Quotes about other
page 75

“Hell is other actors,” Kirsten said. “Also ex-boyfriends.”

Emily St. John Mandel book Station Eleven

Source: Station Eleven (2014), Chapter 10 (p. 49)

“Even a child can see that an industrial enterprise would have neither net profits nor profits in general without the participation of the worker. Why does he receive only a wage from the entrepreneur instead of a share in the profits? There is no other reason other than the fact that the means of production are the private property of the entrepreneur. … This inequality and dependence is precisely the injustice that we don't want.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Source: "Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice" (1911), p. 44

Dependency

“For me, the first challenge for computing science is to discover how to maintain order in a finite, but very large, discrete universe that is intricately intertwined. And a second, but not less important challenge is how to mould what you have achieved in solving the first problem, into a teachable discipline: it does not suffice to hone your own intellect (that will join you in your grave), you must teach others how to hone theirs. The more you concentrate on these two challenges, the clearer you will see that they are only two sides of the same coin: teaching yourself is discovering what is teachable.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1979) My hopes of computing science http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD07xx/EWD709.html (EWD 709). 1970s

Problem, Universe, Science

“I have a few business ideas (that I'm going to advertise in High Times, amongst other places), and one of them is a service in which I offer to eat and describe pork to kosher people.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

The Pride is Back

People, Idea, Business, Time

“I was hanging out the other night with a bunch of friends I've known forever. They were saying, "Look at you. You've grown into a swan." I looked at them and said, "My awkward phase lasted about three years longer than all of yours combined." I related to the physical and emotional awkwardness Mia goes through. She has incredibly low self-esteem. A lot of my life was spent having the same thing, but I'm getting over that now.”

Anne Hathaway (1982) American actress

As quoted in "Anne Hathaway : Royal Role" by Jeffrey Epstein at E! Online (20 July 2001)

Life, Night

“Experience has convinced me that the proper way of teaching is to bring together that which is simple from all quarters, and, if I may use such a phrase, to draw upon the surface of the subject a proper mean between the line of closest connexion and the line of easiest deduction. This was the method followed by Euclid, who, fortunately for us, never dreamed of a geometry of triangles, as distinguished from a geometry of circles, or a separate application of the arithmetics of addition and subtraction; but made one help out the other as he best could.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Advertisement, p.4
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Dreams, Way, Help, Drawing

“Sir, there was once a time when close relations of amity were established between the Governments of England and France. It was in the reign of the later Stuarts; and it marks a dark spot in our annals, because it was an union formed in a spirit of domineering ambition on the one side, and of base and vile subserviency on the other. But that, Sir, was not an union of the nations; it was an union of the Governments. This is not be an union of the Governments; it is to be an union of the nations.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1860/feb/10/customs-acts-committee-the-financial in the House of Commons (10 February 1860) on the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty 1860s

Time

“At the present stage, the historic function of the Soviet Armed Forces is not restricted merely to their function in defending our motherland and the other socialist countries. In its foreign policy activity the Soviet state actively and purposefully opposes the export of counter-revolution and the policy of oppression, supports the national liberation struggle, and resolutely resists imperialist aggression in whatever distant region of our planet it may appear. The party and Soviet Government rely on the country's economic and defense might in fulfilling these tasks…The development of the external functions of the socialist armies is a natural process. It will continue.”

Andrei Grechko (1903–1976) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "National Security Affairs: Theoretical Perspectives and Contemporary Issues" - Page 111 - by B. Thomas Trout, James E. Harf - Political Science - 1982

Support, Nature, Distant, Appearance

“I am not old, — I cannot be old,
Though threescore years and ten
Have wasted away, like a tale that is told,
The lives of other men:

I am not old ; though friends and foes
Alike have gone to their graves,
And left me alone to my joys or my woes,
As a rock in the midst of the waves.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

The Song of Seventy.
A Thousand Lines (1846)

Men, Joy

“It is no exaggeration to state that the classic culture of Tlön comprises only one discipline: psychology. All others are subordinated to it. I have said that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

Men, Universe, Time, Success

“(Art worlds) consist of all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as art.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 34.

