Quotes about other
page 28

“I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous—that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't. It makes no difference how well they mean or how cordial they are—they simply get on my nerves unless they chance to represent a peculiarly similar combination of tastes, experiences, and heritages; as, for instance, Belknap chances to do... Therefore it may be taken as axiomatic that the people of a place matter absolutely nothing to me except as components of the general landscape and scenery. Let me have normal American faces in the streets to give the aspect of home and a white man's country, and I ask no more of featherless bipeds. My life lies not among people but among scenes—my local affections are not personal, but topographical and architectural. No one in Providence—family aside—has any especial bond of interest with me, but for that matter no one in Cambridge or anywhere else has, either. The question is that of which roofs and chimneys and doorways and trees and street vistas I love the best; which hills and woods, which roads and meadows, which farmhouses and views of distant white steeples in green valleys. I am always an outsider—to all scenes and all people—but outsiders have their sentimental preferences in visual environment. I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have—in some form or other. Providence is part of me—I am Providence—but as I review the new impressions which have impinged upon me since birth, I think the greatest single emotion—and the most permanent one as concerns consequences to my inner life and imagination—I have ever experienced was my first sight of Marblehead in the golden glamour of late afternoon under the snow on December 17, 1922. That thrill has lasted as nothing else has—a visible climax and symbol of the lifelong mysterious tie which binds my soul to ancient things and ancient places.”

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

Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Life, People, Family

“If the Letter is to be in answer to another, begin by getting out that other letter and reading it through, in order to refresh your memory, as to what it is you have to answer, and as to your correspondent’s present address (otherwise you will be sending your letter to his regular address in London, though he has been careful in writing to give you his Torquay address in full).”

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

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

Memory, Reading

“Explaining economic growth - The achievement motive : how it is measured and its economics effects - Achieving societies in the modern world - Achieving societies in the past - Other psychological factors in economic development - Entrepreneurial behavior - Characteristics of entrepreneurs - The spirit of Hermes - Sources of n achievement - Accelerating economic growth.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Book abstract
The Archiving Society, 1961

World, Behavior, Motivation, Past

“I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 475

People, Books, Time, Reading

“Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”

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

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness.

Men, People, World, Way

“The Israeli people, and Prime Minister Olmert, have made clear that they are more than willing to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will result in two states living side by side in peace and security. But the Israelis must trust that they have a true Palestinian partner for peace. That is why we must strengthen the hands of Palestinian moderates who seek peace and that is why we must maintain the isolation of Hamas and other extremists who are committed to Israel's destruction.”

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

Speech at AIPAC. (2 March 2007) http://www2.iland.net/inews/story.php?storyid=1038226&class=iraq 2007

People, Peace

“The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this country and at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.”

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

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Business, Time, Success, Parting

“Without the right to life, how would an individual’s rights become vested? How could any other rights be realized if one’s very life could be taken away by another who is exercising their right to liberty or pursuit of happiness? Jefferson articulated a prioritized set of rights; first the right to life, then the right to liberty, then the pursuit of happiness. Each right was carefully prioritized in sequential order because the right to life trumps all other rights. No one can take a human life in exercising their liberties and no one can take a life or take away the liberty of another in their pursuit of happiness. If the right to life can be taken by another, then no right of anyone is protected.”

Steve King (1949) US Representative for Iowa

Rep. Steve King: Protecting the Unborn Reaffirms Jefferson’s Truths http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/01/exclusive-rep-steve-king-protecting-the-unborn-reaffirms-jeffersons-truths/ (November 1, 2017)

Life, Exercises, Happiness

“And one of the rules of good civil society I believe is that you’re respectful of the people who disagree with you. And that's part of what makes civil society work. If you can have civil disagreements, and you can listen to each other and not just shout, that's what creates an environment that leads to progress over the long term.”

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

Remarks by President Obama in Conversation with Members of Civil Society at YALI Regional Leadership Center, Kenyatta University,Nairobi, Kenya https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/26/remarks-president-obama-conversation-members-civil-society (July 26, 2015) 2015

People, Parting

“Our girls have to be treated the same. We can’t let old traditions stand in the way. The march of history shows that we have the capacity to broaden our moral imaginations. We come to see that some traditions are good for us, they keep us grounded, but that, in our modern world, other traditions set us back. When African girls are subjected to the mutilation of their bodies, or forced into marriage at the ages of 9 or 10 or 11 -- that sets us back. That's not a good tradition. It needs to end. […]”

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

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

Marriage, Age, World, Way

“Now answer me this. Do you think that the same holds of horses? Do people in general improve them, whereas one particular person corrupts them or makes them worse? Or is it wholly the opposite: one particular person - or the very few who are horse trainers - is able to improve them, whereas the majority of people, if they have to do with horses and make use of them, make them worse? Isn't that true, Meletus, both of horses and of all other animals? Of course it is, whether you and Anytus say so or not. Indeed, our young people are surely in a very happy situation if only one person corrupts them, whereas all the rest benefit them.”

