Quotes about other
page 79

“We’ve got to show that if you say “yes I condemn terror – but the are inferior”, or “violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter” – then you too are part of the problem. Unwittingly or not, and in a lot of cases it’s not unwittingly, you are providing succour to those who want to commit, or get others to commit to, violence.”

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

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)

Problem, Suicide, Parting

“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Page 159
The Doors of Perception (1954)

“The immediate occasion for alarm is the government's announcement that British contractors for supplying armaments to our armed forces must in future share the work with what are called ‘European firms’, meaning factories situated on the mainland of the European continent. I ask one question, to which I believe there is no doubt about the answer. What would have been the fate of Britain in 1940 if production of the Hurricane and the Spitfire had been dependent upon the output of factories in France? That a question so glaringly obvious does not get asked in public or in government illuminates the danger created for this nation by the rolling stream of time which bears away the generation of 1940, the generation, that is to say, of those who experienced as adults Britain's great peril and Britain’s great deliverance. Talk at Bruges or Luxembourg about not surrendering our national sovereignty is all very well. It means less than nothing when the keys to our national defence are being handed over: an island nation which no longer commands the essential means of defending itself by air and sea is no longer sovereign…The safety of this island nation reposes upon two pillars. The first is the impregnability of its homeland to invasion by air or sea. The second is its ability and its will to create over time the military forces by which the last conclusive battle will be decided. Without our own industrial base of military armament production neither of those pillars will stand. No doubt, with the oceans kept open, we can look to buy or borrow from the other continents; but to depend on the continent of Europe for our arms is suicide.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Birmingham branch of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Association (18 February 1989), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), pp. 49-50
1980s

Fate, Question, Suicide, Time

“Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans. Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Subsidies Distort the Housing Market, September 10, 2003 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr091003.htm 2000s, 2001-2005

Pain, Loss, Housing

“The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843) Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/60/12260.html, vol. 1, letter 34

Women, Men, Children, Education

“Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton" (1811–1812)

People

“In what people irritatingly call "iconic" terms, Bin Laden certainly had no rival. The strange, scrofulous quasi-nobility and bogus spirituality of his appearance was appallingly telegenic, and it will be highly interesting to see whether this charisma survives the alternative definition of revolution that has lately transfigured the Muslim world. The most tenaciously lasting impression of all, however, is that of his sheer irrationality. What had the man thought he was doing? Ten years ago, did he expect, let alone desire, to be in a walled compound in dear little Abbottabad?…Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states…. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day…It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust. Well, he and his fellow psychopaths did succeed in killing thousands in North America and Western Europe, but in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2011-05-02
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/death_of_a_madman.html
Death of a Madman
Slate
1091-2339
2010s, 2011

Death, People, World, Way

“We bow our heads in worship on this day and give thanks to the Almighty for the bounty He has bestowed upon us over the past year. We raise our voices in holy gladness to celebrate the victory of the risen Christ over the terrible forces of death. Easter is a joyful festival! It is a celebration because it is indeed a festival of hope! Easter marks the renewal of life! The triumph of the light of truth over the darkness of falsehood! Easter is a festival of human solidarity, because it celebrates the fulfilment of the Good News! The Good News borne by our risen Messiah who chose not one race, who chose not one country, who chose not one language, who chose not one tribe, who chose all of humankind! Each Easter marks the rebirth of our faith. It marks the victory of our risen Saviour over the torture of the cross and the grave. Our Messiah, who came to us in the form of a mortal man, but who by his suffering and crucifixion attained immortality. Our Messiah, born like an outcast in a stable, and executed like criminal on the cross. Our Messiah, whose life bears testimony to the truth that there is no shame in poverty: Those who should be ashamed are they who impoverish others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being persecuted: Those who should be ashamed are they who persecute others. Whose life proclaims the truth that there is no shame in being conquered: Those who should be ashamed are they who conquer others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being dispossessed: Those who should be ashamed are they who dispossess others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being oppressed: Those who should be ashamed are they who oppress others.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

At his speech in Moria, on 3 April 1994
1990s, Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference (1994)

