Quotes about order
page 56

Cormac McCarthy photo

“The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Fear , Fate , Secret , Way
Catherine the Great photo

“A Society of Citizens, as well as every Thing else, requires a certain fixed Order: There ought to be some to govern, and others to obey.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

And this is the Origin of every Kind of Subjection; which feels itself more or less alleviated, in Proportion to the Situation of the Subjects.And, consequently, as the Law of Nature commands Us to take as much Care, as lies in Our Power, of the Prosperity of all the People; we are obliged to alleviate the Situation of the Subjects, as much as sound Reason will permit. And therefore, to shun all Occasions of reducing People to a State of Slavery, except the utmost Necessity should inevitably oblige us to do it; in that Case, it ought not to be done for our own Benefit; but for the Interest of the State: Yet even that Case is extremely uncommon. Of whatever Kind Subjection may be, the civil Laws ought to guard, on the one Hand, against the Abuse of Slavery, and, on the other, against the Dangers which may arise from it.
Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

Fred Phelps photo

“This jackass of a president ought to proclaim pride month for decency, abstinence and chastity, not for the most abominable sins known to mankind — in the estimation of God Almighty, that is. Obama will bring down the curses of God upon the whole creation. Remember, you ignorant Americans, you Obama-worshippers around the world, we warned you. He raises a false argument ordering that nobody discriminate against fags. Listen up, you Bible-ignorant moron! It is neither wrongful nor sinful to discriminate against sin!”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, Fag-Lover Obama (2009)

World , God , Falseness
Jerome K. Jerome photo

“How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and felt more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Life , Thinking , Holiday
Ptolemy photo

“He left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. …This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired… A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order… As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

Carl B. Boyer, in The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959)

Confidence , Time , Self-confidence , Water
Sinclair Lewis photo

“Sinclair Lewis was a crypto-sentimentalist and a slovenly writer who managed a slight falsification of life in order to move the reader.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

James Gould Cozzens, "Books: The Hermit of Lambertville", Time, 2 September 1957

Life
Emperor Norton photo

“At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the past nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S., and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in the Musical Hall of this city on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.”

Emperor Norton (1811–1880) Self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States

Proclamation in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (17 September 1859)

Home , Confidence , Law , Country
Walter Raleigh photo

“War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory and good fortune.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

War
John Stuart Mill photo

“I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/186/mode/1up p. 186

Nature , Universe , Perfection , Parting
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“This is no day for the rabble-rouser, whether he be Negro or white.We must realize that we are grappling with the most weighty social problem of this nation, and in grappling with such a complex problem there is no place for misguided emotionalism. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter. I know how we feel sometime. There is the danger that those of us who have been forced so long to stand amid the tragic midnight of oppression — those of us who have been trampled over, those of us who have been kicked about — there is the danger that we will become bitter. But if we will become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns, the new order which is emerging will be nothing but a duplication of the old order.”

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

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)

Hate , Freedom , Problem , Passion
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There is also the danger that our system can lead to tragic exploitation. We must come out of the mountain and be concerned about a more humane and just economic order. And I say, this afternoon, that we cannot solve this problem byturning to Communism. Communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept. I do believe that in America we must use our vast resources of wealth to bridge the gulf between abject, deaden-ing poverty and superfluous, inordinate wealth. God has left enough space in this universe for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life.”

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

1960s, Keep Moving from this Mountain (1960)

God , Mountain , Wealth , Children
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“If I stopped at this point, I would be merely stating a fact, and not telling the truth. You see, a fact is merely the absence of contradiction, but truth is the presence of coherence. Truth is the relatedness of facts. Now it is a fact that we’ve come a long, long way, but it isn’t the whole truth. In order to tell the truth, it would be necessary to add the other part, and I’m afraid that if I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stopped here, I would leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficialities. So in order to tell the truth, it is necessary to move on and not only say that we’ve come a long, long way, but that we’ve a long, long way to go before the American dream is a reality, before this problem is solved.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Optimism , Dreams , Truth , Problem
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Even in terms of breaking down the barriers of segregation, there is still much to be done. It may be true, as I just said, figuratively speaking that old man segregation is on his deathbed. But history has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. And so segregation is still with us. We still confront it in the South in its glaring and conspicuous forms. We still confront it in every other section of this country in its hidden and subtle forms. But if democracy is to live, segregation must die, for racial segregation is a cancer in the body politic. Segregation must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Democracy , History , Health , Country
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“The forces of good will must be mobilized in order to go the additional distance and make integration and the brotherhood of man a reality. First, the federal government must use all of its constitutional authority to enforce the law of the land. As we look back over the years, we must honestly admit that only one branch of the government has given consistent, forthright, vigorous leadership, namely the judicial branch of the government, but the executive and legislative branches of the government have been all too apathetic, all too silent, and sometimes hypocritical. The time has come for all of the branches of the federal government to work in a vigorous manner to make integration a reality.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Reality , Making love , Law , Time
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There is also need for leadership and concern on the part of white people of good will in the North, if this problem is to be solved. Genuine liberalism on the question of race. And what we too often find in the North is a sort of quasi-liberalism based on the principle of looking objectively at all sides, and it is a liberalism that gets so involved in looking at all sides, that it doesn’t get committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it fails to get subjectively committed. It is a liberalism that is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. And we must come to see that his problem in the United States is not a sectional problem, but a national problem. No section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood. It is one thing for a white person of good will in the North to rise up with righteous indignation when a bus is burned in Anniston, Alabama, with freedom riders, or when a nasty mob assembles around a University of Mississippi, and even goes to the point of killing and injuring people to keep one Negro out of the university, or when a Negro is lynched or churches burned in the South; but that same person of good will must rise up with the same righteous indignation when a Negro in his state or in his city cannot live in a particular neighborhood because of the color of his skin, or cannot join a particular academic society or fraternal order or sorority because of the color of his or her skin, or cannot get a particular job in a particular firm because her happens to be a Negro. In other words, a genuine liberalism will see that the problem can exist even in one’s front and back yard, and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Justice , Freedom , Question , Country
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“If integration is to be a reality, the Negro must struggle for it. And so the Negro must continue to work through legislation; he must continue to work to double the number of registered voters, so that he political climate can be changed; he must continue to work through the courts, and get the law clarified and the Constitution clear on this issue. Then even after working in these areas, he must understand that a court order can only declare rights; it can never thoroughly deliver them. And only when people themselves begin to act, are rights which are on thin paper given life blood. And so the Negro must supplement all that is done through legislation, through voting, and through the courts with non-violent direct action.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Understanding , Law , People , Reality
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“I say to you in very honest terms that there are some things in our social order and in the world to which I’m proud to be maladjusted, and I would hope the men of good will will be maladjusted to these same things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Hope , Self-confidence , World , Madness
Ulysses S. Grant photo

