Quotes about order

A collection of quotes on the topic of order, use, doing, other.

Quotes about order

“One time, Niall sat on the floor for hours trying to find a way of putting his M&M's in alphabetical order.”

Louis Tomlinson (1991) English pop singer

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5834782.Louis_Tomlinson

“I can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect a thing I must at least have some knowledge of it.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Variant: And I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know.
Source: Mein Kampf

Love, Knowledge, Fight

“In order to see the boundaries of the probabilities, need to try impossible.”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

During the fall of Constantinople, when he said that the ships would pass by land.

“I took part in all battles. If sometimes I was not there, the operation was likewise carried out under my orders.”

Omar Mukhtar (1858–1931) Libyan resistance leader

Trial proceedings (15 September 1931)

Parting

“Teachers have to be learners. They have to treat each new group of students as a different group, fresh and unknown. Teachers often perceive new students as being the same as those in the previous group and apply the same practice to them. If teachers are learners, they will study the new group of students in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses, then teach them accordingly.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Teacher

Study, Teachers

“The speedily changing world and the growth in business and industrial enterprises have led to greater demand of semi-skilled manpower, who need a higher level of education in order to perform their tasks at the adequate level. To keep up with the speedy change, the educational system can no longer take a passive role.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education helps reduce social problems and improves quality of life

World, Education, Business, Change

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Learning

“Jews hate nature and the natural order, because it's pure and beautiful, and also because it's bigger and stronger than they are, and they feel that they can not fully control it. Nature's beauty and harmony stands in stark contrast to their squalidness and ugliness, and that makes them hate it all the more. Jews are destroyers. They are anti-humans.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, February 19 2005 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_31_2.MP3I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There's no doubt of it in my mind.Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It’s a terrible game now. Very uncreative. 2000s

Hate, Beauty, Feeling, Nature

“In order to see the boundaries of the probabilities, need to try impossible.”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

When he said that the ships would pass by land Source: Ahmet Akgündüz - Mehmed's tolerance http://www.ahmetakyol.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9849&Itemid=47

“For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

History, Nature, Fight, Beauty

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.”

C.G. Jung book Psychology and Alchemy

CW 12, par. 126 (p 99)
Psychology and Alchemy (1952)
Context: People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come.

People, Soul

“Learn in order to remove that veil of fear before your eyes.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Fear, Learning

“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Variant: Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.
Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Religion

“A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

“Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation…. The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (September 26, 1975). "The Root Cause", ch. 9, Our Blood (1976).

Love, Life, Lovers

“We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown—and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.”

Jordan Peterson book 12 Rules for Life

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Overture

“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

As quoted in The Beginning of the End (2004) by Peter Hershey, p. 109
Also, as quoted in "The Relentless Rise of Science as Fun", by Jeremy Burgess, in New Scientist, Volume 143, Issues 1932-1945, originally published 1994.
Attributed from posthumous publications

“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Fear, Failure, Success, Deep

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Life, Motivational, Deep, Happy

“If, I say now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods… then I would be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. …this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology

Death, Wisdom, Men, God

“On making prisoners of our generals, they expected that we should perish from want of direction and order.”

Xenophon book Anabasis

Bk. 3, ch. 2; pp. 88-89.
Anabasis
Context: On making prisoners of our generals, they expected that we should perish from want of direction and order. It is incumbent, therefore, on our present commanders to be far more vigilant than our former ones, and on those under command to be far more orderly, and more obedient to their officers, at present than they were before…On the very day that such resolution is passed, they will see before them ten thousand Clearchuses instead of one.

“It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel, p. 120, quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1983) by Richard S. Westfall, p. 326, in Fables of Mind: An Inquiry Into Poe's Fiction (1987) by Joan Dayan, p. 240, and in Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin (1999) by Richard H. Popkin, James E. Force, and David S. Katz, p. 124
Context: It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions.

God, Perfection

“If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.”