Life, Death, Truth, Faith

“I can hardly describe the discord produced by the comparison of the retouched part of the painting and the part left untouched, the former having lost entirely the immediacy and brio of the brushwork and the latter the mastery of sensitive and discerning touches... For it is true that the more one retouches under the pretext of restoration, the more harm one does, and even the artists themselves, were they able to return, would not able to retouch their painting perfectly on account of the necessary change in the hue of pigments over time… No painting by Titian should be relined, nor any paintings by a number of other painters.... and, even when it is possible, the operation is more likely to result in deterioration than in improvement of the painting.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

from his Letters 263-264. circa 1801; in Goya, A life in Letters, edited and introduced by Sarah Simmons; translations by Philip Troutman, London, Pimlico, 2004
Early 1801 - Goya was then First Painter of the Court - the artist is sent to check the results of some restoration operated on works belonging to the Spanish crown. His 263-264 letters reveal the total opposition of Goya against any cleaning or restoration of older paintings
1800s

Change, Time, Parting, Painting

“The intellectual world is divided into two classes — dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity

World

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

People, World, Forgiveness, Parent

“A word to Sen. Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it -- we'll go at it over the next two months -- you know that's the nature of this business -- and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and my admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, and that's an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights. No country -- no country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Sen. Obama and his supporters for their achievement.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

People, Business, Support, Nature

“… a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, … a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence,… which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles.”

Georges Duhamel book Scènes de la vie future

describing cinema, Scènes de la vie future (1930), p. 58

Hope, Angels, Star, Intelligence

“There is an outmoded Burmese proverb still recited by men who wish to deny that women too can play a part in bringing necessary change and progress to their society: "The dawn rises only when the rooster crows." But Burmese people today are well aware of the scientific reasons behind the rising of dawn and the falling of dusk. And the intelligent rooster surely realizes that it is because dawn comes that it crows and not the other way round. It crows to welcome the light that has come to relieve the darkness of night. It is not the prerogative of men alone to bring light to this world: women with their capacity for compassion and self-sacrifice, their courage and perseverance, have done much to dissipate the darkness of intolerance and hate, suffering and despair.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Women, Men, Hate, People

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Children, People, Truth, Lie

“Well, I once wrote in - it's in Joan Mitchell Paints a Picture, as I remember, Irving Sandler, a long time ago, that I hated the word 'Nature' with a capital 'N.'... But now I accept it, I suppose. I mean, I really like trees and flowers and dogs and all that much more than.... a lot of other people [do]... You know, I really do get pleasure out of... Great pleasure. Out of just looking at... But I have fun here [New York] too, you know.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

Hate, People, Pleasure, Dogs

“She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

The Rose and the Ring http://www.gutenberg.org/files/897/897-h/897-h.htm#2H_4_0004 (1855), Ch. 2.

People, Princess

“You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred—like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 2, "The Three-personal God"
Mere Christianity (1952)

God, Religion, Way, Science

“Those communities who adopted the new rules and, in doing so, infringed upon deeply embedded natural feelings became the successful ones, the ones who multiplied because they were more prosperous and were able to attract people from other groups.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Knowledge, Evolution and Society (1983), "Coping with Ignorance", "The Reactionary Nature of the Socialist Conception"

People, Feeling, Communication, Nature

“In other words, it is my view that the brain is preprogrammed to feel good (i. e., to seek a sense of well-being/gratification). This is what I term the gratification principle. This usually occurs as the result of instinctive salient/relevant acts or what we normatively decide are salient/relevant acts.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.110

Feeling, Sense

“The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. I take a very different view. I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud of than which we should be ashamed.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture

History

“[About the Swiss] The nice Germans, Yeah. Or as they like to say, the other white race. Now, I have only one question. How can you trust an army, how butch is an army that has a wine opener on its knife? "Many of you have never opened Chardonnay under fire! First, you pull the cork out, sniff it, say, 'Meat or fish?', and throw! (Military cadence) I don't know, but I've been told, Chardonnay must be served cold! Ja!"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)

Question, Fish, Wine

“And so it is, seven years nearly after the War, that we yet see this prolonged and intensified depression, and this horrible figure of unemployment…We stand to-day at a point where, roughly speaking, one out of every ten of the insured population is out of work…But there is no direct remedy from the State alone. There can be no direct remedy by private men alone. Nothing can be done unless we can all pull together with a will. And I am—and I speak seriously—quite profoundly thankful that the Labour Party have been in office, and for this reason: that they now know that they, no more than any other Government, have been able to produce a panacea that would remedy unemployment. And in their hearts they must admit that they have no remedy which can be guaranteed to cure this disease and at the same time maintain unimpaired the international position and power of the British Empire.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Birmingham (5 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp 30-31.
1925

