Quotes about pen (361 quotes, page 3) | Quotes of famous people

“.. I write you from the French front where I'am serving as a soldier in the Russian ambulance Corps. How are you feeling and what are you doing? How are your friends, Lissitsky, Libakov [also former students of Pen], Mazel, Mekler, and Chagall? Please, for God's sake, answer me. I would be so glad to hear how everyone is.
I'm in fine health, but tired of it all – it's utterly disgraceful, makes the soul turn cold. If only it [the war] would just end.
What are you working on, what are you doing? Please write me.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Yours Zadkine.
Quote in a letter of Zadkine (in France) to his former art-teacher Yuri Moiseevich Pen in Vitebsk, Russia, 16 Nov. 1916 (transl. into Belorussian E.M. Kichina); as quoted in Vitebsk: The Life of Art, by Aleksandra Semenovna Shatskikh; Yale University Press, 2007, p. 19
1915 - 1940

God , War , Health , Feeling

“I wear my Pen as others do their Sword.
To each affronting sot I meet, the word
Is Satisfaction: straight to thrusts I go,
And pointed satire runs him through and through.”

John Oldham (poet) (1653–1683) English satirical poet and translator

Satire upon a Printer, line 36; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

“In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=R18JAAAAQAAJ&q=%22In+composing+as+a+general+rule+run+your+pen+through+every+other+word+you+have+written+you+have+no+idea+what+vigour+it+will+give+your+style%22&pg=PA382#v=onepage
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Idea

“In preparing this record, penned by my own hand, of my life and my participation in our great struggles for national existence, human liberty and political equality, I make no pretence to literary merit. The motive that induces me is not authorship. The import of the subject matter of my narrative is my only claim to attention. The statements of facts are a matter of documentary evidence. The comments are my own and show how I saw the matters treated of, whether others saw them in the same light or not. Respectfully dedicating this work to the millions of armed men and devoted women who participated in the great wars of this country, I leave it as a heritage to my wife and son.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. vi

Life , Women , Men , War

“A good camera does not make a good photographer, A good pen does not make a good poet.”

Prito Reza (1984) Photographer

“I shall present as certain only those data corroborated by exhaustive research, or by my own personal investigations, as I am not untraveled for a bookish man. Wherever doubt exists, I shall unambiguously state its degree and nature, along with whatever grounds I may have for preferring one hypothesis over another. If, despite all I have said, the reader disdains such honest ambiguity, and stubbornly prefers the unequivocal assertiveness to be found in factitious travelogues penned by raffish “explorers,” or in the specious “natural histories” compiled by crapulous and unprincipled hacks who have never left their squalid lofts in Scrivener’s Row, then there is nothing further I can do, and I leave him, with apologies, to his deception.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (p. 10)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

History , Nature , Personality

“Twenty candles on a cake. Twenty Camels in a pack. Twenty months in the federal pen. Twenty shots of tequila down a young girl's gullet. Twenty centuries since Our Lord's last pratfall, and after all that time we still don't know where passion goes when it goes.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Girl , Passion , Time

“When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion. I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.”

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

The Anas (February 1, 1800). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 1 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf, pp. 352–353
1800s

Secret , Religion , Departure

“I am most comfortable with writing and pen and ink illustrations. My filter tends to be cut ups of what is around me blurred into my own feelings and interests of the Victorian era. I don't try to categorize myself but I do recognize my influences are a bit more macabre than usual.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding his influences and style; as quoted in "Americymru" http://americymru.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-with-lorin-morgan-richards.html "An Interview With Lorin Morgan-Richards” (25 August 2010).

Feeling

“Here was the worldly environment with which Fauchery is so often reproached. But the books and papers that littered the table bore witness that the present occupant of this charming retreat remained a substantial man of letters. His habit of constant work was still further attested by his face, which I admit, gave me all at once a feeling of remorse for the trick I was about to play him. If I had found him the snobbish pretender whom the weekly newspapers were in the habit of ridiculing, it would have been a delight to outwit his diplomacy. But no! I saw, as he put down his pen to receive me, a man about fifty-seven years old, with a face that bore the marks of reflection, eyes tired from sleeplessness, a brow heavy with thought, who said as he pointed to an easy chair, "You will excuse me, my dear confrère, for keeping you waiting."”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

I, his dear confrère! Ah! if he had known!
The Age for Love

Books , Feeling , Waiting

“The pen is almost as pretty an implement in a woman's fingers, as a needle.”

Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) English writer and printer

Page 120.
The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson with Lady Bradshaigh (1804)

“Olive and laurel binds her golden hair: Wherever shines this native of the skies, Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise. Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates How pour her armies through a thousand gates”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

“The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Speech on being elected to the Belgian Academy, as quoted in “Lady of Letters” Pt. 4, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

Way , Time

“FYI: The Summer of Gay has been extended into the Year of the Queer. Another heads up: Mad Vow Disease, once limited to wholesome, unimpeachable gay couples earnestly seeking to take on the rights and responsibilities of marriage, has jumped the pen and crossed into the general population.”

Kate Clinton (1947) American comedian

Marriage Mishegas http://progressive.org/?q=node/916
The Progressive, Unplugged

Marriage , Disease , Summer , Madness

“I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Sermons in Cats"
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

“It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Variant translation: First, as is often said, a samurai must have both literary and martial skills: to be versed in the two is his duty. Even if he has no natural ability, a samurai must train assiduously in both skills to a degree appropriate to his status. On the whole, if you are to assess the samurai's mind, you may think it is simply attentiveness to the manner of dying.
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book

Death , Way , Nature

“The wheel of Time wrote the first half of the poetry of mass destruction on the black board of the ashes of a funeral ground by dint of a pair of pens of nuclear bombs.”

Manmohan Acharya (1967–2013) Poet, lyricist

Stanza-10, Verse 6
Song of the Bumblebee (2008)

Time

“And down the dunes a thousand guns lie crouched,
Unseen, beside the flood —
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched
That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
Walk grave and thoughtful men,
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.”

Henry Timrod (1828–1867) Poet from the American South

"Charleston", st. 4–5

Men , Lie , Waiting

“A rich man’s body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. ‘’Ours’’ is different. My father’s spine was a knotted rope, the kind that women use in villages to pull water from wells; the clavicle curved around his neck in high relief, like a dog’s collar; cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist, reaching down below his hip bones into his buttocks. The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Life , Women , Dogs , Water

“"The pen is mightier than the sword," you say. Get out your pens and prepare to have your logic tested by steel.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), Episode One

“As I opened the door — I heard cattle — many — in the pens over by the track — lowing — I wonder if you ever heard a whole lot of cattle lowing — it sounds different here — too — just ground and sky — and the lowing cattle — you hardly see — either them or the pens — the pens are of weather beaten boards — take on the color of the ground it seems — I like it and I don't like it — its like music — I made up a tune this morning — Well — I heard the cattle — as I opened the door — and I liked it and I didn't liked it — then I read your letter as I walked to breakfast — a great letter — Anita”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (November, 1916), p. 216
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Music , Color , Reading , Weather

“Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1743
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Bee

“I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.”

Romain Gary book Promise at Dawn

Promise at Dawn (1960) as quoted in "Great Pretenders" by Emma Garman in Tablet (31 October 2007) http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/906/great-pretenders/

Dreams , Feeling , Idea , Waiting

“Benjamin Black is a craftsman and these are crafted works. I'm very proud of them. I think they're well made, but Banville is doing something else – he's trying to make a kind of poetry, I suppose. I'm a perfectionist. It's an illness but a good illness. It's a completely different method of writing. Banville writes with a fountain pen on paper in a manuscript book and Black works straight on to the screen. It could take me a whole morning to write a few sentences as Banville, but as Black I'd be very annoyed if I didn't have at least two or three pages done. This drives crime-writers crackers because they think I'm saying that their craft is not worth it. I'm simply saying it's a different thing. I don't know why they worry when I talk about speed; after all, Georges Simenon wrote his books in about 10 days.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

Books , Thinking , Speed

“Early in my public labors I was bidden by the Lord, "Write, write the things that are revealed to you." At the time this message came to me, I could not hold my hand steady. My physical condition made it impossible for me to write. But again came the word, "Write the things that are revealed to you." I obeyed; and as the result it was not long before I could write page after page with comparative ease. Who told me what to write? Who steadied my right hand, and made it possible for me to use a pen?”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

