Quotes about oil
page 4

“Hey folks, tonight I wanna talk about global warming. Now, The World is Hot and Flat Society is growing increasingly hysterical and that indeed is causing me to sweat a little. In the last month or so, I've heard suggestions that those skeptical of Al Gore's spiritual crisis are deniers and one good way to serve the planet would be to have one less kid and I've also read that mankind is 'a virus' and human beings are 'the AIDS of the earth.' Global warming is officially becoming creepy and I can't tell yet if it's facisitc or fetishistic but it's kinda like piercing or tattoos, I don't even wanna get one, because I see how hooked people are and it spooks me. I just find it odd that we've come to a point in history where if I don't concede that if Manhattan will be completely submerged in 2057 I'm thought to be a delusional contrarian by some of my more zealous fellow citizens. I'm sorry Angst Squad, but if we commissioned a public works project (let's call it 'The Manhattan Project') and tried our hardest to submerge Manhattan in the next 50 years, we couldn't pull it off, mainly because it wouldn't be environmentally sound and you guys would hang it up in the permitting process. Simply put, I can't worry about the earth right now because I'm too worried about the world. Why can't I take terrorism as seriously as Al Gore takes global warming? There are times that you think that liberals only fear car bombs if they have leaky exhaust systems. And why am I constantly beaten over the head with 'the delicate balance of nature'? Am I the only one who watches Animal Planet? Every time I turn it on, I see some demented harp seal chucking peguins down his gullet like they were maitre d'Tic-Tacs. To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged eustachian tube. Listen, the weather is just like Hilary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we? We're here to miss our next Tuesday's weather much less the year 2057. Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. That's why I drive an SUV: so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself at the vanguard of the environmental movement and I think the individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dillemma and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about our Mother Earth? Don'tcha?”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

6/17 The Half Hour News Hour
The Buck Starts Here

War, People, World, Fear

“What the eye can see won't get us very far. And what it can see is so limited, so restricted. But a gouache or an oil painting can be seen at a glance, can take in a whole world at a single glance.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

11 August 1972; pp. 90-91
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

World, Painting

“Well, the common enemy in North America is the Western consumer. The consumer has driven oil up to $50.00 a barrel so we have to have these wars. I think it's incumbent upon us to.”

Dan Aykroyd (1952) Canadian film actor

Response to question from reporters as to who are the enemy in the above comment.
[PEOPLE:Aykroyd a man of the world, but which one?, STEVE, EDDY, Orange County Register, Santa Ana, Calif., December 2, 2004]

War, Thinking

“It is here that Britain's weakness lies. The plain fact is that labour costs per unit of output in British business and industry continue to rise faster than is consistent with low unemployment and faster than our principal competitors overseas. Productivity is, certainly rising quite rapidly, but pay is rising faster still. It is this—and not our alleged dependence on oil—that constitutes the Achilles' heel of the British economy.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/mar/18/help-for-the-unemployed in the House of Commons (18 March 1986)

Business, Dependency

“It's real simple. Basically, their message is to stop warring on each other and to stop warring on the planet to be kind to each other and the planet, because we're headed for major environmental collapse. And they've also expressed deep concern about the leadership of the planet. They've made it very clear: You're being led by the oil industry and the war industry.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James explaining one of the messages he says he receives from the extraterrestrials.

War

“I only know that all is lost, and that nothing can help me unless I inherit money, strike oil or go to work.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Coffee, Please!
How to Be a Hermit (1929)

Money, Help

“I have always striven to fix beauty in wood, stone, glass or pottery, in oil or watercolor by using whatever seemed fittest for the expression of beauty, that has been my creed.”

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) American stained glass and jewelry designer

The Art Work of Louis C. Tiffany (Doubleday, Page & Co New York, 1916)

Beauty

“I work a lot and I think a lot. I really want to try to paint on glass.. Please will you ask him [mr. architect Taut ] if there are any transparent colors, which one can use to paint on the glass directly... I want to dispose of a new technique in which the artist can paint on the glass directly instead of canvas. When one wants to reach colors spiritually-bright, then a time will come that oil-paint and canvas are no longer suitable... So, if you have time, please ask Mr. Taut if he understands my view and maybe he knows the ways how I can follow my direction.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:)Ich arbeite sehr viel und denke sehr viel. Ich möchte so gern versuchen, auf Glas zu mahlen. .. ..bitte fragen sie ihn dann [Herr Taut] ob es transparante Farbe gibt, womit man gleich auf Glas malen kann. .. ..ich möchte eine neue Technik haben, dass der Künstler so direkt das Glas verwenden kann statt Leinwand. Wenn man die Farben leuchtend geistlich haben will, dann wird es eine Zeit kommen, dass Oelfarben und Leinwand sich dafür nicht mehr eignen.. ..So wenn Sie Zeit haben, fragen Sie dann Herrn Taut ob er meine Idee versteht und vielieich den Weg kennt, den ik gehen müsse.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 11 Nov. 1914; as cited by Arend H. Huussen Jr. in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 19
It was not until April 1918 that Jacoba wrote Walden she had decided to submit a series of designs for stained glass windows for the upcoming 'Sturm' exhibition - in April 1919 she sent him ten stained-glass windows, 'Nrs. 12-26'
1910's

Color, Way, Understanding, Thinking

“The implicit, or even explicit, offer made by authoritarians is stability in exchange for liberty. High oil prices allowed Putin to keep this bargain for a while, aided by an international community that lost interest in promoting liberty as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. Putin was welcomed by the G7 as an equal while destroying democracy and civil society at home. Imagine how difficult it was for us in Russia to attack Putin’s regime as undemocratic while he was being embraced by the leaders of the free world. Even Putin’s invasion of neighboring Georgia in August 2008 resulted in no censure or sanction. He was rewarded by Obama and Hillary Clinton’s reset a few months later, confirming to him that a move into Ukraine would also go unchallenged.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

