Quotes about opening
page 21

Wendell Phillips photo

“The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth — to tear a question open and riddle it with light.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

1880s, The Scholar in a Republic (1881)

Madeleine Stowe photo
Ken Ham photo
Friedrich Schleiermacher photo
Ingeborg Refling Hagen photo
John Napier photo

“8 Proposition. The first Seal beginneth to be opened in Anno Christi 29. compleat.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593), The First and Introductory Treatise

C. Rajagopalachari photo
Alison Bechdel photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo
Margaret Mead photo

“!-- This is my most misunderstood book, and I have devoted some attention to trying to understand why. … --> I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences … This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Preface of 1950 edition of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. xxvi <!-- ; 1977 editon, p. ix -->
[Anthropology demands] the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
As quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012) by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither<!-- cited in Coming of Age in Second Life : An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (2010) by Tom Boellstorff, p. 71 -->
1950s

Lulu (singer) photo

“It's important to be open to new experiences. I recently went to Disneyland for the first time in 20 years. There were three of us 60-year-olds on a rollercoaster, screaming our heads off. It was white knuckles all the way and I loved it!”

Lulu (singer) (1948) Scottish singer, actress, and television personality

I'm through with having Botox, says pop diva Lulu, 2008-03-31, 2008-03-31, Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=550849&in_page_id=1879,

Ronald David Laing photo
Dave Eggers photo

“Openness is all, she thought. Truth was its own reward.”

Source: The Circle (2013), p. 449

Thomas Carlyle photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Peter Hitchens photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
John Gray photo

“Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and slept again.”

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter I: Balkan Europe; Section 1, “The European War and After” (p. 17)

John Derbyshire photo
Georges Bataille photo

“Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? …
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.”

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

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 7

Geoffrey Chaucer photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Carl Eckart photo

“A good plan will therefore include alternative actions, the choice between them being left open until the passage of time indicates which is feasible and which is not.”

Carl Eckart (1902–1973) American physicist

Source: Our Modern Idol: Mathematical Science (1984), p. 42.

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Anton Mauve photo
Patrick Swift photo
John Updike photo
Hilaire Belloc photo
Ryan C. Gordon photo
Mohamed Nasheed photo
Elizabeth Prentiss photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Caspar David Friedrich photo

“Sometimes I try to think and nothing comes out of it; but it happens that I doze off and suddenly feel as though someone is rousing me. I am startled, open my eyes, and what my mind was looking for stands before me like an apparition - at once I seize my pencil to draw; the main thing has been done.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich, recorded by Vasily Zhukovsky, c. 1821; cited by Sigrid Hinz, Caspar David Friedrich in Briefen und Bekenntnissen; Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellchaft, Berlin ,1968 p. 239; as cited in 'The Phantasmatic in romantic subjective experience and aesthetics' - Master's Thesis http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1667795&fileOId=2224083 by Adrian Gerardo de Jong; Helsingborg Sweden, Sept. 2010, pp. 46-47
1794 - 1840

Florian Cajori photo
Henry Rollins photo
James Watt photo
Vincent Gallo photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Tommy Franks photo

“Another hallway led to a green steel door. "This is the execution chamber," the officer said. "The day of the execution, we take the man through this door." He opened the green door, and we blinked at the bright lights inside. A big chair filled the room. I could smell leather. "All right, boys," he said. "Line up." The kids made a straight line that led out the green door, then moved ahead, one at a time, to sit in the big wooden chair. "This is the electric chair, Tommy Ray," my dad explained. "It's where murderers are executed." The boys inched forward. Some sat longer in the chair than others. Executed meant killed, that much I knew. "This is the ultimate consequence for the ultimate act of evil," my father told the troop. When all the boys had sat in the chair, it was my turn. I reached up and felt the smooth wood, the leather straps with cold metal buckles. There was a black steel cap dangling up there like a lamp without a bulb. "Up you go, Tommy Ray," Dad said, hoisting me into the chair. The boys were staring at me. But I wasn't even a little bit afraid. My father stood right beside me. I could feel his warm hand next to the cool metal buckle. As the school bus rumbled out of the prison parking lot that afternoon, I stared back at the high walls. I had learned another important lesson. A consequence was what followed what you did. If you did good things, you'd be rewarded with further good things. If you broke the law, you'd have to pay the price. I have never forgotten that lesson.”

