Quotes about opposition
page 10

“During the final months of the campaign, as polls indicated that I had a real chance of becoming the next leader, opposition from the supply management lobby gathered speed. Radio-Canada reported on dairy farmers who were busy selling Conservative Party memberships across Quebec. A Facebook page called Les amis de la gestion de l’offre et des régions (Friends of supply management and regions) was set up and had gathered more than 10,500 members by early May. As members started receiving their ballots by mail from the party, its creator, Jacques Roy, asked them to vote for Andrew Scheer.
Andrew, along with several other candidates, was then busy touring Quebec’s agricultural belt, including my own riding of Beauce, to pick up support from these fake Conservatives, only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges. Interestingly, one year later, most of them have not renewed their memberships and are not members of the party anymore. During these last months of the campaign, the number of members in Quebec had increased considerably, from about 6,000 to more than 16,000. In April 2018, according to my estimates, we are down to about 6,000 again.
A few days after the vote, Éric Grenier, a political analyst at the CBC, calculated that if only 66 voters in a few key ridings had voted differently, I could have won. The points system, by which every riding in the country represented 100 points regardless of the number of members they had, gave outsized importance in the vote to a handful of ridings with few members. Of course, a lot more than 66 supply management farmers voted, likely thousands of them in Quebec, Ontario, and the other provinces. I even lost my riding of Beauce by 51% to 49%, the same proportion as the national vote.
At the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa a few days after the vote, a gala where personalities make fun of political events of the past year, Andrew was said to have gotten the most laughs when he declared: “I certainly don’t owe my leadership victory to anybody…”, stopping in mid-sentence to take a swig of 2% milk from the carton. “It’s a high quality drink and it’s affordable too.” Of course, it was so funny because everybody in the room knew that was precisely why he got elected. He did what he thought he had to do to get the most votes, and that is fair game in a democratic system. But this also helps explain why so many people are so cynical about politics, and with good reason.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

page 23 in "Live or die with supply management", chapter 5 previewed April 2018 http://www.maximebernier.com/my_chapter_on_supply_management of "Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada"

People, Game, Drink, Business

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

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

Letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1780), "The Works of John Adams" http://books.google.com/books?id=j9NKAAAAYAAJ&dq=John%20Adams%20works&pg=PA511#v=onepage&q&f=false, vol 9, p. 511 1780s

Evil

“Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.
But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could… fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case… who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.
We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.
A successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee. Even if the hybrid were infertile like a mule, the shock waves that would be sent through society would be salutary. This is why a distinguished biologist described this possibility as the most immoral scientific experiment he could imagine: it would change everything! It cannot be ruled out as impossible, but it would be surprising.”

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

Richard Dawkins Chimpanzee Hybrid? The Guardian, Jan 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/02/richard-dawkins-chimpanzee-hybrid?commentpage=2

Life, People, Imagination, Question

“1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions (1982), p. 21

Indecision

“It doesn’t take much refection—and indeed only a little research—to discover that the kind of conservative readings of the Genesis story that are often put up in opposition to what it is thought Darwin said (often without bothering to read what Darwin himself had to say) bear almost no relation to what we find in the refection of the fathers on the account found in Genesis. Such Christians have imagined a tradition that has no right to call itself tradition.”

Andrew Louth (1944)

"Being Human," The Wheel, Spring/Summer 2018

Imagination, Reading

“The same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 185

Death, Past

“Against the many Russian thinkers influenced by Hegel who believed that history was governed by universal laws to which one could only submit, Turgenev upheld the freedom of different societies to pursue different paths of development and of individuals to pursue, even in opposition to powerful historical forces, their own goals and values. Here Turgenev endorsed the celebrated dictum of Alexander Herzen, with whom he disagreed on other matters: that history has no libretto. Human history is a realm of contingency and unpredictability, in which each generation faces conflicts that have no ideal solution.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.105)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

Law, History, Freedom, Universe

“In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.”

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

Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-02_Bk.pdf, p. 256 1770s

Age, Religion

“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness.
We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us-and in us-and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial.
We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom. We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom-the forced actors who take the consequences-are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Source: Letters & Autobiographical Writings (1954), pp. 184-185.

