Quotes about performance

page 16

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/monster-2003 of Monster (1 January 2004)
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: What Charlize Theron achieves in Patty Jenkins' Monster isn't a performance but an embodiment. With courage, art and charity, she empathizes with Aileen Wuornos, a damaged woman who committed seven murders. She does not excuse the murders. She simply asks that we witness the woman's final desperate attempt to be a better person than her fate intended.

Poppin (1969)
Context: We can only take it so far, because man can only take it so far, lower self can only take it so far, and you have to realize that the public is only at a certain place. We won't see the day when the public accepts what we wanna project, even though they are accepting a lot now. By the time they're accepting it, maybe they'll be too old.... If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play. A total silence trip is the ultimate.... We do antagonize them psychologically. People look at us and react. They either go "Wow! Hey-hey-hey, baby!" and we say that's great. They're reacting and that's wonderful. It's better than them sitting there doing nothing. I say make them react — do whatever's in your power to move the audience, and if that's where it is, and there where it is with America, sex and violence, then I say project it.

"Sand Dabs, Five"
Winter Hours (1999)

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 173
Context: I love traditional religions. Whenever I wander into distinctive churches or mosques or temples, or visit museums of religious art, or hear performances of sacred music, I am enthralled by the beauty and solemnity and power they offer. Once we have our feelings about Nature in place, then I believe that we can also find important ways to call ourselves Jews, or Muslims, or Taoists, or Hopi, or Hindus, or Christians, or Buddhists. Or some of each. The words in the traditional texts may sound different to us than they did to their authors, but they continue to resonate with our religious selves. We know what they are intended to mean.

I Am A Dancer (1952)

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter IX, p. 749.
Context: Every system which endeavours, either, by extraordinary encouragements, to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than what would naturally go to it; or, by extraordinary restraints, to force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it; is in reality subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour.
All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual, or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.
The proper performance of those several duties of the sovereign necessarily supposes a certain expence; and this expence again necessarily requires a certain revenue to support it.

Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

As quoted by John Ward, The lives of the professors of Gresham college (1740) p. 171. https://books.google.com/books?id=jp5bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA171
Context: About this time, 1655, having an opportunity of acquainting myself with astronomy by the kindness of Dr. Ward, I apply'd myself to the improving of the pendulum for such observations, and in the year 1656, or 1657, I contriv'd a way to continue the motion of the pendulum, so much commended by Ricciolus in his Almagestum which Dr. Ward had recommended to me to peruse. I made some trials to this end, which I found to succeed to my wish. The success of these made me further think of improving it for finding the longitude; and the method I had made for myself for mechanick inventions, quickly led me to the use of springs, instead of gravity, for the making a body vibrate in any posture. Whereupon I did first in great, and afterwards in smaller modules, satisfy myself of the practicableness of such an invention; and hoping to have made great advantage thereby, I acquainted divers of my freinds, and particularly Mr. Boyle, that I was possessed of such an invention, and crav'd their assistance for improving the use of it to my advantage. Immediately after his majesty's restoration Mr. Boyle was pleased to acquaint the lord Brouncher and Sir with it, who advis'd me to get a patent for the invention, and propounded very probable ways of making considerable advantage by it. To induce them to a belief of my performance, I shewed a pocket watch, accommodated with a spring, apply'd to the arbor of the ballance, to regulate the motion thereof, concealing the way I had for finding the longitude. This was so well approv'd of, that Sir Robert Moray drew me up the form of a patent, the principal part whereof, viz. the description of the watch so regulated, is his own hand writing, which I have yet by me. The discouragement I met with in the management of this affair, made me desist for that time.

Changing My Mind, Among Others : Lifetime Writings (1982), p. 76; also in Change Your Brain (2000), p. 72
Context: To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to communicate the internal. The training of artists and creative performers can be a straightforward, almost mechanical process. When you teach someone how to perform creatively (ie, associate dead symbols in new combinations), you expand his potential for experiencing more widely and richly.