“I do not pretend to sustain the order. At the time of its publication I was insensed by a reprimand received from Washington for permitting acts which the Jews, within my lines, were engaged in.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1860s, Letter to Isaac N. Morris (1868)

Time
Isoroku Yamamoto photo

“Yamamoto was an aggressive and inspiring officer, but he made the error of dividing his huge force five ways and of thinking that his foe would behave in a predictable way. After his crushing defeat on Midway, he ordered a general retreat and took ill in his cabin. U.S. naval intelligence again was his undoing. When he took off on an inspection tour from Rabaul, American fighter planes were up and waiting for him.”

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884–1943) Japanese Marshal Admiral

C.L. Sulzberger, The American Heritage Picture History of World War II (1966), p. 212
Disputed

Waiting , Intelligence , Thinking , Way

“It is a question of relativity. In order to understand it more clearly we must cleanse our minds of old ideas instilled into us by false education, both religious and scientific, and philosophic too”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 2
Man in Evolution (1941)

Understanding , Question , Falseness , Education

“Though patriotism includes a sentimental, as it were a family, feeling for place, we can distinguish the ethical motive from the sentimental. At certain times in certain countries there has been a moral urgency to be patriotic when the actual or ideal policy of a man’s nation has been a sine qua non for his conscience. But to-day patriotism, in so far as it means subordination to a specifically national policy, is superannuated. This war, we assume, is not being fought-not by most of us-for any merely national end; we are fighting it, primarily and clearly, for our lives, and secondarily, and, alas! vaguely, for a new international order.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"Traveller's Return", in Horizon, February 1941, Reprinted in David Pierce Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader. Cork University Press, 2000.

Family , Time , Country , War
Will Durant photo

“Middle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 3 : On Middle Age

Marriage , Age , Passion
W. H. Auden photo

“In societies with fewer opportunities for amusement, it was also easier to tell a mere wish from a real desire. If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, "I should like to hear some music," mean what they appear to mean, or merely, "At this moment I should like to forget myself."”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

When all he has to do is press a switch, it is more difficult. He may easily come to believe that wishes can come true.
Interlude: West's Disease", p. 245
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Music , Forgetting , Appearance , Waiting
James P. Gray photo

“The effect of our drug policy on the health of people who use illicit drugs stem from four basic problems: (1) a lack of information about medial hygiene, because our laws push drug users away from the medical professionals who can help them; (2) no quality control regarding either the strength or purity of illicit drugs; (3) the inability of many drug users to prepare and use injectable drugs under more medically hygienic conditions;… and (4) the enormous pressure on drug addicts to engage in dangerous criminal activity, such as prostitution, burglary and drug dealing, in order to get the money to purchase these artificially expensive drugs.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, pp. 126-127

Money , Law , People , Health
James P. Gray photo

“Similarly, when drug users are forced to steal or prostitute themselves in order to get money to buy artificially expensive illicit drugs from the criminal underworld, that is a Drug Prohibition problem more than it is a drug problem. So too is the diversion of billions of dollars from the prosecution of violent street crime and fraud to the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug sellers and millions of drug users a distinct problem of Drug Prohibition.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 10

Money , Problem , Fraud
Saffron Burrows photo

“If you’re told that’s how you behave in order to survive and flourish, then you actually question far less in your 20s and 30s because you think: ‘Oh, nothing’s as bad as that.’ So it’s a real issue. No one wants their teenage daughter thinking that’s what you should expect from your life.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On women starting out young in the modeling or film industry in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted’” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/19/saffron-burrows-i-was-raised-to-feel-like-i-could-love-who-i-wanted in The Guardian (2020 Feb 19)

Question , Bad luck , Daughters , Thinking
Richard Dawkins photo

“Replicators are no longer peppered freely through the sea; they are packaged in huge colonies—individual bodies. And phenotypic consequences, instead of being evenly distributed throughout the world, have in many cases congealed into those same bodies. But the individual body, so familiar to us on our planet, did not have to exist. The only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 13. The Long Reach of the Gene

Universe , Life , Sea , World
Hans Morgenthau photo

“We must distinguish between military and political power.
Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised. It gives the former control over certain actions of the latter through the influence which the former exert over the latter's minds. That influence may be exerted through orders, threats, persuasion, or a combination of any of these.”