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

25b
Plato, Apology

People, Thinking, Animals, Horse

“I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Feeling, Suffering, Personality

“Prophets do not help responsible Christian persons who seek to gain political and economic power as a means to serve the public good within the constraints of political, economic, medical, or other institutions.”

James Gustafson (1925) American academic

Source: "Varieties of Moral Discourse: Prophetic, Narrative, Ethical and Policy", p. 55

Help, Personality

“Successful people never worry about what others are doing.”

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

Alleged source in Plato unknown. Earliest occurrence to have been located is a Tweet from 2011 https://twitter.com/ochocinco/status/93332058864238592. Disputed

People, Success

“As to the papists, 'tis certain that several of their dangerous opinions, which are absolutely destructive of all governments but the pope’s, ought not to be tolerated in propagating those opinions; and whosoever shall spread or publish any of them the magistrate is bound to suppress so far as may be sufficient to restrain it…Papists are not to enjoy the benefit of toleration, because, where they have power, they think themselves bound to deny it to others…It being impossible, either by indulgence or severity, to make papists, whilst papists, friends to your government, being enemies to it both in their principles and interest, and therefore considering them as irreconcilable enemies, of whose fidelity you can never be secured whilst they owe a blind obedience to any infallible pope, who hath the keys of their consciences tied to his girdle, and can, upon occasion, dispense with all their oaths, promises, and the obligations they have to their prince, especially being (in their sense) a heretic, and arm them to the disturbance of the government, [I] think they ought not to enjoy the benefit of toleration.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

An Essay on Toleration (1667), quoted in Mark Goldie (ed.), Locke: Political Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 151-152.

Thinking, Sense

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Quote is actually from Tom Peters: The Best Corporate Strategy? None, Of Course. Chicago Tribune July 11, 1994 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-07-11/business/9407110026_1_silicon-graphics-customers-richard-branson Misattributed

Life

“Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 185.

Love, Men

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Love, Life, People, Books

“We run, not only because we think it is doing us good, but … because it helps us to do other things better.”

Roger Bannister (1929–2018) English physician and athlete

cited by Craig A. Masback, "A Sports White Paper for Clinton," http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/24/sports/backtalk-a-sports-white-paper-for-clinton.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm New York Times. January 24, 1993, p. S-11.

Thinking, Help

“Simran and Sukirti are not similar at all. I think the amount of the sacrifices that Simran has made may exist in other girls in real life too but I do not see myself in the same mould. I am a very reserved and a practical girl. However, I can relate to undying love, extreme emotions and the bubbliness of Simran. I have always preferred my work to speak for me than my relationships; I don’t want to comment on it. As far as marriage is concerned, I cannot think of getting married till the time I have achieved my targets. My parents got married when they were both 32 so I don’t think 25 years down the line, their kids are rushing into marriage anytime soon.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

On comparison with her character and personal life http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/tv-news/i-have-never-been-associated-the-word-struggle-life-sukirti-kandpal-042/

Love, Life, Marriage, Girl

“I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive — even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.”

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

1860s, Letter to James C. Conkling (1863)

People, Motivation, Thinking, Freedom

“There is, then, in this analysis of variance no indication of any other than innate and heritable factors at work. (Coining of the phrase ‘analysis of variance’.)”

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

The causes of human variability. Eugenics Review 10, 213-220, 1918.
1910s–1920s

“Many are God so transforms the soul in Him that it knows nothing other than God; and He continues to draw it up into His fiery love until He restores it to that pure state from which it first issuedastonished at this, and since they do not know the reason, they are offended. And truly, if it were not that God stands by me, the world would often consider me mad, and that is because I almost always live outside myself.”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Love, God, World, Soul

“One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Diary entry (5 October 1962)