Men, War, People, World

“My accomplishments as Secretary of State? Well, I'm glad you asked. My proudest accomplishment in which I take the most pride, mostly because of the opposition it faced early on, you know. The remnants of prior situations and mindsets that were too narrowly focused in a manner whereby they may have overlooked the bigger picture and we didn't do that. Very proud. I would say that's a major accomplishment.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Claimed to be from a speech in letter to the editor by Scott Boyer. " Hillary Clinton: A killer public speaker http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/hillary-clinton-a-killer-public-speaker/article_c8a22488-10e7-11e4-8550-001a4bcf887a.html", Missoulian (). There is no record of Hillary Clinton having engaged in a public appearance on this date, nor any news account or transcript recording such a quote, according to snopes.com ( "Stating the Oblivious" http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/achievements.asp). Misattributed

“I am for the unity of the party – for the national and international unity of the party. But it must be a unity of socialism and socialists. The unity with opponents – with people who have other aims and other interests, is no socialist unity. We must strive for unity at any price and with all sacrifices. But while we are uniting and organizing, we must rid ourselves of all foreign and antagonistic elements. What would one say of a general who in the enemy’s country sought to fill the ranks of his army with recruits from the ranks of the enemy? Would that not be the height of foolishness? Very well, to take into our army – which is an army for the class struggle and the class war – opponents, soldiers with aims and interests entirely opposite to our own, – that would be madness, that would be suicide.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

War, People, Suicide, Madness

“Did you see that wee church in Salamanca where the Virgin's statue had eyes that moved? Your priest there said it was a miracle, but you could see the string the fellow jerked to make the wooden eyeballs twitch! But why go to the trouble of having a string? I asked myself. Because the people want a miracle, that's why. And just because some people invent a miracle doesn't mean there aren't real ones, does it? It means the opposite, so it does, for why would you imitate something that doesn't exist?”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sergeant Patrick Harper, p. 186
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Rifles (1988)

People, Jerk

“I tried to be natural, in other words the exact opposite of what drawing teachers call 'faithful to nature'. I made my first experiments with free form.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Looking, Arp, Jean; as quoted by Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 12
1960s

Faith, Nature, Teachers, Drawing

“Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Amartya Sen's article in 'The Economist' dated November 18th, 2005 http://www.economist.com/node/5133493 India

“I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate, of inducing the people there either to separation or forcible opposition. The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing the embargo on the 4th March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations. The further details are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly certain that the embargo will be taken off the 4th of March.”

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

Letter to his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph (7 February 1809) on the termination of the American embargo.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

War, People

“We must foster in us the awareness that the actual laws are, on the whole, something limited and that there is always need of integration and correction, and this attention to possible changes must be kept especially in regard to more important things. Citizens often use the opposite method: they disobey the small laws, and they obey the important ones. They have not widened their spirit to look above all at these last ones, which at times are unjust impositions. Then disobedience to these becomes a witness.”

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

‘In Remembrance of Aldo Capitini’
Hymn

Law, Change, Time

“There is, therefore, both positive and negative proof in favour of my mental and suggestive theory, and in opposition to the magnetic, occult, or electric theories of the Mesmerists and electro-biologists. My theory, moreover, has this additional recommendation, that it is level to our comprehension, and adequate to account for all which is demonstrably true, without offering any violence to reason and common sense, or being at variance with generally admitted physiological and psychological principles.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Sense

“All racist and anti-semitic attacks must be stamped out. However, the reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims — and they are the primary targets of the extreme right. For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments — not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.
They are also fuelling anger and violence across the world. For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong — but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Commentary in The Guardian (4 March 2005)

People, Truth, World, Reality

“Mankind has advanced. Human progress is ceaseless. We can look at Bosnia or Zaire or Rwanda and conclude that building just societies is a fool's errand. We are always, despite our advances, only one sin away from slipping into the abyss of terror and ignorance.
But that is not so. Generations upon generations have driven the human race farther and farther from darkness. Past episodes of abominable human cruelty are kept vivid in the memories of succeeding generations. "Never again," is the admonition passed from the survivors of the Holocaust to their descendants and to us all. And although such an important reminder will not always prevent the occurrence of cruelty and violence even at levels approaching genocide, the civilized world is more inclined to organize opposition to such tragedies if not as early as we should, at least sooner than we once would have.”

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

1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)

World, Fools, Memory, Past

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

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

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

Age, Family, Way, Time

“After a considerable walk through the forest, where I became acquainted with several of the little lakes I am so fond of, I came to Hestehaven and Lake Carl. Here is one of the most beautiful regions I have ever seen. The countryside is somewhat isolated and slopes steeply down to the lake, but with the beech forests growing on either side, it is not barren. A growth of rushes forms the background and the lake itself the foreground; a fairly large part of the lake is clear, but a still larger part is overgrown with the large green leaves of the waterlily, under which the fish seemingly try to hide but now and then peek out and flounder about on the surface in order to bathe in sunshine. The land rises on the opposite side, a great beech forest, and in the morning light the lighted areas make a marvelous contrast to the shadowed areas. The church bells call to prayer, but not in a temple made by human hands. If the birds do not need to be reminded to praise God, then ought men not be moved to prayer outside of the church, in the true house of God, where heaven's arch forms the ceiling of the church, where the roar of the storm and the light breezes take the place of the organ's bass and treble, where the singing of the birds make up the congregational hymns of praise, where echo does not repeat the pastor's voice as in the arch of the stone church, but where everything resolves itself in an endless antiphony — Hillerød, July 25, 1835”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men, God, Beauty, Bird