It was the Lord.
The Review and Herald (14 June 1906), p. 8

Time

“I have a new CD; it's in stores, and when you have a CD in stores, you have to do in-store appearances, and if nobody shows up, I just pretend like I'm shopping. That's how I shop; I sit behind a table with a pen.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

Appearance

“I'd like you [Theo] to spend some time here, you'd feel it — after some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel colour differently. I'm also convinced that it's precisely through a long stay here that I'll bring out my personality. The Japanese [like a. o. Hokusai, admired by Vincent] draws quickly, very quickly, like a flash of lightning, because his nerves are finer, his feeling simpler. I've been here [Arles] only a few months but — tell me, in Paris would I have drawn in an hour the drawing of the boats?... Now this [sketch] was done without measuring, letting the pen go. So I tell myself that gradually the expenses will be balanced by work.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum
The Japanese artists with their colored woodblock-prints meant a great inspirations for several Paris' artists - they were extremely important for Vincent, these years
1880s, 1888

Feeling , Change , Time , Drawing

“Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1988 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1988.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Fraud

“Stroke of the pen. Law of the Land. Kinda cool.”

Paul Begala (1961) American political consultant

Source: The New York Times, July 5, 1998, referring to executive orders.

Law

“"You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that." quoted in”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

February 2010
http://blogs.bnet.com/corporate-strategy/?p=101
2000s

Thinking , Reading

“… Practical people have little idea of the practical ability required to write a large book, and especially a large history. Long before you get to the pen, there is an immensity of pure business: heaps of material are strewn every where; but they lie in disorder, unread, uncatalogued, unknown. It seems a dreary waste of life to be analysing, indexing, extracting works and passages, in which one per cent of the contents are interesting, and not half of that per centage will ultimately appear in the flowing narrative.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[ART. I—Edward Gibbon, National Review, 2, January 1856, 1–42, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081643169;view=1up;seq=41] (quote p. 29)
Edward Gibbon (1856)

Life , People , Lie , Books

“How could one argue with a man who was always drawing lines and circles to explain the position; who, one day, drew a diagram [here Michael illustrated with pen and paper] saying 'take a point A, draw a straight line to point B, now three-fourths of the way up the line take a point C. The straight line AB is the road to the Republic; C is where we have got to along the road, we canot move any further along the straight road to our goal B; take a point out there, D [off the line AB]. Now if we bend the line a bit from C to D then we can bend it a little further, to another point E and if we can bend it to CE that will get us around Cathal Brugha which is what we want!”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

How could you talk to a man like that?
Referring to Eamon de Valera in conversation with Michael Hayes, at the debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921
Michael Hayes Papers, P53/299, UCDA
Quoted in Doherty, Gabriel and Keogh, Dermot (2006). Michael Collins and the Making of the Irish State. Mercier Press, p. 153.

Way , Drawing

“I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore fair game for my pen and I refuse to avoid him any longer simply because some of his behaviour patterns are rather complex and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so erudite, Homo sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless; in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the early old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment to him, but his old impulses have been with him for millions of years, his new ones only a few thousand at the most - and there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past. He would be a far less worried and more fulfilled animal if only he would face up to this fact. Perhaps this is where the zoologist can help.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

Introduction
The Naked Ape (1967)

Hope , Game , Motivation , Past

“There is more done with pens than with swords.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

This is very similar in theme to "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword." by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
Attributed

“One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns readers…He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; "lays waste" a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the government itself. He is kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Character of Cobbett"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Country

“Painting in the chamber of a Prince who was indisposed, the Physician said, that he hoped bymeans of his Highness, to obtain also the favor of a picture by Salvator. The Prince made he request, and Salvator readily consented. The Physician then desired the Painter not to egin his picture till he had given him the idea, nd the design. Salvator made no reply; ut when the Physician called for pen and ink o write his prescription, he desired him to stop ill he should tell him what to write. The Docor, not comprehending his meaning, said * Signor Salvator, this is a business which conerns me, not you." "I would have you to know Mr. Doctor" replied Salvator, " that I can more easily instruct you in the cure of your tickt than you can me in the art I profess, being a much better Painter than you are a Physician.'*”

Peter Beckford (1643–1710) Governor of Jamaica

Hope , Art , Idea , Business

“My song shall spread where ever there are men,
If wit and art will so much guide my pen.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Cantando espalharei por toda parte,
Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte.

