Quotes about other (10000 quotes, page 18)

“The taste for freedom, the fashion and cult of happiness of the majority that the nineteenth century is infatuated with, was only a heresy in his eyes that would pass like others.”

Stendhal book The Charterhouse of Parma

Le goût de la liberté, la mode et le culte du bonheur du plus grand nombre, dont le XIXe siècle s'est entiché, n'étaient à ses yeux qu'une hérésie qui passera comme les autres.
Source: La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Ch. 7

Fashion , Freedom , Happiness

“In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and, as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them…A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions - one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Stupidity , Beauty , Art , Appearance

“Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain — at least in a poor country like Russia — and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

The Russian Revolution (1930)

Country

“The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"The Danger of Lying in Bed" (1871)

Nature , Chance

“Socrates: The shoemaker, for example, uses a square tool, and a circular tool, and other tools for cutting?
Alcibiades: Yes.
Socrates: But the tool is not the same as the cutter and user of the tool?
Alcibiades: Of course not. …
Socrates: Then what shall we say of the shoemaker? Does he cut with his tools only or with his hands?
Alcibiades: With his hands as well.
Socrates: He uses his hands too?
Alcibiades: Yes. …
Socrates: And does not a man use the whole body?
Alcibiades: Certainly.
Socrates: And that which uses is different from that which is used?
Alcibiades: True.
Socrates: Then a man is not the same as his own body?
Alcibiades: That is the inference.
Socrates: What is he, then?
Alcibiades: I cannot say.
Socrates: Nay, you can say that he is the user of the body.
Alcibiades: Yes.
Socrates: And the user of the body is the soul?
Alcibiades: Yes, the soul.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Alcibiades I

Soul

“I tell you that if natural bodies have it from Nature to be moved by any movement, this can only be circular motion, nor is it possible that Nature has given to any of its integral bodies a propensity to be moved by straight motion. I have many confirmations of this proposition, but for the present one alone suffices, which is this. I suppose the parts of the universe to be in the best arrangement, so that none is out of its place, which is to say that Nature and God have perfectly arranged their structure. This being so, it is impossible for those parts to have it from Nature to be moved in straight, or in other than circular motion, because what moves straight changes place, and if it changes place naturally, then it was at first in a place preternatural to it, which goes against the supposition. Therefore, if the parts of the world are well ordered, straight motion is superfluous and not natural, and they can only have it when some body is forcibly removed from its natural place, to which it would then return by a straight line, for thus it appears that a part of the earth does [move] when separated from its whole. I said "it appears to us," because I am not against thinking that not even for such an effect does Nature make use of straight line motion.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

A note on this statement is included by Stillman Drake in his Galileo at Work, His Scientific Biography (1981): Galileo adhered to this position in his Dialogue at least as to the "integral bodies of the universe." by which he meant stars and planets, here called "parts of the universe." But he did not attempt to explain the planetary motions on any mechanical basis, nor does this argument from "best arrangement" have any bearing on inertial motion, which to Galileo was indifference to motion and rest and not a tendency to move, either circularly or straight.
Letter to Francesco Ingoli (1624)

God , World , Nature , Thinking

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Death , Hunger , People , Hell

“Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 76.

War

“But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences, and impossibilities, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the (true) doctrines, as learning nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 4, ch. 2, par. 15
On First Principles

God , Law , Beauty , History

“A lot has changed, El Paso, a lot has changed. One thing's for sure, I'm still the fluffy guy. And I say "fluffy" because that is the politically correct term, for those of you who don't remember I used to say that there were Five Levels of Fatness. Reason why I say "Used to say" is because now there are six! Uh-huh, I met the new one in Las Cruces. The original five levels are Big, Healthy, Husky, Fluffy, and DAMN! People ask, "What could be bigger than DAMN!" The new level's called "OH HELL NO!" What's the difference? You're still willing to work with level five. Example, if you're on an elevator and you're with your friend and this really big guy gets on and you and your friend look at each other and you're like, "DAAAMN!" But you still let the big guy ride your elevator. That's the difference. Level six, you see walking towards your elevator, [Deep growling noise] [Pretends to be a shocked passenger and starts pushing the "close door" button. ] "OH HELL NO!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Pretends to kick the fat man out] That's the difference. The guy that I met was six foot eight, six hundred and fourteen pounds. Uh-huh, OH HELL NO!! And he was offended at my show. Not by anything that I said, but because of the fact that now at the shows I started selling T-shirts and apparently, I didn't have his size. Keep in mind, I go all the way up to 5X on the T-shirts and he was like, [Deep growling voice] "You don't have my size." I was like, "Dude, I didn't know they MADE you! I have up to 5X, I don't have [Growl] X!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