People, World, Art

“To the working men of Dundee…I press upon them the absolute necessity, as the very foundation of success in life, that they shall assume an erect position; that they shall respect their own manhood; and they will soon compel all other people to respect them”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Speech to Working Men of Dundee July 14, 1875 Evoking Burn’s A Man’s A Man For A’ That - Speeches of Alexander Mackenzie during his recent visit...page 44

Life, Men, People, Success

“The Democratic Party, whatever that is, lacks a vision or an ideology. But many people have said this. Why? That is because it is a conglomeration of mutually exclusive parts. It contains a large part of the American working class, which has suffered greatly since the Great Recession began. But it also contains a lot of Wall Street people and well-to-do people, and new technologists. What policies is going to unite these people? It's hard to find a unifying theme among them, other than they don’t want the Republicans in power. Now, that often gets you fairly far, but it doesn't allow you to govern very effectively.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

"How Radical Change Occurs: An Interview With Historian Eric Foner" http://www.thenation.com/article/how-radical-change-occurs-interview-historian-eric-foner/ (3 February 2015), by Mike Konczal, The Nation 2010s

People, Suffering, Parting

“The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. … The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.”

Friedrich Engels book Principles of Communism

Principles of Communism (1847)

Parting

“In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 4

World, Understanding, Business, Science

“Deacon Uriel Gadd was a man of integrity, granite-rough and lichen-coated. The punishment in his rheumatism, clearly sent of God, and the defection of his son Elijah, had weakened him only in making him somewhat less contemptuous of his sentimental son Aaron. All other persons he divided into fools, scoundrels and the blessedly elect, with only himself indisputably in the last class.”

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

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 6

God, Fools, Personality

“Other men have said, "If I could only live, I would establish and perpetuate an empire." This Christ of Galilee says, "My death shall do it." Other martyrs have died in simple fidelity to truth. This martyr dies that He may make His truth mighty over all hearts. He was a man; but was He only a man?”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 70.

Death, Men, Truth, Heart

“I do not mock men who have faith. It goves them comfort, and oft times leads them to help others. Yet I have also seen great evils done in the name of the Source. And never have I witnessed a miracle. Until I do I shall remain sceptical.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 2

Men, Faith, Evil, Time

“To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.”

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

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Way, Thinking

“(about her beginnings) "People assume I always wanted to be a violinist. It was actually just one of many other hobbies that I had. I had very enthusiastic parents. They gave me swimming lessons and horseback riding and gymnastics and ballet. My mom put me on the piano when I was about 3i. I asked for the violin when I was 4 because I wanted something that was smaller and more portable. I auditioned for the Juilliard School when I was about 6. During the week, I went to a regular school in Philadelphia so I could be with kids my own age." and "I started my career when I was 8 with two debuts in New York and Philadelphia, and then I started recording when I was 9. When you're so young, you don't realize the impact of a New York Philharmonic debut. You're told to do something and you go out and do it and you don't ask too many questions. I think the questions come later when you're in your teens. By the time I was 14, I was spending probably half the year in Europe. So I was out of school a lot. I did most of my homework by e-mail or fax. We made it work because my professors were incredible."”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

Newsweek September 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870541/site/newsweek/?page=6

People, Age, School, Moms

“Philosophy is to be replaced by the logic of science -- that is to say, by the logical analysis of the concepts and sentences of the sciences, for the logic of science is nothing other than the logical syntax of the language of science.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Foreword
Logical Syntax of Language, 1934/1937

Science

“One may well wonder at the short-sightedness of those who ignore the characteristics which so clearly distinguish different things and declare that the laws of Solon and Lycurgus are all-sufficient to secure the greatest of republics, Athens and Sparta, because their sovereign authority is loyally accepted by those who enjoy that citizenship, yet deny that right reason, which is the fountain head of all other law, can impart freedom to the wise, who obey all that it prescribes or forbids.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

47.
Every Good Man is Free

Law, Freedom

“Because a cause was taken to be sufficient for its effect, nothing was required to explain the effect other than the cause. Consequently, the quest for causes was environment-free. It employed what we now call 'closed-system' thinking. Laws. —like that of freely falling bodies—-were formulated so as to exclude environmental effects.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1970s, Redesigning the future, 1974, p. 10.