Men, War, Disease, Time

“In the first televised presidential debate, Nixon thought he was upholding some puritan gravitas by refusing makeup; by choosing the citizen’s black suit; choosing the poor man’s version of natural aristocracy. Nixon was easily the more able in his grasp of history and the workings of government. John F. Kennedy, gold-dusted and ghostwritten, appeared completely natural. Nixon perspired. In an instant, I saw what many other Americans saw that night: Harvard College will always beat Whittier College in America. The game is fixed and there is nothing to be done about it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

History, Game, Nature, Appearance

“General Marshall was "impatient with a type of nonsense particularly prevalent in the State Department known as 'kicking the problem around.' All of us who have work with General Marshall have reported a recurring outburst of his: 'Don't fight the problem, gentlemen, solve it!' With him the time to be devoted to analysis of a problem, to balancing 'on the one hand' against 'on the other hand,' was definitely limited. The discussion he wanted was about plans of action"”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Problem, Time, Fight

“Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist.
Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

People, Beauty, Thinking

“But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Personality

“Enforced solitude, as in solitary confinement, is a terrible and disorienting punishment, but freely chosen solitude is an immense blessing. To be out of the rattle and clang of quotidian life, to be away from the garbage of other people's amusements and the overflow of their unwanted subjectivities, is the essential escape. Solitude is, beyond question, one of the worlds great gifts and an indispensable aid to creativity, no matter what level that creation may be hatched at.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Life, People, World, Question

“And know that if I knew
all of the answers I would
Not hold them from you. You'd
Know all the things that I'd know
We told each other, there is no other way.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

No Other Way.
Song lyrics, In Between Dreams (2005)

Way

“I didn't speak any English when I arrived here [but] I was very good at drinking. [It was my] third day in the U. S., so I talked to the other students, 'Let's have a drink.' They said, 'How can you get the drinks? We are not allowed?' And I said, 'I can buy it in Chinatown.' So I bought it and we drank in my room and we get crazy all night long and they don't have enough tolerance for that, so they all starting throwing up. Suddenly there came four or five ambulances and they kept asking, 'Hey, why, did you do that?”

Psy (1977) South Korean singer

My English was really horrible, so the only words I had were, 'Not me!
Ibid.

Drink, Night

“In other words: Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing. Against the revolution, nothing, because the revolution also has its rights, and the first right of the revolution is the right to exist, and no one can oppose the revolution's right to exist. Inasmuch as the revolution embodies the interests of the people, inasmuch as the revolution symbolizes the interests of the whole naion, no one can justly claim a right to oppose it.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

People

“Okay, time for me to rain on this parade. I didn’t know he had kids. Young kids. This alters the mix considerably. This makes him an asshole. Cops and firemen, to name but two, place their lives on the line every day to protect others. There was nothing Steve Irwin was doing that he could not have done—as did, say, David Attenborough—without putting his life at risk. This takes this from tragedy to stupidity, and, worse, irresponsibility.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=14104&PN=1&totPosts=25
On the death of Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter"

Life, Stupidity, Time

“The capitalists of a country which manages to capture foreign markets from other countries are able to increase their profits at the expense of the capitalists of the other countries. Similarly, a colonial metropolis may achieve an export surplus through investment in its dependencies.”

Michał Kalecki (1899–1970) Polish economist

Source: Theory of Economic Dynamics (1965), Chapter 3, The Determinants of Profits, p. 51

Dependency, Country

“If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

Adams first coined the phrase http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/97/dream/thedream.html "the American dream" in The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 404

Life, Dreams, Cars, Birth

“You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Perelandra

Perelandra (1943)

Soul, Thinking

“I think, How clever time works, overlapping people's lives at certain stages, and as some eyes are waking up, others are already closing, securing the continuity of the world. My mother and I were connected for twelve years. She also lived during a time I didn't exist. And I, in turn, must now keep living when she does not. And yet my father, who still shares the same wheel of time, is more like my parallel line.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

People, World, Thinking, Time

“Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.”

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

Part IV, Ch. 2
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

“…I don't like to make judgments about what people like sexually. Some people like one sex, or the other, or they like fat people, or they like to be tied up, whatever. That's fine. Whatever people like is fine by me. I think that's important, too, because in this country a lot of people want to make laws about that and I'm very much against that. Making certain kinds of sex illegal… To me that's immoral, to illegalize things that people want to do. Same with religious things. I think people should be able to believe whatever they want to believe. I think that when governments try to get involved with that sort of stuff, you're really destroying people's souls. I don't make statements like that in my songs because that's not what I want. I don't want to make a political statement.”