Dreams, Thinking

“Essentially, we are still the same people as those in the period of the Reformation - and how should it be otherwise? But we no longer allow ourselves certain means to gain victory for our opinion: this distinguishes us from that age and proves that we belong to a higher culture. These days, if a man still attacks and crushes opinions with suspicions and outbursts of rage, in the manner of men during the Reformation, he clearly betrays that he would have burnt his opponents, had he lived in other times, and that he would have taken recourse to all the means of the Inquisition, had he lived as an opponent of the Reformation. In its time, the Inquisition was reasonable, for it meant nothing other than the general martial law which had to be proclaimed over the whole domain of the church, and which, like every state of martial law, justified the use of the extremest means, namely under the assumption (which we no longer share with those people) that one possessed truth in the church and had to preserve it at any cost, with any sacrifice, for the salvation of mankind. But now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Wir sind im Wesentlichen noch dieselben Menschen, wie die des Zeitalters der Reformation: wie sollte es auch anders sein? Aber dass wir uns einige Mittel nicht mehr erlauben, um mit ihnen unsrer Meinung zum Siege zu verhelfen, das hebt uns gegen jene Zeit ab und beweist, dass wir einer höhern Cultur angehören. Wer jetzt noch, in der Art der Reformations-Menschen, Meinungen mit Verdächtigungen, mit Wuthausbrüchen bekämpft und niederwirft, verräth deutlich, dass er seine Gegner verbrannt haben würde, falls er in anderen Zeiten gelebt hätte, und dass er zu allen Mitteln der Inquisition seine Zuflucht genommen haben würde, wenn er als Gegner der Reformation gelebt hätte. Diese Inquisition war damals vernünftig, denn sie bedeutete nichts Anderes, als den allgemeinen Belagerungszustand, welcher über den ganzen Bereich der Kirche verhängt werden musste, und der, wie jeder Belagerungszustand, zu den äussersten Mitteln berechtigte, unter der Voraussetzung nämlich (welche wir jetzt nicht mehr mit jenen Menschen theilen), dass man die Wahrheit, in der Kirche, habe, und um jeden Preis mit jedem Opfer zum Heile der Menschheit bewahren müsse. Jetzt aber giebt man Niemandem so leicht mehr zu, dass er die Wahrheit habe: die strengen Methoden der Forschung haben genug Misstrauen und Vorsicht verbreitet, so dass Jeder, welcher gewaltthätig in Wort und Werk Meinungen vertritt, als ein Feind unserer jetzigen Cultur, mindestens als ein zurückgebliebener empfunden wird. In der That: das Pathos, dass man die Wahrheit habe, gilt jetzt sehr wenig im Verhältniss zu jenem freilich milderen und klanglosen Pathos des Wahrheit-Suchens, welches nicht müde wird, umzulernen und neu zu prüfen.
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 633
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Men, People, Truth, Age

“If you meet with any one who is virtuous do not drive him from you; do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and be reduced to hiding in hermitages, or caves or other solitary places to escape from your treachery; if there is such an one among you do him honour, for these are our Saints upon earth; these are they who deserve statues from us, and images…”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

“If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

"Handicapped People and Science" http://books.google.com/books?id=9LVFAAAAYAAJ&q=%22handicapped+people+and+science%22#search_anchor by Stephen Hawking, Science Digest 92, No. 9 (September 1984): 92 (details of citation from here http://www.enotes.com/stephen-hawking-criticism/hawking-stephen/further-reading).

Children, People, World, Way

“Try not to measure your success by the success of others. Success should be defined by one person…Yourself.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Rules 2 Rule

Success, Personality

“Nor is it only the Germans and Austrians who take the view that as a matter of right they can treat their countrymen resident in America, even if naturalized citizens of the United States, as their allies and subjects, to be used in keeping alive separate national groups profoundly anti-American in sentiment, if the contest comes between American interests and those of foreign lands in question. It has recently been announced that the Russian government is to rent a house in New York as a national center to be Russian in faith and patriotism, to foster the Russian language and keep alive the national feeling in immigrants who come hither. All of this is utterly antagonistic to proper American sentiment, whether perpetrated in the name of Germany, of Austria, of Russia, of England, or France or any other country.”

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

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

Faith, Feeling, Question, Nature

“Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 419)

Life

“Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a fear all the greater because I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.”

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

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Death, Fear

“No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.”

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

Section 1, paragraph 34.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“"It is more than a crime; it is a political fault," —words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others.”

