energy available as work : and both, to endure, must regulate themselves. So it is to Thermodynamics and to its brother Σp log p, called Information Theory, that we look for the distinctions between work and energy and between signal and noise.
For like cause we look to reflexology and its brother feedback, christened Multiple Closed Loop Servo Theory, for mechanical explanation of Entelechy in Homeostasis and in appetition. This is that governance, whether in living creatures and their societies or in our living artefacts, that is now called Cybernetics.”

Warren S. McCulloch (1898–1969) American neuroscientist

McCulloch (1961) in: Pask An approach to Cybernetics http://www.pangaro.com/pask/pask%20approach%20to%20cybernetics.pdf. Preface. p. 7

Books , Art , Mathematics , Nature

“Working men in this hall…I…say to you, and through the Press to all the working men of this kingdom, that the accession to office of Lord Derby is a declaration of war against the working classes…They reckon nothing of the Constitution of their country—a Constitution which has not more regard to the Crown or to the aristocracy than it has to the people; a Constitution which regards the House of Commons fairly representing the nation as important a part of the Government system of the kingdom as the House of Lords or the Throne itself…Now, what is the Derby principle? It is the shutting out of much more than three-fourths, five-sixths, and even more than five-sixths, of the people from the exercise of constitutional rights…What is it that we are come to in this country that what is being rapidly conceded in all parts of the world is being persistently and obstinately refused here in England, the home of freedom, the mother of Parliaments…Stretch out your hand to your countrymen in every portion of the three kingdoms, and ask them to join in a great and righteous effort on behalf of that freedom which has so long been the boast of Englishmen, but which the majority of Englishmen have never yet possessed…Remember the great object for which we strive, care not for calumnies and for lies, our object is this—to restore the British Constitution and with all its freedom to the British people.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (27 August 1866), quoted in The Times (28 August 1866), p. 4.
1860s

Men , War , People , World

“Business is the highest evolution of consciousness, responsibility, and morality. No other living organism is even remotely able to function on a business level. The essences of business are honesty, effort, responsibility, integration, abstraction, conceptualization, objectivity, long-range planning, discipline, thought, control. Business creates essentially every major human value, ranging from the development of consciousness, language, mathematics, the arts, up to the electronic and biogenic revolutions.”

Frank R. Wallace (1932–2006) Philosopher, author, entrepreneur

Wallace, Frank. The Neo-Tech Discovery. Appendix F http://www.neo-tech.com/discovery/appendixf.html

Art , Mathematics , Business , Effort

“The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators. I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.”

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) American artist

Quotes of Sol Lewitt
Source: Art Institute of Chicago. Video Data Bank (1992), On Art and Artists. p. 1991

“We approach one another as if we were separate entities and see the other only from a limited point of view – not as part of us; we do not open ourselves to others with complete faith. When we first encounter objects or persons we think, because of this feeling of separateness, that they are just as we find them and nothing else. But if my attitude towards this person is of love, interest, oneness, then I will lose that first impression of having accidentally found them and will grow beyond my limitations towards something at once more intimate and more vast.”

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

Hymn

Love , Faith , Feeling , Thinking

“It has often been matter of regret in modern times that, in the construction of the Statute of Limitations, the decisions had not proceeded upon principles better adapted to carry into effect the real objects of the Statute; that instead of being viewed in an unfavourable light as an unjust and discreditable defence, it had not received such support as would have made it what it was intended to be, emphatically a Statute of repose. It is a wise and beneficial law, not designed merely to raise a presumption of payment of a just debt from lapse of time, but to afford security against stale demands after the true state of the transaction may be forgotten, or be incapable of explanation by reason of the death or removal of witnesses.”

Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice

Bell v. Morrison, 1 Peters, Sup. C. Rep. (U. S.) 360 (1828).

Death , Law , Support , Decision

“Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral looking an object?”

Max Perutz (1914–2002) Austrian-born British molecular biologist

The Hemoglobin Molecule, Scientific American, <B>211</B>, 65-76, November 1964. This comment refers to the appeareace of the low resolution structure of hemoglobin, which Perutz was instrumental in elucidating in a heroic effort that spanned 1937 to 1959. In the course of this work, Perutz and his co-workers developed many of the techniques that are used to this day to determine the three-dimensional structures of macromolecules.