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

Interview by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm, ca. 1992 ( link http://adaweb.com/~purple/kingm.html) Quotes from interviews

People, Law, Sex, Soul

“In the case of those who are killed in battle, as in all other cases of violent death, a spirit, during the first few moments, is in a state of bewilderment, and as though he were stunned. He does not know that he is dead and seems to be taking part in the action. It is only little by little that the reality of his situation becomes apparent to him.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 249.

Death, Reality, Parting, Dead

“In another place, this learned geographer (Strabo), in alluding to the tradition that Sicily had been separated by a convulsion from Italy, remarks, that at present the land near the sea in those parts was rarely shaken by earthquakes, since there were now open orifices whereby fire and ignited matters and waters escaped; but formerly, when the volcanoes of Etna, the Lipari Islands, Ischia, and others, were closed up, the imprisoned fire and wind might have produced far more vehement movements. The doctrine, therefore, that volcanoes are safety valves, and that the subterranean convulsions are probably most violent when first the volcanic energy shifts itself to a new quarter, is not modern.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Source: Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1, Chpt.2, p. 21

Learning, Water, Parting, Sea

“Despite overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic influence, there is a tendency for those with pronounced free-market views to reject the reality of global warming. The reason underpinning this is transparent – if one accepts human-mediated climate change, then supporting mitigating action should follow. But the demon of regulation is a bridge too far for many libertarians. Given that climate change affects everyone whether they consent to it or not, then unregulated use of natural resources infringes the property rights of others and is ideologically equivalent to trespass, so the tenuous property rights house of cards comes crashing down.When faced with this ideological dilemma, free-market advocates often resolve the cognitive dissonance by simply rejecting the reality of climate change, rather than acknowledging that their axiom is fundamentally flawed.”

David Robert Grimes (1985) researcher

"Libertarian ideology is the natural enemy of science," The Guardian August 29, 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/29/libertarian-ideology-natural-enemy-science

Support, Nature, Reality, Change

“The UK has two things, the arts and education, and both of them it pushes into the corner. It's the hugest, hugest mistake. Why do British ministers meet anyone from the arts other than to cut them? Compared to Germany, Britain has got quite a long way to go there, frankly.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Education, Art, Way

“I listened to a panel of judges and I'll comment on that — I will not comment on the statements made by, um, certainly one judge — but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they'd do what they should be doing. I mean it's so sad, they should be, you know, when you read something so simple, and so beautifully written, and so perfectly written — other than the one statement, of course, having to do with "he" or "she" — but when you read something so perfectly written, and so clear to anybody, and then you have lawyers and you watched, I watched last night in amazement, and I heard things that I couldn't believe, things that really had nothing to do with what I just read, and I don't ever want to call a court biased, so I won't call it biased, and we haven't had a decision yet, but courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right.”

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

2010s, 2017, February

Sadness, Justice, Decision, Reading

“Of two men sharing with a calf the milk of that calf's mother one eyes the calf with the thought that his tender flesh would provide good meat for him and his friends to feast upon at his approaching birthday. The other thinks of the calf as his brother of the teat and is filled with affection for the young beast and his mother. I say to you, the latter is truly nourished by that calf's meat; while the first is poisoned thereby. Aye, many things are put in the belly that should be put in the heart.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Men, Birthday, Thinking, Heart

“The number of compound nebulæ… being so considerable, it will follow, that if they owe their origin to the breaking up of some former extensive nebulosities of the same nature with those which have been shewn to exist at present, we might expect that the number of separate nebulæ should far exceed the former, and that moreover these scattered nebulas should be found not only in great abundance, but also in proximity or continuity with each other… Now this is exactly what by observation, we find to be the state of the heavens.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Nature

“Marty Rathbun, who served on the church's board and was a top lieutenant of Miscavige's, said he was often ordered by Miscavige to attack others.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

[Associated Press, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/22/national/main5102700.shtml, Scientology Smackdown: Report Claims Abuse - Leader Of Church Accused Of Hitting Subordinates, Ex-Officials Tell Newspaper, CBS News, CBS, June 22, 2009, 2010-07-03].
About

“All other great men are valued for their lives; He, above all, for His death, around which mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, God and man are reconciled; for the cross is the magnet which sends the electric current through the telegraph between earth and heaven, and makes both Testaments thrill, through the ages of the past and future, with living, harmonious, and saving truth.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 69.