Joseph Fouché (1759–1820) French statesman

Memoirs of Fouché. Commonly quoted, "It is worse than a crime,—it is a blunder", and attributed to Talleyrand; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“It is part of a work to which if ever it should be compleated I intend to give some such title as Principles of Legal Policy; the object of it is to trace out a new model for the Laws: of my own country you may imagine, in the first place: but keeping those of other countries all along in view. To ascertain what the Laws ought to be, in form and tenor as well as in matter: and that elsewhere as well as here. All that I shall say to recommend it to you is that I have taken counsel of you much oftener than of our own Ld. Coke and Hale and Blackstone. The repose of Grotius and Puffendorf and Barbeyrac and Burlamaqui I would never wish to see disturbed. I have built solely on the foundation of utility, laid as it is by Helvetius. Becarria has been lucrative pedibus, or if you please manibus, meis.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Letter to Voltaire (c. November 1776), quoted in Timothy L. S. Sprigge (ed.), The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (London: University College London Press, 2017), p. 367

Law, Imagination, Parting, Country

“I idealize my directors. It's true. I need to. I need to. I don't know if idealizing is a bad thing or good thing. But I just want to get up in the morning and work to get a glimpse of thing of his eyes searching things inside of me. For some I want to go to hell and to heaven. It hasn't happened with everybody. There are certain people I idealize. Others are very good, and I want to please them, too, but in a different sense of the word.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

People, Search, Hell, Sense

“…why doesn't somebody write a tract on "How to Be a Christian and yet keep your Hands off of Other People's Things."”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 222

People

“I wish the very best for each and every one of you. Even if you think you are the most pitiful wretch on two feet, this is completely possible. It doesn't matter how bad we have been or how much difficulty and trouble we've created for ourselves and others in the past. The question is, how will it end? "All's well that ends well," as the saying goes, and that's as true as can be. The way things end is the way they will remain. Things won't be as they were before.”

Elias Aslaksen (1888–1976) Norwegian clergyman

Closing remark - Aslaksen's last recorded message
No difficulties (Stavanger, 18 January, 1976)

Way, Question, Thinking, Past

“Sometimes I had an overwhelming urge to speak, not about that, but only to hint that there were some curious things about me which no one knew of. I wanted to find out whether other people had undergone similar experiences. I never succeeded in discovering so much as a trace of them in others. As a result, I had the feeling that I was either outlawed or elect, accursed or blessed.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), p. 41

People, Feeling

“The second and third Empires, represented by the Bear and Leopard, are again represented by the Ram and He-Goat; but with this difference, that the Ram represents the kingdoms of the Medes and Persians from the beginning of the four Empires, and the Goat represents the kingdom of the Greeks to the end of them. By this means, under the type of the Ram and He-Goat, the times of all the four Empires are again described: I lifted up mine eyes, saith Daniel, and saw, and behold there stood before the river [Ulai] a Ram which had two horns, and the two horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.”

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

Vol. I, Ch. 9: Of the Kingdoms Represented in Daniel by the Ram and He-Goat
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)

Time

“The difference between a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be nothing.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“Translation:
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.”

Saadi book Gulistan of Sa'di

Alternative translation:
The children of Adam are limbs of a whole
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others
You are not worthy to be called by the name of "man".
Source: Gulistan (1258), Chapter 1, story 10

Pain, Soul, Affliction

“In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss: —
"'"Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not."
"Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat."
"Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him."
From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.”

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

Source: The Philosophy of Misery (1846), Chapter I

Game, Science, Falseness

“As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk's bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse's tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, which makes them appear like those of the Canaries, neither black nor white; others with white, others with red, and others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, and some the whole body; others only the eyes, and others the nose. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except parrots.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

12 October 1492; This entire passage is directly quoted from Columbus in the summary by Bartolomé de Las Casas
Journal of the First Voyage

Women, People, Age, Faith

“In many respects there is a complete lack of analogy between the civilization of to-day and the only other civilization in any way comparable to it, that of the ancient Greco-Roman lands. There are, of course, many points in which the analogy is close, and in some of these points the resemblances are as ominous as they are striking. But most striking of all is the fact that in point of physical extent, of wide diversity of interest, and of extreme velocity of movement, the present civilization can be compared to nothing that has ever gone before. It is now literally a world movement, and the movement is growing ever more rapid and is ever reaching into new fields. Any considerable influence exerted at one point is certain to be felt with greater or less effect at almost every other point. Every path of activity open to the human intellect is followed with an eagerness and success never hitherto dreamed of. We have established complete liberty of conscience, and, in consequence, a complete liberty for mental activity. All free and daring souls have before them a well-nigh limitless opening for endeavor of any kind.”

