Quotes about opening
page 23

“Form displays the relation [to beings] itself as the state of original comportment toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus for the first time placed in the open.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 119

Time

“On November 8, the feast of Saints Archangels Michael and Gabriel, we were discussing the possible name for this youth organization. I said: "Let it be 'Michael the Archangel'." My father said: "There is in the church, on the left hand door of the altar, an icon of St. Michael." "Let us go see it!" Mota, Garneata, Corneliu Georgescu, Radu Mironovici, Tudose and I went to look at it and we were truly amazed. The icon appeared to us of unsurpassed beauty. I was never, attracted by the beauty of any icon. But now, I felt bound to this one with all my soul and I had the feeling the Archangel was alive. Since then, I have come to love that icon. Any time we found the church open, we entered and prayed before that icon. Our hearts were filled with peace and joy.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), The Legion

Love, Youth, Peace, Beauty

“The act of speaking, the release from silence, invariably meant that the prisoner would say too much, give something away, let slip an honest truth in the midst of the self-justification. Inspector Singh, like a fine piano-tuner, could listen to these verbal outpourings and pick up those hints of expression or emotion that were off-key and those that rang true. And so he waited for Jasper Lee to open his mouth, and a door to the truth, at the same time.”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 10

Truth, Silence, Time, Waiting

“I believe in open, honest government, where we hold our leaders accountable. I believe in putting the national interests over the special interests. I believe in putting principle above politics. The bottom line: I believe we can do better. I believe we must do better. And if the system's broke — fix it.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Tennessee True Values Tour remarks, Jackson, Tennessee (4 February 2004) http://www.clark04.com/speeches/040/

“The main problem with many nonscientific world models is the vigor with which they insist upon their rightness. Once a world model claims to be completely right, it is no longer open to any changes. …Closed systems can be comforting, but they are limited. …It's not the best we can do. Neither is extreme "open-mindednesss" that slides into "empty headedness"—the ideal that we can never really know anything.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

World, Problem, Change

“One who aspires to greatness should read and study, pursuing the True Way with such a firm resolve that he is perfectly straightforward and open, rises above the superficialities of conventional behavior, and refuses to be satisfied with the petty or commonplace.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. II.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

Way, Behavior, Study, Reading

“Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 7 “Tier” section II (p. 212).

Life, Age, Time

“The third model regards mind as an information processing system. This is the model of mind subscribed to by cognitive psychologists and also to some extent by the ego psychologists. Since an acquisition of information entails maximization of negative entropy and complexity, this model of mind assumes mind to be an open system.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Models of Mental Illness (1984), p. 102

“The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to William Hunter (11 March 1790)
1790s

War, Secret

“Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 33, Rainy-Day Laundry, Car Rental, Bob Dylan

Life, Time, Waiting, Reading

“We played a gig in the Swiss Alps at a snowboarding convention. Red Bull-this energy sports-fuel drink-sponsored the whole thing. It has some ingredient believed to be bull-testicle extract. We went way off our tour route, had to take two planes and missed a night's sleep. We got up there and there's no snow-it's all mud. You couldn't walk. You'd step and then be up to your knee in mud. So you had several thousand disgruntled snowboarders tanked up to the max on bull-testicle extract. Of course, for some reason, these strapping brutes were made to wait out in the mid and the rain before coming into the tent for the show. When we get up to play, I see this forty-foot gap between us and the audience-they still managed to nail us with empty cans of Red Bull. After a few songs, I wasn't really playing my guitar, I was using it to bay cans back into the crowd of disgruntled sports enthusiasts. It felt like we were A Flock of Seagulls opening for Napalm Death.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Rolling Stone magazine, 1996

Death, Way, Drink, Sport

“It blew me wide open. It shifted me up into what I call the inter-dimensional mind.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James describing his near-death experience.
Source: [Bures, Frank, Aliens, Anomalies, and Absurbity at Mt. Adams, The Portland Mercury, September 2001, http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=25334&category=34029, 2007-03-01]

“Feynman was not a theorist's theorist, but a physicist's physicist and a teacher's teacher. Feynman's theoretical concepts opened up research opportunities for experimenters, and his approach to physics dignified the role played by their work.”

Valentine Telegdi (1922–2006) American physicist

[Physics Today, A Lowbrow's View of Feynman, 42, 2, 1989, 10.1063/1.881197] (p. 85)

Teachers

“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit…. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Living in Truth (1986), An Anatomy of Reticence

People, Lie, Way, Exercises

“Well let there be sunlight, let there be rain.
Let the brokenhearted love again.
Sherry we can run with our arms open before the tide”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Sherry Darling"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Love

“Being open minded isn’t about accepting things mindlessly. Being open minded is about having the information and then making the best decisions you can. A chap called Ian Rowland who wrote a good book on cold-reading made the point that if you’re a chef and you think, ‘well I know if I put poison in this soup and give it to these 200 people it’s going to kill them but, hey, I’ll be open minded’, that’s not being open minded, that’s just being ignorant. That’s just not working with the information you’ve got. So we have information on things like placebo effect and information about cold-reading. These things exists – false memories and anecdotal [evidence], all those things that are important – and taking that on board is just about being able to make better decisions. That’s about being truly open minded. Ignoring them and putting them to one side in this pursuit of easy answers and ‘intuition is the be-all and end-all of truth’, that’s not being open minded at all. I think that’s very narrow minded and certainly to laugh at people who say that evidence is important, I think that’s hypocrisy of the worst kind, to call them narrow minded.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, The Enemies of Reason (Richard Dawkins)