World, Democracy, Home, Imagination

“The Exxon Corporation was, and is, working hard to take the lead in setting the standard for the environmental clean-up along the 1,200 miles of damaged Alaskan coastline. Yet, despite all their efforts they still hear cries of foul. News articles claim the corporation is falling short of its responsibilities. Video footage of out-of-work fishermen sitting in idle boats carries the depressing message that the fishing industry cannot provide a livelihood for several more years. Exxon has spent billions of dollars related to that tragic oil spill. In spite of their efforts they continue to pay the price in money, damaged reputation, and ill-will.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 2

Money, Fish, Effort

“The technique used heavy, spiky pastes made of nothing other than ordinary oil paint, used thick and mixed with sand and gravel. I some cases – but these were the exception – a few miscellaneous objects were stuck into the wet paint, such as bits of string or little pieces of glass or mirror.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

quote by Dubuffet on his technique, he used in his series Hautes Pâtes, exhibited in 1946
Source: 1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967, p. 428

Past, Painting

“Roger: On a single tour.. Hmm.. Probably more than five. Cause when we first started, we had a really old van. It was a '79 Chevy. It was like the kind of thing where we'd pull over and get gas and it'd need two quarts of oil every time. That kind of thing. It'd break down pretty frequently. We have bad luck with vans. It's some sort of curse. But, then we got another one after that and that one was good to us for many years.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Bad luck, Time

“After working with oil, pastel, and watercolors, I have intentionally returned to working with graphite. It is the most challenging mode of expression to master”

Wahbi Al-Hariri (1914–1994) Artist, architect, author

Wahbi al-Hariri-Rifai (1992), The Spiritual Edifices of Islam: Drawings by Wahbi Al-Hariri-Rifai http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Spiritual_Edifices_of_Islam.html?id=J9sJtwAACAAJ - National Museum (Saudi Arabia) Exhibit Booklet - 2002, Washington, D.C.: GDG Exhibits Trust & National Museum (Saudi Arabia), OCLC:56990773, retrieved on 25 June 2013. Quoted from inside cover.

“Contemporary art and the [Communist] Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water—they can never mix.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

Art, Water

“All that foreign oil controlling American soil. Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed: sheiks walking around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings, deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris.”

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

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), Slow Train

Future

“After earning the PhD degree and acquiring some relatively extensive experience in digital computers… It was time to leave the University. The result of an extensive search for the right job was a family move to Arlington Heights, Illinois, where it was a short commute to the Research Laboratories of the Pure Oil Company at Crystal Lake. I was given the title of Mathematical and Computer Consultant. The Labs were set in a beautiful campus, the professional personnel were eager to learn what I had to teach and to include me in many interesting projects where my knowledge and skills could be put to good use. I was encouraged to initiate my own program of research. I went to work with enthusiasm.
The corporate headquarters of Pure Oil were located in down town Chicago. Pure Oil had been trying to install an IBM 705 computer system for all their accounting needs including calculation of all data necessary for the management of exploration, drilling, refining and distribution of oil products and even royalties to shareholders in oil wells. Typical for those early days, the programming team was in deep difficulties and needed help; they lacked adequate resources and suitable training. The Executive Vice President of Pure Oil, when he heard that there was a computer expert already on the payroll at the Crystal Lake lab, ended our family blissful dream and I was reassigned to the down town office.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

Family, Beauty, Dreams, Search

“On working at La Passione (1996): Day one, the damage was done. All it was meant to be was one hour of a little boy’s dreams. And I had things I wanted to do with the guitar that hadn’t been done before. Like, there’s one number called "Olive Oil", where I was actually playing slide guitar in the same scale as a saxophone. […] But then in came millions of executives from America. So in the end, it fell flat on its arse. And it came out the same week that Britpop took off. Blair had just won the election. Oasis. Spice Girls. So something a bit Fellini-ish – about a little boy who loved red cars – went straight over the top. It was like, ‘Well, don’t you have a 335 guitar with a Union Jack on it?’”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Love, Dreams, Cars, Girl

“I have never been a supporter of or an apologist for Saddam Hussein. Indeed, I recall many lonely occasions in the House when I spoke against Saddam Hussein, his genocide against the Kurdish people and the way that the British Government were financing the re-arming of Iraq. Indeed, the chemical weapons being manufactured in Iraq largely comprise chemicals made in western Europe and north America. Some £1 billion was loaned to Saddam Hussein by British banks, with the agreement of the British Government. His power is largely the creation of western Europe and north America. I do not support him and I do not think that he was right to invade Kuwait…The only purpose of sending troops to the region is to defend and guarantee oil supplies. I find it difficult to accept that the United States is merely defending a small country against a larger country. If that were true, why were Grenada and Panama invaded? What was the Vietnam war about, other than a powerful United States wishing to extend its control and influence throughout the world? …If the shooting starts and there is war in the Gulf, the retaking of Kuwait will not be a clean, clinical operation—it will be a filthy and long war with hundreds of thousands of dead, and at the end of that war there will still have to be negotiations on the future order and the future government of that area and those countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/07/first-day in the House of Commons (7 November 1990). 1990s

War, People, World, Way

“I must have a talk with you, David, and learn all the new ideas. As far as I can see, one must hate everybody but at the same time give them free medical attention and a lot of extra education, poor things! All those helpless little children herded into schoolhouses every day — and cod liver oil forced down babies’ throats whether they like it or not — such nasty-smelling stuff.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Lucy Angkatell
The Hollow (1946)