“When [ Abraham ] the "Pillar of the World" appeared, he became convinced that there is a spiritual Divine Being, which is not a body, nor a force residing in a body, but is the author of the spheres and the stars; and he saw the absurdity of the tales in which he had been brought up. He therefore began to attack the belief of the Sabeans, to expose the falsehood of their opinions, and to proclaim publicly in opposition to them, "the name of the Lord, the God of the Universe" (Gen. xxi. 33), which proclamation included at the same time the Existence of God, and the Creation of the Universe by God.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.29

God, World, Star, Universe

“It's a universal tendency in films to be more about sex and violence than the real world is, but I would pose the opposite question: Why are so many characters that you see on TV so desexualized? A lot of them seem to be completely asexual — especially animated characters — and it implies that those characters are normal. The characters in Aeon Flux are normal people who have normal sex lives and appetites.”

Peter Chung (1961) Korean-American animator

Sexuality Desexualized http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/features/a/aeon_flux_050706/

People, World, Sex, Question

“We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.”

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

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Art, Feeling, Problem, Wealth

“We do, as a new Government, have to be extremely careful after 18 years in opposition. A lot of people who worked for us, they then go on and work for the lobby firms. I think we have to be very careful with people fluttering around the new Government, trying to make all sorts of claims of influence, that we are purer than pure, that people understand that we will not have any truck with anything that is improper in any shape or form at all.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

David Hughes, "'Don't flutter around us' Blair warns lobbyists", Daily Mail, 8 July 1998, p. 2.
After a scandal about lobbying and access; this statement is often misremembered as "whiter than white".
1990s

People, Understanding, Thinking

“One must perhaps qualify this statement and say that seemingly opposite tendencies each contain some modicum of the other. I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“Where in the world did the idea come from that things left to themselves can improve with time? Who would start a crazy idea like that? This idea is the opposite of everything that we observe in the world today. For instance, all the highways in our nation today left to themselves decay, deteriorate, and fall apart. A house left to itself will become a wreck. It takes work and constant planning to make anything improve. Everything tends toward disorder.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

World, Idea, Time, Housing

“Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don't speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language in Malaysia). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn't happen, what happens then? Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don't oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645 1960s

People, Education, Cars, Failure

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

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

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

People, Secret, Nature, Reality

“In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, … the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 52.

Truth, Idea

“When asked about why the opposition members were arrested, Gayyoom replied "Violence, Violence, Violence"”

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (1937) Maldivian politician, 3rd president of the Maldives

BBC World interview (2003)

“If A is A, a philosopher should equal a philosopher. But that's not the way the cosmos works. Similar things set themselves apart from one another. …What's more, opposites are joined at the hip. Einstein says that most creative acts come from opposition. They come from pitting yourself against someone with another point of view. They come from the law of differentiation. And that was true of Aristotle and his law of identity, his law of noncontradiction, his construction for the base for A is A. Aristotle came up with his idea… to fling a finger in the face of another philosopher [Heraclitus]…”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

When a Frog is a River? Aristotle Wrestles Heraclitus
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

Law, Way, Idea

“Nobody can valuate without devaluating, revaluating, and serving one’s interests. Whoever sets a value, takes position against a disvalue by that very action. The boundless tolerance and the neutrality of the standpoints and viewpoints turn themselves very quickly into their opposite, into enmity, as soon as the enforcement is carried out in earnest. The valuation pressure of the value is irresistible, and the conflict of the valuator, devaluator, revaluator, and implementor, inevitable.”

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law

"The Tyranny of Values" (1959)

“We do not “look” at something or someone; we “eat” it: we are like “cannibals” consuming the world for our own benefit. “The only people who have any hope of salvation are those who occasionally stop and look for a time, instead of eating.” Here we have Weil’s version of changing from a position of egocentrism to egolessness. … Weil is claiming that it all starts with paying attention to the other—any other—as the way to form our appropriate stance toward the world and all its creatures. Her essay titled “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” joins what appear to be opposites—a child’s concentration on working on a math problem and training for loving God. From her own earliest days, she saw the value of studying math and science, disciplines that demanded an openness and patience to a subject outside of oneself and whose truth did not rest with one’s own interpretation.”