People, Truth, Books, Thinking

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

God, Books, Fear, Imagination

“I was walking past a sex shop an' that. One, it was open early which I never understood, it was about eight o'clock in the morning. Who needs butt plugs then?”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 2
On Sex

Sex, Past

“Mr. Sandburg possesses a powerful imagination, which plays over and about his realistic themes and constantly ennobles them. …strikes, and factories, and slaughter-houses, and railroad trains, all take on a lyric quality under his touch. …When Carl Sandburg left college, he was no longer an unskilled labourer, working with his hands. He was a thinking man, with a brain charged with ideas and emotions, determined to do his part in bringing about the millennium. For Carl Sandburg… is a revolutionary; he must push the world to where he is convinced it ought to be. …again and again, he deserts the seer's mountain peak for the demagogue's soap-box. …Mr. Sandburg is like a man striving to batter down a jail with balls of brightly coloured glass. …Whether constant preoccupation with disease is a healthy form of literature, whether it acts as a curative, is open to question. But we can surely say that to be curative the disease must be treated unsentimentally and truly. Mr. Sandburg has aimed at doing this, has striven hard to do it. For this, one honours him above his fellows. For this, and the spirit of beauty which pervades his work.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

"Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg," Tendencies in Modern American Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=UgZaAAAAMAAJ (1917).

World, Disease, Beauty, Imagination

“When the wise man opens his mouth, the beauties of his soul present themselves to the view, like the statues in a temple”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
Florilegium

Beauty, Soul

“On the need to respond to the crisis in Greece, and broaching the subject of the Truman Doctrine ("it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.") with Congress: "In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western Europe. The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to will all the possibilities. Even one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a position to break up the play. These were the stakes that British withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean offered to an eager and ruthless opponent."”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Truman Doctrine, Cold War

People, History, Support, Past

“The highest activities are always essentially lonely and private, and these men had a robust sense of their independence and the ultimate self-sufficiency of the mind. In this they were just like Socrates. The only change they operated was to bring philosophy out of the closet into the open, instead of seeking protection behind a little wall like men in a storm. Of course, in so doing they made philosophy, on the one hand, more vulnerable to the public if the hopes of controlling the public are not fulfilled, and, on the other, put at risk that inner intransigence which is the necessary condition of the quest for truth. Not only the rewards but the new responsibilities might prove irresistible temptations to compromise.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 290.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Men, Truth, Hope, Sense

“Well, you know, a lot of work nowadays [c. 1991] tends to be illustrative of theory already written, and some of it tends to be quite consciously didactic, as if the determination is to teach somebody something. And letting that go for the moment, as far as its value is concerned, it's exactly the opposite of what I seem to find most useful, and that is to leave things open and not determine anything except the very clear form. The form is always very simple and clear. What is experienced is uncertain and unforeseeable, which is why I do it, and its point is never clear to me, even after I've done it. So that's a very, very different way of looking at the nature of our responsibility in the world.”

Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) American artist

In an interview with Robert C. Morgan, 1991; in the 'Journal of Contemporary Art, 4', no. 2, p. 56-69

World, Way, Nature

“There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

Life, Women, Men, War

“It was given to me by the late Shannon Hoon, who fashioned it out of a fork he got in Denny's (a US fast food chain) on the first tour Blind Melon ever did, which was opening for us. I really liked it, but I stopped wearing it after he died. Because the other thing I wore was this ring that belonged to Andy Wood, who died. It's like, 'I don't wanna wear these f**king things from people who died.' A girl outside the hotel tonight had a similar fork, and I've had people throw them on-stage. I've seen hundreds of those forks, but it always reminds me of Shannon. They're making them cos they're thinking of me, but really it's him. Which is cool.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked about the fork necklace that he wore for several years **
Soundgarden Era

People, Food, Girl, Fashion

“The backlash is merely the surfacing of prejudices... that already existed and... are just now starting to open.”

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

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Seventh Annual Gandhi Memorial Lecture, Howard Univ., Washington, D.C. (6 November 1966), quoted in What do the election results mean for the move toward marriage equality? by Evan Wolfson (3 November 2004) http://www.freedomtomarry.org/document.asp?doc_id=2030 1960s

“"Most so-called liberated people that I know are full of it," remarked a caustic, albeit articulate, businessman attending a seminar I gave on emerging male/female relationships. "The feminist leadership is a good example. They have the worst qualities of both men and women. They have all the answers and nothing you can say ever changes their mind. Then, from what I read, one turns on and attacks the other—supposedly for ideological reasons, but it's just a variation on the old-fashioned male ritual of ego-tripping—'I'm for real, you're not—I'm the greatest, you're nothing.'"It's a real cast of characters, these feminist leaders," he continued. "There's the glamor queen one who's trying to be a movie star without copping to what she's doing. It's obvious, though. She's always being seen with celebrities and she's always dating the richest, most successful guys. Then there's the other one who's like a Jewish mother—complaining and telling everybody how to change, and how to live. I'm surprised she doesn't try and tell us what to eat."I looked through their magazine recently. It's full of the same kind of ads as the other women's magazines that Ms. supposedly abhors. You know, jewelry, deodorants, perfumes—and the articles are mainly old-fashioned victim variety stuff, an updated variation on the old "poor downtrodden women" theme."The 'liberated' guys they hold up as shining examples of what men should behave like are just as phony as the feminist women pretending to be so pure. They're workaholics, and they're the worst kind of arrogant—because God is on their side and unless you imitate them, you're a misguided pig. It feels like being at a church social when you watch them—at least as hypocritical, if not more so—because at least church types don't pretend to be open to discussing their beliefs. They're out front in thinking that they have all the answers."When what's-her-name ran for vice-president and lost, what did she do—she blamed the male establishment. God save us from female leadership! They can't stop blaming—even at that level. I thought of reminding her that this country has at least ten million more women than men and the odds were totally on her side and it was women who rejected her, and saw through her act; but I know better than to argue against that stuff with facts."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Earth Mothers in Disguise, p. 149
The Inner Male (1987)