Hate, Children, Education, Idea

“The Saudi government has been pumping money in a quiet kind of revolution to shape Islam in its own images since 1973, [with] oil price rises. It wasn't a noisy revolution like the Iranian revolution was. It didn't have so much hubbub and noise associated with it and all. But it was quietly done [with] Saudi influence, using money, and the building of [madrassas] -- that is, religious schools and mosques all across the world. … The very particular kind of Islam associated with Saudi Arabia … is an upstart. It was created in the 18th century. It was constrained and confined entirely to the Arabian Peninsula right through to the late 1960s. All of a sudden, this [Wahhabi] Islam -- which is espoused by these young men, which considers even a Muslim like myself, because of my Shiite background, to be dirty or not a real Muslim … [is] probably the dominant form [of Islam] in the United States. It spreads from one end of the world to the next. It's been a quiet, silent revolution that's been happening, and suddenly exploded on the scene with Sept. 11.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men, Money, World, School

“You know, I could run for governor and all this but I'm basically a media creation. I've never really done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil industry. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

In an interview with the Midland Reporter Telegram on 4 July 1989, quoted in Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (John Wiley and Sons, 2003) by James Moore and Wayne Slater, p. 161.
1980s

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Life, People, World, Travel

“These movies belonged to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—that period of great, unsustainable, and hedonistic prosperity, driven by the burning of Earth’s reserves of perishable oil, which culminated in the False Tribulation, and the wars, and the plagues, and the painful dwindling of inflated populations to more reasonable numbers.”

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

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 29

Pain, War, Falseness

“[Bin Laden has] already said publicly that you can have all the oil you want. I can‘t drink it. We‘re going to sell it to you at a marketplace.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Hardball with Chris Matthews, November 16 2004
2000s

Drink

“I'm with you. I'm with everybody. I'm with everybody, look, I'm self-funding. I have no oil company. I have no special interest. I have no lobbyists.”

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

2010s, 2015

“Only now [1943] I become conscious that my work in black, white and little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expressions... In painting, however, the lines are absorbed by the color planes; but the limitations of the planes show themselves as lines and conserve their great value.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

note from his postcard, late May 1943; as quoted in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 240
1940's

Color, Drawing, Painting

“I could not believe what I was seeing: everywhere there were whale bones. Thousands of them stacked on top of each other. They rose from the seabed almost to the surface of the water. There were big bones. I could make out many of them: rib bones, jaw bones, vertebrae. In some places they were piled so high that, when I took a stroke, my hands touched them. I thought of all the beautiful whales I’d seen around the coast of South Africa and Norway that add so much to the area. How many whales were hunted and brought to this island before having their carcasses burned for oil and their bones dumped in this way? It disgusted me to such an extent that I considered stopping the swim to move it elsewhere, but I decided I had to press on.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 233, describing his swim at Deception Island, Antarctica (2005)
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Beauty, Way, Water

“…talking as though the Standard Oil Company was the smallest thing he owned.”

Addison Mizner (1872–1933) American architect

From his sketchbook

“The combined efforts of Government policy since 1979 have been not to improve but substantially to worsen our competitive position. We have gone from a huge manufacturing surplus of £5.5 billion in 1980 to a 1986 third quarter deficit of £8 billion a year…Even with oil production continuing for some time, the current account has gone from a £3 billion surplus to a deficit predicted by the Chancellor of £1.5 billion…Sadly, the Government's great contribution, having refused to stimulate the economy by more respectable means, is a roaring consumer boom, which there is not the slightest chance of their moderating before an election. A roaring consumer boom does not, to any significant extent, mean more employment. In our competitive position, worsening under the Government, it means overwhelmingly higher imports, a still worse balance of payments position and a classic path to perdition. To have produced, after seven and a half years, the combination of total monetary muddle, a worsened competitive position, a widespread doubt in other countries as to how we are to pay our way in the future, a desperately vulnerable currency and the prospect of an unending plateau of the highest unemployment in a major country in the industrialised world is a unique achievement over which the Chancellor is an appropriate deputy acting presiding officer.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/nov/06/economic-policy in the House of Commons (6 November 1986) 1980s

World, Way, Effort, Chance

“I have some hopes for the future. One of the things I hope the new leader will address is an integrated energy policy, because we need to take advantage of the tremendous brainpower that we have amassed over the years relative to conventional and oil-sands oil and gas, and funnel those energies into alternate forms of energy for the future. By that I mean coal, coal gasification, coalbed methane, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, hydro power, all forms of energy other than conventional and oil-sands gas and oil.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: [Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up, University of Alberta Press, 2010, 312, Geo Takach]

Hope, Future

“Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of re-assembling the Russian empire.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

World, Wealth

“Standing on my watch-tower I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind — heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict — and I cry to those for whom I watch, "A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away. "Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins — the sea burning like oil — nations rising from under ground — the sun falling — the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene. My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!”

Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) American academic administrator

Sermons, vol. II (1839), sermon XXXIX: "The Watchman".

God, World, Distant, Evil

“Oil painting and color, said Michelangelo, are for “women and the lazy.” His sharp-edged Apollonian style is the only way to beat back mother nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 158

Women, Color, Way, Nature

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31.

Money, Hope, Nature, Waiting

“We lost -- we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties -- and Sen. Obama -- passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust when we valued our power over our principles. We're going to change that.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

People, Change, Dependency

“Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Quoted in Friedman, Robert I., Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement (New York, New York: Random House, 1992), 132-52.
1990s

“The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. A first knowledge of their sense of the purity of rarefaction was given me in early years, when we had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, 'This is jessamine, this violet, this rose'. But at last Dahoum drew me: 'Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all', and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. 'This,' they told me, 'is the best: it has no taste.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

My Arabs were turning their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no share or part.
Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 3

World, Dogs, Way, Flowers

“Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system.”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 19