Truth , Search

“The knower is the Purusa (the conscious principle) who cognizes the reflection from the Will-to-know by conjunction. The knowable consists of all the characteristics present in the essence of the Will-to know. This, then the knowable behaves like a magnet. It is useful only when placed here. On account of its capacity of knowability, it becomes the possession of the lord, the Purusa, who is of the nature of power of knowing. It becomes the object of the act of enjoyment, in as much as although by nature independent, it becomes dependent on another, existing as it does for fulfilling the object of that other…. The conjunction therewith is the cause, by giving that up is secured the complete remedy of pain, in as much as that is found to be the cause of removal the real thing, the cause of pain.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

in p. 125.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Pain , Nature , Dependency

“That from the outset they expect or even impose all the properties of finite numbers upon the numbers in question, while on the other hand the infinite numbers, if they are to be considered in any form at all, must (in their contrast to the finite numbers) constitute an entirely new kind of number, whose nature is entirely dependent upon the nature of things and is an object of research, but not of our arbitrariness or prejudices.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

Letter to Gustac Enestrom, as quoted in Georg Cantor : His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (1990) by Joseph Warren Dauben ~ ISBN 0691024472

Question , Nature , Dependency

“Do you think it inconsistent for someone who lacks belief in the stork to object when public schools teach middle schoolers that that’s where babies come from? Likewise no history class should ever confuse students by playing any movie with Mel Gibson’s name in the credits, because they’re wrong, and it’s wrong to mislead students. It would be inconsistent for one who loves and seeks knowledge of truth not to object to lies or challenge liars. Everything religion teaches is wrong. Although public schools are not teaching about the stork, some of them are teaching creationism, which is just as demonstrably absurdly wrong; In either case, it’s a criminal immoral disservice, and should be corrected.”

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

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Love , Truth , School , Religion

“As the natural sciences have developed to encompass increasingly complex systems, scientific rationality has become ever more statistical, or probabilistic. The deterministic classical mechanics of the enlightenment was revolutionized by the near-equilibrium statistical mechanics of late 19th century atomists, by quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, and by the far-from-equilibrium complexity theorists of the later 20th century. Mathematical neo-Darwinism, information theory, and quantitative social sciences compounded the trend. Forces, objects, and natural types were progressively dissolved into statistical distributions: heterogeneous clouds, entropy deviations, wave functions, gene frequencies, noise-signal ratios and redundancies, dissipative structures, and complex systems at the edge of chaos.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Statistical Mentality" https://web.archive.org/web/20110718052233/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/index.php/article/detail/522/statistical-mentality (2011)

Mathematics , Nature , Science

“All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Elizabeth Day, "The Moore Legacy," http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/jul/27/1 The Observer (2008-07-27),
Henry Moore is quoted here by Mary Moore, the artist's niece
1970 and later

Art , Thinking , Effort , Parting

“The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.”

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

As quoted in Grace at the Table : Ending Hunger in God's World (1999) by David M. Beckmann abd Arthur R. Simon, p. 156

“These individual actions are really trans-actions instead of either individual behavior or the "exchange" of commodities. It is this shift from commodities and individuals to transactions and working rules of collective action that marks the transition from the classical and hedonic schools to the institutional schools of economic thinking. The shift is a change in the ultimate unit of economic investigation. The classic and hedonic economists, with their communistic and anarchistic offshoots, founded their theories on the relation of man to nature, but institutionalism is a relation of man to man. The smallest unit of the classic economists was a commodity produced by labor. The smallest unit of the hedonic economists was the same or similar commodity enjoyed by ultimate consumers. One was the objective side, the other the subjective side, of the same relation between the individual and the forces of nature. The outcome, in either case, was the materialistic metaphor of an automatic equilibrium, analogous to the waves of the ocean, but personified as "seeking their level." But the smallest unit of the institutional economists is a unit of activity -- a transaction, with its participants. Transactions intervene between the labor of the classic economists and the pleasures of the hedonic economists, simply because it is society that controls access to the forces of nature, and transactions are, not the "exchange of commodities," but the alienation and acquisition, between individuals, of the rights of property and liberty created by society, which must therefore be negotiated between the parties concerned before labor can produce, or consumers can consume, or commodities be physically exchanged.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

"Institutional Economics," 1931

Pleasure , School , Behavior , Nature

“We can be as sure as we could probably need be that neither this enormous explosion that set the universe in motion, which is still moving away from us at a great rate, nor this amazingly complex billion year period of evolution, we can be pretty certain it was not designed so that you and I could be meeting in this room. We are not the objects of either of these plans. These plans don’t know we’re here. I’m sorry to say, wouldn’t know or care if we stopped being here. We have to face this alone with the equipment, intellectual and moral, that we’ve been given, or that we've acquired, or that is innate to us.”