Sallie McFague (1933–2019) American feminist and theologian

describing Simone Weil’s view, Blessed Are the Consumers

Love, God, People, Truth

“Secularism, with its moral relativism, is in direct opposition to Christianity and its absolute morality. The battle is between these two worldviews—one that stands on God's Word and one that accepts man's opinions.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Carol Derby & Ken Ham, "The 'Evolutionizing' of a Culture", War of the World Views: Powerful Answers For An "Evolutionized" Culture (2006), p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=RTc_lsnp0r0C&pg=PA11

God

“For those who would like to throw off the burden of history and move on, Goldhagen’s book has been a welcome gift. Purporting to bring the past home to the unsuspecting present, he has had the opposite effect. If he has not yet asked himself why his book has received such an enthusiastic reception in Germany, he might ponder why ‘the Germans’ should be so glad to be supplied with the argument that their parents and grandparents were all equally to blame because they inhabited a culture blameworthy in itself: we’re different now. But nobody is that different now, because nobody was that different then.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Postscript to Hitler's Unwitting Exculpator
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

Books, Home, History, Parent

“It was Lavrentiy Beria who told Stalin,‘show me the man, and I’ll find your crime.’ You can go through the federal criminal code and find crimes that virtually any businessman, any politician has committed. It is so easy to get a warrant. It is so easy to persuade a judge to give you a wiretap warrant. That simply doesn’t protect American citizens, and any civil libertarian who was exposed to what’s going on here today — if Hillary Clinton were the subject — would be taking exactly the opposite position.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Interview over Michael Cohen, MSNBC, May 3, 2018, hosted by Steve Kornacki. Christian Datoc, “Dershowitz Explodes: ‘I Don’t Want To Live In A Police State,” The Daily Caller, May 3, 2018 http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/dershowitz-i-dont-want-to-live-in-police-state/

“Although the Mathematicks according to its Etymology, signifies only Discipline, yet it merits the Name of Science better than any other, because its Principles are self-evident, and independent on any sensible Experience, and its Propositions demonstrated beyond all possible Doubt or Opposition. Youth were anciently instructed herein before Philosophy, on which Account Aristotle called it the Science of Children. This was taught them not only to raise and excite their Genius, but also as a fit preparative to the Study of Nature; and it was upon this Account that the Divine Plato inscribed on his School… that none wholly ignorant of Geometry should be admitted there.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702, p. 1, The Introduction; Lead paragraph

Children, Youth, School, Nature

“It is a common error, as we have pointed out several times, to interpret opposition to U. S. intervention and aggression as support for the programs of its victims, a useful device for state propagandists but one that often has no basis in fact.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 256.

Error, Support, Time

“A country cannot solely rely on the government and opposition parties to solve all of the problems.”

Jiang Yi-huah (1960) Taiwanese politician

Jiang Yi-huah (2017) cited in " Former premier wants to help youth go global http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2017/01/17/489623/Former-premier.htm" on The China Post, 17 January 2017

Problem, Country

“What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace…It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather."”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all. Speech on the Munich Agreement http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government (5 October 1938).

Friendship, War, Peace, Quotes

“Clarke's Fourth Law: For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”

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

Profiles of the Future (1999, London: Victor Gollancz) p. 143
On Clarke's Laws

Law

“Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

2009 ed., p. 517
How the Mind Works (1997)

Love, People, Books, Dreams

“He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if it may be, seems to surpass the very gods, who sitting opposite thee again and again gazes at thee and hears thee sweetly laughing.”
Ille mi par esse Deo videtur, ille, si fas est, superare Divos, qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit dulce ridentem.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

LI, lines 1–5. Cf. Sappho 31.
Carmina

God

“I support the effort of government to bring about reconciliation and unity but this cannot be achieved through a Bill that has caused so much opposition, division and confusion in the country.”

Petero Mataca (1933–2014) Catholic archbishop

Statement to the media, 23 June 2005 http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=23578, on the government's proposal to establish a Reconciliation and Unity Commission (excerpts)

Support, Effort, Country

“Some have an idea that the reason we in this country discard things so readily is because we have so much. The facts are exactly opposite-the reason we have so much is simply because we discard things so readily. We replace the old in return for something that will serve us better.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan, in: General Motors, News and Views. (1945), p. 1;

Idea, Country

“Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism… There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called ‘liberalism’ was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.”

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

"Why I am Not a Conservative" https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/excerpt/2011/hayek_constitution.html 1960s–1970s, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)

History, Sense, Change

“As a matter of fact, however, no church rises with everything against it. Something is favorable to it, or it could not exist. If it succeeds and grows, it is absolutely certain that the conditions are favorable. If it spreads rapidly, it simply shows that the conditions are exceedingly favorable, and that the forces in opposition are weak and easily overcome.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

“I am proud to represent the Labour party, which established the minimum wage, which some Opposition parties could not find time to support.”

