Quotes about other
page 95

James Nachtwey photo
Edward Thomas photo
Max Frisch photo

“Basically America (the USA) is not a warmongering but simply a commercial society: war as the continuation of business by other means.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Drafts for a Third Sketchbook (2013)

André Breton photo
Andrei Codrescu photo
José Mourinho photo

“I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur. He likes to watch other people. There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea. [about Arsene Wenger]”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2009/02/23/1122426/italy-v-england-10-classic-jose-mourinho-quotes
Chelsea FC

Poul Anderson photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Babe Ruth photo

“A man who works for another is not going to be paid any more than he is worth; you can bet on that. A man ought to get what he can earn. Don't make any difference whether it's running a farm, running a bank or running a show; a man who knows he's making money for other people ought to get some of the profits he brings in. It's business, I tell you. There ain't no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Responding to a reporter asking whether or not he believed that other players merited salaries comparable to his own (i.e. $52,000 a year, as per Ruth's newly signed 1922 contract), as quoted in "Have to Get More of 'Em,' Says Babe Ruth When He Hears of the Income Tax," in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 10, 1922)

Thomas Little Heath photo
John Banville photo
Carl Sagan photo
Italo Svevo photo

“Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain…in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space?”

La vita attuale è inquinata alle radici. L'uomo s'è messo al posto degli alberi e delle bestie ed ha inquinata l'aria, ha impedito il libero spazio. Può avvenire di peggio. Il triste e attivo animale potrebbe scoprire e mettere al proprio servizio delle altre forze. V'è una minaccia di questo genere in aria. Ne seguirà una grande chiarezza... nel numero degli uomini. Ogni metro quadrato sarà occupato da un uomo. Chi ci guarirà dalla mancanza di aria e di spazio?
Source: La coscienza di Zeno (1923), P. 364; p. 436.

Daniel Dennett photo
Ferenc Puskás photo
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Seba Johnson photo
Alexander Smith photo

“The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863).

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Carl Sagan photo

“Humans have evolved a leadership brain. Good leaders are people with a conscience who respect and reward all the four drives of other stakeholders [the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend], even as they respect and reward their own drives.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Paul R. Lawrence, quoted in: " The Drive to Acquire’s Impact on Globalization http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-drive-to-acquires-impact-on-globalization," at hbswk.hbs.edu, 23 august 2010.

Max Scheler photo

“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 54-55

Smokey Robinson photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Robert Spencer photo

“Europe could be Islamic by the end of the twenty-first century. … Will tourists in Paris in the year 2015 take a moment to visit the "mosque of Notre Dame" and the "Eiffel Minaret?" Through massive immigration and official dhimmitude from European leaders, Muslims are accomplishing today what they have failed to do at the time of the Crusaders: conquer Europe. If demographic trends continue, France, Holland, and other Western European nations could have Muslim majorities by middle of this century. … What Europe has long sown it is now reaping. In her book Eurabia, Bat Ye'or, the pioneering historian of dhimmitude, chronicles how this has come to pass. Europe, she explains, began thirty years ago to travel down a path of appeasement, accommodation, and cultural abdication in pursuit of shortsighted political and economic benefits. She observes that today, "Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment/secular elements, to a 'civilization of dhimmitude,' i. e., Eurabia: a secular-Muslim transitional society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing." … France and Germany have pursued a different strategy, attempting to establish the European Union as a global counterweight of the United States—a strategy that involves close cooperation with the Arab League.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, 2005, ISBN 0-89526-013-1, pp. 221-224 http://books.google.com/books?id=_7RD2jwMU2wC&pg=PA221

George Santayana photo
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh photo

“Do you still throw spears at each other?”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Said in 2002 to an Indigenous Australian businessman, as quoted in "Prince Philip's spear 'gaffe'" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1848813.stm, BBC News (1 March 2002)
2000s

Rick Baker photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Terry Eagleton photo

“Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of… revolutionary avant-gardism.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism, ch. 9 (1985)
1980s

Jane Roberts photo
Kage Baker photo
Richard Nixon photo
David Brooks photo
Vernon L. Smith photo
Robert Boyle photo
Jane Roberts photo
Paul Gauguin photo
Ma Ying-jeou photo

“I think mutual denial of each other’s sovereignty (between ROC and PRC) and mutual non-denial of respective jurisdictions would be more appropriate, but any proposal has its pros and cons, and I think it’s up for discussion.”

Ma Ying-jeou (1950) Taiwanese politician, president of the Republic of China

Ma Ying-jeou (2011) cited in: " ‘One China’ idea up for discussion: Ma http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2011/06/25/2003506626" in The Taipei Times, 25 June 2011.
Statement made during the interview with Apple Daily, 24 June 2011.
Strait issues

Naum Gabo photo
Anish Kapoor photo

“Red is a colour I’ve felt very strongly about. Maybe red is a very Indian colour, maybe it’s one of those things that I grew up with and recognise at some other level. Of course, it is the colour of the interior of our bodies. Red is the centre.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Anish kapoor in conversation with John Tusa, 2003 in "Anish Kapoor" by Royal Academy Organization.

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn photo
Jane Roberts photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Here is a well-known trajectory: You begin with a heartfelt desire to help other people and the conviction, however well or ill founded, that your guild or club or church is the coalition that can best serve to improve the welfare of others. If times are particularly tough, this conditional stewardship — I'm doing what's good for the guild because that will be good for everybody — may be displaced by the narrowest concern for the integrity of the guild itself, and for good reason: if you believe that the institution in question is the best path to goodness, the goal of preserving it for future projects, still unimagined, can be the most rational higher goal you can define. It is a short step from this to losing track of or even forgetting the larger purpose and devoting yourself singlemindedly to furthering the interests of the institution, at whatever costs. A conditional or instrumental allegiance can thus become indistinguishable in practice from a commitment to something "good in itself." A further short step perverts this parochial summum bonum to the more selfish goal of doing whatever it takes to keep yourself at the helm of the institution ("who better than I to lead us to triumph over our adversaries?")We have all seen this happen many times, and may even have caught ourselves in the act of forgetting just why we wanted to be leaders in the first place.”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Neil Gaiman photo
Gustav Landauer photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Madeleine Stowe photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Harper Lee photo

“…before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.”