Stanza 2, lines 7–8 (tr. Richard Fanshawe, 1655)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto I

Men , Art

“One of the early presidents of Harvard College wrote a dissertation on the question, "Whether angels speak any language; if so, whether it is Hebrew." Much futile discussion on such questions has at various times brought debating into ill repute. A question should offer something more than an ingenious exercise; it should offer the chance of arriving at some conclusion regarded by the particular audience or disputants as of some practical importance. It should be discarded if, like the proposition, "The pen is mightier than the sword/' it offers no possibility of arriving at reasonably sound conclusions through the process of argument.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 4-5; as cited in: Branham (2013, p. 32-33)

Angels , Exercises , Question , Chance

“How can I trust a bank to keep my money safe when it has dozens of pens stolen every day?”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Money

“Shocking, absolutely shocking – they [the German w:Fluxus artists] pissed in the tub, snag the German national anthem, covered the audience with paper, poured laundry detergent into the piano, attached microphones to fountain pens.... it was all very cynical and destructive; it was a signal for us and we (the German artists Lueg and Polke and Gerhard Richter himself] became [also] cynical and cocky.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 47

“This ruling has finally nailed down the coffin of what was from the beginning an ill-penned accord. This should make all those who authored and had a hand in writing the accord to get red in the face and immediately turn in their resignation from the government for trying to bungle our Constitution.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Official Website of the Senate of the Philippines http://www.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2008/1014_escudero1.asp
2008, Statement: on the MOA-AD Supreme Court Decision

“I have learned a great deal from Marxism as I do not hesitate to admit… The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it… National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: Disputed, Hitler Speaks (1940), p. 186

Learning

“We're saying that Germany wants to destroy us. And right now in Germany a whole lot of good quiet people like us, no worse than we are, they're getting whipped into a frenzy by the same story. They're being told the others are penning them into a country that's too small, and don't want to let them live. On one side or the other somebody's being sold a bill of goods. Maybe the Germans are wrong. We don't know. All I know is, I don't want to go killing some guy that never did me any harm, and who hasn't the choice but to do what he's told. I've got nothing against that poor guy. Why should I go and stick a bayonet into him? He wants to live, just like I do. He doesn't want to die.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.45

People , Guy , Country

“The "medium is the message" is one of the world's silliest remarks. The message is the message, and it doesn't matter whether you send it by e-mail, a note in a bottle or on a picture postcard. The book, or the poem, or the play is what counts and it doesn't matter if it's written with a pen on a long sheet of ruled paper, as I am writing now, or on the most highly developed word processor. No machine can help with the rhythms of your prose, even if it can spell better than you can.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 28 : Inventions and the Decline of Language

Books , World , Help

“Upon this I sent to the Register who brought me the [twenty-four] articles, which I have read and find so curiously penned, so full of branches and circumstance, as I think the Inquisitors of Spain use not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their prey. … this kind of proceeding is too much savouring of the Roman inquisition, and is rather a device to seek for offenders than to reform any.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, criticising the Court of High Commission which was persecuting nonconformists (1 July, 1584).
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), p. 295.

Question , Thinking , Reading

“It seems never to have occurred to Lenin that the root of these troubles lay in the fact that the whole system was based, as he constantly emphasized, on force and not on law. He demanded that people be imprisoned right and left for inefficiency, and then wondered why they were afraid to take decisions and referred them higher up whenever they could. He demanded vigilant supervision and exhaustive records, and yet was astonished at the amount of "pen-pushing". His statement that "socialism equals Soviet power plus electrification" is often quoted; less often his statement, just after the Revolution, that "what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything" (Meeting of the Central Executive Committee, 17 November 1917; Works, vol. 26, p. 288). He created a system in which, depending on the whim of a local party or police authority, any criticism might be regarded as counter-revolutionary and expose its author to imprisonment or death, and at the same time he urged the working people to be fearless in their criticism of the state apparatus.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age, pp. 489-90

Death , People , Law , Quotes

“Everything that divides men, everything that specified, separates or pens them, is a sin against humanity.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

My Race (1893)