Women, Men, God, People

“Now, I always think that one of the most curious contradictions about the English stock is this: that while the criticism that is often made of us is not without an element of truth, and that is that as a nation we are less open to the intellectual sense than the Latin races, yet through that may be a fact, there is no nation on earth that has had the same knack of producing geniuses. It is almost a characteristic of the English race; there is hardly any line in which the nation has not produced geniuses, and in a nation which may people might think restrained, unable to express itself, in this same nation you have a literature second to none that has ever existed in the world, and certainly in poetry supreme.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 2-3.
1924

People, Truth, World, Literature

“These buildings are just right for the excesses of post-modernism -- decorative, frivolous -- serving to obviously excite and attract -- every feature using the architectural vocabulary freely without too much regard for serious function -- open glass atriums and shining metals and expensive and artificial marbles, zany letterings and excess neon.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

8 1/2 Women

“I imagine that as one penetrated out from some enormous forest of the tropics, the wild beasts would become fewer, the gloom would lighten, and the horror of the place would slowly lift. Yet as one emerges nearer to the edge of London, and nearer to the beautiful influence of the hills, the houses become uglier, the streets viler, the gloom deepens, the errors of civilisation stand bare to the scorn of the fields.
Where ugliness reaches the height of its luxuriance, in the dense misery of the place, where one imagines the builder saying, "Here I culminate. Let us give thanks to Satan," there is a bridge of yellow brick, and through it, as through some gate of filigree silver opening on fairyland, one passes into the country.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

A Dreamer's Tales http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8drem10.txt, The Field

Beauty, Error, Imagination, Housing

“The untransacted destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent — to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean — to animate the many hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward — to set the principle of self-government at work — to agitate these herculean masses — to establish a new order in human affairs — to set free the enslaved — to regenerate superannuated nations — to change darkness into light — to stir up the sleep of a hundred centuries — to teach old nations a new civilization — to confirm the destiny of the human race — to carry the career of mankind to its culminating point — to cause stagnant people to be re-born — to perfect science — to emblazon history with the conquest of peace — to shed a new and resplendent glory upon mankind — to unite the world in one social family — to dissolve the spell of tyranny and exalt charity — to absolve the curse that weighs down humanity, and to shed blessings round the world!
Divine task! immortal mission! Let us tread fast and joyfully the open trail before us! Let every American heart open wide for patriotism to glow undimmed, and confide with religious faith in the sublime and prodigious destiny of his well-loved country.”

William Gilpin

Address to the U.S. Senate (2 March 1846); quoted in Mission of the North American People, Geographical, Social, and Political (1873), by William Gilpin, p. 124.

Love, People, World, Family

“Jobs: Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields. We all brought to this a sort of “liberal arts” air, an attitude that we wanted to pull the best that we saw into this field. You don’t get that if you are very narrow.
Cringley: How does the Web affect the economy?
Jobs: We live in an information economy. The problem is that information's usually impossible to get, at least in the right place, at the right time. The reason Federal Express won over its competitors was its package-tracking system. For the company to bring that package-tracking system onto the Web is phenomenal. I use it all the time to track my packages. It's incredibly great. Incredibly reassuring. And getting that information out of most companies is usually impossible.
But it's also incredibly difficult to give information. Take auto dealerships. So much money is spent on inventory—billions and billions of dollars. Inventory is not a good thing. Inventory ties up a ton of cash, it's open to vandalism, it becomes obsolete. It takes a tremendous amount of time to manage. And, usually, the car you want, in the color you want, isn't there anyway, so they've got to horse-trade around. Wouldn't it be nice to get rid of all that inventory? Just have one white car to drive and maybe a laserdisc so you can look at the other colors. Then you order your car and you get it in a week.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Robert X. Cringley for a Public Broadcasting System [PBS] television series, “Triumph of the Nerds” (1995), “The Lost Interview: Steve Jobs Tells Us What Really Matters” https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/17/the-lost-interview-steve-jobs-tells-us-what-really-matters/#5cb0fc8e6c3a, Forbes, Steve Denning, Nov 17, 2011, 1990s