Tommy Franks (1945) United States Army general

Source: American Soldier (2004), p. 8

John Gray photo
Henry Adams photo
Dylan Moran photo
Pamela Anderson photo
William Allingham photo

“Tantarrara! the joyous Book of Spring
Lies open, writ in blossoms.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

Daffodil; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Conversation 5
1970s, The Urgency of Change (1970)

Jonathan Miller photo
Georges Bataille photo
Mike Oldfield photo

“If I open my eyes just far enough
I can see what you're doing.
Go on, fight to the end, it's though enough
When you're on the road of ruin!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“I don't want to have the territory of a man's mind fenced in. I don't want to shut out the mystery of the stars and the awful hollow that holds them. We have done with those hypaethral temples, that were open above to the heavens, but we can have attics and skylights to them. Minds with skylights…
One-story intellects, two-story intellects, three-story intellects, with skylights. All fact-collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so that he can get at them,—facts below, principles above, and all in ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture in the attics.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)

José Mourinho photo

“Young players are a little bit like melons. Only when you open and taste the melon are you 100% sure that the melon is good.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/7004282.stm
Chelsea FC

Daniela Sea photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Pablo Neruda photo

“Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

<p>¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie
y adentro de las casas tampoco?</p><p>Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas.
Si no tienes dònde dormir
toca una puerta y te abrirán,
te abrirán hasta cierto punto
y verás que hace frío adentro,
que aquella casa está vacía,
y no quiere nada contigo,
no valen nada tus historias,
y si insistes con tu ternura
te muerden el perro y el gato.</p>
Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).

Kris Kristofferson photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Pan Wen-chung photo

“English proficiency opens up opportunities for young (Taiwanese) people. We must do this for the next generation.”

Pan Wen-chung (1962) Taiwanese educator and politician

Pan Wen-chung (2018) cited in " Premier to set goals in 2019 for making English official language http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201808270018.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 27 August 2018

Elie Wiesel photo
George William Curtis photo

“Up to this time, as I believe, slavery had been let alone, as it claimed to be, in good faith. Up to this time it is clear enough in our history that there was no general perception of the terrible truth that slavery was a system aggressive in its very nature, and necessarily destructive of Constitutional rights and liberties. Up to this time there had been a general blindness to the fact that, under the plea, which was allowed, that it was a local and State institution, slavery had acquired an absolute national supremacy, and if not checked would presently declare itself in national law as the national policy. I think that the eyes of the people were opened rather by the frank statements and legislative action in Congress of the slave party; by the speeches of Mr. Calhoun, filtered through lesser minds and mouths than his; at last by the events in Kansas forcing every man to consider whether, while we had let slavery alone, it had also let us alone; and forcing him to see that its hand was already upon the throat of freedom in this country. I think that by the cuts of the slave party, not by the words of the technical abolitionists, the country was at last aroused. The moral wrong and the political despotism of the system were at last perceived, and a reconstruction of political parties was inevitable. For in human society, while the individual conscience is the steam or motive power, political methods are the engine and the wheels by which progress is effected and secured.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
Sara Bareilles photo
Alan Greenspan photo

“Intensive research in recent years into the sources of economic growth among both developing and developed nations generally point to a number of important factors: the state of knowledge and skill of a population; the degree of control over indigenous natural resources; the quality of a country's legal system, particularly a strong commitment to a rule of law and protection of property rights; and yes, the extent of a country's openness to trade with the rest of the world. For the United States, arguably the most important factor is the type of rule of law under which economic activity takes place. When asked abroad why the United States has become the most prosperous large economy in the world, I respond, with only mild exaggeration, that our forefathers wrote a constitution and set in motion a system of laws that protects individual rights, especially the right to own property. Nonetheless, the degree of state protection is sometimes in dispute. But by and large, secure property rights are almost universally accepted by Americans as a critical pillar of our economy. While the right of property in the abstract is generally uncontested in all societies embracing democratic market capitalism, different degrees of property protection do apparently foster different economic incentives and outcomes.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Alan Greenspan (2004) The critical role of education in the nation's economy.
2000s

Tony Benn photo

“Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

On not attending an EEC meeting in order to attend a Labour rally (12 December 1975), quoted in 'Mr Benn delays EEC meeting', The Times (13 December, 1975), p. 1
1970s

“Study void. Void is what makes everything possible. If there is no emptiness or open space in your life then very very few things are possible.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Five Elements Five Dakinis http://www.unfetteredmind.org/five-elements-five-dakinis-9#FEFD090:33:46.8. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org.. (2007-07-09) (Topic: Practice)

Kent Hovind photo
John Adams photo

“Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.”