Sun Tzu book The Art of War

(zh-TW) 將弱不嚴，敎道不明，將之過也。
The Art of War, Chapter X · Terrain

“We must consider that wisdom is embedded in knowledge. Here is the list of the desires in order: Love, wealth, health, power and knowledge.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Wisdom, Health, Knowledge

“Be Prepared in Mind by having disciplined yourself to be obedient to every order, and also by having thought out beforehand any accident or situation that might occur, so that you know the right thing to do at the right moment, and are willing to do it.

Be Prepared in Body by making yourself strong and active and able to do the right thing at the right moment, and do it.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

Source: Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship

Strong

“Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Sadness, Thinking, Fight

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Drink, Problem, Forgetting

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Attributed in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 132, and many places on the internet, this was actually stated by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Anthon van Rappard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_van_Rappard (18 August 1885) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let528/letter.html, also rendered "I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it." Misattributed Variant: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Learning

“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Death

“Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Time

“In order to understand, I destroyed myself.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 73
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Para compreender, destruí-me.

Understanding

“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages. As a precaution to ever committing major acts of evil it is our solemn duty never to do what we're told, this is the only way we can be sure.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

People, World, Way, Evil

“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

People, Law

“A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

People, Tree, Success, Drawing

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Next day, at the time of the noon prayer, we went out for seeing those places in Gwalior which we had not yet seen' Going out of the Hathipole Gate of the fort, we arrived at a place called Urwa'…'Solid rocks surround Urwa on three sides' On these sides people have carved statues in stone. They are in all sizes, small and big. A very big statue, which is on the southern side, is perhaps 20 yards high. These statues are altogether naked and even their private parts are not covered'…'Urwa is not a bad place. It is an enclosed space. Its biggest blemish is its statues. I ordered that they should be destroyed.”

Babur Baburnama

Baburnama, Translated from the Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi included in Mughal Kãlîna Bhãrata: Bãbur, Aligarh, 1960, In Goel, S.R. Hindu Temples - What happened to them

People, Time, Parting

“The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 11, p. 179

Help

“The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. … Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: Flambeau”, p. 113.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Youth, Travel, Freedom, Learning

“The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order. Unless he knows its cause, he cannot regulate it.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love I
Mozi

“It is useless for you to ask me single facts. Whatever has been committed against Italy and the Italians for the past ten years was willed and permitted by me, whenever I did not personally take part in the acts themselves. … The raids, too, were ordered by me and some of them carried out by me.”

Omar Mukhtar (1858–1931) Libyan resistance leader

Trial proceedings (15 September 1931)

Past, Parting, Personality

“I made public the resolution to abstain from wine, which had been hidden in the treasury of my breast The victorious servants, in accordance with the illustrious order, dashed upon the earth of contempt and destruction the flagons and the cups, and the other utensils in gold and silver, which in their number and their brilliance were like the stars of the firmament They dashed them in pieces, as, God willing! soon will be dashed the gods of the idolaters, - and they distributed the fragments among the poor and needy.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, pp. 554-5. https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n623/mode/2up/search/dashed Also cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources

God, Star, Wine, Victory

“The. manager must never be lacking in knowledge of the special profession which is characteristic of the undertaking: the technical profession in industry, commercial in commerce, political in the State, military in the Army, religious in the Church, medical in the hospital, teaching in the school, etc. The technical function has long been given the degree of importance which is its due, and of which we must not deprive it, but the technical function by itself cannot endure the successful running of a business; it needs the help of the other essential functions and particularly of that of administration. This fact is so important from the point of view of the organization and management of a business that I do not mind how often I repeat it in order that it may be fully realized.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Industrial and General Administration, 1916, p. 68 ; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 6-7

School, Business, Knowledge, Success

“I tried at that time to relieve the Sixth Army, of which I was supreme commander, above Paulus, by counterattacks - but it was not possible. I gave the order finally for the Sixth Army to break out, but then Paulus said it was too late and not possible. Hitler did not want the Sixth Army to break out at any time, but to fight to the last man. I believe that Hitler said if the Sixth Army tried to break out, it would be their death.”

Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) German general

To Leon Goldensohn (14 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Death, Time, Fight

“All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.”

Tom Watson (1874–1956) American businessman

Actually a remark by Nicholas Murray Butler. Quoted by Watson in comments about "Think" and attributed to Nicholas Murray Butler - IBM Archives: Comments on "THINK" - Transcript https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/multimedia/think_trans.html Misattributed Source: American Dental Association (1959) The Journal of the American Dental Association. Vol 59. p. 289.

Men, World, Problem, Thinking

“Endurance is composed of four attributes: eagerness, fear, piety and anticipation (of death). so whoever is eager for Paradise will ignore temptations; whoever fears the fire of Hell will abstain from sins; whoever practices piety will easily bear the difficulties of life and whoever anticipates death will hasten towards good deeds.
Conviction has also four aspects to guard oneself against infatuations of sin; to search for explanation of truth through knowledge; to gain lessons from instructive things and to follow the precedent of the past people, because whoever wants to guard himself against vices and sins will have to search for the true causes of infatuation and the true ways of combating them out and to find those true ways one has to search them with the help of knowledge, whoever gets fully acquainted with various branches of knowledge will take lessons from life and whoever tries to take lessons from life is actually engaged in the study of the causes of rise and fall of previous civilizations.
Justice also has four aspects depth of understanding, profoundness of knowledge, fairness of judgment and dearness of mind; because whoever tries his best to understand a problem will have to study it, whoever has the practice of studying the subject he is to deal with, will develop a clear mind and will always come to correct decisions, whoever tries to achieve all this will have to develop ample patience and forbearance and whoever does this has done justice to the cause of religion and has led a life of good repute and fame.
Jihad is divided into four branches: to persuade people to be obedient to Allah; to prohibit them from sin and vice; to struggle (in the cause of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and to detest the vicious. Whoever persuades people to obey the orders of Allah provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades them from vices and sins humiliates the unbelievers; whoever struggles on all occasions discharges all his obligations and whoever detests the vicious only for the sake of Allah, then Allah will take revenge on his enemies and will be pleased with Him on the Day of Judgment.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Life, Death, People, Truth

“Of course, we all know that our own reality depends on the structure of our consciousness; we can objectify no more than a small part of our world. But even when we try to probe into the subjective realm, we cannot ignore the central order…In the final analysis, the central order, or 'the one' as it used to be called and with which we commune in the language of religion, must win out.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Werner Heisenberg as quoted in Quirks of the Quantum Mind, p. 175, ICRL Press, ISBN 1936033062

World, Religion, Communication, Reality

“Why they had gone so suddenly off the walls seems to have been that they had taken the resolve of those who give up a place as lost; they put all ladies and beauties to death, then, looking themselves to die, came naked out to fight. Our men attacking, each one from his post, drove them from the walls whereupon 2 or 300 of them entered Medini Rao's house and there almost killed one another in this way: -- one having taken stand with a sword, the rest eagerly stretched out the neckblow. Thus went the greater number to hell. By God's grace this renowned fort was captured in 2 or 3 garis (cir. an hour), without drum and standard, with no hard fighting done. A pillar of pagan-heads was ordered set up on a hill north-west of Chanderi. A chronogram of this victory having been found in the words of Fath-i-daru'l-harb (Conquest of a hostile seat), I thus composed them:
Was for a while the station Chandiri Pagan-full, the seat of hostile force;
By fighting, I vanquished its fort,
The date was Fath-i-daru'l-harb.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Quote from Bevridge translation of the Baburnama https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n663/mode/2up

Death, Men, God, Hostility

“We need law and order. If we don't have it, we're not going to have a country. … We need law and order in our country.”

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

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Law, Country

“I am ready to serve the people of Afghanistan, particularly in order to restore peace. I will be ready to assume any duty at the service of my people.”

Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953–2001) Afghan military leader

Meeting with European legislators http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2000/june/jun23i2000.html (11 June 2000).

