Quotes about path
page 11

Winston S. Churchill photo
Francis Parkman photo

“They’ll say you’re walking down the wrong path, if you’re walking down your path.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Dirán que andas por un camino equivocado, si andas por tu camino.
Voces (1943)

Felix Adler photo
Logan Pearsall Smith photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Earl Warren photo

“The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Speech at the Louis Marshall Award Dinner of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Americana Hotel, New York City (11 November 1962)
1960s

Amir Taheri photo
Eric Maisel photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“Grey was an ambitious man who always wished to lead, but his overt ambition during his youth made him unpopular. He lacked the warmth of personality that made Fox revered by his followers. Grey was respected but rarely loved. His achievements were few, but they were significant. He helped to keep liberal principles alive during the years of conflict with revolutionary France, and in 1832 he safeguarded the continuity of the British constitution into an era of increasingly rapid social and political change. In character he was a man of contradictions, headstrong but easily discouraged by failure, imperious but indecisive, cautious and introspective. He was at his best when in office, for he sought fame and reputation: in opposition he often became despondent. He was a man of principle and integrity, though not always successful in execution. His bearing and attitudes were aristocratic, and his instincts were fundamentally conservative. He was a whig of the eighteenth-century school, most at home among his deferential clients, tenants, and labourers at Howick, and he never came to terms with the new industrial society which was coming into being during his later years. It is greatly to his credit that his Reform Act, whatever its conservative purpose, smoothed the path for that new society to establish its dominance without destroying the old.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

E. A. Smith, ‘ Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey (1764–1845) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11526’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 8 Sept 2012.
About

Joseph Beuys photo

“Fat' traverses the path from a chaotically dispersed, undirected energy form to a form. Then it appears in the famous fat corner.... now [a wedge of fat in the angle between seat and back of the wooden old Chair, Beuys used in the fat-sculpture, like 'Stuhl mit Fett' (Fet Chair), 1964] intersects the human body in the region that houses certain emotional forces”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Beuys laughed, and so did everyone else of the public
In a public debate at the Kunstring (Artcircle) Folkwang in Essen, 1972; (Stachelhaus 1991, p. 71); as quoted in Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, Victoria Walters, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 29
1970's

Dinesh D'Souza photo

“America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the most virtuous nation on Earth. This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice and immorality in America. Some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty. Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option. Even amid the temptations of a rich and free society, they have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen. By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in this, because she is being compelled. Compulsion cannot produce virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like America's is not merely more prosperous, more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant; it is also morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes that America's enemies advocate.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Rollo May photo
Steven Erikson photo
Vincent Massey photo

“It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address at the Congress of the Association of the Universities of the British Commonwealth, Montreal, September 1, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Octavio Paz photo
Leon R. Kass photo

“Could technology, understood as the disposition and activity of mastery, turn out to be a stumbling block in the path of the master himself?”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Source: The Problem of Technology (1993), p. 9

Joseph Warton photo
Colleen Fitzpatrick photo
Thomas Young (scientist) photo

“This statement appears to us to be conclusive with respect to the insufficiency of the undulatory theory, in its present state, for explaining all the phenomena of light. But we are not therefore by any means persuaded of the perfect sufficiency of the projectile system: and all the satisfaction that we have derived from an attentive consideration of the accumulated evidence, which has been brought forward, within the last ten years, on both sides of the question, is that of being convinced that much more evidence is still wanting before it can be positively decided. In the progress of scientific investigation, we must frequently travel by rugged paths, and through valleys as well as over mountains. Doubt must necessarily succeed often to apparent certainty, and must again give place to a certainty of a higher order; such is the imperfection of our faculties, that the descent from conviction to hesitation is not uncommonly as salutary, as the more agreeable elevation from uncertainty to demonstration. An example of such alternations may easily be adduced from the history of chemistry. How universally had phlogiston once expelled the aërial acid of Hooke and Mayow. How much more completely had phlogiston given way to oxygen! And how much have some of our best chemists been lately inclined to restore the same phlogiston to its lost honours! although now again they are beginning to apprehend that they have already done too much in its favour. In the mean time, the true science of chemistry, as the most positive dogmatist will not hesitate to allow, has been very rapidly advancing towards ultimate perfection.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Miscellaneous Works: Scientific Memoirs (1855) Vol. 1 https://books.google.com/books?id=-XAXAQAAMAAJ, ed. George Peacock & John Leitch, p. 249