Men

“Akbar was the first emperor to abolish Jizyah with one stroke of pen, along with all its associations and implications, including the distinction of Muslim and Dhimmî into the bargain. His son and grandson followed his example in regard to Jizyah, generally speaking, but reimposed upon the Hindus all the other restrictions and disabilities suffered by them before.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Harsh Narain, Jizyah and the spread of Islam, chapter 3

Suffering

“Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say to you that it is not America.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Los Angeles California (27 October 1956), as quoted in The New America (1971), edited by Seymour E. Harris, John B. Martin, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., p. 249

“Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak quotes

Love , Heart

“A match as a pen
Blood on the floor as ink
The forgotten gauze cover as paper
But what should I write?
I might just manage my address.
This ink is strange; it clots.
I write you from a prison
in Greece.”

Alexandros Panagoulis (1939–1976) Greek politician and poet

My Address, written in Military Prisons of Bogiati, 5 June 1971 – After beating.
Poetry, Vi scrivo da un carcere in Grecia (I write you from a prison in Greece) (1974)

“I was very glad when Mr. Attlee described my speeches in the late war as expressing the will not only of Parliament but of the whole nation. I have never accepted what many people have kindly said—namely, that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it and if I found the right word you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen, and by my tongue.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Westminster Hall (30 November 1954), quoted in The Times (1 December 1954), p. 11
Post-war years (1945–1955)

War , People

“I am a galley slave to pen and ink.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Je suis un galérien de plume et d'encre.
Letter to Zulma Carraud (2 July 1832), translated by C. Lamb Kenney.

“One day I was in rather a fix, so I went out. I strolled along in the dazzling sunlight of early spring, lost in thought, seeing and hearing nothing, really; forming no kind of picture of what was going on around me in the Saturday bustle of the country village. Nothing. Funny, it was so typical : one of those times when a writer feels stale, when his pen has been showing signs of going on of going on strike and will soon cease to obey him altogether. Driven by his restlessness, the writer goes away like a rat leaving a sinking ship…”

Marko Tapio

Marko Tapio, in: The Norseman, Vol. 15, 1957, p. 413

Feeling , Spring , Time , Country

“They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes, 'more than the pen can enumerate'… In short, the Muhammadan army brought the country to utter ruin, and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants, and plundered the cities, and captured their offspring, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was one called Somnat, fixed upon stone, polished like a mirror of charming shape and admirable workmanship' Its head was adorned with a crown set with gold and rubies and pearls and other precious stones' and a necklace of large shining pearls, like the belt of Orion, depended from the shoulder towards the side of the body….
'The Muhammadan soldiers plundered all these jewels and rapidly set themselves to demolish the idol. The surviving infidels were deeply affected with grief, and they engaged 'to pay a thousand pieces of gold' as ransom for the idol, but they were indignantly rejected, and the idol was destroyed, and 'its limbs, which were anointed with ambergris and perfumed, were cut off. The fragments were conveyed to Delhi, and the entrance of the Jami' Masjid was paved with them, that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory.' Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds. Amen! After some time, among the ruins of the temples, a most beautiful jasper-coloured stone was discovered, on which one of the merchants had designed some beautiful figures of fighting men and other ornamental figures of globes, lamps, etc., and on the margin of it were sculptured verses from the Kurdn. This stone was sent as an offering to the shrine of the pole of saints… At that time they were building a lofty octagonal dome to the tomb. The stone was placed at the right of the entrance. "At this time, that is, in the year 707 h. (1307 a. d.), 'Alau-d din is the acknowledged Sultan of this country. On all its borders there are infidels, whom it is his duty to attack in the prosecution of a holy war, and return laden with countless booty."”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Somnath. Abdu’llah ibn Fazlu’llah of Shiraz (Wassaf) : Tarikh-i-Wassaf (Tazjiyatu’l Amsar Wa Tajriyatu’l Ãsar), in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 43-44. Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Men , God , War , Children

“Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Not a Kerouac quote, but part of the text from a publicity campaign for the Beat Museum, San Francisco, composed by the advertising agency Gyro: http://paulacw.com/The-Beat-Museum
Misattributed

Life

“If we only knew, the sacred value, And if the might of our pen, is stronger than the swords of men, let us unsheathe our minds, write with our hearts again.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"What Has Become"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