Dawn Butler (1969) British politician

Maiden speech on 24 May 2005

Support, Time

“The world and Christianity have completely opposite conceptions. The world says of the apostles, of the Apostle Peter as their spokesman, "He is drunk,"-and the Apostle Peter admonishes, "Become sober." Consequently the secular mentality considers Christianity to be drunkenness, and Christianity considers the secular mentality to be drunkenness. "Do become reasonable, come to your senses, try to become sober"-thus does the secular mentality taunt the Christian. And the Christian says to the secular mentality, "Do become reasonable, come to your senses, become sober." The difference between secularity and Christianity is not that one has one view and the other another-no, the difference is always that they have the very opposite views, that what one calls good the other calls evil, what the one calls love the other calls selfishness, what the one calls piety the other calls impiety, What the one calls being drunk the other calls being sober. it is precisely the drunken man, the apostle, who finds it necessary to bring home to the sober (I assume) world the admonition: "Become sober!"”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

This very admonition may, as intended, most severely wound the callous secular mentality, which as a rule cannot be wounded very easily or disconcerted.
Judge for Yourself, p. 96-97 1851
1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

Love, World, Home, Sense

“Is it not remarkable that the common repute which we all give to attorneys in the general is exactly opposite to that which every man gives to his own attorney in particular? Whom does anybody trust so implicitly as he trusts his own attorney? And yet is it not the case that the body of attorneys is supposed to be the most roguish body in existence?”

Anthony Trollope Miss Mackenzie

Miss Mackenzie (1865), Ch. 17

“Such is the real distribution of duties, responsibilities, and expenses. Yet people are given to thinking and speaking of the National Government as 'the Government'. They demand more from it than it was ever intended to provide; and yet in the same breath they complain that Federal authority is stretching itself over areas which do not concern it. On one side, there are demands for more amendments to the Constitution. On the other, there is too much opposition to those that already exist.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

People, Thinking

“The great trouble with all of us who are struggling with unhappy or unfortunate conditions is that we have separated ourselves in some way from the great magnetic center of creation. We are not thinking right, and so we are not attracting the right things. “Think the things you want.” The profoundest philosophy is locked up in these few words. Think of them clearly, persistently, concentrating upon them with all the force and might of your mind, and struggle toward them with all your energy. This is the way to make yourself a magnet for the things you want. But the moment you begin to doubt, to worry, to fear, you demagnetize yourself, and the things you desire flee from you. You drive them away by your mental attitude. They cannot come near you while you are deliberately separating yourself from them. You are going in one direction, and the things you want are going in the opposite direction.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

How to Get What You Want (1917).

Fear, Way, Thinking

“Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance: a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony. If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large. Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son, that will be precisely ironic.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

Way, Mountain, Football

“Oh people, the Messenger of God said: Whoever sees an aggressive tyrant that legalizes the forbiddens of God, breeches divine laws, opposes the tradition of the Prophet, oppresses the worshippers of God, and does not concede his opposition to God in word or in deed, surely Allah will place that tyrant (in the Hell) where he deserves.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Khawarazmi, Maqtal al-Husayn, vol.1, p. 234
Regarding the Advent of Karbalā

God, People, Law, Hell

“When he walks in, whether you are batting in the middle or sitting in the pavilion and a wicket has fallen, he brings calm to the whole dressing room. I, personally, get a feeling of calm and solidity, not because Laxman will always score but because you know that he will never let you down in terms of effort: you know that he is there and he will pull his weight. There is no higher compliment. You know he has the requisite quality, and that he can read situations well. He has turned up in every circumstance: bad pitches, good pitches, when setting a total or after the opposition has piled up a big score.”

V. V. S. Laxman (1974) former Indian cricketer

Rahul Dravid in a column after Laxman had played his 100th Test.
Source: http://cricket.yahoo.com/photos/if-you-get-laxman-it-s-a-miracle-slideshow/england-and-india-nets-session-photo-1345279931.html

Feeling, Effort, Reading, Personality

“The formalization of behavior takes formal power away from the workers and the managers who supervise them and concentrates it near the top of the line hierarchy and in the technostructure, thus centralizing the organization in both dimensions. The result is Type A decentralization. Training and indoctrination produces exactly the opposite effect: it develops expertise below the middle line, thereby decentralizing the structure in both dimensions (Type E). Putting these two conclusions together, we can see that specialization of the unskilled type centralizes the structure in both dimensions, whereas specialization of the skilled or professional type decentralizes it in both dimensions.”

Henry Mintzberg (1939) Canadian busines theorist

Source: The structuring of organizations (1979), p. 211

Behavior, Training

“Each sent pressure can be regarded as arousing in the focal person a psychological force of some magnitude and direction. Such forces will be called role forces. This is not to say that these motivational role forces are identical in magnitude and direction with the role pressures which evoked them. Especially when role pressures are seen as illegitimate or coercive, they may arouse strong resistance forces which lead to outcomes different from or even opposite to the expected behavior. Pressures to increase production rates sometimes result in slowdowns. Moreover, every person is subject to a variety of psychological forces in addition to those stimulated by pressures from his role set in the work situation. Role pressures are thus only a partial determinant of behavior on the job. In addition, to the motivational forces aroused by role pressures, there are important internal sources of motivation for role performance. One of these stems from the intrinsic satisfaction derived from the content of the role.”