Smile, Appearance, Training

“In the [art-magazine] 'Kunst-Kronijk' my work 'Monastic corridor' came under your eyes; it is after a drawing that I started at Kleve after Nature and of which the painting is now almost finished. I believe, you know Kleve. The smallest of the Catholic Churches is a kind of monastery church; it has a nice sacristy, and the passage along the building gave me the motive of which you saw the lithography. On the same spot I designed a sketch in the 'Paarden-posterij' [Horse post-location] (where the cars are stored at Emmerich). I later made it a drawing - one of my best, and also the construction of it is now already in oil, to be completed soon. As motive, aspect, effect, etc. it pleases everyone - it is a real stable with lots of horses in it, and yet I do not have to make an enormous effort to paint the horses. As they are in the stable, they take the mysterious part [of the image]. Who knows, the K[unst]-K[ronyk] will produce a reproduction of it.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch, (citaat van een brief van Johannes Bosboom, in het Nederlands:) In de 'Kunstkronijk' kwam U mijn 'Kloostergang' onder de oogen; 't is naar een Teek[ening] die ik te Cleef naar de Natuur begon en waarvan nu de schilderij bijna gereed is. Ik geloof, gij kent Kleef. De kleinste der Kath. Kerken is een [soort] van Kloosterkerk, heeft een aardige sacristy en de gang langs het Pand gaf mij het motief, waarvan gij de lith[ographie] zaagt. Bij datzelfde verblijf ontwierp ik eene schets in de Paardenposterij (waar de wagens op Emmerik stallen). Ik maakte die later tot eene Teek[ening], een mijner beste, en ook daarvan staat de aanleg in olie gereed, om eerlang voltooid te worden. Als motief, aspect, effect, etc. bevalt het een ieder - 't is een echte stal, waar veel paarden in zijn, en toch hoef ik mij aan het schilderen der paarden niet te buiten te gaan. Zooals ze erin zijn, nemen zij het mysterieuse gedeelte in. Wie weet, levert de K[unst]-K[ronyk] er niet een reproductie van. Quote from Bosboom's letter, 1866; as cited in: Uit het leven van een kunstenaarspaar: brieven van Johannes Bosboom, H.F.W. Jeltes, 1916 https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/excerpts/437 (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek) 1860's

Art, Cars, Motivation, Nature

“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

Tony Hayward (1957) British businessman

BP boss admits job on the line over Gulf oil spill http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/13/bp-boss-admits-mistakes-gulf-oil-spill.

Water

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Men, People, World, Hope

“I’m tired of being told that out of “tolerance for other cultures” we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.”

Robert A. Hall (1946) American politician

I'm Tired (February 19, 2009)

Love, Money, Hate, School

“The island lies like a strange, misshapen dagger in the blue Ionian Sea, midway along the Greek and Albanian coastlines.
In the past, it has fallen into the hands of a dozen different nations, from all of which it has absorbed what it found good and rejected the rest, thus keeping its individuality. Unlike so many parts of Greece, it is green and lush, for when it was part of the Venetian empire they used it as their oil store, planting thousands of olive trees, so that now the bulk of the island is shaded by these carunculated giants with their wigs of silvery-green leaves. Between them run the admonishing fingers of black-green cypress, many planted in groves as dowries. All this creates a mystical landscape, bathed in sharp brittle sunlight, orchestrated by the knife-grinder song of the cicadas, framed in the blue, still sea. Of all the wonderful and fascinating parts of the planet I have been privileged to visit, Corfu is the nearest approach to home for me, since it was here, nurtured in sunlight, that my fascination for the living world around me came to fruition.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist (1984)

World, Home, Tree, Past

“For the foreseeable future, we're going to need oil products because I don't like the idea of hydrogen cars. I'm not sure I want to be cruising around a mall parking lot filled with a thousand mini-Hindenburgs.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

When Did Nature Get So Whiney? (12 September 2003)

Cars, Idea, Future

“The accounts of money, supplies and provisions should then be considered. The overseer should report what wine and oil has been sold, what price he got, what is on hand, and what remains for sale. Security should be taken for such accounts as ought to be secured. All other unsettled matters should be agreed upon. If any thing is needed for the coming year, it should be bought; every thing which is not needed should be sold. Whatever there is for lease should be leased.”

Cato the Elder book De Agri Cultura

Of the duties of the owner
De Agri Cultura, about 160 BC

Money, Wine

“I love the military, and I want to have the strongest military that we've ever had, and we need it more now than ever. But I said, "Don't hit Iraq," because you're going to totally destabilize the Middle East. Iran is going to take over the Middle East, Iran and somebody else will get the oil, and it turned out that Iran is now taking over Iraq. Think of it. Iran is taking over Iraq, and they're taking it over big league.”

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

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Love, Thinking

“A man needs truth like a machine needs oil.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Often attributed to Kerouac's novel Big Sur, the quote cannot be found in that book, nor in any of Kerouac's other published works. It is, in fact, a quote by the Kerouac character in the movie of Big Sur (2013) and therefore composed by the screenplay writer Michael Polish, rather than by Jack Kerouac.
Misattributed

Truth

“The world petroleum story is one of the most inhuman known to man: in it, elementary moral and social principles are jeered at. If powerful oil trusts no longer despoil and humiliate our country it is not because these predators have become human, but because we have won a hard-fought battle which has been going on since the beginning of the century.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 59
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On oil and nuclear energy

World, Country

“Not all monotheisms are exactly the same, at the moment. They're all based on the same illusion, they're all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally it's a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, with an enormous fortune it's pumping the ideologies of wahhabism and salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That's what it does globally, it's quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn't it? It says it's the Final Revelation. It says that God spoke to one illiterate businessman – in the Arabian Peninsula – three times through an archangel, and that the resulted material, which as you can see as you read it is largely plagiarized ineptly from the Old…and The New Testament, is to be accepted as the Final Revelation and as the final and unalterable one, and that those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims. Well I tell you what, I don't think Muhammad ever heard those voices. I don't believe it. And the likelihood that I am right – as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn't read, had bits of the Old and The New Testament re-dictated to him by an archangel, I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct. But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says I'd better listen because if I don't I'm in danger, or me who says "no, I think this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it"? And up go the placards and the yells and the howls and the screams – this is in London, this is in Toronto, this is in New York, it's right in our midst now – "Behead those who cartoon Islam". Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You're giving away what is most precious in your own society, and you're giving it away without a fight, and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you why you do this. Make the best use of the time you've got left. This is really serious. … Look anywhere you like for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for antisemitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that's on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque. And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force that is the main source of hatred, is also the main caller for censorship.”