Death, Men, God, Truth

“The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture (6 February 1990)

Idea, Change

“I was imprisoned in Concepción for a few days and then realeased. They didn't torture me, as I had feared; they didn't even rob me. But they didn't give me anything to eat either, or any kind of covering for the night, so I had to rely on the goodwill of other prisoners, who shared their food with me. In the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas. … I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me in Los Ángeles…”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

His experience of being imprisoned during the regime of Augusto Pinochet, as depicted in "Dance Card", p. 215
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Fear, School, Food, Sleep

“Under these circumstances, men lose sight of themselves and escape into the security of work or sociability or other forms of what Vidich and Bensman have called the “externalization of the self.” Vidich and Bensman sketch a troubling picture of such men: “What is left of the personality is the dulled, autonomic ritualization of behavior where … no disturbing interferences are allowed to enter into thought. … Personal and social life becomes barren, and the personal mechanics and daily routine of living become the end-all of existence. All types of activity whose operation is based upon an objective, external, automatic rhythm to which an individual can bend himself serve the function of enabling him to lose himself in an objective ceremony.””

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 69, quotation is from A. J. Vidich and J. Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society (New York), p. 315

Life, Men, Behavior, Personality

“How happy could I be with either,
Were t' other dear charmer away!”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Act II, scene ii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Variant: How happy could I be with either,
Were t' other dear charmer away!

Happiness

“You can't demand generational change on the one hand and expect 40 years of experience on the other.”

Federica Mogherini (1973) Italian politician

As quoted in "Yearning for Change: Italian Diplomacy Just Got Younger" by Walter Mayr, in Der Spiegel (4 July 2014).

Change

“There is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive – even in the weak, value-neutral sense. There will be times when increased size of some organ is favoured and other times when decreased size is favoured. Most of the time, average-sized individuals will be favoured in the population and both extremes will be penalised. During these times the population exhibits evolutionary stasis (i. e., no change) with respect to the factor being measured. If we had a complete fossil record and looked for trends in some particular dimension, such as leg length, we would expect to see periods of no change alternating with fitful continuations or reversals in direction – like a weathervane in changeable, gusty weather.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)

Sense, Change, Time, Weather

“Goul or ghul, in Arabic, signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses; hence it became the appellative of that species of monster which was supposed to haunt forests, cemeteries, and other lonely places, and believed not only to tear in pieces the living, but to dig up and devour the dead.”

Brian McNaughton (1935–2004) US author

Attributed to McNaughton online, this actually is a quote from an English edition of The History of the Caliph Vathek (1786) by William Thomas Beckford, as translated by Samuel Henley.
Misattributed

People, Sense, Tear, Dead

“A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else.”

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

1920s, Letter to Charles F. Gardner (1924)

Color, Decision

“This may be why New Yorkers instinctively avoid making eye contact with each other in crowded places, why they "look right through you," as dismayed visitors often complain. They are not looking right through you at all; they are discreetly avoiding an intrusion into your space. They sense the danger in a place where a one-degree temperature rise can mean an explosion.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Spaced In" (p.120)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Sense

“Christian practice is that evidence which confirms every other indication of true godliness.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 619.

“12 principles for a 21st century conservatism.
1. The fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid.
2. Peaceful social being is preferable to isolation and to war. In consequence, it justly and rightly demands some sacrifice of individual impulse and idiosyncrasy.
3. Hierarchies of competence are desirable and should be promoted.
4. Borders are reasonable. Likewise, limits on immigration are reasonable. Furthermore, it should not be assumed that citizens of societies that have not evolved functional individual-rights predicated polities will hold values in keeping with such polities.
5. People should be paid so that they are able and willing to perform socially useful and desirable duties.
6. Citizens have the inalienable right to benefit from the result of their own honest labor.
7. It is more noble to teach young people about responsibilities than about rights.
8. It is better to do what everyone has always done, unless you have some extraordinarily valid reason to do otherwise.
9. Radical change should be viewed with suspicion, particularly in a time of radical change.
10. The government, local and distant, should leave people to their own devices as much as possible.
11. Intact heterosexual two-parent families constitute the necessary bedrock for a stable polity.
12. We should judge our political system in comparison to other actual political systems and not to hypothetical utopias.”

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

Speech of Jordan Peterson at Carleton Place for the Conservative Party of Ontario <nowiki>[12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0</nowiki>] Concepts

War, People, Family, Peace

“Love of others begins with love of self.”