Judith Grant interview (1999)
Context: I literally never meet anybody who ever talks about God as something other than a kind of big man. I think God is a wondrous spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, but only interested in men as part of a giant creation which is pulsing with life.
People say, when a relative dies: "Oh, how could God have taken her away so young and with so much before her?" God doesn't give a bugger about how young she is. He probably isn't noticing particularly. That's just the way a lot of things happen. A lot gets spilled, you know, in nature. When you look at what's going on out there now, those trees are dropping seeds by literally the hundreds of thousands and millions, and one or two of them may take on. I think that that is the way that God functions. He doesn't care nearly as much about individuals and individual fates as we would like to suppose. But by trying to ally ourselves with the totality of things, we may get into Tao as they say in the East and be part of it, really take part in it, and not just regard ourselves as a kind of miraculous creation and the rest just sort of stage scenery against which we perform.

1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)
Context: On this hallowed ground, heroic deeds were performed and eloquent words were spoken a century ago. We, the living, have not forgotten– and the world will never forget– the deeds or the words of Gettysburg. We honor them now as we join on this Memorial Day of 1963 in a prayer for permanent peace of the world and fulfillment of our hopes for universal freedom and justice.

As quoted in "On Record : Zooey Deschanel of She & Him" at American Songwriter (18 March 2010).
Context: My goal as an actor is always to be as truthful as possible, and to find the truth in the material I am representing. So I think that it’s the same with performing music. But in a way, performing your own music, it’s easier to find the truth in it, because it’s coming from yourself. There’s no translation needed.

Maha Shivarathri message following Agni Puja (17 February 1996) http://www.dattapeetham.com/india/talks/shivaratri96.html

Aphorism 27
Les Caractères (1688), De la chaire
Context: What a vast advantage has a speech over a written composition. Men are imposed upon by voice and gesture, and by all that is conducive to enhance the performance. Any little prepossession in favor of the speaker raises their admiration, and then they do their best to comprehend him; they commend his performance before he has begun, but they soon fall off asleep, doze all the time he is preaching, and only wake to applaud him. An author has no such passionate admirers; his works are read at leisure in the country or in the solitude of the study; no public meetings are held to applaud him.... However excellent his book may be, it is read with the intention of finding it but middling; it is perused, discussed, and compared to other works; a book is not composed of transient sounds lost in the air and forgotten; what is printed remains.

As quoted in Through Music to the Self : How to Appreciate and Experience Music Anew (1979) by Peter Michael Hamel, p. 18
Context: Elemental Music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener bust as a co-performer. It is pre-rational, has no over-all form, no architectonics, involves no set sequences, ostinati or minor rondo-forms. Elemental Music is earthy, natural, physical, capable of being learnt and experienced by anybody, child's play.... Elemental Music, word and movement, play, every-thing that awakens and develops the powers of the soul builds up the humus of the soul, the humus without which we face spiritual soil-erosion.... we face spiritual soil-erosion when man estranges himself from the elemental and loses his balance.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
Book I, 1098a; §7 as translated by W. D. Ross
Variants:
One swallow does not a summer make.
As quoted in A History of Ancient Philosophy: From the Beginning to Augustine (1998) by Karsten Friis Johansen, p. 382
One swallow (they say) no Sommer doth make.
John Davies, in The Scourge of Folly (1611)
One swallow yet did never summer make.
As rendered by William Painter in Chaucer Newly Painted (1623)
One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one sunny day; similarly, one day or a short time does not make a man blessed and happy.
As translated in Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (1988), by Richard E. Grandy and ‎Richard Warner, p. 483
Nicomachean Ethics