Law, Thinking

“I started to see human beings as little lonesome, water based, pink meat, life forms pushing air through themselves and making noises that the other little pieces of meat seemed to understand. I was thinking to myself, 'There's five billion people here but we've never been more isolated.' The only result of the aggressive individualism we pursue is that you lose sight of your compassion and we go to bed at night thinking, 'Is this all there is?”

Devin Townsend (1972) Canadian musician

because we don't feel fulfilled. Far Beyond Metal: Metal Hammer Interviews Devin http://www.farbeyondmetal.com/index.php?page_id=1120

Life, People, Feeling, Understanding

“Our time is Gothic in its spirit. Unlike the Renaissance, it is not dominated by a few outstanding personalities. The twentieth century has established the democracy of the intellect. In the republic of art and science there are many men who take an equally important part in the intellectual movements of our age. It is the epoch rather than the individual that is important. There is no one dominant personality like Galileo or Newton. Even in the nineteenth century there were still a few giants who outtopped all others. Today the general level is much higher than ever before in the history of the world, but there are few men whose stature immediately sets them apart from all others.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Men, Age, World, Art

“An artist, if good for anything, foresees what his public will see; and what his public will see is what he ought to have intended — the measure of his genius. If the public sees more than he himself did, this is his credit; if less, this is his fault. No matter how simple or ignorant we are, we ought to feel a discord or a harmony where the artist meant us to feel it, and when we see a motive, we conclude that other people have seen it before us, and that it must therefore have been intended.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

People, Feeling, Motivation

“It was impossible to see warfare as anything other than what Morgenes had once termed it: a kind of hell on earth that impatient mankind had arranged so it would not have to wait for the afterlife.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 12, “Raven’s Dance” (p. 392).

Hell, Waiting

“Is not the training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self — and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern — Truth; for, if Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me — is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected — that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

Life, Men, Truth, Art

“First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things…. But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them…. My soul is that of a drummer…. It came to where I had to make a decision — I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

As quoted in The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers (1984) by Max Weinberg and Robert Santelli

Love, Life, Money, Way

“There is not something fundamentally different about the American DNA that causes us to have a level of gun violence that is 20 times that of other first-world nations…. It happens here because we choose to allow it to happen. We have a celebratory culture of guns, and the loosest firearms laws in the world.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

"Meet the Senator Who Filibustered for 15 Hours on Gun Control" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-senator-who-filibustered-for-15-hours-on-gun-control-20160620, RollingStone.com, 20 June 2016.

World, Law, Time

“He's taking an inside view. He should forget about his own case and look for what happened in other cases.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 23, "The outside view", page 254 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Forgetting

“You are exactly what you seem, and so you always assume that other people are, too.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

People

“Addiction may be something to which some of us are predisposed, like diabetes, rather than a voluntary behavior — but it’s also reversible. A "disease model" of alcoholism and other addictions in no way diminishes our personal accountability once we know the facts. It simply suggests how hard recovery will be, and how much help we need.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"Can't Get Enough," New York Magazine (23 May 1998)

Alcohol, Disease, Way, Behavior

“On-line service providers and others have a key role to play in freeing cyberspace of the taint of copyright lawlessness. Accountability for copyright violations committed by users is as essential for advancing this indispensable goal.
Who is responsible if a valuable copyrighted work is downloaded from a provider, and then copied on a digital video machine from which thousands of copies can be made, the last copy as pure and pristine as the first? And if no one can be held responsible, then who and what is to prevent the flood that will surely follow? This is a loophole larger than a parade of eight-wheelers through which a dam-busting avalanche of violations can rupture the purpose of your bill every day.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives on copyright immunities for ISPs. (7 February 1996) http://www.judiciary.house.gov/legacy/461.htm

“SPAN ID=All_fashionable_clothes> All fashionable clothes, as Thorstein Veblen has pointed out in his Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), are highly symbolic: materials, cut, and ornament are dictated only to a slight degree by consideration of warmth, comfort, or practicability. The more we dress up in fine clothes, the more we restrict our freedom of action. But by means of delicate embroideries, easily soiled fabrics, starched shirts, high heels, long and pointed fingernails. and other such sacrifices of comfort, the wealthy classes manage to symbolize, among other things, the fact that they don't have to work for a living.

