Quotes about order
page 42

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“That reform of the land laws, that abolition of the present system of entail, together with just facilities for the transfer of land, is absolutely necessary in order to do anything like common justice to those who inhabit the rural parts of this country, and whom, instead of seeing them, as we now see them, dwindle from one census to another, I, for my part, and I believe you, along with me, would heartily desire to see maintained, not in their present number only, but in increasing numbers over the whole surface of the land.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (2 October 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 386.
1890s

Alija Izetbegović photo
Perry Anderson photo
Colin Wilson photo
Marina Warner photo
Ismail ibn Musa Menk photo

“We all have examinations in life, different types of examinations. And each one has to try very hard. As you know, in a set up where there is a school, or a university, at the end of every semester, trimester or term, you would have some examinations, in order to qualify you to get to the next level. And as you progress in life, the examinations become more and more difficult. And you would know that without working, we don't achieve. We know the common saying, "Whoever works very hard will definitely see the fruit of that particular working." So just like we have people who fail because they did not work hard, or they did not understand that the examination would become more and more difficult as time passes, we also have an issue with the Dīn where, as we progress in life, we will have more and more tests, and they become more and more difficult until we meet with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And this is why the Prophet S. A. W. was told "Worship your Rabb [Lord] until death overtakes you. Worship your Rabb until the end. Right up to the end. Keep on worshiping. Continue. Do not stop, do not pause, do not lose hope. In fact, progress and become stronger and stronger." If you take a look at some of the other verses of the Quran, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala makes mention of Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam delivering the message. It was not easy. And it was difficult, he faced so many challenges. He continued, and he persevered. Twenty three whole years of nubuwwah. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, when you have, Subhan Allah! Subhan Allah! You know, the achievement that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala granted him, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will grant each person achievement according to his will obviously but also connected to the effort that that particular person makes. If we were to give up suddenly, we would never be able to achieve even Jannah. […] So it's important for us to know that to give up… you don't know how close you are to the end! Imagine a person digging a tunnel, for example, and right when they are near the end they suddenly give up thinking that you know what, I don't know how long this is going to carry on for. Had they carried on for a minute longer they would have broken through! So with us we need to continue, fulfill your Salah, progress, develop. Don't think for a moment that life is going to become any easier. The only thing that will happen is, with the development of the link with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, we become more content, we understand the nature of the world. We understand the nature of the tests of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, so we enjoy going through them in the sense that we are content. We are happy with the decree of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So my brothers and sisters, not only do I say work hard to achieve here in the Dunyā”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

and may Allah bless you and grant you success in these examinations – but even in the Akhirah we ask Allah to bless you, to open your doors. To prepare for the Akhirah, it's not an easy task, but with the hope in the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala things will be made easy, and at the same time, with the constant preparation, without giving up hope – never ever giving up, never saying no, never just throwing the towel – by the will of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we will achieve, and we will achieve great heights.
"Exams in Life - Never Give Up - Mufti Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4w4pak66V0, YouTube (2013)
Lectures

Louis Brandeis photo
Tomoyuki Yamashita photo

“In order to carry out orders from the southern army I sent 50,000 troops to Leyte, but due to air and submarine attacks half of them were lost.”

Tomoyuki Yamashita (1885–1946) general in the Imperial Japanese Army

Quoted in "Yamashita Denies Any Atrocity Link" - New York Times - November 29, 1945.

Donald J. Trump photo

“In this race for the White House, I am the Law And Order candidate. … I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)
Context: "I am the law-and-order candidate" was a phrase used by Richard Nixon during his 1968 presidential campaign.