Robert L. Kahn (1918–2019) American psychologist

Source: Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity, 1964, p. 16-17

Behavior, Motivation, Strong, Personality

“If you think asking for help betrays weakness, get over it. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s a sign that you’re confident enough to admit that other people may know more than you know or can do things better than you can.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On asking for help
Mount Saint Vincent University speech (2016)

People, Confidence, Thinking, Help

“Yet the world has never thoroughly learned this lesson It has never been willing entirely to acknowledge this principle. One of the greatest needs of the present day is the establishment and recognition of standards, and holding ourselves up to their proper observance. This cannot be done without constant effort and it will meet constant opposition. Always there have been those who fail to recognize this necessity. Their opposition to it and their philosophy of life were well expressed by Robert Burns in that poem which describes the carousings of a collection of vagabonds, where one of them gave his views: 'A fig for those by law protected! Liberty's a glorious feast! Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life, World, Law, Effort

“Measuring people and issues in terms of political parties has turned out to be philosophically fallacious if not totally misleading. This is because the platforms or positions of political parties are often superficial and structured on shifting sand. The platform of a political party of one generation can hardly be recognized by the next. Furthermore, Communism and Fascism turned out to be different names for approximately the same thing ~ the police state. They are not opposite extremes but, for all practical purposes, are virtually identical.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

People, Communication

“I should like to make an observation to right honourable and honourable Gentlemen opposite. It is that I do not think they will help to produce the atmosphere in Europe which is so desirable by issuing papers that have been issued by the National Council of Labour, headed 'Hit Hitler.”

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

Speech in the House of Commons (11 March 1935); published in Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 299 cols. 50-1.
1935

Thinking, Help

“Some of you may doubt the truth of what I now say, and argue that the Lord could teach him. This is a mistake. The Lord could not have taught him in any other way than in the way in which He did teach him. You believe Adam was made of the dust of this earth. This I do not believe, though it is supposed that it is so written in the Bible; but it is not, to my understanding. You can write that information to the States, if you please-that I have publicly declared that I do not believe that portion of the Bible as the Christian world do. I never did, and I never want to. What is the reason I do not? Because I have come to understanding, and banished from my mind all the baby stories my mother taught me when I was a child. But suppose Adam was made and fashioned the same as we make adobies; if he had never drunk of the bitter cup; the Lord might have talked to him to this day, and he would have continued as he was to all eternity, never advancing one particle in the school of intelligence. This idea opens up a field of light to the intelligent mind. How can you know truth but by its opposite, or light but by its opposite? The absence of light is darkness. How can sweetness be known but by its opposite, bitter? It is by this means that we obtain all intelligence.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourse 2:6-7 (October 23, 1853)
1850s

Truth, World, School, Way

“Jesus was not divine because he was less human than his fellowmen but for the opposite reason that he was supremely human, and it is this of which his divinity consists, the fullness and perfection of him as an intellectual, moral and spiritual human being.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Jesus, the Supreme Leader (1914)

Perfection

“The two parties represent two opposite moods of the English mind, which may be trusted, unless past experience is wholly useless, to succeed each other from time to time. Neither of them, neither the love of organic changes nor the dislike of it, can be described as normal to a nation. In every nation, they have succeeded each other at varying intervals during the whole of the period which separates its birth from its decay. Each finds in the circumstances and constitution of individuals a regular support which never deserts it. Among men, the old, the phlegmatic, the sober-minded, among classes, those who have more to lose than to gain by change, furnish the natural Conservatives. The young, the envious, the restless, the dreaming, those whose condition cannot easily be made worse, will be rerum novarum cupidi.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

But the two camps together will not nearly include the nation: for the vast mass of every nation is unpolitical.
Quarterly Review, 133, 1872, pp. 583-584
1870s

Love, Men, Dreams, Birth

“I wonder if I am going crazy or if I do not love my family enough, or if it is the opposite, if I love them too much. If I am the only sane person I know.”

Philipp Meyer (1974) American writer

The Son (2013)

Love, Family, Personality

“The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Truth, Nature, Animals, Wealth

“Ev was a careful man, a model of caution. He took pride in not committing to a view until all the facts were in. Which meant, of course, that he was never quite on board. Or in opposition.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 4 (p. 38)

“What upsets me the most is that I was an accountable representative of a system under which people suffered, also under which repression was aimed at individuals, who were persecuted because of their oppositional stance. Their position was the right one. My position was the wrong one. We were not capable of democracy, but rather tried in the absence of better arguments to get rid of the other opinion with direct violence.”