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Symbolic Process, pp. 24-25

Fashion, Freedom, Clothes

“On the other hand I tell my true intimates that what I write is not intended for them. In fact I'd prefer they never read it. When I write, I'm talking to somebody I intend to never meet.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

Reading

“As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

Pavarotti : My World (1995)

Art, Way

“When citizens are relatively equal, politics has tended to be fairly democratic. When a few individuals hold enormous amounts of wealth, democracy suffers. The reason for this pattern is simple. Through campaign contributions, lobbying, influence over public discourse, and other means, wealth can be translated into political power. When wealth is highly concentrated—that is, when a few individuals have enormous amounts of money—political power tends to be highly concentrated, too. The wealthy few tend to rule. Average citizens lose political power. Democracy declines.”

Benjamin Page (1939) Professor of Decision Making

Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (University of Chicago Press: 2017), p. 19

Money, Democracy, Suffering, Wealth

“Let me tell you the story of the most successful organism of all time: this is the story of the parasite. … Early on, evolution branched into two distinct paths: independent organisms—those that exist on their own in the natural world—and parasites—organisms that live on other organisms. And it was, by far, the parasites that proved the more successful of the two branches. Today, for every independent organism in nature, there exist three parasites. … These two strains of evolution have been locked in a primordial arms race, constantly evolving to best each other for supremacy of this planet. As parasites evolve to perfect their systems against a species of host, the host evolves to evade their attack. Scientists call this theory of an eternal genetic struggle the Red Queen Hypothesis—a name taken from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 31: Red Queen Hypothesis, Character: Sobol

World, Nature, Time, Success

“A critical sense of style and of poetic form is not easy to attain, nor is it of first importance for the younger, or, indeed, for any student of Virgil. Wide open to anyone who is willing to learn is the richer knowledge of Virgil as a poet who loved his country and who loved also that humanity which existed before Rome, exists today within ourselves, and will exist long after our own civilization, like that of Virgil's Rome, has become a matter of "ancient history." It is true that the longer one has lived the better one can appreciate a poem which is concerned with life. But the gain that comes to us with the years depends, partly at least, upon the riches we have been willing to extract from literature, which is the experience of other men and women written out. In youth's search for this treasure the Aeneid will be at once a fair haven and a port of departure.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Introduction to The Aeneid of Virgil (Chicago and New York: Scott Foresman and Company, 1916), p. 45; partially quoted in School and Home Education, Vol. 35 (1916), p. 172

Love, Life, Women, Men

“This is not like any other policy issue. This will determine the nature of our country over the next decades in how we settle this. Either we’re going to add to the anxiety and all this hate-filled back and forth, or we find an economic solution for this country moving forward.”

Dave Brat (1964) American economist and professor at Randolph–Macon College

Rep. Dave Brat: 2018 DACA Amnesty Fight ‘Will Determine the Nature of Our Country’ — ‘If We Fail on This, Just Picture Europe’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/12/30/rep-dave-brat-2018-daca-amnesty-fight-will-determine-the-nature-of-our-country-if-we-fail-on-this-just-picture-europe/ (December 30, 2017)

Hate, Nature, Country

“For a great leader, colleague, friend, or parent to be his best, he has to acknowledge his worst. Throughout my life I've met plenty of superheroes, but the strongest and most effective among them were simply human and knew they weren't perfect. They were the men and women who, like my father, believed in their duty to country and sacrificed for others without hesitation. They all had their strengths and weaknesses. They excelled at times; they stumbled at times. But the great ones always made sure they could walk tall by recognizing their own enemy within and confronting it.”

Ann E. Dunwoody (1953) U.S. Army, first four-star general in U.S. military history

Source: A Higher Standard (2015), p. 72

Life, Women, Men, Parent

“There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall "inherit the earth." Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume V, part IX, chapter XI (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

Men, Peace

“Stewart: Living. Living. Everyday living. At home, in the garden, around the house, with the kids, um, on vacation, and it has always been for me a very serious subject. But to persuade other people that it's a serious subject, not my readers, not my, not my followers, I don't want to call them followers, my friends, but to persuade…”

Martha Stewart (1941) American businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former fashion model

On Charlie Rose, 15 September 1995

People, Home, Housing

“Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842).