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=youtu.be&t=16m36s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Death, Women, God, Hate

“It is interesting that when you actually subpoena the emails and the correspondence of the oil industry, as the Attorney-General of New York State has done, it unveiled a record of deception for decades. It’s all there and it’s all clear, and it’s all terrifying, basically.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

Climate, Welfare..., Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 October, 2018 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4892252.htm

“In achieving this vision, we plan to work in close partnership with international institutions, including the United Nations; our Allies and partners; and bilateral donors. If conflict occurs, we plan to seek the adoption, on an urgent basis, of new United Nations Security Council resolutions that would affirm Iraq's territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief, and endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq. We will also propose that the Secretary General be given authority, on an interim basis, to ensure that the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people continue to be met through the Oil for Food program.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi people (March 2003)

People, Food, Partnership

“Okemah was one of the singiest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Pastures Of Plenty: A Self Portrait (1990), p. 3

“You know, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U. N. inspections were over. I don't believe he went in there for oil. We didn't go in there for imperialist or financial reasons. We went in there because he bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Interview with Time Magazine, June 2004
2000s

Peace, Thinking, Waiting

“From the happy-go-lucky days of oil exploration and drilling, when a lot of easy sources were being found and easily managed, we're gotten ourselves into this sort of apocalyptic time. We're willing to destroy almost everything, risk almost anything, and go ahead with techniques for which we have no way of responding to the known problems. And that is truly an addiction in the real sense of the word, an addiction by which people destroy their own bodies to continue to have a supply of something that is killing them.”

Carl Safina (1955) American biologist

[The Atlantic, Deepwater Horizon, One Year Later: A Conversation With Carl Safina, 20 April 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/04/deepwater-horizon-a-convesation-with-carl-safina/237043/] (Talking to the author of "A Sea in Flames" about how offshore drilling has—and hasn't changed—since the Gulf spill — interview by Douglas Gorney)

People, Way, Problem, Sense

“Mattei was convinced that Italy, a poor and defeated country, nonetheless possessed notable energy deposits of petroleum in its subsoil, and he was also aware that the oil business, even if there were not really resources inside the country, was an important business which one could not stay out of and in which one could not be at the mercy of the big guys. So Mattei's program was to try to use all available means to exploit the country's energy resources, and if this were not possible, to seek international accords with coun¬tries which had these energy resources, so that they could be used by Italy in order to become a partner of the major pow¬ers, and not be at their mercy”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The Strategic Stakes in Mattei's Flight, p. 23

Guy, Business, Country

“The tired assertion that America "supports democracy" in the Middle East is increasingly transparent. It was false 50 years ago, when we supported and funded the hated Shah of Iran to prevent nationalization of Iranian oil, and it’s false today when we back an unelected military dictator in Pakistan - just to name two examples. If honest democratic elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, many countries would elect religious fundamentalist leaders hostile to the United States. Cliché or not, the Arab Street really doesn’t like America, so we should stop the charade about democracy and start pursuing a coherent foreign policy that serves America’s long-term interests.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Hypocrisy in the Middle East http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/tst022607.htm (February 26, 2007). 2000s, 2006-2009

Hate, Hostility, Democracy, Support

“(17.2. 1914) Beyond some bars, out of arm's reach, lies an objective [a banana]; on this side, in the background of the experiment room, is placed a sawn-off castor-oil bush, whose branches can be easily broken off. It is impossible to squeeze the tree through the railings, on account of its awkward shape; besides, only one of the bigger apes could drag it as far as the bars. Sultan is let in, does not immediately see the objective, and, looking about him indifferently, sucks one of the branches of the tree. But, his attention having been drawn to the objective, he approaches the bars, glances outside, the next moment turns round, goes straight to the tree, seizes a thin slender branch, breaks it off with a sharp jerk, runs back to the bars, and attains the objective. From the turning round upon the tree up to the grasping of the fruit with the broken-off branch, is one single quick chain of action, without the least 'hiatus', and without the slightest movement that does not, objectively considered, fit into the solution described.”

Wolfgang Köhler book The Mentality of Apes

Source: The Mentality of Apes, 1925, p. 94; As cited in: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964, p. 103

Jerk, Tree, Indifference

“We may not appreciate the fact; but a fact nevertheless it remains: we are living in a Golden Age, the most gilded Golden Age of human history — not only of past history, but of future history. For, as Sir Charles Darwin and many others before him have pointed out, we are living like drunken sailors, like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on? Estimates vary. But all are agreed that within a few centuries or at most a few millennia, Man will have run through his capital and will be compelled to live, for the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and seventy or eighty centuries of his career as Homo sapiens, strictly on income. Sir Charles is of the opinion that Man will successfully make the transition from rich ores to poor ores and even sea water, from coal, oil, uranium and thorium to solar energy and alcohol derived from plants. About as much energy as is now available can be derived from the new sources — but with a far greater expense in man hours, a much larger capital investment in machinery. And the same holds true of the raw materials on which industrial civilization depends. By doing a great deal more work than they are doing now, men will contrive to extract the diluted dregs of the planet’s metallic wealth or will fabricate non-metallic substitutes for the elements they have completely used up. In such an event, some human beings will still live fairly well, but not in the style to which we, the squanderers of planetary capital, are accustomed.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293

Men, Alcohol, Age, History

“Oil is like drugs. Find the commodity smugglers. Many are adventurous; they will buy from you at a discount and they don't care about embargoes.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Statement (11 April 2011) as quoted in "Gaddafi clung to a fading reality" at Aljazeera (21 May 2012) http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/libyaontheline/2012/05/201256134918771317.html Al Jazeera's mobile phone wiretaps

“We may question, do the European policymakers act morally correct when they do not take serious attempts to prevent the arctic oil drilling.”