African Spir photo
Quentin Crisp photo
Noam Chomsky photo

“The history of the Democratic Party can be concisely captured by referring to its steadfast allegiance to the four Ss. Slavery, Secession, Segregation, and Socialism. During the Obama presidency we have seen how hard old habits die, even for a black man whose race was the long-time victim of Democratic Party's bone-deep authoritarianism. Under this Democratic president we have seen a war waged on several fronts against America's young. Indeed, the Democrats' historic taste for and belief in slavery have resurfaced with a vengeance and indiscriminately under the Obama administration, whether white, black, yellow, red, male, or female America's young are dying and being forced to work for Obama and his lieutenants as they seek to maintain their party's hold on political power. How so? Well, America has never had a president and administration so eager to kill unborn Americans. Even with post-1973 science having proved irrefutably that the unborn are human beings, and even though American law always has defined them as U. S. citizens, Obama and his colleagues have strengthened at every point they could the absurd notion that unborn humans are the chattel property of the woman who bears them, and so can be disposed of, that is, murdered, at her whim. And, in what must be considered a masterpiece of Orwellian language, Obama and his team, and most Democrats since 1973, describe this federal government-issued license to kill as a woman's 'right', a means by which she manifests her equality with men. They then damn any one who questions the logic, sanity, or justice of this argument as an 'extremist'. Only in an America in which a political entity as devoted to the four 'Ss' as the Democratic Party could opposition to the cold-blooded murder of fellow citizens unable defend themselves be identified by the country’s best-educated as 'extremism'. If this is indeed a right, it is a right gives each woman the right to be a slave-owner and a Nazi. Such a 'right' really is no different than the rights sanctioned by the Dred Scott decision and the Nuremberg laws, each of which legally defined certain categories of people out of the human race in order to enslave or kill them. Since 1973, the application of this 'right' has produced precisely the same results as Dred Scott and the Nuremberg laws, though in numbers so immense, 55 million and climbing, that they make those acts seem rather tame and minimally destructive of humans.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (21 November 2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“The fifth and most important principle of our foreign policy is support of national independence—the right of each people to govern themselves—and to shape their own institutions. For a peaceful world order will be possible only when each country walks the way that it has chosen to walk for itself. We follow this principle by encouraging the end of colonial rule. We follow this principle, abroad as well as at home, by continued hostility to the rule of the many by the few—or the oppression of one race by another. We follow this principle by building bridges to Eastern Europe. And I will ask the Congress for authority to remove the special tariff restrictions which are a barrier to increasing trade between the East and the West. The insistent urge toward national independence is the strongest force of today's world in which we live. In Africa and Asia and Latin America it is shattering the designs of those who would subdue others to their ideas or their will. It is eroding the unity of what was once a Stalinist empire. In recent months a number of nations have east out those who would subject them to the ambitions of mainland China. History is on the side of freedom and is on the side of societies shaped from the genius of each people. History does not favor a single system or belief—unless force is used to make it so. That is why it has been necessary for us to defend this basic principle of our policy, to defend it in Berlin, in Korea, in Cuba—and tonight in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

José Maria Eça de Queiroz photo

“In the depths of China there lives a mandarin who is richer than any king spoken of in fable or in history. You know nothing about him, not his name, his face or the silks that he wears. In order for you to inherit his limitless wealth, all you have to do is to ring the bell placed on a book by your side. In that remote corner of Mongolia, he will utter a single sigh. He will then be a corpse, and at your feet you will see gold beyond the dreams of avarice. Mortal reader, will you ring the bell?”

No fundo da China existe um mandarim mais rico que todos os reis de que a fábula ou a história contam. Dele nada conheces, nem o nome, nem o semblante, nem a seda de que se veste. Para que tu herdes os seus cabedais infindáveis, basta que toques essa campainha, posta a teu lado, sobre um livro. Ele soltará apenas um suspiro, nesses confins da Mongólia. Será então um cadáver: e tu verás a teus pés mais ouro do que pode sonhar a ambição de um avaro. Tu, que me lês e és um homem mortal, tocarás tu a campainha?
O Mandarim ("The Mandarin", 1880), trans. Margaret Jull Costa, Ch. 1.

Neal Stephenson photo
Shlomo Ganzfried photo

“It is my considered opinion that the so called Kashmir problem, we have been facing, since 1947 has never been viewed in a historical perspective. That is why it has defied solution so far, and its end is not in sight in the near future. Politicians at the helm of affairs during this nearly half a century have been living from hand to mouth and are waiting for Pakistan to face them with a fait accompli. Once againg they are out to hand over Kashmir and its people to be butchers who have devastated this fair land and destroyed its rich eulture. … It is therefore high time that we renounce this ritual and have a look at the problem in a historical perspective. I should like to warn that histories of Kashmir written by Kashmiri Hindus in modern times are worse than useless for this purpose. I have read almost all of them, only to be left wondering at the piteous state to which the Hindu mind in Kashmir has been reduced. I am not taking these histories into account except for bits and pieces which fall into the broad pattern. … What distinguishes the Hindu rulers of Kashmir from Hindu rulers elsewhere is that they continued to recruit in their army Turks from Central Asia without realizing that the Turks had become Islamicized and as such were no longer mere wage earners. One of Kashmir's Hindu rulers Harsha (1089-1101 CE) was persuaded by his Muslim favourites to plunder temple properties and melt down icons made of precious metal. Apologists of Islam have been highlighting this isolated incident in order to cover up the iconoclastic record of Islam not only in Kashmir but also in the rest of Bharatvarsha. At the same time they conceal the fact that Kashmir passed under the heel of Islam not as a result of the labours of its missionaries but due to a coup staged by an Islamicised army. … Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory"”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors.
Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism by Sita Ram Goel https://web.archive.org/web/20080220033606/http://www.kashmir-information.com/Miscellaneous/Goel1.html