Hans Morgenthau book Politics Among Nations

Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 27 (1954 edition)

Relation ships , Exercises
Viktor Orbán photo

“Is it possible to successfully reject migration, to protect families, to defend Christian culture, to announce a programme of national unification and nation building, and to create an order of Christian freedom? Is it possible in all this to survive against the full force of an international headwind, and indeed to make it succeed?”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Tusnádfürdő speech https://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-30th-balvanyos-summer-open-university-and-student-camp, 27 July 2019

Family , Making love , Freedom
Potter Stewart photo

“The Executive must have the largely unshared duty to determine and preserve the degree of internal security necessary to exercise that power successfully. It is an awesome responsibility requiring judgment and wisdom of a high order. A very first principle of that wisdom would be an insistence upon avoiding secrecy for its own sake. For when everything is classified, then nothing is classified and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Source: Security Classification Reform Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Goverment Operations of the House of Representatives. Ninetythird Congress. Second Session. 1974

Self-confidence , Wisdom , Exercises
James Baldwin photo

“He was silent for a long while. Then: 'You do, sometimes, remind me of the kind of man who is tempted to put himself in prison in order to avoid being hit by a car.'”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Pt. 2, Ch. 3 - p.104
Giovanni's Room (1956)

Cars
Daniel Abraham photo

“In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 21 (p. 223)

Hiroshi Kajiyama photo

“In order to prevent the further spread of the (COVID-19) coronavirus (in Japan), commuting in shifts and teleworking need to be widely exercised across society. We will call on the corporate world to actively implement”

Hiroshi Kajiyama (1955) Japanese politician

the measures
Hiroshi Kajiyama (2020) cited in " Flexible working hours key to fighting Covid-19: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/coronavirus-flexible-working-hours-key-to-fighting-covid-19-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-abe/story-9U0YMv57n0OlyWrEe0q43K.html" on Hindustan Times, 25 February 2020.

World , Exercises
Huey P. Newton photo

“Men were not created in order to obey laws. Laws are created to obey men. They are established by men and should serve men. The laws and rules which officials inflict upon poor people prevent them from functioning harmoniously in society. There is no disagreements about this function of law in any circle-the disagreement arises from the question of which men laws are to serve. Such lawmakers ignore the fact that it is the duty of the poor and unrepresented to construct rules and laws that serve their interest better. Rewriting unjust laws is a basic human right and fundamental obligation.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

"In Defense of Self-defense" I (June 20, 1967)
To Die For The People

Men , People , Law , Question
Lewis Gompertz photo

“It is strange that philosophers first show how one animal supports itself by destroying another, and then enter into discussions on the apparent admirable order of things in their present state. But though this may be a necessary contrivance, and the only way in which life can be supported, it can never be a beautiful one, in our short sights, notwithstanding that something worse might be, were this not the case.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, pp. 49–50

Support , Beauty , Animals , Way
Emmanuel Macron photo

“This evening, we know that at least one police officer was killed, and another injured. This imponderable problem, this menace will be part of our daily lives for the years to come. I express all my support in this regard for our police forces and the forces of law and order. I am thinking of the victim's family.””

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

20 April 2017 https://www.facebook.com/EmmanuelMacron/posts/1951134895119087/
2017
Original: (fr) Ce soir, on sait qu'au moins un policier a été tué, qu’un autre a été blessé. Cet impondérable, cette menace fera partie du quotidien des prochaines années. Je témoigne toute ma solidarité à l’égard de nos forces de police, de nos forces de l’ordre. J'ai une pensée pour la famille de la victime.

Family , Law , Support , Problem
Norman Schwarzkopf photo

“It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.”

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army general

Interview with Barbara Walters (15 March 1991); also quoted in his memoir It Doesn't Take a Hero : General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the Autobiography (1992), p. xiii

Men
William Blum photo

“These actions were not always carried out on the direct order of the CIA or with its foreknowledge, but the Agency could hardly plead "rogue elephant."”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

It had created an operations headquarters in Miami that was truly a state within a city—over, above, and outside the laws of the United States, not to mention international law, with a staff of several hundred Americans directing many more Cuban agents in just such types of actions, with a budget in excess of $50 million a year, and an arrangement with the local press to keep operations in Florida secret except when the CIA wanted something publicized.
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner photo

“If the man laughs, change the Order.”

Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899) British orientalist

Writings of Dr. Leitner, Chapter: On the Science of Language and Ethnography, p. 173

Change
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo

“To simplify somewhat, one may say that anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First, its practitioners produce knowledge about the actual cultural variation in the world; studies may deal with, say, the role of caste and wealth in Indian village life, technology among highland people in New Guinea, religion in southern Africa, life on the Wall Street stock exchange, the political importance of kinship in the Middle East, or concepts about life and the cosmos in the Amazon basin. Although most anthropologists are specialists in one or two regions, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about global cultural variation, and about humanity as such, in order to be able to say anything interesting about one’s region, topic or people.
Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare and understand these varied expressions of the human condition. In other words, the subject offers both things to think about and things to think with.
But anthropology is not just a toolbox; it is also a craft which teaches the novice how to obtain a certain kind of knowledge and what this knowledge might say something about.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Study , Religion , Understanding , Wealth
Marianne Williamson photo

“If we’re not working in order to get rich, then why are we working at all? What are we supposed to do all day? Just sit home and watch TV?
Not at all, but thinking so is a temporary phase many people go through — when the values of the old world no longer have a hold on us, but the values of the new don’t yet grab your soul. They will.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

Home , Soul , People , Thinking
Germaine Greer photo

“Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace, and wit, reminders of order, calm, and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep, and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still, and absorbed.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

"Still in Melbourne, January 1987", as quoted in [Fred R Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations, https://books.google.com/books?id=ck6bXqt5shkC, 2006, Yale University Press, 0-300-10798-6, 324]
Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989)

Pleasure , Home , World , Light
Victor Hugo photo

“There is... always, in a large population like that of France, a class which is ignorant, which suffers, covets, and struggles, placed between the brutish instinct which impels it to take, and the moral law which invites it to labour. In the grievous and oppressed condition in which it still is, this class, in order to maintain itself in probity and well-doing, requires all the pure and holy light that emanates from the Gospel; it requires that, on the one hand, the spirit of Jesus Christ, and, on the other, the spirit of the French Revolution, should address to it the same manly words, and should never cease to point out to it, as the only lights worthy of the eyes of man, the exalted and mysterious laws of human destiny,—self-denial, devotion, sacrifice, the labour which leads to material well-being, the probity which leads to inward well-being; even with this perennial instruction, at once divine and human, this class, so worthy of sympathy and fraternity, often succumbs.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part First, III
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Law , Light , Suffering , Self-confidence
Victor Hugo photo

“We who combat them are "the eternal enemies of order.". We are—for they can as yet find nothing but this worn-out word—we are demagogues. In the language of the Duke of Alva, to believe in the sacredness of the human conscience, to resist the Inquisition, to brave the state for one's faith, to draw the sword for one's country, to defend one's worship, one's city, one's home, one's house, one's family, and one's God, was called vagabondism... The man is a demagogue in the nineteenth century, who in the sixteenth would have been a vagabond.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Book II, XI
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Family , God , Drawing , Faith
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“A New Order of the Ages Begins, says the reverse side of the Great Seal, and the Revolutionaries meant it. The American experiment was consciously conceived as a momentous step in the evolution of the species. The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind, Thomas Paine said in his inflammatory pamphlet Common Sense (1776).”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Sense , Pain , Age
Pope Pius VI photo

“It is nature herself, therefore, which (decrees) that the usage which each must make of his reason should consist essentially in recognizing his sovereign author. ... In order to make this phantom of unlimited freedom vanish from the eyes of healthy reason, is it not enough to say that this system was that of the Vaudois and the Beguars?”

Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) pope and sovereign of the Papal States

Quod aliquantum (10 March 1791), quoted in André Latreille and Joseph E. Cunneen, 'The Catholic Church and the Secular State: The Church and the Secularization of Modern Societies', CrossCurrents Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 1963), p. 221

Freedom , Making love , Nature
Paul Kruger photo

“We have arrived here to celebrate as you are well aware. Our aim, as your aim, is no less than to acquire a deeper understanding of the will of the Lord, and to apprise ourselves of his guidance, in order that the parents may convey to their children and grandchildren, and thence to our most distant descendants, what God has bestowed on us.”

Paul Kruger (1825–1904) President of the South African Republic

At Paardekraal, current Krugersdorp, addressing a crowd of SAR citizens who gathered to celebrate the Paardekraal resolution of a year before, besides the Day of the Vow (13 to 16 December 1881)

God , Understanding , Children , Distant
Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“Whenever man does not interfere, monogamy seems to be the general order of Nature with all higher organisms.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Nature
John Allen Paulos photo

“Two dangers threaten the world—order and disorder.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Source: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Chapter 27, “Special Investigator Says Full Story Not Told” (p. 123; quoting Paul Valéry)

World
John Allen Paulos photo

“Appreciating humor—even recognizing it—requires human skills of the highest order; no computer comes close to having them.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor (1980), Chapter 3, “Self-Reference and Paradox” (p. 50)

“What if your enemy were your enemy because of poor communication and misunderstanding? What if your enemy were your enemy because of the instigative nature of the ego? What if your enemy were a necessary obstacle put in your life by fate to overcome in order to progress to the higher version of self? I wonder about that because what if your enemy is in fact your hero? Make sure the snake in your life isn't just your pride and ego.”

Scarlet Jei Saoirse (1984) American singer and actress
Fate , Communication , Nature , Self-confidence

“Nor at present, nor in the past, we have ever denied,
That your sense of justice is trumpeted far and wide.
Whatever has been happening, we also accept
Fell within the limits of law, with justice as your guide.
Even when you ordered firing on the helpless multitude,
You didn't even by a hair-breadth the law of land defied.
But this truth too cannot be lightly brushed aside,
Thay your act unleashed a deluge of death in the twinkling of an eye,
The handsome youth when they fell before your deadly fire],
Wondered if it was the doom, or the stars shooting from the [[sky.
The arch and pulpit of the mosque were left riddled with bullets,
But the mosque needs perhaps such patterns on its front and sides.
Fast-fettered did they watch, the convicts and the passers-by,
And the police took the stand: How can we, the servants, the sovereign's fiat defy?
But let's state the fact, you may or may not like,
We are the oppressed folk, you are not the oppressor, right!”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 105
Poetry, Oppression