Letter to his brother Rev. William N. Cleveland (7 November 1882); published in The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland (1892), p. 534.
Context: I feel as if it were time for me to write to someone who will believe what I write.
I have been for some time in the atmosphere of certain success, so that I have been sure that I should assume the duties of the high office for which I have been named. I have tried hard, in the light of this fact, to appreciate properly the responsibilities that will rest upon me, and they are much, too much underestimated. But the thought that has troubled me is, can I well perform my duties, and in such a manner as to do some good to the people of the State? I know there is room for it, and I know that I am honest and sincere in my desire to do well; but the question is whether I know enough to accomplish what I desire.
The social life which seems to await me has also been a subject of much anxious thought. I have a notion that I can regulate that very much as I desire; and, if I can, I shall spend very little time in the purely ornamental part of the office. In point of fact, I will tell you, first of all others, the policy I intend to adopt, and that is, to make the matter a business engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an eye single to the interest of my employers. I shall have no idea of re-election, or any higher political preferment in my head, but be very thankful and happy I can serve one term as the people's Governor.

This comprehensive statement was arrived at by examining the statutes of those seven states that have remained in the Dark Ages, so that I might satisfy their definitions of blasphemy.
Skeptic Magazine, 1995 (Volume 3, No. 4) http://www.petting-zoo.net/~deadbeef/archive/383.html, stated in an unsuccessful effort to be officially charged with blasphemy http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=James_Randi.

Introduction
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)
Context: In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics".
The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 409-411
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: [T]he power of creating a corporation is one appertaining to sovereignty, and is not expressly conferred on Congress. This is true. But all legislative powers appertain to sovereignty. The original power of giving the law on any subject whatever is a sovereign power, and if the Government of the Union is restrained from creating a corporation as a means for performing its functions, on the single reason that the creation of a corporation is an act of sovereignty, if the sufficiency of this reason be acknowledged, there would be some difficulty in sustaining the authority of Congress to pass other laws for the accomplishment of the same objects. The Government which has a right to do an act and has imposed on it the duty of performing that act must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means, and those who contend that it may not select any appropriate means that one particular mode of effecting the object is excepted take upon themselves the burden of establishing that exception. [... ] The power of creating a corporation, though appertaining to sovereignty, is not, like the power of making war or levying taxes or of regulating commerce, a great substantive and independent power which cannot be implied as incidental to other powers or used as a means of executing them. It is never the end for which other powers are exercised, but a means by which other objects are accomplished. No contributions are made to charity for the sake of an incorporation, but a corporation is created to administer the charity; no seminary of learning is instituted in order to be incorporated, but the corporate character is conferred to subserve the purposes of education. No city was ever built with the sole object of being incorporated, but is incorporated as affording the best means of being well governed. The power of creating a corporation is never used for its own sake, but for the purpose of effecting something else. No sufficient reason is therefore perceived why it may not pass as incidental to those powers which are expressly given if it be a direct mode of executing them.

Acceptance speech http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=leonardAcceptanceSpeech, National Book Critics Circle 2006 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (8 March 2007)
Context: My whole life I have been waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. From these writers, for almost 50 years, I have received narrative, witness, companionship, sanctuary, shock, and steely strangeness; good advice, bad news, deep chords, hurtful discrepancy, and amazing grace. At an average of five books a week, not counting all those sighed at and nibbled on before they go to the Strand, I will read 13,000. Then I'm dead. Thirteen thousand in a lifetime, about as many as there are new ones published every month in this country.
It's not enough, and yet rich to excess. The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we're better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks. We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish.

Playboy interview (1996)
Context: I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing.

Speech to Congress (8 January 1861).
Context: It is said that serious apprehensions are to some extent entertained (in which I do not share) that the peace of this District may be disturbed before the 4th of March next. In any event, it will be my duty to preserve it, and this duty shall be performed.
In conclusion it may be permitted to me to remark that I have often warned my countrymen of the dangers which now surround us. This may be the last time I shall refer to the subject officially. I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be imperfectly, performed, and, whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

"The Jury System" (February 1890)
Context: In this, our land, we are called upon to give but little in return for the advantages which we receive. Shall we give that little grudgingly? Our definition of patriotism is often too narrow. Shall the lover of his country measure his loyalty only by his service as a soldier? No! Patriotism calls for the faithful and conscientious performance of all of the duties of citizenship, in small matters as well as great, at home as well as upon the tented field.