Money, People, World, Art

“I was sitting in the barn, drawing a dead bird which I had put on a box. Then the barn door opened and Kees entered [an old iron-merchant, already retired].... He came down next to me.... After a short silence he said: 'Are you painting? '.... it looks somewhat like that bird'. I said: 'To me that means a compliment Kees, because I am trying to draw that bird.' Stunned, he looked at me and asked, "Why are you doing that?" What could I answer? I said: Actually, I don't know myself'. Then he hoisted himself to his feet and said, I'll bring you the stuff next Monday' and he went to the door..”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: ** Ik zat in de schuur en tekende een dode vogel, die ik op een kistje had neergelegd. Toen ging de schuurdeur open en kwam Kees binnen [een oud ijzerkoopman, al met pensioen].. ..Hij ging op zijn hurken naast me zitten.. ..Toen zei hij, na een korte stilte: 'Ben je aan het schilderen?'.. .. 'Het lijkt wel wat op die vogel'. Ik zei: 'Dat is voor mij een compliment, Kees, want die vogel probeer ik na te tekenen.' Stomverbaasd keek hij me aan en vroeg: 'Waarom doe je dat?' Wat moest ik daar nu op antwoorden? Ik zei: 'Ja, dat weet ik eigenlijk zelf ook niet'. Toen hees hij zichzelf overeind en zei 'Ik breng de rommel maandag wel bij je.' Hij liep naar de deur..
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 27

Bird, Silence, Drawing, Painting

“That these ideas will ultimately triumph, I have no doubt. Nor is it open to question that by the combined efforts of the peace-loving peoples they can be made to triumph now, before Europe has been again plunged into a fresh bloodbath.
May Heaven grant that the statesmen of the world may realize this before it is too late and, by the exertion of the needed courage and prudence, restore again to the position of authority which it had only a few years ago, that great institution for the maintenance of peace on which the future of civilization so largely depends. I mean, of course, the League of Nations.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

Love, People, World, Peace

“I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

Tear

“If Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, you know for sure the entire 100 million cans would be dropped in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, without a second thought and irrespective of what that did to the year's profits. What do we do with a crappy movie? We double its advertising budget and hope for a big opening weekend. What have we done for the audience as they walk out of the cinema? We've alienated them. We've sold audiences a piece of junk; we just took twelve dollars away from a couple and we think we've done ourselves no long-term damage.”

David Puttnam (1941) British film producer

GQ magazine, April 1987

Hope, Thinking

“Open, honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy. We all need spaces where we can be alone with thoughts and feelings - where we can experience healthy psychological autonomy and can choose to share when we want to.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

All About Love: New Visions (2000)

Truth, Feeling

“… conferences with open attendance are very important for the stimulation of young people or other people who are new in the field. … The field of high-energy physics is, as you know, very strongly in the hands of a clique and it is hard for an outsider to enter.”

Victor Frederick Weisskopf (1908–2002) Austrian-born American theoretical physicist

Victor Weisskopf to J. Howard McMillen, 14 Mar 1960, also as quoted by [David Kaiser, Drawing theories apart: the dispersion of Feynman diagrams in postwar physics, University of Chicago Press, 2005, 0226422674, 336]

People

“[N]eutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet. All wireless broadband customers must have the ability to access any lawful applications and content they choose, and applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system.”

John S. Chen (1955) American businessman

Net Neutrality: No on Reclassification, Yes on Adding Content & App Providers http://blogs.blackberry.com/2015/01/blackberry-net-neutrality in INSIDE BlackBerry (21 January 2015)

Law

“Harm is in us.
Harm in us, but power to arm.
Harm is in us.
Leave it open!”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)

“If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.”

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) British writer

Royal Promotions.
Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834)

Men, Personality

“.. momentarily, we (Erich Heckel, Max Pechstein, and I) are once again at Moritzburg. There is nothing more delightful than nudes in open air.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

note, 1910; in: ' 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen' ', Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 36
the location was a baroque hunting lodge at the Moritzburg Ponds a few miles from Dresden
1905 - 1915

“[It] would have been all the easier [if] the entire story of the scar had been presented as a recollection which awakens in Odysseus’ mind at this particular moment. It would have been perfectly easy to do; the story of the scar had only to be inserted two verses earlier, at the first mention of the word scar, where the motifs “Odysseus” and “recollection” were already at hand. But any such subjectivistic‐perspectivistic procedure, creating a foreground and background, resulting in the present lying open to the depths of the past, is entirely foreign to the Homeric style; the Homeric style knows only a foreground, only a uniformly illuminated, uniformly objective present.”

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 7

Lying, Past

“PINCHES OF SALT: Are the humanoids pilling the chemistry into reactions they have no control over? Have the wolves of the universal law already started to blow the door down? Is the back door still open? Who the hell cares with a hundred billion freon - filled hair sprays still on sale? Who am I to ctiticise my own crisis?”

Roy Harper (singer) (1941) British musician

Law, Hell, Universe

“We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

The Chapel of the Hermits; comparable to Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book vii

Autumn

“A war takes place; an earthquake occurs; a flood of a magnitude not seen in a hundred years washes over the land; a cartel falls apart; oil prices quadruple; tax laws change, and the market in which you had an open position, or even hedged, moves in a magnitude not only unforeseen, but totally outside past models. They always do. You are in trouble.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

"Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs." http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/1990s/TESTIMONYCommitteeBanking100198.html, October 1 1998

War, Law, Change, Past

““I hate students,” [Zizek] said, “they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.
In a recent interview at this year’s Zizek Conference in Ohio, Zizek talked about his personal life before delving into his thoughts on teaching. “I hate giving classes,” Zizek said, citing office hours and grading papers as his two biggest peeves. “I did teach a class here [at the University of Cincinnati] and all of the grading was pure bluff,” he continues. “I even told students at the New School for example… if you don’t give me any of your shitty papers, you get an A. If you give me a paper I may read it and not like it and you can get a lower grade.” He received no papers that semester. But it’s office hours that are the main reason he does not want to teach.
“I can’t imagine a worse experience than some idiot comes there and starts to ask you questions, which is still tolerable. The problem is that here in the United States students tend to be so open that sooner or later, if you’re kind to them, they even start to ask you personal questions [about] private problems… What should I tell them?”
“I don’t care,” he continued. “Kill yourself. It’s not my problem,””