Edward Allington photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury photo
Aron Ra photo

“The evolution of life is analogous to the evolution of language. For example, there are several languages based on the Roman alphabet of only 26 letters. Yet by arranging these in different orders, we’ve added several hundred thousand words to English since the 5th century, and many of them were completely new. The principle is the same in genetics. There are millions of named and classified species of life, all of them based on a variable arrangement of only four chemical components. For another example, we know that Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese all evolved from Latin, a vernacular which is now extinct. Each of these newer tongues emerged via a slow accumulation of their own unique slang lingo –thus diverging into new dialects, and eventually distinct forms of gibberish such that the new Romans could no longer communicate with either Parisians or Spaniards. Similarly, if we took an original Latin speaking population and divided them sequestered in complete isolation over several centuries, they might still be able to understand each other, or their jargon may have become unintelligible to foreigners. But they won’t start speaking Italian or Romanian because identical vocabularies aren’t going to occur twice.”

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

"8th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-7d06HJSs, Youtube (March 22, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Bruce Fein photo

“The paramount political benefit of membership on a large-sized intelligence committee is the capacity to leak information to favored reporters in order to elicit media good will.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

A Tight Plug on Intelligence Leaks http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/10/opinion/a-tight-plug-on-intelligence-leaks.html, The New York Times (June 10, 1987)

Cormac McCarthy photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo

“Such was the man who was sent on an embassy to Ajmir, in order that the Rai (Pithaura) of that country might see the right way without the intervention of the sword, and that he might incline from the track of opposition into the path of propriety, leaving his airy follies for the institutes of the knowledge of Allah, and acknowledging the expediency of uttering the words of martyrdom and repeating the precepts of the law, and might abstain from infidelity and darkness, which entails the loss of this world and that to come, and might place in his ear the ring of slavery to the sublime Court (may Allah exalt it!) which is the centre of justice and mercy, and the pivot of the Sultans of the worldand by these means and modes might cleanse the fords of good life from the sins of impurity'…'The army of Islam was completely victorious, and 'an hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell'… After this great victory, the army of Islam marched forward to Ajmir, where it arrived at a fortunate moment and under an auspicious bird, and obtained so much booty and wealth, that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed….'While the Sultan remained at Ajmir, he destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Ajmer (Rajasthan) Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 213-216. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Nathanael Greene photo
Stephen L. Carter photo

“A cemetery is an affront to the rational mind. One reason is its eerily wasted space, this tribute to the dead that inevitably degenerates into ancestor worship as, on birthdays and anniversaries, humans of every faith and no faith at all brave whatever weather may that day threaten, in order to stand before these rows of silent stone markers, praying, yes, and remembering, of course, but very often actually speaking to the deceased, an oddly pagan ritual in which we engage, this shared pretense that the rotted corpses in warped wooden boxes are able to hear and understand us if we stand before their graves.The other reason a cemetery appeals to the irrational side is its obtrusive, irresistible habit of sneaking past the civilized veneer with which we cover the primitive planks of our childhood fears. When we are children, we know that what our parents insist is merely a tree branch blowing in the wind is really the gnarled fingertip of some horrific creature of the night, waiting outside the window, tapping, tapping, tapping, to let us know that, as soon as our parents close the door and sentence us to the gloom which they insist builds character, he will lift the sash and dart inside and…And there childhood imagination usually runs out, unable to give shape to the precise fears that have kept us awake and that will, in a few months, be forgotten entirely. Until we next visit a cemetery, that is, when, suddenly, the possibility of some terrifying creature of the night seems remarkably real.”

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 50, Again Old Town, I

Alfred de Zayas photo

“The Independent Expert is persuaded that recognition of peace as a human right will promote a democratic and equitable international order and that national and international democratization will reduce conflict, since peoples want peace. It is Governments that stumble into war.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2013
Source: United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.