Justice , Law , Past , Star
Ethan Allen photo

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_."”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization [sic] and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies [sic], or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Life , God , Pain , Dependency
Umar II photo

“O people, you were not created in vain, nor will you be left to yourselves. Rather, you will return to a place in which Allah will descend in order to judge among you and distinguish between you. Destitute and lost are those who forsake the all-encompassing Mercy of Allah, and they will be excluded from Paradise, the borders of which are as wide as the heavens and the Earth. Don't you know that protection, tomorrow, will be limited to those who feared Allah [today], and to those who sold something ephemeral for something permanent, something small for something great, and fear for protection? Don't you realize that you are the descendants of those who have perished, that those who remain will take place after you, and that this will continue until you are all returned to Allah? Every day you dispatch to Allah, at all times of the day, someone who has ded, his term having come to an end. You bury him in a crack in the earth and then leave him without a pillow or a bed. He has parted from his loved ones, severed his connections with the living, and taken up residence in the earth, whereupon he comes face to face with the accounting. He is mortgaged to his deeds: He needs his accomplishments, but not the material things he left on earth. Therefore, fear Allah before death descends and its appointed times expire. I swear by Allah that I say those words to you knowing that I myself have committed more sins than any of you; I therefore ask Allah for forgiveness and I repent. Whenever we learn that one of you needs something, I try to satisfy his need to the extent that I am able. Whenever I can provide satisfaction to one of you out of you of my possessions, I seek to treat him as my equal and m relative, so that my life and his life are of equal value. I swear by Allah that had I wanted something else, namely, affluence, then it would have been easy for me to utter the word, aware as I am of the means for obtaining this. But Allah has issued in an eloquent Book (Quran) and a just example Sunnah by means of which He guides us to obedience and proscribes disobedience.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 98/99, also quoted in Umar Bin Abd Al-Aziz, p. 708-710
Last Sermon delivered to People

Forgiveness , Life , Time , Death
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“In many instances traditional ways are being re-adopted, not out of nostalgia but because we recognize that our "modern" approaches have been an aberration, an attempt to impose some sort of clumsy order on a nature far more ordered than we can imagine.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves

Way , Nostalgia , Imagination , Nature
Donald J. Trump photo

“My administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to prevent the spread of this illness in the United States. We are ready. We are ready. Totally ready. On January 31st, I ordered the suspension of foreign nationals who have recently been in China from entering the United States. An action which the Democrats loudly criticized and protested and now everybody’s complimenting me saying, “Thank you very much. You were 100% correct.””

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

Could’ve been a whole different story. But I say, so let’s get this right. A virus starts in China, bleeds its way into various countries all around the world, doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes, and the Democrats’ single talking point, and you see it, is that it’s Donald Trump’s fault, right? It’s Donald Trump’s fault. No, just things that happened.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

History
Nicanor Parra photo

“I do physics in order to earn my living, and I do poetry in order to keep alive.”

Nicanor Parra (1914–2018) writer, poet, matematician, fisic

Interview with The New York Times https://nyti.ms/2Uzw2nh, June 27, 1968, p. 49

Elizabeth of the Trinity photo

“Remain in Me." It is the Word of God who gives this order, expresses this wish. Remain in Me, not for a few moments, a few hours which must pass away, but "remain...”

Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906) French Carmelite nun and mystic

permanently, habitually, Remain in Me, pray in Me, adore in Me, love in Me, suffer in Me, work and act in Me.

First Day, 3
Heaven in Faith (1906)

God

“Of course, working people ultimately cannot rely upon the federal government or the state governments (whose purpose is to maintain the hegemony of the markets and the rule of capital) to fix this crisis in any equitable way. Only the working class has the power to make this happen through mass strikes and work actions. In order to act swiftly in the case of any layoffs, lockouts, or shutdowns, working people ultimately must organize themselves at their workplaces and in the streets, whether they are in a union or not, and be prepared to use their collective power to demand that all necessary resources be employed for the well being of the whole class with full compensation and benefits, that full back pay be provided to all workers upon returning to work, and that everyone has access to well compensated employment.”

James Dennis Hoff

Freeze Layoffs: Make the Capitalists Pay (March 23, 2020)

Way , Making love , People
Robert B. Reich photo

“The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition... oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever... When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable. As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again. In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change. The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.”

Robert B. Reich (1946) American political economist

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-system-is-rigged-but-we-can-fix-it/, Alternet, 24 March 2020

Understanding , Country , Bad luck , People
Imru' al-Qais photo

“Has anything deceived you about me, that your love is killing me,
And that verily as often as you order my heart, it will do what you order?”

Imru' al-Qais (501–544) Arabic Poet

The Sacred books and Early literature of the East, Vol. 5, p. 22 https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly05hornuoft/page/18/mode/2up
The Poem of Imru' al-Qais, Couplets

Love , Making love , Heart
Ron Paul photo

“For many millions of Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others may celebrate the arrival of spring and the promise of new life. Whatever one’s beliefs, after several weeks of mandatory “stay at home” orders and the complete shutdown of the US economy over the coronavirus, this self-destructive hysteria must end and we must reclaim the freedom and liberty that has provided us so much opportunity as Americans. To do that we should first understand that much of the hysteria is being generated by a mainstream media that has long prioritized sensationalism over investigating and reporting the truth. Government bureaucrats are also exaggerating the threat of this virus and appear to be enjoying the power and control that fearful people are willingly handing over to them. One “coronavirus” bureaucrat even told us that we can no longer go to the grocery store! So we should just starve? It is certainly possible to believe that this virus can be dangerous while at the same time pointing out that radical steps are being taken in our society – stay-at-home orders, introduction of de facto martial law, etc.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Life , Home , Time , Understanding
Isaac Asimov photo

“I don't believe in flying saucers... The energy requirements of interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades.”