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

As quoted by Eugene Wolters, " Professor of the Year: 'If You Don't Give Me Any of Your Shitty Papers You Get an A http://www.critical-theory.com/professor-of-the-year-if-you-dont-give-me-any-of-your-shitty-papers-you-get-an-a/'", Critical-Theory.com, May 26 2014; square brackets and lack of accent marks as in orginal

Life, Hate, People, Stupidity

“Learn to use an axe, and respect it and you can't help but love it. But abuse one and it will wear your hands raw and open your foot like an overcooked sausage.”

Richard Proenneke (1916–2003) American hermit

Alone in the Wilderness Part 2 DVD, Bob Swerer Productions

Love, Learning, Help

“Opening the fridge door, I found a rat eating the cheese. My dealings with rodents, particularly those tagged verminous, have been few, but generally the pattern has been one of man, the boss, the caretaker of creation, the namer, appearing and the lower orders hitting the road.”

Tibor Fischer book The Thought Gang

Page 63.
The Thought Gang (1994)

Appearance

“Her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her, and it deserted her when her eyes were opened to the extent of her own danger, as well as that of her lover and her guardian; and when she found her will, the slightest expression of which was wont to command respect and attention, now placed in opposition to that of a man of a strong, fierce, and determined mind, who possessed the advantage over her, and was resolved to use it, she quailed before him.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 23.

Lovers, Nature, Strong

“The real Bible is a sealed book, an apocryphon, a book not to be opened (mentally) until its time has come.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

2:568
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

Books, Time

“The show is much more emotional now. It's a journey, but it is still about clothes, too. It's been fascinating to see how looking good and having faith in your appearance makes you into a sexier person, which makes you attractive to your partner again. We come in as complete strangers and get to know them all extremely well. It was a privilege for Trinny and I to have these people feel they could open up to us. It was very humbling, too.”

Susannah Constantine (1962) British fashion designer and journalist

Regarding Trinny & Susannah Undress..., as quoted in Laid Bare The Daily Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_objectid=17846372&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=laid-bare-name_page.html (30 September 2006)

People, Faith, Feeling, Appearance

“Max opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “No.”
“Speak louder. You used a word I don’t understand.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Starman Jones

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 9, “Chartman Jones” (p. 95)

Understanding

“Democrats of the seventies and eighties are too tolerant, too open-minded, not feral enough. I want to be a ferocious liberal.”

Alec Baldwin (1954) American actor, writer, producer, and comedian

As quoted in "Smart Alec" by Alec Gross, in New York magazine, Vol. 30, No. 35 (24 November 1997), p. 41.

“The vegan diet in the western industrial society is important to me because I feel that if you open yourself up to eating dairy and meat then you’re taking part in basically a holocaust for animals. You know it’s very different if you’re in some tribal situation where people are fishing — like how we used to live. Maybe we would have eaten meat sometimes. But this kind of American idea we have of traditional eating is the cause of so much torture and misery. I don’t want to eat that – it’s gross. Animals are my friends and so it feels weird to eat them.”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Daniela Sea Won't Take Part In An Animal Holocaust http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/09/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-daniela-sea-wont-take-part-in-an-animal-holocaust/", interview with Ecorazzi (9 December 2008).

People, Feeling, Idea, Fish

“…when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Microserfs (1995)

Love

“Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens.”

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

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

World

“In each of the cathedral churches there was a bishop, or an archbishop of fools, elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a pope of fools. These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suit of ecclesiastics who attended upon them, and assisted at the divine service, most of them attired in ridiculous dresses resembling pantomimical players and buffoons; they were accompanied by large crowds of the laity, some being disguised with masks of a monstrous fashion, and others having their faces smutted; in one instance to frighten the beholders, and in the other to excite their laughter: and some, again, assuming the habits of females, practised all the wanton airs of the loosest and most abandoned of the sex. During the divine service this motley crowd were not contended with singing of indecent songs in the choir, but some of them ate, and drank, and played at dice upon the altar, by the side of the priest who celebrated the mass. After the service they put filth into the censers, and ran about the church, leaping, dancing, laughing, singing, breaking obscene jests, and exposing themselves in the most unseemly attitudes with shameless impudence. Another part of these ridiculous ceremonies was, to shave the precentor of fools upon a stage erected before the church, in the presence of the populace; and during the operation, he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses, accompanied by actions equally reprehensible. The bishop, or the pope of fools, performed the divine service habited in the pontifical garments, and gave his benediction to the people before they quitted the church. He was afterwards seated in an open carriage, and drawn about to the different parts of the town, attended by a large train of ecclesiastics and laymen promiscuously mingled together; and many of the most profligate of the latter assumed clerical habits in order to give their impious fooleries the greater effect; they had also with them carts filled with ordure, which they threw occasionally upon the populace assembled to see the procession. These spectacles were always exhibited at Christmas-time, or near to it, but not confined to one particular day.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 345
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

People, Fools, Sex, Fashion

“It would be another two decades before I came upon the words that made me think I had a story to tell—the opening words of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.” The immigrant mother’s prohibition to her daughter reminded me of my own mother’s warning about spreading “family secrets.” In the face of California’s fame for blatancy—in the face of pervasive light, ingenuousness, glass-and-aluminum housing, bikinis, billboards—Mrs. Hong recommended concealment.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Secret, Family, Thinking, Light

“the city was the same, but I was afraid. The streets lurked with danger. The tall buildings forming black canyons were traps to kill you when the earth shook. The pavement might open. The street cars might topple.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Cars

“It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look at each other — for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we had intended— the doors we had indiscreetly opened.”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw (1898), Ch. XIII.