Syksy Räsänen (1973)

2013
Moraali voi sivuuttaa lakipykälät HS 5.10.2013

Question

“Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Speech delivered at the London Institute of Petroleum http://web.archive.org/web/20000414054656/http://www.petroleum.co.uk/speeches.htm, 1999 1990s

World, Business

“Though that at the beginning miracles were shewed through such ceremonies, to move the infidels to believe the word of God, as thou readest how the apostles anointed the sick with oil, and healed them; and Paul sent his pertelet or jerkin to the sick, and healed them also; yet was it not the ceremony that did the miracle, but faith of the preacher and the truth of God, which had promised to confirm and stablish his gospel with such miracles.”

William Tyndale (1494–1536) Bible translator and agitator from England

The Obedience of A Christian Man (1528)

God, Truth, Faith

“At his heart President-elect Trump will see the benefits and I think the oil industry will also be advising him accordingly that blocking trade in any product is not healthy.”

Khalid A. Al-Falih (1960) CEO of Saudi Aramco

Interview with Financial Times (18 November 2016)

Thinking, Heart

“Use both bribery and threats to exterminate every Cossack to a man if they set fire to the oil in Guriev.”

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

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), p. 69.
Attributions

“Sen. Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

Health, Thinking

“We got rich by violating one of the central tenets of economics: thou shall not sell off your capital and call it income. And yet over the past 40 years we have clear-cut the forests, fished rivers and oceans to the brink of extinction and siphoned oil from the earth as if it possessed an infinite supply. We've sold off our planet's natural capital and called it income. And now the earth, like the economy, is stripped.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Hey President Obama http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/82/obama_economics.html/. Adbusters (March 24, 2009).

Nature, Fish, Past

“If I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.
Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us — or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen — I hope sooner rather than later!
Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. … Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can't allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…
The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years — and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.
I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

Life, Sadness, Peace, Hope

“Biodiesel seems to be the answer to a lot of our prayers. Not only can it help the U. S. economy, our unwanted dependence on foreign oil, and the gasping environment, it could also help the family farmers out of this tragic dilemma they have found themselves in through no fault of their own.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

[On the Clean Road Again: Biodiesel and the Future of the Family Farm, 37, Nelson, Willie, Fulcrum Publishing, 2007, 9781555916244]

Family, Help, Dependency

“We must proceed with our own energy development. Exploitation of domestic petroleum and natural gas potentialities, along with nuclear, solar, geothermal, and non-fossil fuels is vital. We will never again permit any foreign nation to have Uncle Sam over a barrel of oil.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Speech as Vice President to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, West Palm Beach, Florida (26 January 1974); entered into the Congressional Record vol. 120, p. 2044.
1970s

Nature

“My mother taught me a Spanish saying,” he remarked, “that it takes four men to make a salad: a spendthrift for the oil, a philosopher for the seasonings, a miser for the vinegar, and a madman for the tossing.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 1 “Marque and Reprisal”, Chapter V (pp. 37-38)
The Star Fox (1965)

Men, Season

“When the regime wanted additional industrial capacity or resources for the military economy which the private sector could not provide, it was created (or conquered) by the state… during the Third Reich state ownership expanded into the productive sectors, based on the strategic industries, aviation, aluminum, synthetic oil and rubber, chemicals, iron and steel, and army equipment. Government finances for state-owned enterprises rose from RM 4,000m in 1933 to RM 16,000m 10 years later; the capital assets of state-owned industry doubled during the same period; the number of state-owned firms topped 500.”

Richard Overy (1947) British historian

Source: War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994), p. 16

“In the Middle Ages people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today’s shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

"The Return of the Primitive" http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984031,00.html, TIME magazine (29 January 1996) 1990s, 1996

People, Age

“The economic life of the human race had for some time been based on coal, but latterly oil had been found a far more convenient source of power; and as the oil store of the planet was much smaller than its coal store, and the expenditure of oil had of course been wholly uncontrolled and wasteful, a shortage was already being felt. Thus the national ownership of the remaining oil fields had become a main factor in politics and a fertile source of wars.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter I: Balkan Europe; Section 4, “The Russo-German War” (pp. 29-30)

Life, War, Time

“To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one’s fellow man—even a fellow man striving to do the same to you—creates what might be called an unassimilable memory: a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was.”

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

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), pp. 110-111

Life, Way, Memory, Heart

“It takes powers which are permanent—this is not a temporary provisions Bill—and cover all fuels. I welcome the Bill because it will enable a Labour Government to do all they want under Labour's programme for Britain…It will give us the power to control all the oil companies, all the multi-nationals, to fix their prices and their distribution systems; and under these powers every other fuel and its use, including the chemical industry, will be brought within the control of the Government of the day. This will include road transport and private transport.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1973) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/nov/26/fuel-and-electricity-bill on the Conservatives' Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill 1970s

“The economy is doing fine—if you gauge it in traditional ways. The growth of GDP is 6.2%, which is good. […] But do we compare Russia to developed countries or to a country like China that has the GDP growth of 9%—or oil producers like Azerbaijan with 12%, or Kazakhstan with 19%. This way, we see that Russia's achievement is more than modest. Under oil windfall profits, Russia's GDP should have grown by 15% to 16% in 2005. Once you dismiss the windfall profits, you see a poor quality of the economic policy that has proven negative to the tune of losing some 9% to 10% of the GDP growth.”