Günter Schabowski (1929–2015) German politician

Am meisten bedrückt mich, dass ich ein verantwortlicher Vertreter eines Systems war, unter dem Menschen gelitten haben, dass Repressionen gegen einzelne Menschen gerichtet waren, die wegen ihrer oppositionellen Haltung verfolgt wurden. Ihre Einstellung war die richtige. Meine Einstellung war die falsche. Wir waren nicht demokratiefähig, sondern haben versucht, mangels besserer Argumente uns der anderen Meinung mittels direkter Gewalt zu entledigen.
[citation needed]

People, Democracy, Suffering

“In June 1977 or thereabouts, while I was still Speaker of the Lok Sabha, I wanted to go to Bombay during a weekend to call on Jayaprakash Narayan who had come back from the United States after medical treatment. I thought I might mention the matter to Prime Minister, Morarji Desai. His reaction was uncharitable to Jayaprakash Narayan as it was unworthy of him. He asked me if it was really necessary for me to “Lionize” JP. It is an admitted fact that JP’s prominent role in bringing opposition parties together under one banner was widely acknowledged. It was also well-known that JP had been instrumental in Desai’s becoming Prime Minister”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Prime Ministers, Volume 1, P.236

“It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders' motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world. Instead, we are deluding the ignorant and the semi-savage by telling them that no political knowledge is necessary—that our system is only a matter of subjective preference—that any prehistorical form of tribal tyranny, gang rule, and slaughter will do just as well, with our sanction and support. It is thus that we encourage the spectacle of Algerian workers marching through the streets [in the 1962 Civil War] and shouting the demand: "Work, not blood!"—without knowing what great knowledge and virtue are required to achieve it. In the same way, in 1917, the Russian peasants were demanding: "Land and Freedom!" But Lenin and Stalin is what they got. In 1933, the Germans were demanding: "Room to live!" But what they got was Hitler. In 1793, the French were shouting: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!"”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

What they got was Napoleon. In 1776, the Americans were proclaiming "The Rights of Man"—and, led by political philosophers, they achieved it. No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal.
The Ayn Rand Column

War, World, Way, Motivation

“But this brings us to what I consider the fatal flaw in the monetarist prescriptions. If the leader of the school cannot make up his own mind regarding what the most desirable rate of monetary increase should be, what does he expect to happen when the decision is put in the hands of the politicians? … The fatal flaw in the monetarist prescription, in brief, is that it postulates that money should consist of irredeemable paper notes and that the final power of determining how many of these are issued should be placed in the hands of the government—that is, in the hands of the politicians in office. The assumption that these politicians could be trusted to act responsibly, particularly for any prolonged period, seems incredibly naive. The real problem today is the opposite of what the monetarists suggest. It is how to get the arbitrary power over the stock of money out of the hands of the government, out of the hands of the politicians.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money, School, Problem, Decision

“Grey was an ambitious man who always wished to lead, but his overt ambition during his youth made him unpopular. He lacked the warmth of personality that made Fox revered by his followers. Grey was respected but rarely loved. His achievements were few, but they were significant. He helped to keep liberal principles alive during the years of conflict with revolutionary France, and in 1832 he safeguarded the continuity of the British constitution into an era of increasingly rapid social and political change. In character he was a man of contradictions, headstrong but easily discouraged by failure, imperious but indecisive, cautious and introspective. He was at his best when in office, for he sought fame and reputation: in opposition he often became despondent. He was a man of principle and integrity, though not always successful in execution. His bearing and attitudes were aristocratic, and his instincts were fundamentally conservative. He was a whig of the eighteenth-century school, most at home among his deferential clients, tenants, and labourers at Howick, and he never came to terms with the new industrial society which was coming into being during his later years. It is greatly to his credit that his Reform Act, whatever its conservative purpose, smoothed the path for that new society to establish its dominance without destroying the old.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

E. A. Smith, ‘ Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey (1764–1845) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11526’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 8 Sept 2012. About

Love, Youth, School, Home

“We are going through a crucial historical crisis in which each year poses more acutely the global problem of rationally mastering the new productive forces and creating a new civilization. Yet the international working-class movement, on which depends the prerequisite overthrow of the economic infrastructure of exploitation, has registered only a few partial local successes. Capitalism has invented new forms of struggle (state intervention in the economy, expansion of the consumer sector, fascist governments) while camouflaging class oppositions through various reformist tactics and exploiting the degenerations of working-class leaderships. In this way it has succeeded in maintaining the old social relations in the great majority of the highly countries, but must develop conflicts posing the question of power everywhere.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

About the Situationist International movement
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

Way, Question, Problem, Success

“In a healthy democracy both the ruling party and the opposition have a responsibility to the country and surely the people will judge them in the discharge of that responsibility.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.184.