“If there had been any unbelief in Mary, that could not prevent God from accomplishing his work in any other way which he might choose. But she is called blessed, because she received by faith the blessing offered to her, and opened up the way to God for its accomplishment.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on Luke 1:45 http://www.biblestudyguide.org/comment/calvin/comm_vol31/htm/ix.viii.htm. Harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke

God, Faith, Way

“The United States, as you point out, has been actually freer than most in terms of offering access to information. It doesn’t have to be this way. Openness is not the default in terms of how if you look back in time, or even around the world. We need to show how openness works better. That you end up with companies that thrive better. That you have, with standards, you have more competition that builds more jobs. That openness is a win.”

Brewster Kahle (1960) American computer engineer, founder of the Internet Archive

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle on Recode Decode https://www.recode.net/2017/3/8/14843408/transcript-internet-archive-founder-brewster-kahle-wayback-machine-recode-decode (March 8, 2017)

World, Way, Time

“I am locked in a race with someone who is continually described almost in Homeric fashion. The reason I say that is because Homer had this way of attaching epithets to all the characters, so he would never say Achilles, it would always have to be "Valorous, Brave Achilles" or something, or "Swift Footed Achilles" and things of this kind. He would never say Odysseus, it was always "Manly Wild Odysseus" or something; he would always have a little name in front. And you've noticed that my opponent Barack Obama, the media always puts a little epithet in front of him. "The Democrat Rising Star, Barack Obama," "Rising Star Barack Obama." And they tell me that they are not biased. I'm locked in a little battle with the Illinois media right now, because I've had the nerve to identify them as minions of the Democrat party. And they are all upset with me about this — but I have this bad habit of opening my eyes and seeing what's in front of them.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

National Federation of Republican Assemblies, NYC, August 31, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_08_31nfra.htm. 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race

Way, Star, Fashion

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Men, World, History, Question

“Open your eyes at last and see… now I will open the book of the world for you, there are no words in it, just pictures.”

Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) Austrian dramatic, painter and writer

Books, World

“If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility. To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility. Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)
Variant: If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility. To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility. Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.

Way, Thinking, Reality, Sense

“Consider what kind of authority [can be ascribed to] any principle which it open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regimen of asceticism and fasting … for reasons of health … What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose … but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 42.

Health

“It is the old, old worry: will the British people perceive in time what is happening to them and where they are being taken? If they do, I am not afraid for the outcome. But will they? … referendum day is certainly not the last chance, because I am sure that, if the result is interpreted as sanctioning Stay In, the events of the following months will open many eyes that are closed at present. Perhaps, however, I might express it this way: if referendum day is not September, 1939, at any rate it is September, 1938. The nation is being invited to confirm the surrender, and the permanent surrender, of its most precious possession: its political independence and parliamentary self-government, and the right to live under laws and to pay taxes authorized only by Parliament and to be governed by policies for which the executive is fully accountable through Parliament to the electorate. Above and beyond all the arguments about butter mountains and Brussels bureaucrats there lies that stark fact, undenied and undeniable.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'The one stark fact', The Times (4 June 1975), p. 14
1970s

People, Law, Way, Mountain

“When the wind blew from the south and the French doors had been opened, the sound of cheering carried from Ebbets Field into the apartment. It was astonishing, to hear cheers from a major league crowd while sitting at home.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 1, The Trolley Car That Ran By Ebbets Field, p. 36

Home

“When finally our Constitution was adopted, it contained specific provision that the President and members of the Congress and of state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officials, should be qualified for the discharge of their office by oath or affirmation. By the statute law of the United States, and I doubt not by all States, such oaths are administered by a solemn appeal to God for help in the keeping of their covenants. I scarcely need to refer to the fact that the houses of the Congress, and so far as I know the state legislatures, open their daily sessions with prayer. The foundation of our independence and our Government rests upon our basic religious convictions. Back of the authority of our laws is the authority of the Supreme Judge of the World, to whom we still appeal for their final justification.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God, World, Law, Help

“We read his words and our heart opens. Suddenly we realize our home is with God.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Rabbi Zolman Schacter-Shalomi, Professor Emeritus, Temple University
About

God, Home, Reading, Heart

“I've got a blister from touching everything I see
The abyss opens up
It steals everything from me”

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

"Softer, Softest"
Song lyrics, Live Through This (1994)

“The means of existence of our country will break down, once the watergates are open to the foreigners.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

Die Existenzgrundlage unseres Landes geht kaputt, wenn erst die Schleusen für die Ausländer geöffnet sind.
Lecture for businessmen from Schwabia (March 1994)

Country

“Sri Chithira Tirunal Maharaja was a visionary. Gandhiji came here after the Temple Entry Proclamation was made by my brother, throwing open the temples to all the castes. The Mahatma said it was not a trip but a pilgrimage. The carpet on which he sat is now a prized possession of the family.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

In "Royal vignettes: Travancore - Simplicity graces this House (30 March 2003)"