Andrey Illarionov (1961) Russian politician

About the real picture in the Russian economy around 2005.
"Q&A: Putin's Critical Adviser," 2005

Way, Gauge, Country

“As collage technique replaced oil paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas. Someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk. There are 4,000,000 dots per second on one television screen, just think of the variety of images you can get. It's so cool. It's like going to the moon.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

Manifesto, New York, October 1965, as cited in Jasia Reichardt (1971). The computer in art. p. 95
1960s

Thinking, Painting

“I would say that, whenever religion has rule over law, that madness will reign, with automatic violations of human rights, but maybe I'm being alarmist. What do they say? How can we know what sort of society they envision?.. We know that they are nearly all republicans, and that that party has been virtually assimilated by them, and we know they will speak more freely when they feel the safety of numbers. So let's look at the Republican Party platform of one of the red states, a very red state… Of course, they want to make pornography illegal (no surprises there), they also want to be able to filibuster the US senate again… Regarding the environment, they strongly support the immediate repeal and abolishment of the Endangered Species Act. Remember that these people don't believe in evolution, so they don't understand the importance of biodiversity and they don't care about the rights of animals either. They want to dominate and subdue the earth, just like their abominable doctrine demands, so they strongly oppose all efforts of environmental groups that stymie business interests, especially those of the oil and gas industry… Texas republicans not only want marriage to be restricted to one man and one woman (despite what the Bible says), but they insist it must be a natural man and a natural woman… So transgender people would be completely ostracized under the law should they get their way. There's no civil union options for gay couples either, because the platform also opposes the creation, recognition or benefits of partnerships outside marriage that are provided by some political subdivisions. As if that weren't enough, they also want to define the word "family" such that it excludes homosexual couples. They say they deplore sensitivity training (think about that for a moment), and they state very clearly that they want homosexuality condemned as unacceptable. They mean that very strongly too, so strongly in fact that they oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality as a reaction of religious faith. In fact, they go so far as to urge the immediate repeal of the hate crimes law specifically where that relates to sexual orientation… If you're uncertain whether that includes acts of violence, there at least two members of the current State Board of Education who implied that it should, and we know of a few Tea Partiers who insist that homosexuals should be executed, murdered by the state. I am alarmed at how popular this abominable sentiment is… Under the heading "supporting motherhood", they strongly support women who "choose" to devote their lives to their families and raising their children, but they implicitly object to women choosing other options such as college, careers, or not having children at all. A woman's ambition beyond the confines of the kitchen and obeisance to her husband is decried by conservatives as a deplorable assault on the family which, of course, they blame on liberals. Regarding the right to life, they say that all innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from fertilization to natural death. Notice a few subtle caveats here: the qualifier of protecting only innocent life is how Texas republicans justify having executed more prisoners than any other state in the union, nearly five times as many as the next deadliest state in fact. Says something about Christian forgiveness, doesn't it!”

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

Youtube, Other, Republican Theocracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjNg7nQvB0 (November 4, 2012)

Life, Death, Women, Hate

“The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Speech delivered at the Cato Institute http://www.cato.org/speeches/sp-dc062398.htm, (June 23, 1998) 1990s

Business

“When I was a boy no one seemed to ask where the energies come from. Land, oil, coal, air seemed inexhaustible. Now we are realizing how our very life depends upon restoring not only our balance with nature, but also that balance within ourselves. We are depleting our reserves of spirit, health, courage and faith at an alarming rate. The quiet practice of yoga is, in its humble yet effective way, an antidote.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Sushama Londhe in “A Tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and Wisdom Spanning Continents and Time about India and Her Culture”, p. 341

Life, Health, Faith, Way

“It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Source: Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932), Ch. 9

Friendship

“But let us not speak anymore of books and theories on paper. Now then, did you see my exhibition? As you may remember, 1 gathered in 'Cahiers d'Art' ten very recent paintings, twenty-five gouaches and watercolors, also recent, and twenty-eight drawings that span the period from 1910-1934. In the majority of the compositions on canvas I used a sand technique more or less consistently.... but I usually don't distinguish between traditional oil painting, gouache, tempera and watercolor, and I even simultaneously use the various techniques in the same work. What is essential for me is to be able to clearly convey what I want, to recount my dream. / consider both technique and form to be mere instruments of expression, and my stories, furthermore, are not narrative or historical in character, but purely pictorial.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

From an interview, 28 July 1935, in the Italian daily newspaper 'Lavoro fascista'; as quoted in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 30
1930 - 1944

Books, Dreams, Drawing, Painting

“It is no coincidence that the ABM Treaty was signed midway between the delinking of the U. S. dollar from the gold standard in 1971 and the first oil crisis in 1973. These were the years not only of monetary and economic crises but also of both the beginning of the destruction of the welfare state and the shift of the hegemony of economic production from the factory to more social and immaterial sectors. One might think of these various transformations as different faces of one common phenomenon, one grand social transformation.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

39
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Thinking

“Eternally the choking steam goes up
From the black pools of seething oil…”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Lover in Hell

“A little, with the blessing of God upon it, is better than a great deal, with the encumbrance of His curse; His blessing can multiply a mite into a talent, but His curse will shrink a talent into a mite; by Him the arms of the wicked are broken, and by Him the righteous are upholden: so that the great question is, whether He be with or against us, and the great misfortune is, that this question is seldom asked. The favour of God is to them that obtain it a better and enduring substance, which, like the widow’s barrel of oil, wasted not in the evil days of famine, nor will fail.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Source: The Works of the Right Reverend George Horne, 1809, p. 220 ; As quoted in Allibone (1880)

God, Question, Evil

“Tara: No more talk of gloomy Angel, though. Only happy thoughts. Sunshine, picnic, that spell we did last night. With the oil?”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Seeing Red [6.19]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Angels, Night, Happiness