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

1910s, The World Movement (1910)

World, Dreams, Way, Soul

“As to why some are touched by the law and others not, so that some receive and others scorn the offer of grace…[this is the] hidden will of God, Who, according to His own counsel, ordains such persons as He wills to receive and partake of the mercy preached and offered.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 169

God, Law, Personality

“That which transcends country, which is greater than country, can only reveal itself through one’s country. God has manifested his one eternal nature in just such a variety of forms… I can assure you that through the open sky of India you will be able to see the sun therefore there is no need to cross the ocean and sit at the window of a Christian church. … “I have nothing more to say,” answered Gora, “only this much I would add. You must understand that the Hindu religion takes in its lap, like a mother, people of different ideas and opinions, in other words, the Hindu religion looks upon man as man and does not count him as belonging to a particular party. It honours not only the wise but the foolish also and it shows respect not merely to one form of wisdom but to wisdom in all its aspects. Christians do not want to acknowledge diversity; they say that on one side is Christian religion and on the other eternal destruction, and between these two there is no middle path. And because we have studied under these Christians we have become ashamed of the variety that is there in Hinduism. We fail to see that through this diversity Hinduism is coming to realise the oneness of all. Unless we can free ourselves from this whirlpool of Christian teaching we shall not become fit for the glorious truths of Hindu religion.””

Rabindranath Tagore book Gora

Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, translated into English, Calcutta, 1961. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13 ISBN 9788185990354 https://web.archive.org/web/20120501043412/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/

Wisdom, God, People, Truth

“There is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the lowly, and the common, even though it may seem almost the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and security. Here it is only a euphemism for escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. … Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”—the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 95-96

Love, People, Way, Home

“In general, fakirs, like scribes and potters, are sitting down, when he’s standing up, a fakir is just like an other man, and sitting down, he’ll be smaller than the others”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 60 (Vintage 2003)

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment."”

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

Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch übriggelassen als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose "bare Zahlung".
Section 1, paragraph 14, lines 1-5.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Nature

“Remember that your bird should have no other model than the bat, because its membranes serve as an armour or rather as a means of building together the pieces of its armour, that is the framework of the wings.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

Bird

“When the Twin Towers fell—I felt a dentist had pulled out my two front teeth. I could not laugh anymore. And I have the smile of a smiling damned villain. But I also felt the hole in my mouth became a garage, and entering that garage were terrorists in trucks full of explosives and French diplomats—to f*ck us more with other nations—to run over our dead bodies.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Smile, Dead

“Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this [surrender], but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face — that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy?”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

Life, War, People, Peace

“Art consists in making others feel what we feel.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 231
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A arte consiste em fazer os outros sentir o que nós sentimos.

Art, Feeling

“I didn't have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you're rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You're behind the eight ball when you go in there.”

Robert De Niro (1943) American actor, director and producer

What I've Learned

Problem

“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Le seul véritable voyage, le seul bain de Jouvence, ce ne serait pas d'aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d'avoir d'autres yeux, de voir l'univers avec les yeux d'un autre, de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d'eux voit, que chacun d'eux est.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. V: The Captive (1923), Ch. II: "The Verdurins Quarrel with M. de Charlus"

Youth, Universe

“…Does your Excellency know the spirit of (my) country? If you did, you would not say that I am "a spirit twisted by a German education," for the spirit that animates me I already had since childhood, before I learned a word of German. My spirit is "twisted" because I have been reared among injustices and abuses which I saw everywhere, because since a child I have seen many suffer stupidly and because I also have suffered. My "twisted spirit" is the product of that constant vision of the moral ideal that succumbs before the powerful reality of abuses, arbitrariness, hypocrisies, farces, violence, perfidies and other base passions. And "twisted" like my spirit is that of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who have not yet left their miserable homes, who speak no other language except their own, and who, if they could write or express their thoughts, would make my Noli me tangere very tiny indeed, and with their volumes there would be enough to build pyramids for the corpses of all the tyrants…”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Open letter to Barrantes on the Noli, published in La Solidaridad (15 February 1890)

Education, Home, Reality, Suffering

“[W]orking men are the basis of all governments. That remark is due to them more than to any other class, for the reason that there are more of them than of any other class. And as your address is presented to me not only on behalf of workingmen, but especially of Germans, I may say a word as to classes. I hold the value of life is to improve one's condition. Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man, so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing. I am for that thing.”

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

1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Gazette version

Life, Men

“People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.”

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

"Is There a God?" (1952)
1950s

People, Religion, Fools

“Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 105
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Life, Way

“To let go of judgment does not mean that you don’t see what they do. It means that you recognize their behavior as a form of conditioning, and you see it and accept it as that. You don’t construct an identity out of it for that person.
That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Behavior, Personality

“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”

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

The Ayn Rand Column ‘Introducing Objectivism’

Life, Happiness

“When two-three different religions claim that only their own religions are true and all other religions are false, their religions are only ways to Heaven, conflicts can not be avoided. Thus, fundamentalism tries to abolish all other religions. This is called Bolshevism in religion. Only the path shown by the Hinduism can relieve the world form this meanness.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

R. Tagore, `Aatmaparichapa' in his book `Parichaya' http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

World, Religion, Way, Falseness

“If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried.”