Family

“It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

From speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, . Frequently misattributed to The God Delusion.
quoted in [EDITORIAL: A scientist's case against God, The Independent (London), April 20, 1992, 17] and [2011-05-27, What Should I Believe?: Philosophical Essays for Critical Thinking, Paul Gomberg, Broadview Press, 9781554810130, 146, http://books.google.com/books?id=76WxxHN9I0kC&pg=PA146&dq=%22Faith+is+the+great+cop-out%22]

God, Sense, Christmas

“You have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will,” he added softly to himself, “for there is something of each in every man.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), Chapter 6 (p. 74)

Evil, Time, Fight, Country

“Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against Bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold that all had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, with the reins of power at last now firm in his grasp, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 (1988), p. 688-689

Death, Hunger, War, Fear

“The key is so distant, I've opened doors.
Know when to listen, know what to listen for.”

Travis Meeks (1979) American musician

Shelf in the Room (Orange - 1998).
Lyrics

Distant

“The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1005.52 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s10/p0520.html#1005.50 1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Truth

“The whole, however, had become more than the sum of its parts. The parts concentrate on the periods in the chrysalis when life as we have known it is over. No longer who we were, we know not who we may become. We experience ourselves as living mush, fearful of the journey down the birth canal. The whole has to do with the process of psychological pregnancy—the virgin forever a virgin, forever pregnant, forever open to possibilities.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Introduction, p. 7
The Pregnant Virgin (1985)

Life, Fear, Birth, Parting

“For almost 2,500 years the book of Daniel has been virtually a sealed book, and it's only recently that men have begun to open the book, break the seals, and understand the prophecies and what Daniel was saying. Although they had the Bible for thousands of years, they still didn't understand endtime Bible prophecy. But now we're supposed to open the book, break the seals, and read it and understand it, because we live in the time of the end.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

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

Men, Books, Understanding, Time

“In the emerging picture of mankind in the universe, the future (if it exists) will surely entail discoveries about space and time which will open up whole new perspectives in the relationship between mankind, mind, and the uni-verse.… But what is now? There is no such thing in physics; it is not even clear that ‘now’ could ever be described, let alone explained, in terms of physics.… Notions such as ‘the past,’ ‘the present’ and ‘the future’ seem to be more linguistic than physical.… There is no universal now, but only a personal one—a ‘here and now.’ This strongly suggests that we look to the mind, rather than to the physical world, as the origin of the division of time into past, present, and future.…There is none of this in physics.… No physical experiment has ever been performed to detect the passage of time. As soon as the objective world of reality is considered, the passage of time disappears like a ghost into the night.”

Paul Davies (1946) British physicist

Page 222, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521291514.
Space and Time in the Modern Universe (1977)

World, Reality, Universe, Time

“Multiculturalism in Europe is dead in the water, as every recent election has shown. Even the politicians are admitting it now. Some people cling to the illusion of it still, the way the Soviets clung to the illusion of Communism, but it's over, and these show trials and violent street attacks are symptoms of its death throes. They're the desperate acts of desperate people who've totally lost their way. Criminalizing opinion is an open admission that lawmakers have lost control, and created a situation they can't handle. But that's what happens when the people are never asked for their opinion, and, when they give it, it's ignored.”

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

"Free speech in Europe" (10 November 2010) http://youtube.com/watch?v=bWw7H4m389o 2010

Death, People, Way, Communication

“Once animal exploitation was institutionalized and accepted as part of the natural order of things, it opened the door to similar ways of treating other human beings, thus paving the way for such atrocities as human slavery and the Holocaust.”

Charles Patterson (author) (1935) American author and historian

Source: Eternal Treblinka (2002), p. 12

Way, Nature, Animals, Parting

“Wounds on the external landscape exist in the internal landscape first. We re-create those inner wounds on the outside, on the planet. So being a vegan, practicing yoga, and taking time to exercise and do things that nourish my heart and spirit are all vital parts of my “activism.” Activists have done a great job of caring for the world around us, but we haven’t done a great job of caring for ourselves and each other. … If we’re going to ask people to open up to the pain of the earth, we ought to have systems in place that enable us to relieve each other’s pain.”

Julia Butterfly Hill (1974) American activist

" The Butterfly Effect http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/436/the_butterfly_effect". Interview by Leslee Goodman for The Sun, April 2012, issue 436

Pain, People, World, Exercises

“For thousands of years women chose men based on their ability to provide. The more women increase their mastery of the workplace, the more they open themselves to partnership with a new type of man. It is my hope that Part One has begun a paradigm shift in the way we view men. As we saw women doing financially better than men in male-dominated professions, it hopefully offers a more generous view of the male attitude toward women in the workplace. As we contemplate making sacrifices to earn more, it is my hope we appreciate the sacrifices men have made to nurture the family by being their family's 'financial womb.”

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

Especially the sacrifices of 'working dads' and of dads' 'invisible juggling act'.
Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 122.