Men , Heart

“I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly,
When my hand
Touched her cold and long fingers
Which was from the family of the wailing reed
It gripped an eternal grief in its fist
The pen broke
And pain
Like black drops of ink
dropped on our papery hearts.
I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly;”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Fare welling Hands

Pain , Family , Heart

“My pen in this, my sword in that hand hold.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Numa mão sempre a espada, e noutra a pena.
Stanza 79, line 8 (tr. Richard Fanshawe)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto VII

“I can only look from the outside (or cut into the inside, but flesh and genes do not reveal organic totality). I am stuck with a panoply of ineluctably indirect methods - some very sophisticated to be sure. I can atomize, experiment, and infer. I can record reams of data about behaviors and responses. But if I could be a beetle or a bacillus for that one precious minute - and live to tell the tale in perfect memory - then I might truly fulfill Darwin's dictum penned into an early notebook containing the first full flowering of his evolutionary ideas during the late 1830's: "He who understands the baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke."”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?" pp. 376
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Behavior , Flowers , Idea , Understanding

“Quantum physicists today are reconciled to randomness at the individual event level, but to expect causality to underlie statistical quantum phenomena is reasonable. Suppose a person shakes an ink pen such that ink spots are formed on a white wall, in what appears for all intents and purposes, randomly. Let us further suppose the random ink spots accumulate to form precise pictures of different known persons' faces every time. We will not regard the overall result to be a happenchance; we are apt to suspect there must be a "method" to the person who is shaking the ink pen.”

Ravi Gomatam (1950) Indian academic

R.Gomatam’s response http://www.bvinst.edu/gomatam/pub-2006-01%20original.htm to Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg's article "Einstein's Mistakes" published in Physics Today, Volume 59, Issue 4, Letters http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v59/i4/p10_s1?bypassSSO=1, October, 2005.

Appearance , Time , Personality

“I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand."”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

“i keep drinking the ink from my pen
and i'm balancing history books up on my head
but it all boils down to one quotable phrase
if you love something give it away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

landlocked blues
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Love , Books , History , Drink

“No gall has ever poisoned my pen.”

Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707–1777) French writer

Aucun fiel n'a jamais empoisonne ma plume.
Discours de Reception; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

“Veal-Fattening Pen: Small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered disassemblable wall partitions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the small preslaughter cubicles used by the cattle industry.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Definitions

“I finished my first woodcut in Dresden in 1905 after the Xylographic art, cutting out of the hard boxwood the clean sketches with the slate pencil. Then followed the rounded iron, to arrive at the woodcut more freely through the simply ripped out sketch on the log (alder, lime tree, poplar), which would be utilized from here on out. Then finally came a short cobbler knife, and without a pré-sketch, the hand cuts freely into the wood a woodcut, just like it would work on paper with the pen.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

Heckel later summarized in this way his woodcut developments, mainly developed during his years in Die Brücke
Source: Brücke' Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik, Magdalena M. Moeller; Verlag Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1992, p. 21; as quoted by Louise Albiez https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564Claire (incl. translation), Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus; submitted to the Division of Humanities New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, May, 2013 p.12

Art , Tree

“These aren't nerds. They're a bunch of interesting guys, and that's the problem with Revenge of the Nerds II. The movie doesn't have the nerve to be about real nerds. It hedges its bets. A nerd is not a nerd because he understands computers and wears a plastic pen protector in his shirt pocket. A nerd is a nerd because he brings a special lack of elegance to life. An absence of style. An inability to notice the feelings of other people. A nerd is a nerd from the inside out, which is something the nerds who made this movie will never understand.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/revenge-of-the-nerds-ii-nerds-in-paradise-1987 of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (13 July 1987)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Life , People , Guy , Feeling

“And so I penned
It down, until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Apology for his Book
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I

“If we are shocked by reports about policemen owning prime properties then all the more should we be angered by the fact many police officers rent rooms no bigger than a pig pen.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Manila Standard Today http://manilastandardtoday.com/mobile/2014/09/26/belmonte-to-purisima-resign-now
2014

Anger

“Prologues like compliments are loss of time;
’T is penning bows and making legs in rhyme.”

David Garrick (1717–1779) English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer

Prologue to Crisp’s Tragedy of Virginia.