People, Peace

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 1, p. 4

History, Wealth

“I was not a[n intelligence] resident, only a Polish officer. I carried out my orders until arrested. I had no sense that I was a spy, and I ask that this be taken into account in deciding my verdict.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

During his trial, 1948.

Intelligence, Sense

“I am astonished about those people who are ordered to prepare their provisions, then the start of the journey is announced, however they remain unmindful in their vain discussions and fruitless deeds.”

Hasan al-Basri (642–728) Iranian Sufi Saint

Quoted in The Life of This World Is a Transient Shade by Abdul Malik Al-Qasim

People

“You have to be willing to take some risks and do some hard things in order to be a leader. A leader is not just a name, a title, and privileges and perks.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)
Context: And the one thing I’ve learned, both in my personal life and in my political life, is that if you want more authority, then you also have to be more responsible. You can’t wear the crown if you can’t bear the cross. […] So my attitude is, if you want to participate then you have to recognize that you have broader responsibilities. […] And that is part of leadership. That’s true, by the way, for you individually as well. You have to be willing to take some risks and do some hard things in order to be a leader. A leader is not just a name, a title, and privileges and perks.

“If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame.”

Sun Tzu book The Art of War

The Art of War, Chapter X · Terrain
Context: If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.

“It is sometimes helpful to differentiate between the God of Miracles and the God of Order.”

Michio Kaku book Hyperspace

Source: Hyperspace (1995), Ch.15 Conclusion
Context: It is sometimes helpful to differentiate between the God of Miracles and the God of Order. When scientists use the word God, they usually mean the God of Order.... The God of Miracles intervenes in our affairs, performs miracles, destroys wicked cities, smites enemy armies, drowns the Pharaoh's troops, and avenges the pure and noble.... This is not to say that miracles cannot happen, only that they are outside what is commonly called science.

God, Help

“Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

"The Unity of Human Knowledge" (October 1960)
Context: Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

Study

“Bestow rewards without respect to customary practice; publish orders without respect to precedent. Thus you may employ the entire army as you would one man.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

“There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 285

Universe, Parting

“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
Context: A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical figures.

“The immortal gods are wont to allow those persons whom they wish to punish for their guilt sometimes a greater prosperity and longer impunity, in order that they may suffer the more severely from a reverse of circumstances.”
Consuesse enim deos immortales, quo gravius homines ex commutatione rerum doleant, quos pro scelere eorum ulcisci velint, his secundiores interdum res et diuturniorem impunitatem concedere.

Julius Caesar book Commentarii de Bello Gallico

Book I, Ch. 14, translated by W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn
De Bello Gallico

God, Suffering, Personality

“Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Table of Contents, Fascism
Blackshirts and Reds (1997)

Democracy

“The development of Indian trigonometry, based on sine as against chord of the Greeks, a necessity for astronomical calculations with his own concise notation which expresses the full sine table in just one couplet for easy remembrance. One of the two methods suggested by him for the sine table is based on the property that the second order sine differences were proportional to sines themselves.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

In, P.245.
Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

“For the dreadful thing about the kind of brutalities here described, is that they are quite unavoidable. When a subject population rises in revolt you have got to suppress it, and you can only do so by methods which make nonsense of any claim for the superiority of western civilisation. In order to rule over barbarians, you have got to become a barbarian yourself.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: Review of Zest for Life by Johann Wöller, in Time and Tide (17 October 1936)

Making love

“I raised the mystics up to the ladder of knowledge, in order to illustrate that one cannot be a narcissist when you are being praised by others.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Knowledge

“The prince may give out orders only according to the wish of the king, who is the true ruler of the people.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People

“Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican."
A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs -- no matter under what form of government -- may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans."
Well! You are a democrat?"
No."
What! "you would have a monarchy?"
No."
A Constitutionalist?"
God forbid."
Then you are an aristocrat?"
Not at all!"
You want a mixed form of government?"
Even less."
Then what are you?"
I am an anarchist."

Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."

By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: Proudhon: What Is Property?