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

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Fali Sam Nariman photo

“[Scripture], by which, “as in a glass, we may survey ourselves, and know what manner of persons we are,” (James 1. 23) discovers ourselves to us; pierces into the inmost recesses of the mind; strips off every disguise; lays open the inward part; makes a strict scrutiny into the very soul and spirit; and critically judges of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. iv. 12) It shows us with what exactness and care we are to search and try our spirits, examine ourselves, and watch our ways, and keep our hearts, in order to acquire this important self-science; which it often calls us to do. “Examine yourselves; prove your own selves; know you not yourselves? Let a man examine himself.” (1 Cor. xi. 28) Our Saviour upbraids his disciples with their self-ignorance, in not “knowing what manner of spirits they were of.” (Luke ix. 55) And, saith the apostle, “If a man (through self-ignorance) thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself, and not another.” (Gal. vi. 3, 4) Here we are commanded, instead of judging others, to judge ourselves; and to avoid the. inexcusable rashness of condemning others for the very crimes we ourselves are guilty of, (Rom. ii. 1, 21, 22) which a self-ignorant man is very apt to do; nay, to be more offended at a small blemish in another's character, than at a greater in his own; which folly, self-ignorance, and hypocrisy, our Saviour, with just severity, animadverts upon. (Mat. vii. 3-5) And what stress was laid upon this under the Old Testament dispensation appears sufficiently from those expressions. "Keep thy heart with all diligence." (Prov. iv. 23) "Commune with your own heart." (Psal. iv. 4) "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts." (Psal. cxxxix. 23) "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart." (Psal. xxvi. 2) "Let us search and try our ways." (Lam. iii. 4) "Recollect, recollect yourselves, O "nation not desired."”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

Zeph. ii. 1
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

Linus Torvalds photo

“I am a lazy person, which is why I like open source, for other people to do work for me.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds, Linus, 2015-01-15, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds on why he isn’t nice: &quot;I don’t care about you&quot;</nowiki>, 2015-01-20 http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-nice-i-dont-care-about-you/,
2010s, 2015

Henry Adams photo
Tim Aker photo
Charles Bell photo

“In concluding these papers, I hope I may be permitted to offer a few words in favour of anatomy, as better adapted for discovery than experiment. … Experiments have never been the means of discovery; and a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology, will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error, than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions.”

Charles Bell (1774–1842) Scottish surgeon and artist (1774-1842)

An Exposition of the Natural System of the Nerves of the Human Body. With a Republication of the Papers Delivered to the Royal Society, on the Subject of the Nerves, London: Spottiswoode, 1824, pp. 376 https://books.google.it/books?id=hc0GAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA376-377.

Orson Scott Card photo

“This is serious, and you gotta keep your mind open in case an idea comes along—you want there to be some room for it to fit in.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 5 “Crystal Ball” (p. 98).

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Ossip Zadkine photo

“My huge monument to the bombing of Rotterdam [in 1940, by the German aircraft], for instance, was the third and final version of this figure. Once the model had been accepted in principle and the scale agreed on, I began working on a new version of it, conceiving it to a great extent in terms of the effects of the changes of lighting in which such a monument would been seen in the open air.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
the name of the monument is ( 'Destroyed City', 1953 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Zadkine_%27s_verwoeste_stad..jpg), in Dutch language: in Dutch: 'De verwoeste Stad']
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, p. 155

Agatha Christie photo

“They are so busy knocking that they do not notice that the door is open!”

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

Hercule Poirot’s Early Cases (1974)

Donnie Dunagan photo

“I was not a great match to be the little boy of the very British Basil Rathbone's character, I'm born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, and I had this southern accent. We were on these huge wide-open castle sets and they kept telling me how the microphones were 'way up there' and how I had to talk extra loud.”

Donnie Dunagan (1934) actor and United States Marine

Child star Donnie Dunagan, aka voice of 'Bambi,' wasn't afraid to face Frankenstein http://www.nwitimes.com/entertainment/columnists/offbeat/offbeat-child-star-donnie-dunagan-aka-voice-of-bambi-wasn/article_f81013d1-e67c-587b-aecb-da893dab25c2.html (Marh 2, 2011)

Aldo Capitini photo

“Nonviolence is opening to the existence, freedom and development of every being”

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

Hymn

Henri Nouwen photo
Chuck Berry photo
William Winwood Reade photo
Henry Moore photo
Oliver Lodge photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for the convenience of trade… But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the London waterside. It is the waterside of watersides, where only one aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream. The lightless walls seem to spring from the very mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.”

London Bridge to the Royal Albert Dock
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16