The Futurological Congress (1971)
Context: A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. Whichever is easier. And why indeed should it behave otherwise, being truly intelligent? For true intelligence demands choice, internal freedom. And therefore we have the malingerants, fudgerators, and drudge-dodgers, not to mention the special phenomenon of simulimbecility or mimicretinism. A mimicretin is a computer that plays stupid in order, once and for all, to be left in peace. And I found out what dissimulators are: they simply pretend that they're not pretending to be defective. Or perhaps it's the other way around. The whole thing is very complicated. A probot is a robot on probation, while a servo is one still serving time. A robotch may or may not be a sabot. One vial, and my head is splitting with information and nomenclature. A confuter, for instance, is not a confounding machine — that's a confutator — but a machine which quotes Confucius. A grammus is an antiquated frammus, a gidget — a cross between a gadget and a widget, usually flighty. A bananalog is an analog banana plug. Contraputers are loners, individualists, unable to work with others; the friction these types used to produce on the grid team led to high revoltage, electrical discharges, even fires. Some get completely out of hand — the dynamoks, the locomoters, the cyberserkers.

Fowler (2003) in: Software development. Vol. 11. p. 99

Diary entry (29 December 1848).
Context: No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.

Nobel lecture (2005)
Context: Since the Chernobyl accident, we have worked all over the globe to raise nuclear safety performance. And since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, we have worked with even greater intensity on nuclear security. On both fronts, we have built an international network of legal norms and performance standards. But our most tangible impact has been on the ground. Hundreds of missions, in every part of the world, with international experts making sure nuclear activities are safe and secure.
I am very proud of the 2,300 hard working men and women that make up the IAEA staff — the colleagues with whom I share this honour. Some of them are here with me today. We come from over 90 countries. We bring many different perspectives to our work. Our diversity is our strength.
We are limited in our authority. We have a very modest budget. And we have no armies.
But armed with the strength of our convictions, we will continue to speak truth to power. And we will continue to carry out our mandate with independence and objectivity.

Ch 1 : Production
Elements of Political Economy (1821)

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter I, p. 8-9.
Context: To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of a pin-maker: a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade, nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth, part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

George Brecht (1963), cited in: Hannah Higgins (2002), Fluxus Experience. p. 69
Context: The misunderstandings have seemed to come from comparing fluxus with movements or groups whose individuals ‘have had some principle in common, or an agreed-upon program. In fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work. Perhaps this common something is a feeling that the bounds of art are much wider than they have conventionally seemed, or that art and certain long-established bounds are no longer very useful. At any rate, individuals in europe, the us, and japan have discovered each other’s work and found it nourishing (or something) and have grown objects and events which are original, and often uncategorizable, in a strange new way.

Black Boy (1945)

Remark (14 July 1975), as quoted in Transitions to a Heart Centered World : Through the Kundalini Yoga and Meditations of Yogi Bhajan (1988) by Guru Rattana and Ann M. Maxwell, p. 107
Context: Life is like a movie. You go to a movie, give them your money and they give you a seat and start the film for you. Between eating popcorn and drinking Coca cola, you fall asleep. Now, you didn't pay your $5.00 to sleep in that chair did you? In exactly the same way, through previous karma, life is gained here. It is paid for! (You have earned it!) With Guru's grace, you did the Bhakti, and then God granted you a human body. It is earned, paid for and the title is clear. You can make it or mar it. It's your business. You've paid the money and now you are seated at the opera and the performance has begun. If you sleep and snore through it, who cares?