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

"On Flying Saucers" in Is Anyone There? (1967), pp. 215–216
General sources

Travel , Game , Relation ships , Flying

“The Trump administration has, for good measure, rewritten the eligibility rules for such programs in order to lower the number of people who qualify. The supposed goal: to cut costs by reducing dependence on government.”

Rajan Menon (1953) political scientist

Never mind the subsidies and tax loopholes Trump’s crew has created for corporations and the super wealthy, which add up to many billions of dollars in spending and lost revenue.
Trump’s War on the Poor Includes Our Children (February 4, 2020)

People , Dependency
Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner photo

“Many disasters can be traced to our linguistic shortcomings. Millions of money and multitudes of men have been sacrificed in order to save the prestige of a mistake in translation committed "by authority."”

Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899) British orientalist

Writings of Dr. Leitner, Chapter: Oriental Translations of English Texts, p. 151

Money , Men
Li Keqiang photo

“(We, the Government of China) must provide better support for fighting and controlling the (COVID-19) outbreak, while safeguarding the normal order of the economy and society.”

Li Keqiang (1955–2023) Premier of the People's Republic of China

Li Keqiang (2020) cited in " China faces dilemma as it tries to get back to work amid coronavirus outbreak fears following Lunar New Year https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049407/china-faces-dilemma-it-tries-get-back-work-amid-coronavirus" on South China Morning Post, 6 February 2020.
2020s

Fight , Support
Anna J. Cooper photo

“Since the idea of order and subordination succumbed to barbarian brawn and brutality in the fifth century, the civilized world has been like a child brought up by his father. It has needed the great mother heart to teach it to be pitiful, to love mercy, to succor the weak and care for the lowly.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 51

Heart , World , Idea , Love
Tony Abbott photo

“Well, there is no doubt that (homosexuality) challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things, but as I also said on the program, it happens, it's a fact of life and we have to treat people as we find them.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Leigh Sales interview https://www.abc.net.au/lateline/abbott-defends-fair-parental-leave-plan/356710; on Lateline, ABC TV, 8 Mar 2010.
Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015)

Life , People
Priti Patel photo

“The Conservative Party is the party of law and order. Full stop. The defence of our nation, defence of our streets and law and order are at the heart of our values.”

Priti Patel (1972) British politician

I want criminals to be terrified, says Priti Patel: New Home Secretary vows to return to zero-tolerance policing as she demands full explanation over bungled 'Nick' sex abuse inquiry https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316055/I-want-criminals-terrified-says-Priti-Patel-Home-Secretary-restore-confidence-Britain.html (2 August 2019)
2019

Heart , Law
David Pearce (philosopher) photo

“I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

Quoted in Ethics Matters (2012) by Peter and Charlotte Vardy, p. 114 ISBN 978-0334043911

World , Animals , Suffering
Immanuel Kant photo

“What vexations there are in the external customs which are thought to belong to religion, but which in reality are related to ecclesiastical form! The merits of piety have been set up in such away that the ritual is of no use at all except for the simple submission of the believers to ceremonies and observances, expiations and mortifications (the more the better). But such compulsory services, which are mechanically easy (because no vicious inclination is thus sacrificed), must be found morally very difficult and burdensome to the rational man. When, therefore, the great moral teacher said, 'My commandments are not difficult,' he did not mean that they require only limited exercise of strength in order to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, as commandments which require pure dispositions of the heart, they are the hardest that can be given. Yet, for a rational man, they are nevertheless infinitely easier to keep than the commandments involving activity which accomplishes nothing... [since] the mechanically easy feels like lifting hundredweights to the rational man when he sees that all the energy spent is wasted.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View https://books.google.com/books?id=TbkVBMKz418C. Translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809320608. Page 33.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Religion , Heart , Teachers , Reality
Karl Kautsky photo

“Our duty is not merely to abolish the capitalist order but to set up a higher order in its place. But we must oppose those forces aiming to destroy capitalism only in order to replace it with another barbarous mode of production.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

““Violence” was a euphemism for a threat to the ruling order and its illusion of social peace, with which the class struggle, the brutality of patriarchy, and the murderousness of colonialism are hidden. The newspapers did not talk about violence when cops killed strikers, when landlords evicted families, or when poor people died of hunger. They talked about violence when workers went on strike, when tenants stopped paying rent, when street vendors refused to surrender their wares to the cops.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 1. Violence Doesn't Exist

Hunger , Peace , People , Family
William Lane Craig photo

“I think that the fundamental way in which we know Christianity is true is through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. I do not think that arguments and evidence are necessary in order for faith to be rational, or for you to know that God exists and has revealed himself in Christ. So I would say that the fundamental way we know Christianity is true is through the witness of the Holy Spirit and reason and argument then can confirm the Spirit's witness. The person who has good apologetic arguments passes, in a sense, a double warrant for his faith. He has the warrant provided by the Holy Spirit, and then he has the double warrant provided by argument and evidence. But should he lack the argument and evidence he can still be warranted just on the basis of the Holy Spirit. That's knowing Christianity to be true.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist
God , Faith , Personality , Thinking

“Telecenters are facilities where the general public can access computers for free. The computers are usually equipped with a variety of open source, and sometimes closed source, software and are connected to the internet. Some Telecenters offer computer lectures and workshops to communities in order to improve social and technical skills. Such activities are an attempt to promote use of the technology to fulfill individual and community needs, increasing human capital and employment. The government, NGOs, and the private sector operate Telecenter units.”