Robert Silverberg book A Time of Changes

Source: A Time of Changes (1971), Chapter 35 (p. 126)

Love

“And how does the God’s existence emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of continuity? Or have we not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head. As soon as I let it go – I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i. e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be – it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if only an instantaneous now, this "now" must be included in the reckoning.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 32

God, Behavior

“It strikes me that mathematical writing is similar to using a language. To be understood you have to follow some grammatical rules. However, in our case, nobody has taken the trouble of writing down the grammar; we get it as a baby does from parents, by imitation of others. Some mathematicians have a good ear; some not (and some prefer the slangy expressions such as 'iff'). That's life.”

Jean-Pierre Serre (1926) French mathematician

Jean-Pierre Serre in letter to David Goss, quoted in: David Goss. " Some Hints on Mathematical Style https://people.math.osu.edu/goss.3/hint.pdf," at people.math.osu.edu, accessed 08.2016

Life, Mathematics, Parent, Baby

“A person is known by the behavior he displays consistently. An experiment by Himmelfarb (1972) makes the important point that consistency in other persons' characterizations of an actor carries more weight if they are based on observations in dissimilar rather than similar situations. The other side of the coin is that a person's inconsistent behavior is attributed not to him but to circumstances.”

Harold Kelley (1921–2003) American psychologist & academic

Source: "Attribution theory and research." 1980, p. 465

Behavior, Personality

“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on — not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, American University speech

Hate, War, World, Peace

“I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution should have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Checking for Errors Before Run Time http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/41997404227dcc12 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, C++

Fear

“It is with considerable reluctance that I criticize the monetarists, because, though I consider their proposed monetary policy unfeasible, they are after all much more nearly right in their assumptions and prescriptions than the majority of present academic economists. The simplistic form of the quantity theory of money that they hold is not tenable; but they are overwhelmingly right in insisting on how much "money matters," and they are right in insisting that in most circumstances, and over the long run, it is the quantity of money that is most influential in determining the purchasing power of the monetary unit. Other things being equal, the more dollars that are issued, the smaller becomes the value of each individual dollar. So at the moment the monetarists are more effective opponents of further inflation than the great bulk of politicians and even putative economists who still fail to recognize this basic truth.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money, Truth

“Voluntary exchanges are by definition advantageous to their participants. Within this voluntary, mutually beneficial relationship, I give up an item I value less, for something I value more: a fee for the desired product or service. My trading partners, whose valuations are in complementary opposition to mine, reciprocate in kind. Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), there's nothing wrong with my running a trade deficit with Costco, my hair stylist or my GTI dealer, as I do—just as long as I pay for my purchases. However, the data demonstrate that Americans, in general, are not paying for their purchases.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump and Trade," http://praag.org/?p=21936Praag.org, March 12, 2016. 2010s, 2016

“We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Ce qui nous fait croire si facilement que les autres ont des défauts, c'est la facilité que l'on a de croire ce qu'on souhaite.
Variant translation: What makes us believe so easily that others have faults is the ease with which we believe what we hope for.
Maxim 25 from the Manuscrit de Liancourt.
Later Additions to the Maxims

“A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other's key.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

The Paradox Of Life
Grooks

Life, Box

“Until we command the exact same salary as every male counterpart, I feel a political desire to stand by other women. If we don’t stand together, that equality will never be fully realized, and that bothers me. I see very little in our culture, actually, of women necessarily standing up for one another. I think there’s still an underlying fear if one woman has the light shone upon her, it takes away from your light, which of course is not the case at all. But I think when you’re young, you maybe fear that.”

Shirley Manson (1966) Scottish singer and artist

Garbage's Shirley Manson on getting the band back together and kissing major labels goodbye, Sam Adams, The A.V. Club, 23 May 2012, 12 February 2015 http://www.avclub.com/article/garbages-shirley-manson-on-getting-the-band-back-t-75506,

Women, Fear, Feeling, Thinking

“The true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and good-will among men, are trying to show their antagonism and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must stand forward with our voice of protest, and say that religion is defeating its own legitimate object.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, in a meeting held to constitute a Theistic Association in London on 20th July 1870. See Universal Religion for full speech.

Men, God, Peace, Religion

“The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Individuality http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html (1873). Context: The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.