Truth

“There were other fellow-sufferers, lower-case ones: the thousands who were either killed, maimed or bereaved by the devotees of the Irish Republic in Mr Sands's organization, the Provisional IRA. Those other dead, however, being the wrong kind, are implicitly excluded from what is seen as a celestial tête-à-tête.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008) Irish politician

Passion & Cunning; Essays on Nationalism, Terrorism and Revolution

Suffering, Dead

“She turned out to be the wife of a man who was then the prime minister of a major country. I'd heard stories about this lady, but I never thought much of them until that night. We met at the house of the friend who'd phoned me. After we'd all chatted for a while in the living room, the four of us who already knew each other drifted out to the kitchen, leaving Ben and Madame X in the living room to get better acquainted. Which they did. In fact, when we drifted back in, about ten minutes later, she and Ben were involved in an incredibly torrid scene on the couch. I remember standing there and thinking to myself, "Well, Donald, you're not in Queens anymore."”

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

Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990), p. 52
1990s

Thinking, Housing, Night, Country

“I didn't care as an ex-ballet dancer wrote and told me she had seen the production and fallen in love with my legs. She said that in other circumstances she could have lived happily with my legs but that she only had a small flat in Holland Park.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Love

“"Ones I promised the fans, that, if I have an opportunity, I will come back to Peterburg. That's what I did. Though I had enough other offers.", Tymoschuk talking after the return to Zenit, 2013.”

Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (1979) Ukrainian footballer

http://www.sports.ru/football/149585307.html. (2013)

“I am neither I
nor Other,
both I and other…”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 26

“Our appetite for meat leads to widespread, horrific cruelty to animals—chickens pressed wing-to-wing into filthy sheds and debeaked, for example. And since I've always espoused creative nonviolence as the fundamental gospel value, my vegetarianism helps me not to participate in the vicious torture and destruction of billions of cows, chickens, and so many other creatures. These chickens never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything natural. … Animals have feelings, they suffer; they have needs and desires. They were created by God to breathe fresh air, raise their families, peck in the grass, or root in the soil. Today's farms don't let them do anything God designed them to do. Animal scientists attest that farm animals have personalities and interests, that chickens and pigs can be smarter than dogs and cats. I like that even Jesus identified himself as “a mother hen who longs to gather us under her wings.””

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

They Will Inherit the Earth (2018)

God, Family, Dogs, Feeling

“According to the ancient doctrines, the soulless elemental spirits were evolved by the ceaseless motion inherent in the astral light. Light is force, and the latter is produced by the will. As this will proceeds from an intelligence which cannot err, for it has nothing of the material organs of human thought in it, being the superfine pure emanation of the highest divinity itself — (Plato's "Father") it proceeds from the beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term human races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to some other of the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in the matrix out of the bodies of a certain class of these elemental beings which have passed away in the invisible worlds.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

World, Law, Intelligence, Light

“First one should write no more or no less letters than the sound of the word requires. Second, one should write as one speaks and not try to pay attention to the style of other writers, particularly academicians.”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Preface to Lehrreicher Geschicht-Herold
Other Quotes

“As in the other cases discussed, our primary concern here is not to establish the facts with regard to postwar Indochina, but rather to investigate their refraction through the prism of Western ideology, a very different task.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, pp. 139-140.

“Even when altruism is allowed (as, for example, in Gary Becker's model of rational allocation), it is assumed that the altruistic actions are undertaken because they promote each person's own interests; there are personal gains to the altruist's own welfare, thanks to sympathy for others. No role is given to any sense of commitment about behaving well or to pursuing some selfless objective. All this leaves out, on the one hand, the evil passions that early theorists of capitalism contrasted with self-interest and, on the other, the social commitments that Kant analyzed in The Critique of Practical Reason and that Adam Smith discussed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

1990s, Foreword to The Passions and the Interests (1996)

Sense, Passion, Evil, Personality

“We must begin to trust each other if this country is to progress the way we want it to. But before that we have to lay the preparatory work to engender that trust by building relationships every day.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening address, Pacific Islands Political Studies Association (PIPSA), 24 November 2005.