A picture of a dinosaur on the back of the tag, you know?
I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy (2009)

People , Way , Guy , Hell

“Not once do you have the feeling that you are in contact with something other than a marvellously organised mental-physical domain.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

On her feelings during stay in Japan, quoted in "Japan (1916-20)" and also in On the Mother: The Chronicle of a Manifestation and Ministry by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1 January 1995) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=WIPXAAAAMAAJ, p. 160

Feeling

“There are two ways of coping with fear: one is to diminish the external danger, and the other is to cultivate Stoic endurance. The latter can be reinforced, except where immediate action is necessary, by turning our thoughts away from the cause of fear. The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. Nothing has so beneficent an effect on human beings as security. If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world. The atom bomb and the bacterial bomb, wielded by the wicked communist or the wicked capitalist as the case may be, make Washington and the Kremlin tremble, and drive men further along the road toward the abyss. If matters are to improve, the first and essential step is to find a way of diminishing fear.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Men , Hate , War , People

“No religion has mandated killing others as a requirement for its sustenance or promotion.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1931–2015) 11th President of India, scientist and science administrator

In: Philosophy & Social Action (2003)

Religion

“Should any other person or governing body be able to tell another person that he/she cannot save their own life, because it would be a violation of a law?”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to John J. LaFalce (1992)

Life , Law , Personality

“The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 437.
(Buch II) (1893)

Appearance

“An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalisation would be just as well founded as the generalisation which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Variant: An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalisation would be just as well founded as the generalisation which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.
Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 6: On the Scientific Method in Philosophy.Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.

Youth , Age , History , Nature

“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 5

Bird , Tree , Silence , Learning

“The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather — not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i. e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Preface
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Books , Thinking

“Ball, Mankiw, Romer and others style themselves as New Keynesians. Their program is to develop improved microeconomic foundations for imperfectly flexible prices. In the process, they hope to illuminate the paradox that individually rational or near-rational behavior can result in significant collective market failures. These are certainly laudable objectives. In the end, I suspect, the program will not change the essential substance of Keynesian macroeconomics. But it will make Keynes more palatable to theorists.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

"Price Flexibility and Output Stability: An Old Keynesian View" (1993)

Hope , Behavior , Failure , Change

“The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Die fast unlösbare Aufgabe besteht darin, weder von der Macht der anderen, noch von der eigenen Ohnmacht sich dumm machen zu lassen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 34
Minima Moralia (1951)

“If the entire soul, then, follows without rebellion the part which loves wisdom, the result is that in general each part can carry out its own function—can be just, in other words—and in particular each is able to enjoy pleasures which are its own, the best, and, as far as possible, the truest. … When one of the other parts takes control, there are two results: it fails to discover its own proper pleasure, and it compels the other parts to pursue a pleasure which is not their own, and not true.”

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

Plato, Republic, T. Griffith, trans. (2000), 587a
Plato, Republic

Love , Wisdom , Pleasure , Soul

“What an excellent horse do they lose, for want of address and boldness to manage him! … I could manage this horse better than others do.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

Statement upon seeing Bucephalas being led away as useless and beyond training, as quoted in Lives by Plutarch, as translated by Arthur Hugh Clough

Horse

“The specialist is a man who fears other subjects.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

Fischerisms (1944)

Fear

“It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church — bless all the churches — and blessed be to God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

To the 1864 general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as quoted in Abraham Lincoln : A History Vol. 6 (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, Ch. 15, p. 324
1860s

God

“It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.”