Brigham Young photo
Lewis Mumford photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Paulo Freire photo
Donald Rumsfeld photo
Stephen Baxter photo
Chelsea Manning photo
Phillip Abbott Luce photo
Jane Roberts photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
R. H. Tawney photo

“Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, [the Puritan] has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 3
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Robert Hunter (author) photo
Narendra Modi photo

“Jai jaigarvi Gujarat mantra jeevant karne ke liye hame shanti ka marg hi chahiye. [In order to give life to the mantra of Jai Garvi Gujarat, we need to follow the path of peace. ]”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2002, "When select phrases are lifted and distorted out of context", 2002

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Abd al-Karim Qasim photo

“The Iraqi people consist of brotherly nationalities which have amalgamated in order to defend the existence of the eternal Iraqi Republic. [This is] why we always declare 'long live true Iraqi unity, for in it lies our strength.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

March, 1959, as quoted in Adeed Dawisha (2009), Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation.

Sir Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet photo

“Judges are philologists of the highest order.”

Sir Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet (1783–1870) British lawyer and Tory politician

Ex parte Davis (1857), 5 W. R. 523.

Ed Templeton photo

“My veganism stems from Mike Vallely. He was the person, he and Christian Kline … would take me out to dinner and say, “We’ll buy dinner for you if you don’t order meat.” I remember being totally bummed out about that and thinking, “I can’t get the Kung Pow chicken, this sucks.” Then I read some pamphlets and discovered how it was made. I think it takes a weird person to know that and then keep eating it. As I read that stuff, it hit me and I instantly went vegetarian. Then a year later went vegan. I read more information because I was interested, the floodgates opened and there was no turning back. … A lot of kids come up to me at demos and say, “Oh, you’ve skated so long. Is that because you’re vegan?” I’m always the first person on the course and the last person off. I’ve always had good energy. Maybe it’s from eating healthy. … I was just one person who said, “I’m not putting my dollars into this stuff, I’m only putting my dollars in this vegan stuff.” When millions of others do the same, the markets respond. Now there’s great ice cream and great soy milk. Everything you can dream about is made vegan now. That’s something that has transformed over the years. I did my little part, my little sacrifice made a point.”

Ed Templeton (1972) artist

"Ed Templeton Interview pt. 2" https://web.archive.org/web/20130207234012/http://veganskateblog.com/interview/ed-templeton-interview-pt-2. Vegan Skate Blog (February 1, 2013).

Jahangir photo

“Jahangir ordered that “a government collector or Jagirdar should not without permission intermarry with the people of the pargana in which he might be” for abduction and forced marriages were common enough.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, I, p. 9. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“…in order to change poverty into wealth, one must start by displaying it.”

(420).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Mohammad Hidayatullah photo

“Law and order represents the largest circle within which is the next circle representing public order and the smallest circle represents security of State. It is then easy to see that an Act may affect law and order but not public order, just as an act may affect public order but not security of the State.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

He explained the intricate relationship of the concepts of law and order, public order and the security of the State, in a particular case.
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

Viktor Lutze photo
Václav Havel photo
Gustav Radbruch photo
Derren Brown photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Edmund White photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo
Simon Stevin photo

“[The books of Euclid pass on to us] something admirable and very necessary to see and to read, namely the order in the method of writing on mathematics in that aforementioned time of the wise age.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Géographie, in Les Oeuvres Mathématiques de Simon Stevin de Bruges (1634) ed. Girard, p. 109, as quoted by Jacob Klein]], Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1968)

Oprah Winfrey photo
Hermann von Helmholtz photo

“There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole — a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind.”

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) physicist and physiologist

"On the Conservation of Force" (1862), p. 279
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)

Carl Linnaeus photo
David Crystal photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“In order to deceive melancholy, you must keep moving. Once you stop, it wakens, if in fact it has ever dozed off.”

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

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Michael Crichton photo
Alice A. Bailey photo