Way, Country

“I hope that with our music we can inspire other people to be creative and to use their imagination, because it is something that is so lacking nowadays. You have virtual reality, MTV, video games and VCR's. Nobody really wants to think about things or create things. You have programs on a computer which will write a poem for you.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

As quoted in Kerrang! (14 December 1996).
1990s

People, Hope, Music, Imagination

“Around 1650 I came across the mathematical writings of Torricelli, where among other things, he expounds the geometry of indivisibles of Cavalieri. …His method, as taught by Torricelli… was indeed all the more welcome to me because I do not know that anything of that kind was observed in the thinking of almost any mathematician I had previously met.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Arithmetica Infinitorum (1656)

Mathematics, Thinking

“As for principles of law, he should know those which are necessary in the case of buildings having party walls, with regard to water dripping from the eaves, and also the laws about drains, windows, and water supply. And other things of this sort should be known to architects, so that… they may be careful not to leave disputed points for the householders to settle after the works are finished, and so that in drawing up contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 10

Law, Water, Drawing

“Mathematics, like music and poetry, is a creation of the mind; … the primary task of the mathematician, like that of any other artist, is to extend man's mental horizon by representation and interpretation.”

Graham Sutton (1903–1977) Welsh scientist

Mathematics in Action (1954) page 1

Music, Mathematics

“Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, First State of the Union Address (1923)

People, Color, Exercises, Suffering

“Except for cases of pathological incapacity, one can and must communicate, and thereby contribute in a useful and easy way to the peace of others and oneself, because silence, the absence of signals, is itself a signal, but an ambiguous one, and ambiguity generates anxiety and suspicion. To say that it is impossible to communicate is false; one always can.”

Primo Levi book The Drowned and the Saved

The Drowned and the Saved (1986)

Peace, Way, Communication, Silence

“All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to William McKinley (27 December 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Men, Hostility, Support, Hurt

“Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

Misattributed

Way

“The last piece of advice I shall venture to offer the Liberal party is this, that they shall not dissociate themselves, even indirectly or unconsciously, or by any careless words, from the new sentiment of Empire which occupies the nation. To many the word "Empire" is suspect as indicating aggression and greed and violence and the characteristics of other empires that the world has known; but the sentiment that is represented now by Empire in these islands has nothing of that in it. (Cheers.) It is a passion of affection and family feeling, of pride and of hopefulness; and the statesman, however great he may be, who dissociates himself from that feeling must not be surprised if the nation dissociates itself from him.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Cheers
Speech at Chesterfield (16 December 1901), reported in The Times (17 December 1901), p. 10.

World, Family, Hope, Feeling

“The mere management of arms, though essentially requisite, was not sufficient of itself to form an accomplished knight in the times of chivalry; it was necessary for him to be endowed with beauty, as well as with strength and agility of body; he ought to be skilled in music, to dance gracefully, to run with swiftness, to excel in wrestling, to ride well, and to perform every other exercise befitting his situation. To these were to be added urbanity of manners, strict adherence to the truth, and invincible courage. Hunting and hawking skilfully were also acquirements that he was obliged to possess, and which were usually taught him as soon as he was able to endure the fatigue that they required.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxiv
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Chivalry

Truth, Beauty, Music, Exercises

“Tonight, I should watch the sun set, and think of the impending darkness as a metaphor for my wasted life: once it was bright, and full of potential, and now it is dark and hopeless and bleak. I should not make the mistake of thinking that the moon and the stars represent slim glimmers of hope, or evidence that there is light on the other side. Even if there is light somewhere I will never walk in it again.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

March 25
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Life, Hope, Star, Thinking

“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 66.
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Men, Books, Search, Business

“Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does, and my pretensions to infer from what your body does to what your mind does all collapse, since the premises for such inferences are either inadequate or unknowable.”