George Gissing book The Unclassed

The Unclassed (1884), ch. 1: School

Pain

“We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book.”

Greg Bear book Hull Zero Three

Hull Zero Three (2010)

Books , Learning

“Therefore, the central point which we see in the centre of the hieroglyphic Monad produces the Earth, round which the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets follow their respective paths. The Sun has the supreme dignity, and we represent him by a circle having a visible centre.”

John Dee (1527–1608) English mathematican, astrologer and antiquary

Theorem III
Monas Hieroglyphica (1564)

Sun

“Rule over the occupied territories would have social repercussions. After a few years there would be no Jewish workers or Jewish farmers. The Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police—mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech, and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the state of Israel. The administration would have to suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has been until now a people's army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.Out of concern for the Jewish people and its state we have no choice but to withdraw from the territories and their population of one and a half million Arabs.”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) israeli intellectual

"The Territories" (1968)

Hostility , People , Secret , Education

“Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Ole-Lukøie
Fairy Tales (1835)

Children , Beauty , Dreams , Sleep

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Premature Burial

"The Premature Burial" (1844).

Life , Death

“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew — not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. … What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money… Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man — and turns them into commodities. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.”

Karl Marx book On the Jewish Question

On the Jewish Question (1843)

Money , God , Religion

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life , Women , Children , People

“If you thought about it I'm hardly the villain, I'm hardly the one you should be scared of. It's the guy who can't talk, it's the guy without a job, it's the one with scares in his face, not the one clean cut, you know what I mean you should worry about a lot of other things, but not me.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Interview on the set Gridlock'd (1996)

Guy

“Part of me felt like something momentous was about to happen. The other part of me expected to wake up at any moment, to come out of this fever dream or stress episode or whatever it was and wake up with my face in a puddle of drool on the Smart Aid break room table and think, Well, that was strange, and then return to the boring old business of being me. But I didn't wake up.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 6, Page 139

Dreams , Business , Thinking , Parting

“In the past, the virtue of women's writing often lay in its divine spontaneity … But it was also, and much more often, chattering and garrulous … In future, granted time and books and a little space in the house for herself, literature will become for women, as for men, an art to be studied. Women's gift will be trained and strengthened. The novel will cease to be the dumping-ground for the personal emotions. It will become, more than at present, a work of art like any other, and its resources and its limitations will be explored.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"Women and Fiction"
Granite and Rainbow (1958)

Women , Men , Books , Art

“But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope.”

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

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Children , Fear , Faith , Hope

“This is the land of the free, and it always will be. As Americans, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that no man or government can take away from us. But we've also long recognized, as our Founders recognized, that with rights come responsibilities. Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same. We don’t live in isolation. We live in a society, a government of, and by, and for the people. We are responsible for each other.”

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

Remarks by the President and the Vice President on Gun Violence, 2013-01-16, January 16, 2013 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/16/remarks-president-and-vice-president-gun-violence,
2013

People , Freedom

“And I said to myself: From now on help anyone and everyone so far as it lies within your power. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone's destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity. And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude to the sick girl whom I had hurt unwittingly and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Girl , Understanding , Suffering , Help

“If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their children's; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably sooner free.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

Children , Justice , Nature , Parent

“Since I have possessed a "Wonderland Stamp Case", Life has been bright and peaceful, and I have used no other. I believe the Queen's laundress uses no other.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing (1890)

Life , Peace

“It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Men , Problem , Past , Sincerity

“The doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemption, obtained through the means of money given to the Church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth there is no such thing as redemption — that it is fabulous, and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker as he ever did stand since man existed, and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

Money , Truth , Idea , Thinking

“If you learn life’s lessons, you will do well. If not, life will just continue to push you around. People do two things. Some just let life push them around. Others get angry and push back. But they push back against their boss, or their job, or their husband or wife. They do not know it’s life that’s pushing.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Life , People , Learning

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love , Hate , Friendship , Fate