Nicholas of Cusa photo
Viktor Schauberger photo
David Lloyd George photo

“Any intervention now would be a triumph for Germany! A military triumph! A war triumph! Intervention would have been for us a military disaster. Has the Secretary of State for War no right to express an opinion upon a thing which would be a military disaster? That is what I did, and I do not withdraw a single syllable. It was essential. I could tell the hon. Member how timely it was. I can tell the hon. Member it was not merely the expression of my own opinion, but the expression of the opinion of the Cabinet, of the War Committee, and of our military advisers. It was the opinion of every ally. I can understand men who conscientiously object to all wars. I can understand men who say you will never redeem humanity except by passive endurance of every evil. I can understand men, even—although I do not appreciate the strength of their arguments—who say they do not approve of this particular war. That is not my view, but I can understand it, and it requires courage to say so. But what I cannot understand, what I cannot appreciate, what I cannot respect, is when men preface their speeches by saying they believe in the war, they believe in its origin, they believe in its objects and its cause, and during the time the enemy were in the ascendant never said a word about peace; but the moment our gallant troops are climbing through endurance and suffering up the path of ascendancy begin to howl with the enemy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/oct/11/statement-by-prime-minister in the House of Commons (11 October 1916)
Secretary of State for War

John Green photo
Christopher Isherwood photo
Lech Kaczyński photo

“It sets a path towards the elimination of nation states and the emergence of a European state in the strictest sense of the word. I'm definitely opposed to it.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

On the EU Constitution
Rzeczpospolita interview (March 2005)

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Cory Booker photo
Amir Taheri photo

“The French Riviera is the one spot in Europe that comes closest to the image of an earthly paradise. At its heart is the Franco-Italian city of Nice, now France’s No. 2 tourist attraction after Paris… To a committed Islamist, Nice was the very symbol of a sinful “deviation from the Right Path.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"A cry from France: After Nice, can we finally face the truth about this war?" http://nypost.com/2016/07/15/a-cry-from-france-after-nice-can-we-finally-face-the-truth-about-this-war/ New York Post (July 15, 2016)
New York Post

Jaime Pressly photo
Asger Jorn photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Sun Myung Moon photo

“In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together. Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.” I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally, “gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively. When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity, even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can never be a time when the denomination takes precedence. It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not church. Taking something that is one and dividing itinto two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready to do so at any time.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

2009, As a Peaceloving Global Citizen http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/TFbiography.pdf, page 56.

Makoto Shinkai photo

“I consider my anime as if they were children who, once grown up, are free to take their own path and personally I do not want to intrude in their lives. No father should snoop in the affairs of their children.”

Makoto Shinkai (1973) Japanese anime director and former graphic designer

Interviewed on AnimeClick.it https://www.animeclick.it/news/70289-your-name-makoto-shinkai-non-e-molto-interessato-al-live-action-hollywodiano
About Your Name

D. V. Gundappa photo
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali photo
Jacques Derrida photo

“Although Saussure recognized the necessity of putting the phonic substance between brackets ("What is essential in language, we shall see, is foreign to the phonic character of the linguistic sign" [p. 21]. "In its essence it [the linguistic signifier] is not at all phonic" [p. 164]), Saussure, for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, everything that links the sign to phone. He also speaks of the "natural link" between thought and voice, meaning and sound (p. 46). He even speaks of "thought-sound" (p. 156). I have attempted elsewhere to show what is traditional in such a gesture, and to what necessities it submits. In any event, it winds up contradicting the most interesting critical motive of the Course, making of linguistics the regulatory model, the "pattern" for a general semiology of which it was to be, by all rights and theoretically, only a part. The theme of the arbitrary, thus, is turned away from its most fruitful paths (formalization) toward a hierarchizing teleology:… One finds exactly the same gesture and the same concepts in Hegel. The contradiction between these two moments of the Course is also marked by Saussure's recognizing elsewhere that "it is not spoken language that is natural to man, but the faculty of constituting a language, that is, a system of distinct signs …," that is, the possibility of the code and of articulation, independent of any substance, for example, phonic substance.”