Women, Men, Family, Hope

“There is an intellectual guardianship over the world, it is man... This is the last judgement, before them you stand... They help you when you work. You can thank them only through work. When you want to die, they sometimes appear to you. When you are completely empty and completely open, you belong to them.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

after his mental recovery
quote from 'A Painter's Credo' c. 1919; from his Davoser Tagebuch'; from Wikipedia: Kirchner
1916 - 1919

World, Appearance, Help

“So I light the fire with the lighter and then I'm like, 'Now, how am I going to light the candles?' And I'm racing through the house, tearing open drawers and throwing things out of closets, looking for matches … and I had just lit the fire with the thing!!! And then I was like, 'How did I light the fire?”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

So then l took the thing and lit the candles.
Attributed

Tear, Light, Housing

“If a friend in Texas seals a silver coin in one envelope and a gold coin in another and mails the envelopes to Tokyo and London, the instant you open you envelope in Japan you know the contents of my envelope in England. But opening your letter causes no physical change in England (faster-than-light or otherwise) but merely involves a change in your knowledge concerning something happening far away and outside your control.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 9, Four Quantum Realities, p. 171 ( See also: Principle of locality)

Knowledge, Light, Change

“Write by WASTE. The government will open it if you use the other. The dolphins will be mad. Love the dolphins.”

Thomas Pynchon book The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

Love, Madness

“I was walking tru Amsterdam when I heared I’m Outta Love blasting out of an open window. In that moment I rang their doorbell and when those people opened the door I said ‘Roomservice!’ Never I saw people dropping their jaws that much (laughs) I saw their eyes goin from me to their tv that had mtv on, back to me and back to the tv again, you saw they where thinking, how can this woman be in both places in the same time? But once they got over that shock they did not wanna let me go anymore, ‘come in, there is plenty to drink, there is plenty of everything (winks), what do you wanna eat, are u staying over…?’ Sweet people, real cute, only later I realized, oh my god, what if they were just making love to my music, they would have opend the door naked!”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Het stomende dubbelinterview: Natalia en Anastacia http://www.humo.be/humo-archief/29756/het-stomende-dubbelinterview-natalia-en-anastacia, Humo, September 27, 2010. General Quotes

Love, God, People, Making love

“Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”

Truman Capote book In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (1965)

Imagination

“The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvellously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

19 January 1847 (p. 55)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Life, Happiness, Feeling, History

“As you open up spiritually, your subtle body has a particular effulgence which attracts entities from both the divine and negative natures. You become more sensitive and aware of everything. You become more intuitive and have more experiences in the dream state. If there are messages you should receive, the impressions will always be there, even when you are asleep, and you will act on them without consciously being aware of it. If a communication is really meant for your growth, even though you may forget it or may not be able to understand its significance, it will still have an effect on your consciousness. Ultimately, both the positive and negative experiences are “quality tests” to assess your level of sincerity.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 21

Dreams, Communication, Understanding, Nature

“A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Se me abre una puerta, entro y me hallo con cien puertas cerradas.
Voces (1943)

“In Flossenbürg, you noticed things more; you had to notice every day so many people hanged in the courtyard. People were brought to their execution completely naked. They were driven into the courtyard and I could hear the noise of naked feet on the court ground right outside my window. Stretchers with corpses were carried past the doors of our cells. If by chance the peek holes were open, one could see them going by. In the courtyard where you took a walk, they had gallows arranged in such a way that you were obliged to look at them.”

Franz Halder (1884–1972) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, April 5, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
Sourced Encyclopedia of the Third Reich Louis L. Snyder

People, Way, Chance, Past

“The Croatian parliament elected me to be the Croatian member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. I went to Belgrade, where first, for several months, I was not allowed to take up my duties because the Federal Assembly was unable to meet. After that, the Serbian bloc boycotted my election as president under… Finally, under pressure from the international community, I was elected president. Croatia adopted a decision on its independence. Croatia, in agreement with the international community, postponed its secession from Yugoslavia by three months. This time period had elapsed. Yugoslavia no longer existed. The federal institutions were no longer functioning. I returned to Zagreb, and that's precisely what I said. Because I [had not gone] to Belgrade to open up a house-painting business. I went there as a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. Since Yugoslavia no longer existed and the Presidency no longer existed, I had performed the tasks entrusted to me by the Croatian parliament and was reporting back, ready to take up a different office. What was I to do in Belgrade when the Presidency no longer existed?… The accused is a lawyer. He understands very well what I'm talking about. My 'task' was to represent Croatia in the Federal Presidency.”

Stjepan Mesić (1934) Former Croatian and Yugoslav president

ICTY Transcript, Page 10636 - Mesić's cross-examination by Slobodan Milošević at the ICTY on 2 October 2002, 8 April 2012 http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/021002IT.htm, Responding to an earlier quote in which he stated My task has come to an end. There is no more Yugoslavia. ("Moj posao je završen - Jugoslavije više nema") 5 December 1991 in the Croatian parliament having left the presidency of the Yugoslav presidency.

Communication, Understanding, Business, Decision

“I learnt the true meaning of what was euphemistically described as close-quarters combat. No line-of-sight particle-beam weapons now; no delayed-detonation nano-munitions. What close-quarters combat meant was something which would have been infinitely more recognisable to a soldier of a thousand years earlier: the screaming fury of human beings packed so close together that the only effective way to kill each other was with sharpened metal weapons: bayonets and daggers, or with hands around each other’s throats; fingers pressed into each other’s eye-sockets. The only way to survive was to disengage all higher brain-functions and regress to an animal state of mind.
So I did. And in doing so, I learned a deeper truth about war. She punished those who flirted with her by making them like herself. Once you opened the door to the animal, there was no shutting it.”

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 7 (p. 108).

War, Truth, Way, Learning

“There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring. Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense, may be safely attributed.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", pages 403-404 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=420&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Men, Religion, Law, Nature

Quotes about opening page 23

Quotes about opening
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