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Steve Allen photo

“No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.”

Steve Allen (1921–2000) American comedian, actor, musician and writer

More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality (1993)

Naum Gabo photo

“Either build functional houses and bridges or create pure art or both. Don't confuse one with the other. Such art is not pure constructive art, but merely an imitation of the machine.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

quote, 1919; as cited in: Ruth Latta (1948) Naum Gabo. Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), p. 18
Here Gabo publicly criticized Tatlin's design for the 'Monument to the Third International' (1919)
1918 - 1935

Warren Farrell photo
Nelson Algren photo
A.E. Housman photo
R. G. Collingwood photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“All international investment agreements under negotiation should include a clear provision stipulating that in case of conflict between the human rights obligations of a State and those under other treaties, human rights conventions prevail”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on the adverse impacts of free trade and investment agreements on a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN General Assembly

Michael Swanwick photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo
John Denham photo

“But whither am I strayed? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built;
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

On Mr. John Fletcher's Works. Compare: "Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For every author would his brother kill", Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Prologues (republished in Dramatic Works, 1739); "Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne", Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 197.

Donald J. Trump photo

“It's not just jobs that are being lost to other countries. We are seeing whole industries vanish overseas.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), p. 85

Donald J. Trump photo
Gustave Courbet photo
André Maurois photo
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“Much like the French (or like ourselves, their apes),
Who with strange habit do disguise their shapes;
Who loving novels, full of affectation,
Receive the manners of each other nation.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation", William Shakespeare, Richard II, act ii. sc. 1.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Bel Kaufmanová photo
Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Bellamy Young photo
Zoey Deutch photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where the administrations that changed quite dramatically, the foreign policy, and it was working more like pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. Clinton did very little, W did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a message – sent numerous messages across the world. While people knew in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that America was there, America was consistent. Even if you have a change in the Oval Office, one party replaces another, you could rely on the United States. America was behind American allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a springtime to be an American enemy because this administration gives up everything to the enemies and betrays allies. And going back to George W. administration, it’s very popular to criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard many voices, even within the Republican Party, it’s just floating with the popular trend. First of all, I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that led to the destruction of dictatorship. I think his people had wrong expectations. When they saw the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after American invasion of Iraq and then the collapse of a few other dictatorships during the Arab Spring, they had expectations that next day, it would be a democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive because dictators succeeds the staying in power for so many years, not because he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to get out of poverty, but because he’s brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in destroying opposition, first political opposition and then freedom of press and remaining horizontal ties in the society. All the NGOs, anything that could represent not just a threat to him, but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent. It’s kind of a political desert. What do you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 – in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of dictatorship?”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Harvey Fierstein photo

“To the delight of millions of little children, the Santa in New York's great parade will be half of a same-sex couple. And guess who the other half will be? Me! Harvey Fierstein, nice Jewish boy from Bensonhurst, dressed in holiday finery portraying the one and only Mrs. Claus.”

Harvey Fierstein (1954) actor from the United States

Quoted in Mark J. Terrill, "'Hairspray' drag queen to play Mrs. Claus at Macy's parade," http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-11-27-parade-mrs-claus_x.htm Associated Press (2003-11-27)

Jeffrey Tucker photo

“An internal combustion engine is 'clearly' a system; we subscribe to this opinion because we know that the engine was designed precisely to be a system. It is, however, possible to envisage that someone (a Martian perhaps) totally devoid of engineering knowledge might at first regard the engine as a random collection of objects. If this someone is to draw the conclusion that the collection is coherent, forming a system, it will be necessary to begin by inspecting the relationships of the entities comprising the collection to each other. In declaring that a collection ought to be called a system, that is to say, we acknowledge relatedness. But everything is related to everything else. The philosopher Hegel enunciated a proposition called the Axiom of Internal Relations. This states that the relations by which terms are related are an integral part of the terms they relate. So the notion we have of any thing is enriched by the general connotation of the term which names it; and this connotation describes the relationship of the thing to other things… [There are three stages in the recognition of a system]… we acknowledge particular relationships which are obtrusive: this turns a mere collection into something that may be called an assemblage. Secondly, we detect a pattern in the set of relationships concerned: this turns an assemblage into a systematically arranged assemblage. Thirdly, we perceive a purpose served by this arrangement: and there is a system.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Decision and control: the meaning of operational research and management cybernetics, 1966, p. 242.

Thorstein Veblen photo
Alexander Bogdanov photo

“Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further, it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objectives of tektology are basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all other sciences, and of all human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method: that is, it is interested only in the mode of organization of this subject matter.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Variant: Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objective of tektology is basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all the other sciences and of all the human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method, that is, it is interested only in the modes of organization of this subject matter.
Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. iii

Jerome Frank photo
Giovanni della Casa photo
Donald Ervin Knuth photo

“The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

Jack Woehr. An interview with Donald Knuth http://www.drdobbs.com/an-interview-with-donald-knuth/184409858. Dr. Dobb's Journal, pages 16-22 (April 1996)

Thomas Carlyle photo

“War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.”

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

Quoted by Emma Goldman in her essay, "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", chapter five of Anarchism and Other Essays (2nd revised edition, 1911).
Attributed

James Russell Lowell photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Antoni Tàpies photo
John Gray photo