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

Authors@Google, August 16, 2007, YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs.
2000s, 2007

Universe

“The extreme ignorance and gullibility of the foreign press provides the negationists with a strategic cover. Most English-knowing Indians believe that the Western intelligentsia is more objective and competent, and they keep on believing this even in domains where the West is completely ignorant and incompetent. So the negationists feel supported in the back by an outside world which they can manipulate but which many in India still consider as a standard of truth. If the Hindu leadership had taken the trouble of studying the mental determinants of India's political configuration, it would have blown this cover away by spreading first-hand information to the foreign media, and educating them about the Stalinist-Islamic grip on the Indian establishment.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

Truth , World , Education , Feeling

“It is often difficult and well-nigh impossible, when using the lens, to get all planes in moderate focus without getting one or some part excessively so, and similarly, if we avoid excessive sharpness in each and every part, some planes, such as the extreme distance or immediate foreground, so broken up as to destroy form and structure. Then it is that the pin-hole, with its equal focus in all planes and at any focal length, seems to recommend itself; but if it be desired to emphasize any object, by introducing more detail there than elsewhere, then the uniform sharpness of the pin-hole image fails us.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 60

Parting

“The Objective of Ahlehadeeth movement is to propagate and inculcate pure Tawheed in all spheres of life by following exact instructions of Kitab and Sunnah to gain satisfaction of Allah. The social and political objectives of Ahl-i-Hadeeth Movement is to bring about all round reforms of the society through ensuring the rectification of Aqeedah and 'Amal”

Muhammad Asadullah Al-Ghalib (1948) Bangladeshi academic

i.e. faith & deeds
(English Translation). http://www.ahlehadeethbd.org/porichitienglish.html
Organizational leaflet

Life , Faith

“Treatises may be didactic in tone, but essentially they lack the conclusiveness of an instruction which could be asserted, like doctrine, by virtue of its own authority. … Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. For by pursuing different levels of meaning in its examination of one single object it receives both the incentive to begin again and the justification for its irregular rhythm.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels [Origin of the German Mourning Play] (1925), p. 28

Way , Thinking

“In conclusion, it appears to me that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries. It both sharpens, and partly likewise allays that want and craving, which, as Sir J. Herschel remarks, a man experiences although every corporeal sense is fully satisfied. The excitement from the novelty of objects, and the chance of success, stimulate him to increased activity. Moreover as a number of isolated facts soon become uninteresting, the habit of comparison leads to generalization. On the other hand, as the traveller stays but a short space of time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches, instead of detailed observation. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter XXIII: "Mauritius To England", pages 607-608 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=626&itemID=F10.3&viewtype=image

Travel , Knowledge , Sense , Distant

“The Anarchists believe in the family; they only insist that free competition and experiment shall always be allowed in order that it may be determined what form of family best secures this object.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Individual Liberty (1926), Liberty and Politics

Family

“One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Truth , Study , Universe , Parting

“Who was the first man to look at a house full of objects and to immediately assess them only in terms of what he could trade them in for in the market likely to have been? Surely he can only have been a thief.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 386

Housing

“The man must learn to know his dog as a personality, not a formula. I have no objection to a grouse dog swinging on his cast and coming in from behind me – a misdemeanor by trial standards. Grouse terrain is such that if it can best be covered by the dog’s working in an unorthodox manner, I consider him intelligent if he does so.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Troubles with Bird Dogs (1975)

Dogs , Intelligence , Learning , Personality

“My noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth rather suggested that it was a really good Socialist policy to join up with these countries. I do not think that comes into it very much. They are not Socialist countries, and the object, so far as I can see, is to set up an organisation with a tariff against the rest of the world within which there shall be the freest possible competition between, capitalist interests. That might be a kind of common ideal. I daresay that is why it is supported by the Liberal Party. It is not a very good picture for the future…I believe in a planned economy. So far as I can see, we are to a large extent losing our power to plan as we want and submitting not to a Council of Ministers but a collection of international civil servants, able and honest, no doubt, but not necessarily having the best future of this country at heart…I think we are parting, to some extent at all events, with our powers to plan our own country in the way we desire. I quite agree that that plan should fit in, as far as it can, with a world plan. That is a very different thing from submitting our plans to be planned by a body of international civil servants, no doubt excellent men. I may be merely insular, but I have no prejudice in a Britain planned for the British by the British. Therefore, as at present advised, I am quite unconvinced either that it is necessary or that it is even desirable that we should go into the Common Market.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/aug/02/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (2 August 1962).
Later life

Men , World , Way , Support