God, People, Truth

“The taste of self-inflicted suffering, of an evening trashed in spite, brought curious satisfactions. Other people stopped being real enough to carry blame for how you felt. Only you and your refusal remained. And like self-pity, or like the blood that filled your mouth when a tooth was pulled - the salty ferric juices that you swallowed and allowed yourself to savor - refusal had a flavor for which a taste could be acquired.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

The Corrections (2001)

People, Suffering

“They say use it, channel it. Do it, like there will be a sign, be an artist, you're so creative, do anything, you've got to do it, use it. Then, things like, and you've got to collect yourself, too. I mean, you know, make your hair more about yourself, self-respect. But I mean, ridiculous. You know why my doctor got so mad this time? He said, that scene, remember in the LSD bit, the only time I had it in that, sleeping with what's-his-name and having that sex bit go on while, it was very strange-mannered, but I certainly wasn't mortified. I mean, I humanly might be a little mortified knowing that a thousand other human beings would think it mortifying, but basically, me. So he thought that was a total lack of self-respect, which is wrong. Totally wrong.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Sex, Thinking, Sleep, Time

“Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach,
And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech,
Because suppose you eschew gossip and just say
Mr. Smith is in love with his wife.
Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life,
But suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever,
Why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), I Have It On Good Authority

Love, Life, Smile, Thinking

“There must be other leaps in life - as momentous as the "mirror stage" - that Lacan didn't mention. Some are universal; others, culturally particular. To understand that your parents are human (and not an element of the natural world), that they're separate from you, that they were children once, that they were born and came into the world, is another leap. It's as if you hadn't seen who they were earlier - just as, before you were ten months old, you didn't know it was you in the mirror. This happens when you're sixteen or seventeen. Not long after - maybe a year - you find out your parents will die. It's not as if you haven't encountered death already. But, before now, your precocious mind can't accommodate your parents' death except as an academic nicety - to be dismissed gently as too literary and sentimental. After that day, your parents' dying suddenly becomes simple. It grows clear that you're alone and always have been, though certain convergences start to look miraculous - for instance, between your father, mother, and yourself. Though your parents don't die immediately - what you've had is a realisation, not a premonition - you'll carry around this knowledge for their remaining decades or years. You won't think, looking at them, "You're going to die". It'll be an unspoken fact of existence. Nothing about them will surprise you anymore.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Life, Death, Children, World

“David Alton: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets his facts from. If it is from one of his friends on the national executive committee of the Labour Party, I suspect that the information is probably as spurious and ridiculous as most of the other things said in that body. I can assure him that what he said is certainly not the case, and I hope that he will withdraw that comment immediately.”

Dennis Skinner (1932) British politician

1980s

Hope

“[A certain Italian judge] declared in an interview that at night he has no need of sleeping pills since, with regards to the Law, his conscience is at peace. We believe him without further ado. But if he asked himself the same question with regards to Justice, I ask myself if his sleep would be equally untroubled. And we are after all aware that he'll never ask himself this question, and on the contrary it would seem to him totally odd. Because, for an Italian judge, the Law and Justice have nothing to do with each other.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Il testimone, p. 386.
2000s - 2010s

Peace, Justice, Law, Question

“Most people think of pterosaurs as "flying dinosaurs". When I was a boy, I remember the other kids called them "dinosaur-birds", but they were neither dinosaurs or birds. The first problem is that most people don't know any more about the fossil record than what they've seen in a few plastic pieces in a prehistoric playset. Not only do they typically think that all these things are dinosaurs, they might even think that these are all the fossil forms that are known. They have no idea how rich the fossil record is.”

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

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

People, Boy, Idea, Problem

“Everything seemed to happen when you were looking the other way.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 22 (p. 238)

Way

“Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the Devil. Other than that, though, it's been a good day.”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

Opening line
E=MO² (1985), A Fine How Ya Do

Love, Life, Time

“Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions. What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

108 - 110
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Love, Pain, Happiness, Pleasure

“Mill’s contempt for ancient India extends to the other Asian civilizations as well and... much of Mill’s framework has survived in the colonial and post-colonial Indology. For instance, his idea that the history of ancient India, like the history of other barbarous nations, has been the history of mutually warring small states, only occasionally relieved by some larger political entities established by the will of some particularly ambitious and competent individuals has remained with us in various forms till today.”

Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti (1941) Indian archaeologist

Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

War, History, Idea

“Resembles herself and no other.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Sol se stessa, et nulla altra, simiglia.
Canzone 160, line 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

“A crow when it sees some foodstuff, it crows, gathers other crows and shares it with them. Crows and fowl have a better social etiquette than a man.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Flowers of Wisdom

“Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to William Short http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fears-people-there-libertyquotation (1825) 1820s

People, Fear, Exercises

“We say to others only what we need to hear.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

“Successful people never forget what they love to do and are passionate about. They quickly learn to follow their own path and to make the right choices, no matter how crazy or unpopular they might appear to others. Just look at Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, who quit studying at a prestigious university to pursue his dreams.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Love, People, Dreams, Study

“In the Name of God, the Most Exalted, the Most Holy. All praise and glory befitteth the sacred and glorious court of the sovereign Lord, Who from everlasting hath dwelt, and unto everlasting will continue to dwell within the mystery of His Own divine Essence, Who from time immemorial hath abided and will forever continue to abide within His transcendent eternity, exalted above the reach and ken of all created beings. The sign of His matchless Revelation as created by Him and imprinted upon the realities of all beings, is none other but their powerlessness to know Him. The light He hath shed upon all things is none but the splendour of His Own Self. He Himself hath at all times been immeasurably exalted above any association with His creatures. He hath fashioned the entire creation in such wise that all beings may, by virtue of their innate powers, bear witness before God on the Day of Resurrection that He hath no peer or equal and is sanctified from any likeness, similitude or comparison. He hath been and will ever be one and incomparable in the transcendent glory of His divine being and He hath ever been indescribably mighty in the sublimity of His sovereign Lordship. No one hath ever been able befittingly to recognize Him nor will any man succeed at any time in comprehending Him as is truly meet and seemly, for any reality to which the term ‘being’ is applicable hath been created by the sovereign Will of the Almighty, Who hath shed upon it the radiance of His Own Self, shining forth from His most august station. He hath moreover deposited within the realities of all created things the emblem of His recognition, that everyone may know of a certainty that He is the Beginning and the End, the Manifest and the Hidden, the Maker and the Sustainer, the Omnipotent and the All-Knowing, the One Who heareth and perceiveth all things, He Who is invincible in His power and standeth supreme in His Own identity, He Who quickeneth and causeth to die, the All-Powerful, the Inaccessible, the Most Exalted, the Most High. Every revelation of His divine Essence betokens the sublimity of His glory, the loftiness of His sanctity, the inaccessible height of His oneness and the exaltation of His majesty and power. His beginning hath had no beginning other than His Own firstness and His end knoweth no end save His Own lastness.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

I, 1
The Persian Bayán

God, Fashion, Reality, Light

“If economists ruled the world, there would be no need for a World Trade Organization. The economist's case for free trade is essentially a unilateral case- that is, it says that a country serves its own interests by pursuing free trade regardless of what other countries may do.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"What should trade negotiators negotiate about?" Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1997)

World, Country

“I think Larry is right to notice that the contradictions are catching the allies up already. It's one of those cases where even before you begin bombing the children, the coalition is falling apart. And that's good news. And I'm very much in favor of it. Some Powell or other is messing up the war.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Panel on Public Domain at Duke University Law School, November 10, 2001 http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/mpegcast.html.

War, Children, Thinking

“You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who [has] different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can [disappear]. And the other people would take it, not giving support.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

Life, People, Idea, Support

“Probability theory is an ideal tool for formalizing uncertainty in situations where class frequencies are known or where evidence is based on outcomes of a sufficiently long series of independent random experiments. Possibility theory, on the other hand, is ideal for formalizing incomplete information expressed in terms of fuzzy propositions.”

George Klir (1932–2016) American computer scientist

Source: Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic (1995), p. 205 cited in: Flavio Comim, et al. (2008) The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications. p. 298.

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Death, Men, Forgiveness, Suffering

“One day I said to myself that it would be better to get rid of all that—melody, rhythm, harmony, etc. This was not a negative thought and did not mean that it was necessary to avoid them, but rather that, while doing something else, they would appear spontaneously. We had to liberate ourselves from the direct and peremptory consequence of intention and effect, because the intention would always be our own and would be circumscribed, when so many other forces are evidently in action in the final effect.”

Christian Wolff (1934) American composer

quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812

Appearance

“My main orientation is harmonic. Bill, besides having the harmonic structures that he did, had a control of the dynamic level of the piano and pedaling, which is ridiculously fantastic. I never saw a man make so many gradations from pianissimo to piano in my life. I can't do that. On the other hand, I think that what I do harmonically is somewhere other than where he was.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT453 (1992, 2006, 2014)

Life, Thinking

“If states do not act according to principles of justice, the injustices they perpetrate will harm not just other states but ultimately also their own national interest.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Neo-statecraft and Meta-geopolitics (2009), p.117

Justice