Niccolo Machiavelli Florentine Histories

Book III, Chapter 13
Florentine Histories (1526)

Men, God, Faith, Fraud

“I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.”

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

As quoted in "Roosevelt The Greatest Outdoor Man" by Arthur K. Willyoung in Outing Vol. 74, No. 6 (September 1919), p. 353
1910s

Life, Men

“The only real formula for real success is Work and Faith. All may achieve this sort of success for all may work and the only happiness, the only success, is in labor. Other rewards do not count, comparatively. The joy of leisure is an illusion. The chief reason for my liking serials for as long as I did was because they kept me constantly at work, whereas feature pictures do permit of a week or more idleness in between.”

Antonio Moreno (1887–1967) Spanish-American film actor and director

The True Story of My Life http://www.public.asu.edu/~bruce/Taylor57.txt (November 8 - December 13, 1924)

Faith, Success, Joy, Happiness

“Here you should be guided by the words of St. Paul, I Corinthians 7 [:4–5], “The husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does; likewise the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does. Do not deprive each other, except by agreement,” etc. Notice that St. Paul forbids either party to deprive the other, for by the marriage vow each submits his body to the other in conjugal duty. When one resists the other and refuses the conjugal duty she is robbing the other of the body she had bestowed upon him. This is really contrary to marriage, and dissolves the marriage. For this reason the civil government must compel the wife, or put her to death. If the government fails to act, the husband must reason that his wife has been stolen away and slain by robbers; he must seek another. We would certainly have to accept it if someone’s life were taken from him. Why then should we not also accept it if a wife steals herself away from her husband, or is stolen away by others?”

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

The Estate of Marriage, 1522, translated by Walther I. Brandt, from Luther's Works, Vol. 45, pp. 32-34); as quoted in Martin Luther: Execute Adulterers, Witches, Frigid Wives, & Prostitutes, Pagadian Diocese http://www.pagadiandiocese.org/2017/10/30/martin-luther-execute-adulterers-witches-frigid-wives-prostitutes/, October 26, 2017, Dave Armstrong

Life, Death, Marriage

“I know God only as he became human, so shall I have him in no other way.”

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

Das Marburger religionsgesprach 1529: Versuch einer Rekonstruction (Leipzig, 1929), p. 27; also LW 38, 3-90

God, Way

“Why… are there any market transactions at all? Why not all production carried on by one big firm?… First, as a firm gets larger, there may be decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function, that is, the costs of organizing additional transactions within the firm may rise… Second, it may be that as the transactions which are organized increase, the entrepreneur fails to place the factors of production in the uses where their value is greatest, that is, fails to make the best use of the factors of production… Finally, the supply price of one or more of the factors of production may rise, because the "other advantages" of a small firm are greater than those of a large firm.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

Source: 1930s-1950s, "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), p. 394-5

“This entire opus is respectfully dedicated to all those who have loved unconditionally only to have their hearts unanaesthetically ripped out: Base not your joy on the deeds of others, for what is given can be taken away. No hope = No fear.”

Peter Steele (1962–2010) American musician

Source: Bloody Kisses booklet

Love, Fear, Hope, Heart

“In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded. They divide their time between labour designed to postpone the moment of dissolution for themselves and frantic struggles to hasten it for others of their kind.”

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

Dreams and Facts https://users.drew.edu/jlenz/br-dreams.html (1919) 1910s

World, Way, Water, Time

“O impious use! to Nature's laws oppos'd,
Where bowels are in other bowels clos'd:
Where fatten'd by their fellow's fat, they thrive;
Maintain'd by murder, and by death they live.
'Tis then for nought, that Mother Earth provides
The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,
If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,
And chaw with bloody teeth the breathing bread:
What else is this, but to devour our guests,
And barb'rously renew Cyclopean feasts!
We, by destroying life, our life sustain;
And gorge th' ungodly maw with meats obscene.”
Heu quantum scelus est in viscera viscera condi ingestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus alteriusque animans animantis vivere leto! Scilicet in tantis opibus, quas, optima matrum, terra parit, nil te nisi tristia mandere saevo vulnera dente iuvat ritusque referre Cyclopum, nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis et male morati poteris ieiunia ventris!