“We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Buddenbrooks [Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, Roman] (1901). Pt 8, Ch. 2

Idea

“The only influences in [the painting 'The sick Child', Munch painted in his elderly home, remembering very accurate the last days of his dying little sister Sophie] 'The sick Child'.... were the ones that come from my home.... my childhood and my home. Only someone who knew the conditions at home could possibly understand why there can be no conceivable chance of any other place having played a part – my home is to my art as a midwife is to her children.... few painters have ever experienced the full grief of their subject as I did in 'The sick child.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

It was not just I who was suffering; it was all my nearest and dearest as well.
Edvard Munch talks to Jens Tiis, c. 1933, Munch Museum; as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 85-86
after 1930

Children , Art , Home , Understanding

“One loves to say what he knows, the other loves to say what he thinks.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Love , Thinking

“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.”

Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) English author

"A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839). Source: Thomas de Quincy. On Murder (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 84

Time , Drink , Thinking

“Know Thyself. All else will be known to thee of its own accord. Discriminate between the undying, unchanging, all-pervading, infinite Atma and the ever-changing, phenomenal and perishable universe and body. Enquire, "Who am I?" Make the mind calm. Free yourself from all thoughts other than the simple thought of the Self or Atma. Dive deep into the chambers of your heart. Find out the real, infinite "I". Rest there peacefully for ever and become identical with the Supreme Self.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Universe , Change , Heart

“At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you are.—And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other.
"The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them."
Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant.
"Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

The Voyage Out (1915), Ch. XI

Love , People , Question

“Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came, under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with all these Divine precepts? Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would we think it just?—One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more than Reason, or the Bible.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

Love , Men , Thinking , Light

“He who offends others, does not secure himself.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

“I was, however, more interested in steam engines than in electric ones. In other words, I was more romantic than technical.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

29.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

“The large-eyed daughter of Kuntibhoja, Pritha by name, was endued with beauty and every accomplishment. Of rigid vows, she was devoted to virtue and possessed of every good quality. Her father Kuntibhoja invited, O best of monarchs, the princes and kings of other countries and desired his daughter to select her husband from among her guests. The intelligent Kunti, entering the amphitheatre, beheld Pandu--the foremost of the Bharatas… The amiable daughter of Kuntibhoja… advancing with modesty,…placed the nuptial garland about Pandu's neck.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Mahabharata translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli in: Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXII https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mahabharata/Book_1:_Adi_Parva/Section_CXIIThe, Wikisource

Beauty , Intelligence , Daughters , Country

“My friends and relations … urged … that the quantity [of food] I took was too little for one so advanced in years; against this, I urged that nature was content with little, and that with this small quantity, I had preserved myself for many years in health and activity, that I believed as a man advanced in years, his stomach grew weaker, and therefore the tendency should be to lessen the amount of food rather than to increase. I further reminded them of the two proverbs, which say; he who has a mind to eat a great deal, must eat but little; eating little makes life long, and, living long, he must eat much; and the other proverb was: that, what we leave after making a hearty meal, does us more good than what we have eaten.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

Life , Health , Food , Nature

“I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way to a more comprehensive and lasting existence elsewhere; that somehow or other we belong to a larger scene than our earthly life provides, and to a wider reach of time than our earthly allotment of three score years and ten…It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us. This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, who have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me to be untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim (1988)

Life , Truth , Fools , Way

“Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164

Life , Courage

“Noble be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Sets hims apart
From every other creature
On earth.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Das Göttliche

Das Göttliche (The Divine) (1783)

Help

“When giving advice, do so kindly. Do it sincerely with patience. Don't do it to show that you are more intelligent or better than others.”