Gilbert Ryle book The Concept of Mind

Source: The Concept of Mind (1949), Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (10) Solipsism

Exercises, Knowledge, Problem, Personality

“It happened fortunately that during this period of turmoil the guidance of the Christian Church, the one powerful and permanent institution, was chiefly in the hands of the splendid order of St. Benedict. This saint… seeing that idleness was the besetting danger of monastic establishments, founded at Monte Cassino… a model abbey, in which industry was the daily rule. Among other employments, reading and writing were approved as powerful agents in distracting the mind from unholy thoughts, and in Benedictine monasteries the mechanical exercise of copying mss. became one of the regular occupations.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

Exercises, Reading

“I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Source: The Man Who Studied Yoga (1956), Ch. 5

Love, People, Art, Effort

“How will the cessation of war purchases of planes, guns, tanks, and ships … affect the national level of employment? How many new jobs will be created by the consumers’demand for an additional one million of passenger cars, how many of these jobs can be expected to be located in the automobile industry itself, and how many in other industries such as Steel and the Chemicals, the Coal and the Petroleum industries? How much additional freight traffic and revenue can the American railroads expect to derive from every billion dollars worth spent on post-war housing construction?”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 141: as cited in: Frits Bos, " Three centuries of macro-economic statistics http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35391/1/Three_centuries_macroeconomic_statistics.pdf." (2011).

War, Cars, Housing

“Disciple: Lord, what is true detachment?
Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God, Happiness, People, Truth

“My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie: Les servir toutes, n'en aimer qu'une.
Le lys dans la vallée (1836), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, part II: First Love.

Love, Women

“Edwin Fischer was, on the concert platform, a short, leonine, resilient figure, whose every fiber seemed to vibrate with elemental musical power. Wildness and gentleness were never far from each other in his piano-playing, and demonic outbursts would magically give way to inner peace. It was as little trouble to him (as Alfred Polgar once said of an actor) to lose himself as to find himself.
His playing of slow movements was full of an unselfconsciousness beside which the music-making of others, famous names included, seemed academic or insincere. With Fischer, one was in more immediate contact with the music: there was no curtain before the soul when he communicated with the audience. One other musician, Furtwangler, conveyed to the same degree this sensation of music not being played, but rather happening by itself.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

As cited in: Ruth Hanna Sachs, ‎D. E. Heap, ‎Joyce Light (2005). White Rose History, Volume II (Academic Version). p. 366

Peace, Music, Way, Soul

“"One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?"
Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl.
He asked: "You really want an answer?"
"I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one."
"The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being — yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe. The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some kind, a benevolent ruling force to maintain that sort of order."”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967)

God, Thinking, Universe

“Crowds of silent voices whisper in our ears, transforming the nature of what we see and hear. Some are those of childhood authorities and heroes; others come from family and peers. The strangest emerge from beyond the grave.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Source: Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), Ch.8 Reality is a Shared Hallucination

Family, Nature, Childhood

“Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, "I just want to be entertained." This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn't make us philosophically incompatible. It just means we shouldn't go to movies together.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Prologue.
Straight Man (1997)

People, Truth, Idea, Question

“It is extremely unlikely that I will ever be one of the richest people in the world. Almost all rich people were born rich, and almost all of them marry other rich people, and almost all of them hold onto almost all of their money, to pass on to their kids. Money doesn't appear out of nowhere—the more they have, the less for me. Life is a "zero sum game," and I am the zero.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

November 1
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Life, Money, People, World

“It is probable that democracy owes more to Nonconformity than to any other single movement.”

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

Part IV, Ch. 4
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Democracy

“People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 41
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

People, Lie, Winter

“Sometimes I pick up a magazine and read a piece of film criticism — to the end only if I like it. I don't like those which are too free with praise because their reasons seem wrong and that annoys me. Critics who attack me do so for such contradictory reasons that they confuse me, and I am afraid that if I am influenced by one, I will sin according to the standards of the other.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Reading

“By teaching others you will learn yourself.”