“An English historian, contrasting the London of his day with the London of the time when its streets, supplied only with oil-lamps, were scenes of nightly robberies, says that "the adventurers in gas-lights did more for the prevention of crime than the government had done since the days of Alfred."”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

1880s, New Orleans Gas Co. v. Louisiana Light Co. (1885)

Light, Time

“Honey can you reach the spots that need oiling and fixing.
H E L P Help Me.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Marrow"
Actor (2009)

Help

“We face a brutal enemy who will kill the innocent for one purpose and that is to gain control of the Middle East and to use the leverage of oil to bring down the West, and to attack us again.”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 19, 2007, MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20302351/page/2/,

“There are many things in this world I do not know. I do not know how butterflies get out of their cocoons without damaging their wings. I do not know why anyone would boil vegetables when roasting them is much tastier. I do not know how to make olive oil, and I do not know why dogs bark before an earthquake, and I do not know why some people voluntarily choose to climb mountains where it is freezing and difficult to breathe, or live in the suburbs, where the coffee is watery and all of the houses look alike.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

People, World, Dogs, Mountain

“The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.
I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond. In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors. And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.
So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html Aljazeera, (01 Nov 2004) 2000s, 2004

Death, Women, Children, World

“I work like a gang of slaves; the day seems five months long. My wish to make a winter landscape has become a fixed idea. I want to do a sheep picture and have all sorts of projects in my head. If you could see how beautiful the forest is! I rush there at the end of the day, after my work, and I come back every time crushed. It is so calm, such a terrible grandeur, that I find myself really frightened. I don't know what those fellows, the trees, are saying to each other.... we don't know their language, that is all; but I am quite sure of this - they do not make puns!.... Send [me] 3 burnt sienna, 2 raw ditto, 3 Naples's yellow, 1 burnt Italian earth, 2 yellow ocher, 2 burnt umber, 1 bottle of raw oil.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet, in his letter from Barbizon, c. 1850 to fr:Alfred_Sensier in Paris; as cited by Arthur Hoeber in The Barbizon Painters – being the story of the Men of thirty https://ia902205.us.archive.org/30/items/barbizonpainters00hoeb/barbizonpainters00hoeb.pdf – associate of the National Academy of Design; publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York 1915, p. 38 In 1850 Millet entered into an arrangement with Alfred Sensier, who provided him with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings (source: Murphy, Alexandra R. Jean-François Millet. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984, p. xix), see: Wikipedia, Millet 1835 - 1850

Beauty, Idea, Tree, Winter

“One of the few graces of getting old — and God knows there are few graces — is that if you’ve worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is the splendid grace. And I think that is what’s happening to me.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

As quoted in "Interview: Why Is Maurice Sendak So Incredibly Angry?" by Leonard S. Marcus in Parenting (October 1993); also in Ways of Telling : Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book (2002) by Leonard S. Marcus, p. 181

God, Thinking

“I don't want to be a leader. I want to be one who goes around with a little oil can and offer help when I see a breakdown.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

Quoted in Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Help

“Many of today's trading relationships actually make America more globally competitive.... Raising tariffs among the United States, Canada and Mexico will only weaken a well-oiled manufacturing machine that is driven by the high level of integration the three economies have in their supply chains. This integration makes the region as a whole more competitive vis-à-vis the world.”

George Shultz (1920) American economist, statesman, and businessman

A better way than tariffs to improve America's trade picture. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/01/opinions/a-better-way-than-tariffs-to-improve-americas-trade-picture/index.html CNN opinion article written jointly with Pedro Aspe, Mexico's former secretary of finance, published June 1, 2018.

World

“is eating up large portions of the Middle East. They’ve become rich. I’m in competition with them. They just built a hotel in Syria. Can you believe this? They built a hotel. When I have to build a hotel, I pay interest. They don’t have to pay interest, because they took the oil that, when we left Iraq, I said we should’ve taken.”

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

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

“The critical oil and natural gas producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

John Bolton Admits All Of These Wars Are For Oil http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAgv6HaOHzM, interview on Fox News, October 22, 2011

War, Nature

“It was in 1926 that John Maynard Keynes wrote his now famous essay "The End of Laissez-Faire." Since then, history has evolved through the Great Depression, "hot" and cold wars, the establishment of the Bretton woods regime, suspension of convertibility of the US dollar into gold, oil shocks, and the information and telecommunications revolution. The situation at the end of the 20th century seems to be quite similar to that of the late 1920s, having come full circle.”

Eisuke Sakakibara (1941) Japanese economist and critic

The End of Market Fundamentalism (1999)

War, History

“The American people, through the 35 states that have liberalized laws banning either medical marijuana, marijuana in general, or cannabinoid oils, have made it clear that federal enforcers should stay out of their personal lives. It’s time for restraint of the federal government’s over-aggressive weed warriors.”

Dana Rohrabacher (1947) American politician

"O.C. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher trying again with bill protecting state marijuana laws", The Orange County Register http://www.ocregister.com/articles/rohrabacher-659189-laws-state.html (April 23, 2015)

People, Law, Time, Personality

“All the Democrats are for higher taxes. All of them are in favor of Hillary's socialist health-care plan. All of them are for higher pay for teachers and nurses — and no pay at all for anyone in the pharmaceutical or oil industries, especially Halliburton executives, who should be sent to Guantánamo. All the Democrats believe the way to strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists is for the federal government to invest heavily in windmills.
All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! … Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the one burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that's all we'd ever hear about.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"What happened to your queer party-friends?" (22 January 2004) http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2004/01/22/what_happened_to_your_queer_party-friends/page/full/ also in How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), p. 49. 2004

War, Health, Fear, Way

Quotes about oil page 4

Quotes about oil
page 4