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book XV, 88–95 (from Wikisource)
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Life, Death, Men, Law

“And in my own life, in this country, and as President, I have learned that our identities do not have to be defined by putting someone else down, but can be enhanced by lifting somebody else up. They don’t have to be defined in opposition to others, but rather by a belief in liberty and equality and justice and fairness. […] But my faith in those principles does force me to expand my moral imagination and to recognize that I can best serve my own people, I can best look after my own daughters, by making sure that my actions seek what is right for all people and all children, and your daughters and your sons.”

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

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

Life, Children, People, Faith

“Two sensuous lovers are not two friends. Much rather are they two enemies, closely attached to each other. I know it, I know it! There are perfect couples, no doubt — perfection always exists somewhere — but I mean us others, all of us, the ordinary people! I know! — the human being's real quality, the delicate lights and shadows of human dreams, the sweet and complicated mystery of personalities, sensuous lovers deride them, both of them! They are two egoists, falling fiercely on each other. Together they sacrifice themselves, utterly in a flash of pleasure.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

People, Pleasure, Dreams, Lovers

“First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now I cannot speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things.”

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

1910s, Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1912)

Death, Truth, Feeling, Thinking

“We may do different jobs and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title — we are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter of our American story.”

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

2013, Fifth State of the Union Address (February 2013)

Way, Idea, Future, Personality

“Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Way, Knowledge, Sense, Fight

“When I meet people in different parts of the world, I am always reminded that we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Nobel lecture (1989)

Friendship, People, World, Understanding

“Said the self-righteous preacher, "What, in your judgment, is the greatest sin in the world?"
"That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners," said the Master.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 139

World, Personality

“It has to be considered damned unusual that no other union was ever investigated.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 6, The Start of the Frame-Up, p. 103

“Now, I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro whatever when they declared all men to be created equal. They desired to express by that phrase, white men, men of European birth and European descent, and had no reference either to the negro, the savage Indians, the Fejee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men. One great evidence that such was their understanding, is to be found in the fact that at that time every one of the thirteen colonies was a slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration represented a slave-holding constituency, and we know that no one of them emancipated his slaves, much less offered citizenship to them when they signed the Declaration, and yet, if they had intended to declare that the negro was the equal of the white man, and entitled by divine right to an equality with him, they were bound, as honest men, that day and hour to have put their negroes on an equality with themselves.”

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

Attributed at a few sites to a debate in Peoria, Illinois with Stephen Douglas on 16 October 1858. No historical record of such a debate actually exists, though there was a famous set of speeches by both in Peoria on 16 October 1854, but transcripts of Lincoln's speech http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=cleaver;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln2;node=lincoln2%3A282 on that date do not indicate that he made such a statement. It in fact comes from a speech made by Douglas in the third debate http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=fejee;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln3;node=lincoln3%3A17 against Lincoln at Jonesboro, Illinois on 15 September 1858. Misattributed

Men, Birth, Understanding, Time

“She sighs for the thought she has. She would like to be silent, but she must speak.
"We don't love each other any more," she says, embarrassed by the greatness of the things she utters; "but we did once, and I want to see our love again."”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Love

“No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it….. When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former (Book of Exodus). I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.”

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

Books, Angels, Communication, Personality

“I define as a unit any magnitude that can serve for the numerical derivation of a series of magnitudes, and in particular I call such a unit an original unit if it is not derivable from another unit. The unit of numbers, that is one, I call the absolute unit, all others relative.”

Hermann Grassmann (1809–1877) German polymath, linguist and mathematician

Zero can never be a unit.
Definition 3. Part 1. The Elementary Conjunctions of Extensive Magnitudes. Ch. 1. Addition, Subtraction, Multiples and Fractions of Extensive Magnitudes. 1. Concepts and laws of calculation. Extension Theory Hermann Grassman, History of Mathematics (2000) Vol. 19 Tr. Lloyd C. Kannenberg, American Mathematical Society, London Mathematical Society
Ausdehnungslehre (1844)

“The persons excepted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so-called confederate government; all who have left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who are, or shall have been, military or naval officers of said so-called confederate government above the rank of colonel in the army, or of lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the United States Congress to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the army or navy of the United States, and afterwards aided the rebellion; and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons or white persons, in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which persons may have been found in the United States service, as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity.”

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

1860s, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)

War, Color, Way, Personality

“A truly intelligent person welcomes new ideas, for new ideas can add to the synergy of other accumulated ideas.”

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!