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

Aphorisms

Learning

“One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system. Yes, that's about cleaning up expenses, yes, that's about reforming parliament, and yes, it's about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.
But I believe it's also something else — it's about being honest about what government can achieve. Real change is not what government can do on its own, real change is when everyone pulls together, comes together, works together, when we all exercise our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, to our communities and to others. And I want to help try and build a more responsible society here in Britain, one where we don't just ask what are my entitlements but what are my responsibilities, one where we don't ask what am I just owed but more what can I give, and a guide for that society that those that can should and those who can't we will always help.
I want to make sure that my Government always looks after the elderly, the frail, the poorest in our country.
We must take everyone through us on some of the difficult decisions that we have ahead.
Above all it will be a Government that is built on some clear values, values of freedom, values of fairness and values of responsibility. I want us to build an economy that rewards work, I want us to build a society with stronger families and stronger communities and I want a political system that people can trust and look up to once again.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2010, First speech as UK Prime Minister (2010)

People, Family, Exercises, Communication

“I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason, and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this world; one reason, which ancient piety could well define: That you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him; that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in respect of him; aim thitherward, with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul, thitherward, and not elsewhither at all! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry you beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves incapable of maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law of God is with regard to a man; make that your human law, or I say it will be ill with you, and not well!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

God, World, Justice, Law

“The artist makes art not to save mankind but to save himself. Every benevolent comment by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 29

Art, Reality

“One of the interesting byways in this whole situation (it was perhaps more than a byway) was the conviction expressed when the [Suez Canal] Users' Association was created and the principles established for the international operation of the canal. The Users were absolutely confident, rather arrogantly so, that the Egyptians could not possibly run the canal. They could not produce the pilots, and would have to appeal to the other nations. The Users had only to sit back and the Egyptians would be on their knees saying: "Please run the canal for us." That, of course, did not happen. The canal was run just as efficiently after the Egyptian take-over as in the past. I remember a Norwegian shipowner saying: "Don't worry too much about the details of international control. They'll have to come to us in a few weeks and beg us to run the canal for them because it is a major source of their revenue and they want to make money out of it."”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

The Egyptians made more money from it than ever did the Suez Canal Company.
Memoirs, Volume Two
Source: NB: ghost-written post-mortem by Munro and Inglis

Money, Confidence, Past

“[W]e do live in a conceptual trough that encourages such yearning for unknown and romanticized greener pastures of other times. The future doesn't seem promising, if only because we can extrapolate some disquieting present trends into further deterioration: pollution, nationalism, environmental destruction, and aluminum bats. Therefore, we tend to take refuge in a rose-colored past […]. I do not doubt the salutary, even the essential, properties of this curiously adaptive human trait, but we must also record the down side. Legends of past golden ages become impediments when we try to negotiate our current dilemma.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Shoemaker and Morning Star", pp. 206–207
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Age, Color, Time, Past

“All systems are receding, not from any particular centre, but from each other: the whole system of galactic systems is expanding.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

“Antony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits, recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter for shame if he should be seen eating by others.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 45
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Life, Food, Soul, Sleep

“I confess I have often fancied myself transformed into some other person, and have felt a certian pleasure in seeing myself in my new chracter. One of our first amusements as children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as a change—to be fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but what we really are.”

Wilkie Collins book The Law and the Lady

The Law and the Lady [Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1875] ( p. 195) Also in Gothic Returns in Collins, Dickens, Zola, and Hitchcock by Eleanor Salotto [Springer, 2016, ISBN 1-137-11770-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=qPmE-w86r0AC&pg=PA195 ( p. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=recYDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA39) The Law and the Lady (1875)

Children, Pleasure, Imagination, Change

“To be sure, one value comes with every positive-law statute without reference to its content: Any statute is always better than no statute at all, since it at least creates legal certainty. But legal certainty is not the only value that law must effectuate, nor is it the decisive value. Alongside legal certainty, there are two other values: purposiveness and justice. In ranking these values, we assign to last place the purposiveness of the law in serving the public benefit.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law" (1946)

Justice, Law, Decision

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

Love, Life, Women, God

“How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

¿De qué otra forma se puede amenazar que no sea de muerte? Lo interesante, lo original, sería que alguien lo amenace a uno con la inmortalidad.
Borges, Biografía Verbal (1988) by Roberto Alifano, p. 23

Death