David Nemer

(p. 66)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Communication
Daniel Hannan photo

“Marx's error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity - to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Nazism (2014)

War , Error
Daniel Hannan photo

“On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Nazism (2014)

“Since we tend to see ourselves primarily in the light of our intentions, which are invisible to others, while we see others mainly in the light of their actions, which are visible to us, we have a situation in which misunderstanding and injustice are the order of the day”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

John G. Bennett The Crisis in Human Affairs

Light
Richard D. Wolff photo

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Home , Question , Country , Suffering
Robert Filmer photo

“In a well-ordered state, the sovereign power must remain in one only, without communicating any part thereof unto the state (for in that case it should be a popular government and no monarchy). Wise politicians, philosophers, divines and historiographers, have highly commended a monarchy above all other commonweals. It is not to please the prince, that they hold this opinion; but for the safety and hap­piness of the subjects. And contrariwise, when as they shall limit and restrain the sovereign power of a monarch, to subject him to the general estates, or to the council; the sovereignty hath no firm foun­dation, but they frame a popular confusion, or a mi­serable anarchy, which is the plague of all estates and commonweals.”

Robert Filmer (1588–1653) English writer

Source: The Power of Kings, p. 325

Parting , Communication
William Cobbett photo

“They were more than a thousand in number, including the mere partizans of my enemies. Several attempts were made to press me down. I got many blows in the sides; and if I had been either a short or a weak man, I must have been pressed under foot, and inevitably killed. ... I had, when I left the Booth, my snuff-box in my right hand. It is oblong square, and has very sharp corners. The Savages pressed me side-ways towards my left; and I had to fight with my right hand, in order to prevent them from getting me down. I had to strike back-handed. One of the sharp corners of the snuff-box, which stuck out beyond the bottom of my little finger, did good service. It cut the noses and eyes of the Savages at a famous rate, and assisted mainly in securing my safe arrival, on the raised pavement, on which I got just opposite to the door of a shop. Just at this time, one of the Savages, foaming at the mouth like a mad dog, exclaimed: “damn him, I'll rip him up.””

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

He was running his hand into his breeches pocket, apparently to take out his knife, but I...drew up my right leg, armed with a new and sharp-edged gallashe over my boot, dealt Mr. Ellice's ripping Savage so delightful a blow, just between his two eyes, that he fell back upon his followers.

‘History of the Coventry Election’, Political Register (25 March 1820), pp. 102–3
1820s

Time , Dogs , Box , Way
William Cobbett photo

“Not only boxing, but wrestling, quarter-staff, single-stick, bull-baiting, every exercise of the common people, that supposes the possible risk of life or limb, and, of course, that tends to prepare them for deeds of bravery of a higher order, and, by the means of those deeds and of the character and consequence naturally growing out of them, to preserve the independence and the liberties of their country; every such exercise seems to be doomed to extirpation. ... Every thing calculated to keep alive the admiration, and even the idea, of hardihood, seems to have become offensive and odious in the sight of but too many of those, whose duty it is to endeavour to arrest, and not to accelerate, the fatal progress of effeminacy. ... That cuttings and stabbings are more fatal than boxing, to say nothing of the disgrace, every one must agree; and, it cannot be denied, that the former have increased in proportion as the latter has been driven from amongst the people.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 200
1800s

Country , Box , People , Nature

“Baldner contends that is "arrogant" and "paternalistic" morally to condemn something as definitive of the natural order as predation. However, it is in the nature of morality to devise ideals of a better world and to work toward realizing them. This entails judging this world to be less than ideal and working to change it. One could restrict moral evaluations to the products of human activity, but that would be arbitrary: what makes suffering (prima facie) morally bad is not that it is the result of human activity but that it is suffering. Our commitment to making the world a morally better place impels us to make moral evaluations of the natural order. There need be nothing either arrogant or paternalistic in making and acting on such evaluations, provided we recognize the very limited nature of our understanding and our power to make improvements.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Dicussion: Environmental Ethics and the Locus of Value https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=bts", Between the Species (Winter 1990), p. 9

Understanding , Bad luck , Suffering , Nature
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“We allow American journalists in Singapore in order to report Singapore to their fellow countrymen...But we cannot allow them to assume a role in Singapore that the American media play in America, that is, that of invigilator, adversary and inquisitor of the administration.”