Speech made at the Reichstag (21 May 1935) Found in Translation of Herr Hitler's Speech to the German Reichstag on May 21, 1935 https://books.google.com/books?id=r_-htwAACAAJ&dq=hitler+may+21+1935+speech&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir0MTAmInWAhXPaCYKHaFIB2UQ6AEIJjAA Foreign Office Press. German version https://archive.org/stream/RedeDesFhrersUndReichskanzlersAdolfHitlerVorDemReichstagAm21.Mai/MicrosoftWord-Ah19350521#page/n11/mode/2up
1930s
Context: The Germany of today is a National Socialist State. The ideology that dominates us is in diametrical contradiction to that of Soviet Russia. National Socialism is a doctrine that has reference exclusively to the German people. Bolshevism lays stress on international mission. We National Socialists believe a man can, in the long run, be happy only among his own people. We are convinced the happiness and achievements of Europe are indissolubly tied up with the continuation of the system of independent and free national States. Bolshevism preaches the establishment of a world empire and recognizes only section of a central international. We National Socialists grant each people the right to its own inner life according to its needs and its own nature. Bolshevism, on the other hand, establishes doctrinal theories that are to be accepted by all peoples, regardless of their particular essence, their special nature, traditions, etc. National Socialism speaks up for the solution of social problems, issues and tensions in their own nation, with methods that are consistent with our common human, spiritual, cultural and economic beliefs, traditions and conditions. Bolshevism preaches the international class struggle, the international world revolution with the weapons of the terror and the violence. National Socialism fights for the reconciliation and consequent adjustment of the differences in life and the union of all for common benefits. Bolshevism teaches the overcoming of an alleged class rule by the dictatorship of the power of a different class. National Socialism does not attach importance to a only theoretical rule of the working class, but especially on the practical improvement of their living conditions and standard of living. Bolshevism fights for a theory and, for it, sacrifices millions of people, immense values of traditional culture and traditions, and achieves, compared with us, only a very low standard of living for all. As National Socialists, our hearts are full with admiration and respect for the great achievements of the past, not only in our own people but also far beyond. We are happy to belong to an European cultural community that has so tremendously embossed today's world with a stamp of its mind. Bolshevism rejects this cultural achievement of mankind, claiming that has found the beginning of the real cultural and human history in the year of birth of Marxism. We, National Socialists, do not want to be of the same opinion as our church organizations in this or that organizational question. But we never want a lack of belief in religion or any faith, and do not wish that our churches become club-houses or cinemas. Bolshevism teaches the godlessness and acts accordingly. We National Socialists see in private property a higher level of human economic development that according to the differences in performance controls the management of what has been accomplished enabling and guaranteeing the advantage of a higher standard of living for everyone. Bolshevism destroys not only private property but also private initiative and the readiness to shoulder responsibility. It has not been able to save millions of human beings from starvation in Russia, the greatest Agrarian State in the world. It would be unthinkable to transfer such a catastrophe into Germany, because, at the of the day, in Russia there are 10 city dwellers for every 90 country dwellers, but in Germany for only 25 farmers there are 75 city dwellers. National Socialists and Bolshevists both are convinced they are a world apart from each other and their differences can never be bridged. Apart from that, there were thousands of our people slain and maimed in the fight against Bolshevism. If Russia likes Bolshevism it is not our affair, but if Bolshevism casts its nets over to Germany, then we will fight it tooth and nail.

I Am A Dancer (1952)

New York Times Interview, 1995
Interviews, Print Interviews
Context: After "Jammin' In New York", I went from a comedian who wrote his own material to a writer who performed his own material... I became socially conscious, and found I had something to say that wasn't too common.

2008
Lyrics

Interview The Lantern (5 April 2001) Replying to two priests who, after a performance of his routines of "The Creation of The World" and "The Hands of Good and Evil", asked if he was religious.

1979 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1979.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)
Context: The primary test of managerial economic performance is the achievement of a high earnings rate on equity capital employed (without undue leverage, accounting gimmickry, etc.) and not the achievement of consistent gains in earnings per share. In our view, many businesses would be better understood by their shareholder owners, as well as by the general public, if managements and financial analysts modified the primary emphasis they place upon earnings per share, and upon yearly changes in that figure.

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty.
Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.

No. 43 (14 August 1750) http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Joh1Ram.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=43&division=div1
The Rambler (1750–1752)
Context: All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-axe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings.
It is therefore of the utmost importance that those, who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason, and their spirit, the power of persisting in their purposes; acquire the art of sapping what they cannot batter, and the habit of vanquishing obstinate resistance by obstinate attacks.