Source: Positions, 1982, p. 21

Piet Mondrian photo
Joel Mokyr photo

“Before the Industrial Revolution all techniques in use were supported by very narrow epistemic bases. That is to say, the people who invented them did not have much of a clue as to why and how they worked. The pre-1750 world produced, and produced well. It made many path-breaking inventions. But it was a world of engineering without mechanics, iron-making without metallurgy, farming without soil science, mining without geology, water-power without hydraulics, dye-making without organic chemistry, and medical practice without microbiology and immunology. The main point to keep in mind here is that such a lack of an epistemic base does not necessarily preclude the development of new techniques through trial and error and simple serendipity. But it makes the subsequent wave of micro-inventions that adapt and improve the technique and create the sustained productivity growth much slower and more costly. If one knows why some device works, it becomes easier to manipulate and debug it, to adapt to new uses and changing circumstances. Above all, one knows what will not work and thus reduce the costs of research and experimentation.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Joel Mokyr, " The knowledge society: Theoretical and historical underpinnings http://ehealthstrategies.comnehealthstrategies.comnxxx.ehealthstrategies.com/files/unitednations_mokyr.pdf." AdHoc Expert Group on Knowledge Systems, United Nations, NY. 2003.

Muhammad photo
Kenneth Grahame photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Kazimir Malevich photo

“At the present time man's path lies through space, and Suprematism is a colour metaphor in its infinite abyss.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

1916
Quote in 'On space and Suprematism', Kasimir Malevich, 1916; as cited in Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 58
1910 - 1920

Alex Salmond photo

“It is easier for us to talk of sacrifice and of change than it is to achieve them. Both can be difficult, sometimes painful. But we have guidance on this new path. We have ourselves, we have each other.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

Morarji Desai photo

“Unless morality comes to public life, politics will remain what it is all over the world. My only interest in remaining in politics is to bring in morality. I’ve chosen the path of action and bhakti.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

Sri Aurobindo photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Robert Brustein photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 257

Henry Adams photo
Patrick Buchanan photo

“Populism is a path that, at its outset, can look and feel democratic. But, followed to its logical conclusion, it can lead to democratic backsliding or even outright authoritarianism.”

Max Fisher American journalist

Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “How can Populism Erode Democracy? Ask Venezuela,” The New York Times, (April 2, 2017)

Max Beckmann photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“Ideal perfection is not the true basis of English legislation. We look at the attainable; we look at the practicable; and we have too much of English sense to be drawn away by those sanguine delineations of what might possibly be attained in Utopia, from a path which promises to enable us to effect great good for the people of England.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1884/feb/28/motion-for-leave in the House of Commons (28 February 1884) during a debate on the Representation of the People Bill.
1880s

Henry Adams photo
Horace Bushnell photo
Charles James Fox photo
Pasquier Quesnel photo