God, Faith, Understanding, Question

“Capitalism in its imperialist stage arrives at the threshold of the most complete socialization of production. In spite of themselves the capitalists are dragged, as it were, into the new social order, which marks the transition from complete free competition to complete socialization. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The framework of formally recognized free competition remains, but the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.”

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

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter One
Source: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition

Time

“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote by Harriet & Sidney Janis in 'Marchel Duchamp: Anti-Artist' in View magazine 3/21/45; reprinted in Robert Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets (1951)
1921 - 1950
Variant: I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Correspondence, Letters to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie
Variant: Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.
Context: Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live. (June 1857)

Children, Reading, Deep

“We have seen many rich persons, many powerful persons, many famous persons, many beautiful persons, many learned and scholarly persons, and persons in the renounced order of life unattached to material possessions. But we have never seen any one person who is unlimitedly and simultaneously wealthy, powerful, famous, beautiful, wise and unattached, like Kṛṣṇa, in the history of humanity. Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is a historical person who appeared on this earth 5,000 years ago. He stayed on this earth for 125 years and played exactly like a human being, but His activities were unparalleled. From the very moment of His appearance to the moment of His disappearance, every one of His activities is unparalleled in the history of the world, and therefore anyone who knows what we mean by Godhead will accept Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. No one is equal to the Godhead, and no one is greater than Him. That is the import of the familiar saying “God is great.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Source: Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

Life, God, World, Beauty

“Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, in order to provide articles for people who can't read.”

Frank Zappa book The Real Frank Zappa Book

"Ben Watson interviews Frank Zappa", in MOJO magazine (October 1993).
Variant: Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, in order to provide articles for people who can't read
Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book

People, Reading

“The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.”

Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) American writer

Future

“My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

Men, Food

“We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Source: Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

World, Dreams, Thinking

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

People, Truth

“Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate", said Davey triumphantly. "She's dead. It killed her. Doesn't that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet.”

Nancy Mitford book Love in a Cold Climate

Source: Love in a Cold Climate

Understanding, Dead

“Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.”

Russell Kirk (1918–1994) American political theorist and writer

Soul

“God the Almighty has made our rulers mad; they actually think they can do—and order their subjects to do—whatever they please. And the subjects make the mistake of believing that they, in turn, are bound to obey their rulers in everything.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 83

God, Thinking, Madness

“Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Women, Men, World

“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, then I would have been satisfied and would say, good, we annihilated an enemy. … I wasn't only issued orders, in this case I'd have been a moron, but I rather anticipated, I was an idealist.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Post-war discussion with Willem Sassen in Eichmanns Memoiren. Ein kritischer Essay (Zuerst 2001) Frankfurt/M.: Fischer TB, 2004 ISBN 3-5961-5726-9

“Law is an order of human behavior. An “order” is a system of rules. Law is not, as it is sometimes said, a rule. It is a set of rules having the kind of unity we understand by a system. It is impossible to grasp the nature of law if we limit our attention to the single isolated rule.”

Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) Austrian lawyer

General Theory of Law and State (1949), I. The Concept of Law, A. Law and Justice, a. Human Behavior as the Objects of Rules

Law, Behavior, Understanding, Nature

“The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don't really want, in order to impress people they don't really like.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

"The Great Disruption", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 17 Jun 1999, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545kh

Life, Money, People, Way

“The only good enemy of the Reich is a dead one. In particular I have to add, when I received an order, I always carried out this order with the executioner, and I am proud of that to this day…. If I had not done this, they would not have gone to the butcher.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

Dead

“Who is like the wise man? Who knows the solution to a problem? A man’s wisdom lights up his face and softens his stern appearance. I say: “Obey the king’s orders out of regard for the oath to God. Do not rush to depart from his presence. Do not take a stand for anything bad; for he can do whatever he pleases, because the word of the king is absolute; who can say to him, ‘What are you doing?”