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

In 1984, National Day speech. Quoted in S. Balakrishna, Seventy years of secularism. 2018.
1980s

Arun Shourie photo

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Hell , Religion , Time , Law
E.M. Forster photo

“Going to Bits. This phrase me to day and is indeed the one I have been looking for; not tragic, not mortal disintegration; only a central weakness which prevents me from concentrating or settling down I have so wanted to write and write ahead. The phrase "obligatory creation" has haunted me. I have so wanted to get out of my morning bath promptly: have decided to do so beforehand, and have then lain in it as usual and watched myself not getting out. It looks as if there is a physical as well as a moral break in the orders I send out. I have plenty of interesting thoughts but keep losing them like the post cards I have written, or like my cap. I can't clear anything up yet interrupt a 'good read' in order to clear up. I hope tomorrow to copy out a piece of someone else's prose: it is the best device known to me for taking one out of inself, Plunge into anothers minutiae.'”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

31-1-61

p. 224
Commonplace Book (1985)

Hope , Reading

“When the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem is applied to particular formal systems, we obtain as special cases: Every group, field, ordered field, etc., has a countable subsystem of the same type. A more spectacular result follows from applying the theorem to set theory (a system which we shall later formalize): There is a countable collection of sets, such that if restrict the membership relation to these sets alone, they form a model for set theory (more precisely all the true statements of set theory are true in this model). In particular, within this model which we may denote by M, there must be an uncountable set. This paradox, that a countable model can contain an uncountable set, is explained by noting that to say a set is uncountable merely asserts the nonexistence of a one-one mapping of the set with the set of integers. The "uncountable" set in M set actually has only countably many members in M, but there is no one-one correspondence \underline {within} M of this set with the set of integers.”

Paul Cohen (1934–2007) American mathematician

Set theory and the continuum hypothesis, pp. 19–20 https://books.google.com/books?id=Z4NCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA19
Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis (1966)

Relation ships

“The natural right of property far from being protected, is systematically violated, and both government and law seem to exist chiefly or solely, in order to protect and organize the most efficacious means of protecting the violation….”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 53

Law , Nature

“Those who make laws, appropriate wealth in order to secure power.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 49

Wealth , Making love , Law

“Slave-owners and rich men, among a crowd of slave-descended famishing labourers, lead probably a more anxious and toilsome life in protecting their property, and in enforcing obedience to their orders, than the slaves whose labour they extort.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 31

Life , Men
Donald J. Trump photo

“I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamberger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!”

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

As quoted by * 2020-04-26

'Hambergers' and 'Noble prizes': Trump attacks press in furious Twitter rant riddled with spelling errors

Alex Woodward

Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-latest-coronavirus-hamburger-nobel-prize-russia-a9485006.html
2020s, 2020, April

Night , Housing , Reading , People

“In order for capitalism to have a clear path, it needs to profane all that is sacred; there must be no limits to what is saleable. The totalitarian commercialism which is now the established Church throughout the West has come close to achieving this.”

Andrew Collier (philosopher) (1944–2014) British philosopher

Source: "The Masters of Suspicion", p. 85

Romila Thapar photo

“The link with Manat [the Arabian Goddess] added to the acclaim for Mahmud. Not only was he the prize iconoclast in breaking Hindu idols, but in destroying Manat he had carried out what were said to be the very orders of the Prophet.”

Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian

Romila Thapar, quoted from Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002) by K. Elst.

Mulayam Singh Yadav photo

“I regret giving orders to shoot kar sevaks at Ayodhya. My decision to order firing at kar sevaks was to save Muslim minorities. This decision was needed to keep the faith of Muslims in this country intact.””

Mulayam Singh Yadav (1939–2022) Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh three times

Mulayam Singh Yadav quoted from ‘Mulayam Singh govt buried Karsevaks, conspired to hide actual number of casualties’: Republic TV exposé https://www.opindia.com/2019/02/mulayam-singh-govt-buried-karsevaks-conspired-to-hide-actual-number-of-casualties-republic-tv-expose/amp/

Decision , Faith , Country
Carolina de Robertis photo

“At some point, the novelist has to leap head first into the pool of imagination in order to more freely explore the truth.”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On thw work of a novelist in “Interviews: Carolina de Robertis” https://bookpage.com/interviews/24365-carolina-de-robertis-fiction#.Xebr8_lKjcs in BookPage (2019 Sep 3)

Truth , Imagination
Newton Lee photo

“Everyone is using science and technology to enhance or to alter our body chemistry in order to stay healthy and be more in control of our lives. We are all transhumanists to varying degrees.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Science

“In order to write anything profile-driven, I would become the person; and then I would analyse the person from within. Earlier, I would analyse them from without. But if I was going to write about him now, I would do it internally, so then it would be fiction.”

Hilton Als (1961) writer, critic

On how his writing has changed in “Hilton Als: ‘I had this terrible need to confess, and I still do it. It’s a bid to be loved’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/hilton-als-interview-pulitzer-prize-criticism-white-girls in The Guardian (2018 Feb 2)

Personality
William Faulkner photo

“I am beginning to see the first sign of my increasing age: I dont like to know that my orders have been disobeyed, even when I knew when I gave them that they would be.”

William Faulkner book Go Down, Moses

The Bear section 2 (p. 212)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

Age
William Faulkner photo

“...ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Gail Hightower's thoughts in Chapter 20
Light in August (1932)

Truth
Aurangzeb photo

“In every parganah officers have come from the thanahs with orders from the Presence for the destruction of idols.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s
Source: A letter preserved in the Yasho-Madhav temple of Dhamrai in the Dacca district, dated 27 June, 1672, and printed in J. M. Ray’s Bengali History of Dacca, i. 389. quoted in Sarkar, Jadunath (1972). History of Aurangzib: Volume III. App. V.