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

4 April 2016 https://twitter.com/muftimenk/status/716954516843790336
Twitter

Intelligence , Sincerity , Patience

“The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, of which our hearts are distinctly conscious, though it remains hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world — to the deep-implanted longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity of the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as to the same source we are able to trace the most visionary and incoherent reveries. A constant endeavour to unite these two elements, so that each may rob as little as possible from the other, has always seemed to me the true end of wisdom.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Wisdom , World , Feeling , Nature

“All art needs this visible world and will always need it. Quite simply because, being accessible to all, it is the key to all other worlds. ** Quote from Zeichnungen von E. L. Kirchner, (under his pseudonym de:Louis de Marsalle) E. L. Kirchner, Genius 2, Book 2, 1921, 216-234, reprinted by National Gallery, Washington D. C. 2003, p. 226”

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

1920's

Books , World , Art , Quotes

“A man who does not fool himself seldom cares much about fooling others. But the man who claims to have seen a ghost wants everybody else to believe in ghosts.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Ventures in Common Sense (1919), p87.

Fools

“As a graduate student I studied mathematics fairly broadly and I was fortunate enough, besides developing the idea which led to "Non-Cooperative Games," also to make a nice discovery relating to manifolds and real algebraic varieties. So I was prepared actually for the possibility that the game theory work would not be regarded as acceptable as a thesis in the mathematics department and then that I could realize the objective of a Ph. D. thesis with the other results.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Autobiographical essay (1994)

Game , Mathematics , Idea , Study

“I do to others what they do to me, only worse.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Arthur A. Sloane, Hoffa, p. 77

“At the appointed time, necessities become ripe. That is the time when the Creative Spirit (which one can also designate as the Abstract Spirit) finds an avenue to the soul, later to other souls, and causes a yearning, an inner urge.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

1910 - 1915, On the Problem of Form (1912)

Soul , Time

“It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.”

Hermann Hesse book Narcissus and Goldmund

Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

Learning

“Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
Isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"”

A.A. Milne book When We Were Very Young

When We Were Very Young (1924)

“Now, what is 'unrighteousness' in practice? It is in practice behavior of a kind disliked by the herd. By calling it unrighteousness, and by arranging an elaborate system of ethics around this conception, the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon the objects of its own dislike, while at the same time, since the herd is righteous by definition, it enhances its own self-esteem at the very moment when it lets loose its impulse to cruelty. This is the psychology of lynching, and of the other ways in which criminals are punished. The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Idea of Righteousness"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Justice , Way , Behavior , Time

“Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the “way of beauty” (via pulchritudinis). Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. This has nothing to do with fostering an aesthetic relativism which would downplay the inseparable bond between truth, goodness and beauty, but rather a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love. So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith. Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new “language of parables”. We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 167
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love , Life , Truth , Faith

“You, Knights of Columbus, are particularly fitted to play a great part in the movement for national solidarity, without which there can be no real efficiency in either peace or war. During the last year and a quarter it has been brought home to us in startling fashion that many of the elements of our nation are not yet properly fused. It ought to be a literally appalling fact that members of two of the foreign embassies in this country have been discovered to be implicated in inciting their fellow-countrymen, whether naturalized American citizens or not, to the destruction of property and the crippling of American industries that are operating in accordance with internal law and international agreement. The malign activity of one of these embassies has been brought home directly to the ambassador in such shape that his recall has been forced. The activities of the other have been set forth in detail by the publication in the press of its letters in such fashion as to make it perfectly clear that they were of the same general character. Of course, the two embassies were merely carrying out the instructions of their home governments.”

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

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

War , Peace , Law , Home

“The Common Sense, is that which judges of things offered to it by the other senses. The ancient speculators have concluded that that part of man which constitutes his judgment is caused by a central organ to which the other five senses refer everything by means of impressibility; and to this centre they have given the name Common Sense. And they say that this Sense is situated in the centre of the head between Sensation and Memory. And this name of Common Sense is given to it solely because it is the common judge of all the other five senses i. e. Seeing, Hearing, Touch, Taste and Smell. This Common Sense is acted upon by means of Sensation which is placed as a medium between it and the senses. Sensation is acted upon by means of the images of things presented to it by the external instruments, that is to say the senses which are the medium between external things and Sensation. In the same way the senses are acted upon by objects. Surrounding things transmit their images to the senses and the senses transfer them to the Sensation. Sensation sends them to the Common Sense, and by it they are stamped upon the memory and are there more or less retained according to the importance or force of the impression.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Way , Sense , Memory , Parting

“Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic. If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato's Republic. Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever written. In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus turned it from its natural course. The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither country nor patriot. The very words should be struck out of our language. The reason does not concern us at present, so that though I know it I refrain from stating it.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book I

Books , Education , Spring , Nature

“Once they knew each other it was more difficult, because it is difficult to love those we know well. To be in love is to be curious. A thing is only beautiful if we do not have surfeit of it, perhaps only what is new is beautiful; in any case we can only love what is new. In order to love people we have got to know too well, we must first of all forget them, not altogether but very nearly. This they learnt during the fortnight. They didn't tell each other that they had learnt it; they were careful, that is, untruthful. To be able to love someone a long time one must lie, quite often to oneself, but mostly to the person one loves.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 206

Love , People , Lie , Beauty

“It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which give us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is—since nothing means anything in itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something. In other words, we are either Englishmen or nothing whatever.”

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

Letter to James F. Morton (6 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

World

“I know I've reached the stage where other artists would bleach their hair or buy a fancy costume, but, inexcusably, I can only be me, which is a full-time occupation and causes terrible backaches.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "I’ll astonish you", interview by Len Brown, Details (March 1991).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Time

“The world at present is obsessed by the conflict of rival ideologies, and one of the apparent causes of conflict is the desire for the victory of our own ideology and the defeat of the other. I do not think that the fundamental motive here has much to do with ideologies. I think the ideologies are merely a way of grouping people, and that the passions involved are merely those which always arise between rival groups. Ideologies, in fact, are one of the methods by which herds are created, and the psychology is much the same however the herd may have been generated.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

People , World , Way , Motivation

“The intellect and the heart are on good terms with one another. One often represents the other so perfectly, that it is hard to determine which of the two was at work.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Der Verstand und das Herz stehen auf sehr gutem Fuße. Eines vertritt oft die Stelle des andern so vollkommen, dass es schwer ist zu entscheiden, welches von beiden tätig war.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 42.

Heart

“For it still seemed to me “that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us.” And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. … I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 10, p. 77
Confessions (c. 397)

Love , Soul , Nature

“I present you with a Key : I have not heard of the like yet framed, since it pleased God to bring that mighty continent of America to light. Others of my countrymen have often, and excellently, and lately, written of the country, and none that I know beyond the goodness and worth of it.
This Key respects the native language of it, and happily may unlock some rarities concerning the natives themselves, not yet discovered.”

Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation

Preface
A Key into the Language of America (1643)

God , Light , Country

“Currently there's five machines permanently networked here. They all contain the serious core stuff. A couple of the machines are pensioned off 486s, with little other value now. Plus there's two Jaz drives in the building and the portable also carries a fair amount of stuff. Plus every Friday a man comes around and carves all the new stuff onto stone slabs and buries them in the garden… I think I'm okay.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

Thinking

“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

En général, l’art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d’argent qu’on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie.
"Money" (1770)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

Money , Art

“We then saw what St. Jerome said of those who serve God and those who serve the world: "Each to the other we seem insane": Invicem insanire videmur. There is a never-ending duel between the two.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Port-Royal (1752), as cited by M. A. Screech in Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (1997), p. 69

God , World

“We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all the rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species. That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in the beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist… these Species were sometimes fertilised out of congeners, that is other Species of the same Genus, whence have arisen Varieties.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Fundamenta fructificationis (1742). As quoted in John S. Wilkins (2009), "Species: A History of the Idea," University of California Press. p. 72

Imagination , Nature , Parent , Change

“I believe that no one who is familiar, either with mathematical advances in other fields, or with the range of special biological conditions to be considered, would ever conceive that everything could be summed up in a single mathematical formula, however complex.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

The evolutionary modification of genetic phenomena. Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Genetics 1, 165-72, 1932.
1930s