Loss , Time

“My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

The New York Times, March 25, 2007.

Moms

“Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world, the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal. With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war — centuries of hypocrisy — centuries of injustice.”

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

Centennial Oration (4 July 1876) http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/centennial_oration.html

Men , God , War , People

“Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

[Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message, 2000, 2002, 9780849943270, 28-29]
2000s

People , Books , Home , History

“It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech. Our earliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift of culture they have, the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech; rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may not only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters in the highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, under various figures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, but on all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongue or pen,—this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficent preceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, are continually urging and guiding us.”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Education , Art , Learning , Universe

“I know from experience that to one who thinks much and feels deeply, it often seems that he has only to put down his thoughts and feelings in order to produce something altogether out of the common; yet as soon as he sets to work he falls into a certain mannerism of style and common phraseology; his thoughts do not come spontaneously, and one might almost say that it is not the mind that directs the pen, but the pen leads the mind into common, empty artificiality.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

"Rome, 9 January"
Without Dogma (1891)

Feeling , Thinking

“"About the Seduction of an Angel" [Über die Verführung von Engeln]; the poem actually stems from Brecht's own pen, but Brecht signed it with the name of his contemporary, fellow German author (in exile) Thomas Mann”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

As cited in Gregory Alexander Knott, Arnold Stadler: Heimat and Metaphysics http://books.google.gr/books?id=ylhXAAAAYAAJ&q=, Weidler Buchverlag, 2009, p. 30.

Angels

“My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument.”

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

Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 January 1946), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 540.
1940s

“One is left, the other is right. But comparable populists are Lafontaine and Le Pen already.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

In the interview with Kai Diekmann, Walter Mayer and Hans-Jörg Vehlewald Bild am Sonntag, 15. September 2008 http://www.bild.de/news/politik/schmidt/haben-sie-mitleid-mit-kurt-beck-teil-2-5809086.bild.html

“One simple method is to take a pen or pencil and hold it up against a blank wall or ceiling. Now concentrate on the pen as if it is the most important thing in the world. Then allow your sense to relax, so you see the pen against the background of the wall. Concentrate again. Relax again. Keep on doing this until you become aware of the ability to focus attention at will. You will find that this unaccustomed activity of the will is tiring; it produces a sense of strain behind the eyes. My own perception is that if you persist, in spite of the strain, the result is acute discomfort, followed by a sudden immense relief - the 'peak experience.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Access to Inner Worlds (1990), p. 33

World , Sense

“Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

As quoted in "Dungeon Masters in Cyberspace" in The New York Times (27 February 2006) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/arts/27drag.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

People , Way , Game

“As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, — in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 11

Men

“Producers nowadays want item numbers. So I have penned one for this film. Cinema is the most effective way of creating awareness and spreading social message. Through this film I would like to convey the message of happiness, humanity and harmony.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On composing the lyrics for a song for a film, as quoted in Kapil Sibal pens item number for Bollywood film http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/Kapil-Sibal-pens-item-number-for-Bollywood-film/articleshow/47221241.cms, The Times of India (10 May 2015)

Way , Happiness

“Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and…get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Shoe , Way , Evil , Dance

“In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena… The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

In regard to Cambodia, our Party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Cambodian people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any 'guardian'. (Selected Works Vol. VI, p. 419.)
Writings, Other

People , Food , Idea , Thinking

“As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.”

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

E 52
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

Books , Feeling

“I am disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women, who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women—and because he happens to have an "R" next to his name we look the other way…This is a party that endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate in the State of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester. You cannot claim that you stand for women and put up with that…Speaking of bad guys, there was quite an interesting person who was on this stage the other day. Her name is Marion Le Pen. Now, why was she here? Why was she here? She’s a young, no-longer-in-office politician from France. I think the only reason she was here is because she’s named Le Pen. And the Le Pen name is a disgrace. Her grandfather (Jean-Marie Le Pen) is a racist and a Nazi. She claims that she stands for him. And the fact that CPAC invited her is a disgrace.”

Mona Charen (1957) political writer

As quoted in "Trump’s Takeover of Conservatism Is Complete and Total" https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/25/donald-trump-conservatism-cpac-2018-217081 (25 February 2018), by Tim Alberta, Politico

Women , People , Disappointment , Way