People, Democracy, Country

“On Barack Obama: "No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous 'Change you can believe in,' it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. 'We will be the most powerful,' he often declared."”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, "The Madmen Did Well" http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2009/05/barack-obama-pilger-bush, New Statesman, 30 April 2009

War, Change

“Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 29

Inspirational, love, Love, Hate

“And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 7
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Feeling, Tear, Cry

“Do I, who've read Freud, know what the Future of an Illusion really is and know that religious belief is ineradicable as long as we remain a stupid, poorly-evolved mammalian species, think that some Canadian law is gonna solve this problem? Please. No, our problem is this: our pre-frontal lobes are too small, and our adrenalin glands are too big, and our thumb-finger opposition isn't all that it might be, and we're afraid of the dark, and we're afraid to die, and we believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can - and all children do, as you can tell by their questions - actually see through them. And I think it should be (religion) treated with ridicule and hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.”

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&t=15m49s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Children, Truth, Books, Stupidity

“T'riss sat down opposite the Warden, her expression thoughtful. 'Is civilisation nothing but an illusion, then?'
'Crowd control.'
'Excuse me?'
'That's all civilisation is, T'riss. A means by which we manage the proliferation of our kind. It increases in complexity the more of us there are. Laws keeps us muzzled and punishment delivers the necessary message when those laws are broken. Civilizations in decline are notable when certain of their members escape justice, and do so with impunity.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Justice, Law

“The landscapes of Ruysdael present the greatest possible contrast to those of Claude, showing how powerfully, from the most opposite directions, genius may command our homage. In Claude's pictures, with scarcely an exception, the sun ever shines. Ruysdael, on the contrary, delighted in, and has made delightful to our eyes, those solemn days, peculiar to his country and to ours, when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' third lecture, Royal Institution (9 June 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 366-67
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Sun, Country

“Instead of understanding the crisis facing the country and helping the country, the opposition wants to weaken the country by its deeds.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

In his address to the party workers on 12 November 1984 to spoil the machinations of terrorist, when he was elected to the post of the President of the Congress Party, Meena Agrawal in “Rajiv Gandhi”, P.74
Quote

Understanding, Help, Country

“Ostensive demonstration is that which concludes directly to that which is in question. Reduction ad impossibile is that which, when something the opposite of that which is in question has been assumed, concludes with some other proposition directly to a known and manifest impossibility, from the opposite of which the investigator is led back to the original proposition in question. But there is a difference between ostensive demonstration and reduction ad impossibile, because the former proves from things prior in the order of nature but the latter from things posterior in the order of nature. When things prior in nature are better known in the intellect of the person making the demonstration the process is carried out ostensively; but when posterior things are better known to his intellect then the demonstration is carried out per impossibile… in demonstration carried out per impossibile the showing of the original thing in question is carried out by means of things posterior to it in the order of nature… And there is in the contrary, falsely supposed in predicate of subject, a connecting term by which something is implied to be which impossible in the nature of things.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

i. 17, f. 18r
Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)

Question, Nature, Personality, Falseness

“We are fond of distinctions; we place ourselves in opposition, and quarrel under the denominations of faction and party, without any material subject of controversy.”

Adam Ferguson book An Essay on the History of Civil Society

PART I, SECTION IV.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

“The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”

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

15 January 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Dependency

“The truth is, that what men demand in life, and miss if they do not find it, is not antagonism and warfare, but struggle, effort, cost, strenuousness. It is not hate and enmity that have ennobled warfare. It is not killing that has made the life of the soldier fruitful in moral lessons. It is the nerve, endurance, hardihood, and courage that we love to see. Of these superb qualities there is likely to be a demand to the end of the human course; for it is out of these things that life is forever being wrought. The grown man conceives the universe, not as two impossible opposites in conflict, but as one harmonious structure; out of his soul, brought into unison with God, all hate has vanished.”

Charles Fletcher Dole (1845–1927) Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer

The Theology of Civilization (May 1899)

Love, Life, Men, God

“The EU violates just about every green principle going. It is the opposite of local; it is destructive to the natural world; it wipes out cultural distinctiveness; it is anti-democratic; it puts the interests of banks and corporations before the interests of its working people. Why – when – how – did the Green Movement abandon its commitment to localism and democracy, and jump into bed with a beast like this?”

Paul Kingsnorth (1972) English writer and environmentalist

"Brexit Reconsidered: a Modern Day Peasants’ Revolt?", Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/21/brexit-reconsidered-a-modern-day-peasants-revolt/ December 21, 2016

People, World, Democracy, Nature

“The Mathematics which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately overreach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adheres to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depend upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the 47 unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

"Ration before the University of Cambridge on being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics," (1660), reported in: Mathematical Lectures, (1734), p. 28

Faith, Art, Exercises, Mathematics