Intelligence, Idea, Personality

“As ambassadors of Jesus Christ, Christians have no choice but to join the movement of liberation on the side of the poor, fighting against the structures of injustice. Faith in Jesus Christ, therefore, is not only an affirmation that we utter in Sunday worship and at other church gatherings. Faith is a commitment, a deeply felt experience of being called by the Spirit of Christ to bear witness to God's coming liberation by fighting for the freedom of the poor now.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. v

God, Faith, Freedom, Christ

“A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. III, ch. 2
The Return of the Native (1878)

Happiness

“We are ready to work with the U. S. side in a spirit of seeking mutual benefit and win-win outcomes to properly address each other's concerns and facilitate the sound and the steady growth of bilateral economic cooperation and trade.”

Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

2000s, White House speech (2006)

“Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits, and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind.”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 25b–c
Timaeus

Men, Parting, Country

“It is well known that in three-dimensional elliptic or spherical geometry the so-called Clifford's parallelism or parataxy has many interesting properties. A group-theoretical reason for the most important of these properties is the fact that the universal covering group of the proper orthogonal group in four variables is the direct product of the universal covering groups of two proper orthogonal groups in three variables. This last-mentioned property has no analogue for orthogonal groups in n (>4) variables. On the other hand, a knowledge of three-dimensional elliptic or spherical geometry is useful for the study of orientable Riemannian manifols of four dimensions, because their tangent spaces possess a geometry of this kind.”

Shiing-Shen Chern (1911–2004) mathematician (1911–2004), born in China and later acquiring U.S. citizenship; made fundamental contributio…

[On Riemannian manifolds of four dimensions, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 51, 12, 1945, 964–971, http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1945-51-12/S0002-9904-1945-08483-3/S0002-9904-1945-08483-3.pdf]

Knowledge, Study, Universe

“I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolf Hitler. I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million citizens of the Soviet Union and so on.
“I paid my dues with everyone else,” he said.
It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German: “Entschuldigen Sie.”
Roughly translated into English, this comes out, “I beg your pardon,” or “Excuse Me.””

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Death, War, People, World

“No man has known perfect felicity,
Until his otherness is drowned in unity”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

Perfection

“JG: Can I ask what your feelings are about God?
EV: Sure. I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet -- [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me… (sic) Funny strange. Funny bad. Funny frown. Not good. That laws are made and wars occur because of this story that was written, again, in this small part of time.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

March 23, 1998, Janeane Garofalo interviewing Eddie Vedder for CMJ New Music Report at Brendan's, on the Lower East Side.

God, War, People, Law

“The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it -- they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

To the Person Sitting in Darkness http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/sitting.html (1901)

Money, People, Game, Suffering

“I got an Irish passport the other day. I love it. It's the best thing in my pocket.”

Sam Neill (1947) Irish-born New Zealand actor

The Irish Times, 13 December 2008

Love

“I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

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

Source: Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII

Men, Feeling, Strong, Personality

“Life's hard. To be in peace with oneself, one must speak the truth. To be in peace with others, one must lie.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"La vida es difícil. Para estar en paz con uno mismo hay que decir la verdad. Para estar en paz con el prójimo hay que mentir."
Descanso de caminantes, 2001.

Life, Truth, Lie, Peace

“Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without “taste,” at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost. Philosophical thinking, on the other hand, is ever on the scent of those things which are most worth knowing, the great and the important insights.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 43

Thinking, Science

“There are many great masters and very great realized beings in India and there have been many great realized beings in Tibet also, but they are not saying, “I'm realized, therefore I can do anything; I can eat meat and drink alcohol.” It's nothing like that. It should not be like that. According to the Kagyupa school, we have to see what the great masters of the past, the past lamas of Kagyupas, did and said about eating meat. The Drikung Shakpa [sp? ], master of Drikungpa, said like this, “My students, whomever are eating or using meat and calling it tsokhor or tsok, then these people are completely deserting me and going against the dharma.” I can't explain each of these things, but he said that anybody that is using meat and saying it is something good, this is completely against the dharma and against me and they completely have nothing to do with dharma. He said it very, very strongly. Other great masters also said this.”

Ogyen Trinley Dorje (1985) Tibetan Lama

"Talk on Vegetarianism", as translated simultaneously by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche during the 24th annual Great Kagyu Monlam, Bodhgaya, India (3 January 2007), in Shabkar.org http://www.shabkar.org/download/pdf/Talk_on_Vegetarianism.pdf.

People, Alcohol, School, Drink

“It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 67
It All Adds Up (1994)

People, Age, Imagination, Time

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