Solomon (-990–-931 BC) king of Israel and the son of David

Ecclesiastes 8:1-4 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/ecclesiastes/8/, NWT

Wisdom, God, Problem, Light

“They [men] have corrupted this [God's supernatural] order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

Men, God

“In order to conceive, and to steep ourselves in, unreality, we must have it constantly present to our minds. The day we feel it, see it, everything becomes unreal, except that unreality which alone makes existence tolerable.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Feeling

“The truth is that Dickens's criticism of society is almost exclusively moral. Hence the utter lack of any constructive suggestion anywhere in his work. He attacks the law, parliamentary government, the educational system and so forth, without ever clearly suggesting what he would put in their places. Of course it is not necessarily the business of a novelist, or a satirist, to make constructive suggestions, but the point is that Dickens's attitude is at bottom not even destructive. There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown. For in reality his target is not so much society as ‘human nature’. It would be difficult to point anywhere in his books to a passage suggesting that the economic system is wrong as a system.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Charles Dickens (1939)

Truth, Books, Education, Law

“The optimism of the Left was created and maintained by a strong feeling: admiration for the power of reason, certainty that the application of science to industry would revolutionise the order of human society and the condition of its individual members. The ancestral aspiration towards human brotherhood was united with faith in practical science in order to inspire either nationalism or socialism or both.”

Raymond Aron (1905–1983) French philosopher, sociologist, journalist, and political scientist

The Opium of Intellectuals (1955), Conclusion: The End of the Ideological Age?

Faith, Feeling, Optimism, Strong

“I'm deeply saddened by a sense that whites are still superior in this country, in some sense, that if you sit at a restaurant, they're served before a Kenyan is served. If you go through customs, a white person is going to follow orders that "all people are to be treated the same."”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

.. Said during a visit to Kenya in the late 1980s or early 1990s, recorded in the 20-minute documentary "A Journey In Black And White" by WeSearchr, as reported and quoted in "Documentary Of Young Obama’s Visit To Kenya Is Set To Be Released" http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/documentary-of-young-obamas-visit-to-kenya-is-set-to-be-released/ by Alex Pfeiffer, The Daily Caller (19 September 2016) 1980s

People, Sense, Personality, Country

“The less you want, the richer you are. The more you need in order to be happy, the more miserable you'll be.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Happiness

“In order to touch the heart and gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the illiterate legions of the proletariat — and the vast majority of proletarians unfortunately still belong in this category — it is necessary to begin to speak to those workers not of the general sufferings of the international proletariat as a whole but of their particular, daily, altogether private misfortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the conditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the meanness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is for them properly to support and bring up a family.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)

Family, Confidence, Support, Suffering

“Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and without sin. He had no need from his labor in the garden to be made righteous and acceptable to God. Rather, the Lord gave Adam work in order to cultivate and protect the garden. This would have been the freest of all works because they were done simply to please God and not to obtain righteousness. … The works of the person who trusts God are to be understood in a similar manner. Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 73-74

God, Faith, Personality

“There are wars in this world, not because wars are the will of God but because of greed and arrogance, the lust for power and domination. There is hunger not merely because there is lack of food, but because of political and economic policies that foster inequality of the distribution of resources, because of one-sided control of world markets by powerful nations who refuse to enter seriously in the search for a more just, equitable, and sustainable economic order.”

Allan Boesak (1946) South African anti-apartheid activist

Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), p. 67

Hunger, God, War, World

“What are you waiting for in order to give up?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Waiting

“The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? Then I would not need to give such advice. Between two evils one is always the lesser, in this case allowing the adulterer to remarry in a distant land in order to avoid fornication...”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Death, Distant, Evil

“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

This is widely reported on many sites as coming from the Bilderberg Conference (1991) Evians, France, purportedly recorded by a Swiss diplomat, but no such recording has ever been provided.
Misattributed

People, World, Fear, Angels

“A Christian has no need of any law in order to be saved, since through faith we are free from every law. Thus all the acts of a Christian are done spontaneously, out of a sense of pure liberty. As Christians we do not seek our own advantage or salvation because we are already fully satisfied and saved by God’s grace through faith. Now our only motive is to do that which is pleasing to God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 75-76

God, Faith, Law, Motivation