“Let us look for a moment at the erroneous interpretations given to the Gospel story. The symbolism of that Gospel story — an ancient story-presentation often presented down the ages, prior to the coming of the Christ in Palestine — has been twisted and distorted by theologians until the crystalline purity of the early teaching and the unique simplicity of the Christ have disappeared in a travesty of errors and in a mummery of ritual, money and human ambitions. Christ is pictured today as having been born in an unnatural manner, as having taught and preached for three years and then as having been crucified and eventually resurrected, leaving humanity in order to "sit on the right hand of God," in austere and distant pomp. Likewise, all the other approaches to God by any other people, at any time and in any country, are regarded by the orthodox Christian as wrong approaches […] Every possible effort has been made to force orthodox Christianity on those who accept the inspiration and the teachings of the Buddha or of others who have been responsible for preserving the divine continuity of revelation. The emphasis has been, as we all well know, upon the "blood sacrifice of the Christ" upon the Cross and upon a salvation dependent upon the recognition and acceptance of that sacrifice. The vicarious at-one-ment has been substituted for the reliance which Christ Himself enjoined us to place upon our own divinity; the Church of Christ has made itself famous and futile (as the world war proved) for its narrow creed, its wrong emphases, its clerical pomp, its spurious authority, its material riches and its presentation of a dead Christ. His resurrection is accepted, but the major appeal of the churches has been upon His death.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter IV: The Work of the Christ Today and in the Future, p. 64

Ann Coulter photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U. S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

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

Twitter https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=pt (6 November 2012)
2010s, 2012

Rudolf Rocker photo
Gerald Ford photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Gregg Toland photo

“The star system has us making pictures with personalities rather than stories, sacrificing everything in order to keep some old bags playing young women.”

Gregg Toland (1904–1948) American cinematographer

From an essay Toland wrote for International Photographer arguing that cinematographers needed to be uncompromising.
Hilton Als (2006). "The Cameraman". The New Yorker (June 19): 46–51

Isaac Asimov photo

“SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?
Asimov: Well, I hope it does get off the ground. And I hope they expand it, because the shuttle program is the gateway to everything else. By means of the shuttle, we will be able to build space stations and power stations, laboratory facilities and habitations, and everything else in space.
SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Asimov: Well, now you've put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don't have to wait for technology - we've got the technology, and we don't have to wait for the know-how - we've got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

Laisenia Qarase photo

“Opponents seem to think the end of the world is nigh and that law and order will grind to a complete halt. Their strategy is based on attack, attack, attack.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Additional remarks about the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, Address to the Editors' Forum, Suva, 27 July 2005

David Ben-Gurion photo

“In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Interview on CBS, (5 October 1956)
As quoted in Israel : Years of Crisis Years of Hope (1973) by Roman Frister, p. 45
Variant: Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.

Indro Montanelli photo

“Italian husbands, in order to buy their wives a fur coat, spend more than all their European collegues.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Controcorrente, 1974-1986.
1950s - 1990s

Bart D. Ehrman photo
Thomas Kuhn photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
African Spir photo

“At this point, here is a parenthesis about the life of the author, which joined the deed to the word: Hélène included to the book on her father, a very short Appendix, "Le devoir d'abolir la guerre", which was taken from the second volume of the Germen works or Spir, and had previously been reproduced, I quote, "in the Jounal de Genève, 15 November 1920, at the time of the maiden Assembly of the United Nations, which Spir has, lately (not long ago, "naguère", Fr.) so much called for (or invite to think about) of all his wishes." ("tant appelée de ses voeux", Fr). The following is a footnote added to this text, that Spir published in the first edition of Recht und Unrecht, in 1879, as an Appendix, under the title of "Considération sur la guerre" - and which was published again in 1931, in Propos sur la guerre. : "To declare (or say) that the establishment of international institutions intended (or used) to settle (or solve) conflicts among people without having recourse to war, this is purely gratuitious affirmation. What sense (or meaning) can it be to declare impossible, something that has been neither wished (or wanted, "voulue", Fr.) seriously, nor tried to put into practice? In truth, there are not any impossibility here, no more of a material order than of a metaphysical order. ("En vérité, il n'y a ici aucun impossibilité, pas plus d'ordre matériel que d'ordre métaphysique", Fr). Supposing that all responsible potentates, ministers and leaders were to be warned (or were given formal notice? - "soient mis en demeure de", Fr.) to agree concerning the establishment (or creation) of international organizations with peaceful workings ("à rouages pacifiques", Fr.), they would not be very long to come to an agreement on the ways and means ("voies et moyens", Fr.) to come to settle the problem. And, indeed, how insoluble could be a problem, that requires nothing else than some good will here and there? It is not a question here of fighting against a terrestrial power, hostile to human beings and independent of their will; it is only for men a matter of overcoming their own passions, et their harmful prejudices. ("En cela", Fr.) In this, would it be more difficult than to kill one's fellow men by the hundred of thousands, de destroy entire (or whole) countries et inflict (or impose) crushing expanses to one own people?"”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), pp. 64-65 - end of parenthesis.

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