“First of all, no one can accuse me, Ayad Jamal Aldin, of secatarianism, because I support a secular regime that fully separates religion and the state. […] I believe that my freedom as a Shia and as a religious person will never be complete unless I preserve the freedom of the Sunni, the Christian, the Jew, the Sabai and the Yazidi. We will not be able to preserve the freedom of the mosque unless we preserve the freedom of entertainment clubs. […] The curricula - both the modern ones, in some Arab and Islamic countries, and the books of jurisprudence and heritage - have many flaws that must be fixed once and for all. There are rulings about Ahl al-Dhimma - even if, Allah be praised, no current regime can enforce these rulings. However, just for the sake of amusement and diversion, I recommend that the viewers read the books of jurisprudence, and see how Ahl al-Dhimma are treated. I especially recommend this to people with a lust for Arab and Islamic history, who claim that our history is a source of pride, and that others were treated with kindness and love - especially Christians and Jews. Among these rulings, a Dhimmi must wear a belt, so he would be identifiable. Moreover, it is recommended that he be forced to the narrowest paths, and there are even jurisprudents who say that it is recommended to slap a Christian on the back of his neck so he would feel humiliated and degraded. This is how we harass him and then invite him to join Islam. I can swear that the Prophet Muhammad is innocent of such inhuman jurisprudence. I challenge anyone among the people with a lust for history to talk candidly to the West, to the advocates of human rights, and tell them that our heritage has such evils and flaws. We are a nation of blackout and darkness. We cannot live in the light of day. […] We do not hold ourselves accountable. This is why America came to demand that the Arabs be accountable. We must have more self-confidence and be accountable before others hold us accountable. We must discipline ourselves before the Americans and English discipline us. We must maintain human rights, which we have neglected for 1,300 or 1,400 years, to this day - until the arrival of the Americans, the Christians, the English, the Zionists, the Crusaders - call them what you will. They came to teach you, the followers of Muhammad, how to respect human rights.”

Iyad Jamal Al-Din (1961) Iraqi politician

Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: The Arabs Want Tyrannical Regimes, in Line with Their Backward Culture, LBC TV, July 31, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZKffu6Wsg,

Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo
Sharon Gannon photo
Zooey Deschanel photo

“Orpheus melted the heart of Persephone, but I never had yours
I followed you back to the end of the path, but I never found the door”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"Don't Look Back" - Video at Vimeo http://vimeo.com/18915786
Volume Two (2010)

Mitt Romney photo
Vannevar Bush photo
Wilhelm Reich photo
Franz Marc photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“Love is the Heaven
Toward which the flowers, rivers, nations, atoms, creatures — you and I
Are rushing by the straight path of action right,
Or winding laboriously on error’s path,
All to reach haven there at last.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Songs of the Soul by Paramahansa Yogananda, Quotes drawn from the poem "What is Love?"

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Confucius photo
Ariel Sharon photo

“It is not in our interest to govern you. We would like you to govern yourselves in your own country. A democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity in Judea and Samaria and economic viability, which would conduct normal relations of tranquility, security and peace with Israel. Abandon the path of terror and let us together stop the bloodshed. Let us move forward together towards peace.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Address by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference, December 18, 2003; cited in: Terje Rød-Larsen, ‎Fabrice Aidan, ‎Nur Laiq (2014), The Search for Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. p. 373
2000s

Ron Paul photo
Sayyid Qutb photo
Anastas Mikoyan photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Andrew S. Tanenbaum photo
Ward Cunningham photo

“What is simplicity? Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

P. L. Travers photo
Wayland Hoyt photo
Mukesh Ambani photo
El Lissitsky photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
James Weldon Johnson photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“All the woodland path is broken
By warm tints along the way,
And the low and sunny slope
Is alive with sudden hope
When there comes the silent token
Of an April day,—
Blue hepatica!”

Dora Read Goodale (1866–1953) U.S. poet

Hepatica, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 365.

Max Pechstein photo

“.. the unrelenting Berlin forced each one of us to struggle through on the most individual paths, so that our communal living [of 'Brücke', in 1913] fell apart. In addition, the knowledge of the individual members had developed so far that the individual form differed, although the overall goal of the group remained the same.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

a later quote of Pechstein; as quoted in Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus, ed. Anita Beloubek-Hammer; Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2005, p. 266 (transl. Claire Albiez)
about the cause of the break-up of Die Brücke group in 1913: the harsh city-life of Berlin. Pechstein himself already was removed from the Brücke group in 1912 (one year before the definite break) because he went against the self-imposed rule of die Brücke to only exhibit together - when he decided to show also his art at the 'Berliner Secession'.