Mathematics

“Beings who are so uniquely constituted must necessarily express themselves in other ways than ordinary men. It is impossible that with souls so differently modified, they should not carry over into the expression of their feelings and ideas the stamp of those modifications.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Men , Way , Feeling , Soul

“The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare — in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of "assaults" and "drunk and disorderlies" his name seldom appears …”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Peace , Appearance , Country

“The professional administrators — especially those at higher levels — serve key roles at the boundary of the organization, between the professionals inside and interested parties — governments, client associations, and so on — on the outside. On the one hand, the administrators are expected to protect the professionals' autonomy, to "buffer" them from external pressures. On the other hand, the administrators are expected to woo these outsiders to support the organization, both morally and financially. Thus, the external roles of the manager—maintaining liaison contacts, acting as figurehead and spokesman in a public relations capacity, negotiating with outside agencies—emerge as primary ones in professional administration.”

Henry Mintzberg (1939) Canadian busines theorist

Source: The structuring of organizations (1979), p. 326

Support

“Again, there are other things associated with these matters, all bearing more or less upon the same points. When God selected Joseph Smith to open up the last dispensation, which is called the dispensation of the fullness of times, the Father and the Son appeared to him, arrayed in glory, and the Father, addressing himself to Joseph, at the same time pointing to the Son, said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him."”

John Taylor (Latter Day Saints) (1808–1887) third president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

God , Appearance , Time

“I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it. I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family — a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related — a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done — the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Hate , People , Lie , World

“If the courts have the final say-so on all legislative acts, and if no appeal can lie from them to the people, then they are the irresponsible masters of the people. In other words, those who take this position hold that the people have enough intelligence to frame and adopt a constitution but not intelligence to apply and interpret the constitution which they have themselves made.”

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

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)

People , Lie , Intelligence

“I'm young enough to still see the passionate boy I used to be.
But I'm old enough to say I got a good look at the other side.
I know we got to work real hard, maybe even for the rest of our lives.
But right now I just want to take what I can
Get tonight.While the night is still young,
I want to keep making love to you,
While the night is still young.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The Night Is Still Young.
Song lyrics, Greatest Hits - Volume I & Volume II (1985)

Love , Making love , Boy , Passion

“My theological beliefs are likely to startle one who has imagined me as an orthodox adherent of the Anglican Church. My father was of that faith, and was married by its rites, yet, having been educated in my mother's distinctively Yankee family, I was early placed in the Baptist sunday school. There, however, I soon became exasperated by the literal Puritanical doctrines, and constantly shocked my preceptors by expressing scepticism of much that was taught me. It became evident that my young mind was not of a religious cast, for the much exhorted "simple faith" in miracles and the like came not to me. I was not long forced to attend the Sunday school, but read much in the Bible from sheer interest. The more I read the Scriptures, the more foreign they seemed to me. I was infinitely fonder on the Graeco-Roman mythology, and when I was eight astounded the family by declaring myself a Roman pagan. Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other. I had really adopted a sort of Pantheism, with the Roman gods as personified attributes of deity.... My present opinions waver betwixt Pantheism and rationalism. I am a sort of agnostic, neither affirming nor denying anything.”

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

Letter to Maurice W. Moe (16 January 1915), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 10
Non-Fiction, Letters

God , Education , School , Family

“God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and now I am.’ Remove the ’here and now’ the ‘I am’ remains, unassailable. (…). All I can say truly is: ‘I am,’ all else is inference (…). The sense ‘I am’ is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, Reality or by any other name. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

God
Source: I am That, P.199.

God , Idea , Reality , Sense

“You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor… Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Sir Robert Peel
Biographical Studies (1907)

Men , Thinking

“There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life , People , Faith , Confidence

“God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment — but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 48
The Antichrist (1888)

God

“Disproving a claim that something exists is often quite difficult, and this difficulty is often mistaken for evidence that the claim is true…Presented as I am periodically with these and other fantastical claims, I sometimes feel a little like a formally dressed teetotaler at a drunken orgy for reiterating that not being able to conclusively refute the claims does not constitute evidence for them.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (pp. 95-96; ellipsis represents elision of new age examples)

Feeling