For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1789). As quoted in Writings http://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Writings-Library-America-Benjamin/dp/0940450291 (1987), p. 1154-1155.
Context: Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitious care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart… To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted.

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 287, the word "passed" was here originally spelt "past" but modern renditions have updated the spelling for clarity. An alteration of these lines occurs in Alexander Pope's satire The Dunciad, Book III, line 264, where he describes a contemporary theatre manager as an "Angel of Dulness":
Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease,
Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease;
And proud his mistress' order to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 62-63.
1925
Context: It was for that reason, feeling as I did, that I was driven into the course which I embraced in December, 1916, when I accepted Mr. Bonar Law's offer to serve as his Parliamentary Secretary. I did that deliberately, because I believed that at my time of life, having already sufficient means to be independent of the active business in which I had passed my life up to then, I had the opportunity of giving my services to the country without any feeling that it was necessary to be remunerated for them. There is nothing singular in that. There must have been millions of men who felt as I did. I have never said, or believed, that that service which I had the opportunity of rendering was one whit higher or better than any other. All service ranks the same, according to the spirit in which it is performed. One of the sources of the great strength of our country in every part of the kingdom is that there are men who have no personal ambition for themselves to get where the limelight is brightest and publicity is greatest. And as long as our country can go on producing that type, which I am thankful to say it is producing from all classes of the community— so long as that is the case, I should never despair of England.

Markets, Governments, and the Common Good, speech at Hillsdale College (27 September 2007)
2000s
Context: Say that you hire me to mow your lawn and afterwards you pay me $30. What I have earned might be thought of as certificates of performance, i. e. proof that I served you. With these certificates of performance in hand, I visit my grocer and demand 3 pounds of steak and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced. In effect, the grocer asks, "Williams, you're demanding that your fellow man, as ranchers and brewers, serve you; what did you do in turn to serve your fellow man?" I say, "I mowed my fellow man’s lawn." The grocer says, "Prove it!" That's when I hand over my certificates of performance -- the $30.

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: The task I am called upon to perform today is to my thinking by no means a merely formal or easy matter. It fills me with deep concern to give an address, with such authority as a president's chair confers, upon a science which, though still in a purely nascent stage, seems to me at least as important as any other science whatever. Psychical science, as we here try to pursue it, is the embryo of something which in time may dominate the whole world of thought. This possibility — nay, probability — does not make it the easier to me now. Embryonic development is apt to be both rapid and interesting; yet the Prudent man shrinks from dogmatizing on the egg until he has seen the chicken.

Originally delivered at a poetry reading at Princeton University (26 October 1937), published in Collected Poems, Prose & Plays (1995)
General sources
Context: When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don’t feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. … You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the New Republic.

Helvering v. Griffiths, 318 U.S. at 400-401 (1943).
Judicial opinions

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 26 : "Epper Si Muove"
Context: To-day alone was real. Never was man brought into contact with reality save through the evanescent emotions and sensations of that single moment, that infinitesimal fraction of a second, which was passing now — and it was in the insignificance of this moment, precisely, that religious persons must believe. So ran the teachings of all dead and lingering faiths alike. Here was, perhaps, only another instance of mankind's abhorrence of actualities; and man's quaint dislike of facing reality was here disguised as a high moral principle. That was why all art, which strove to make the sensations of a moment soul-satisfying, was dimly felt to be irreligious. For art performed what religion only promised.

Context: It’s not a character like in a book or a movie. He’s not a bus driver. He doesn’t drive a forklift. He’s not a serial killer. It’s me who’s singing that, plain and simple. We shouldn’t confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, “My character this, and my character that.” Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don’t have to explain it to me.

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 112

Source: Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It (1993), p. 64

Quoted on Sify News, "India's development depends on its states: President" http://www.sify.com/finance/india-s-development-depends-on-its-states-president-news-national-oeesuGedede.html, April 4, 2014.
Context: The road to our country's development will, therefore, depend on the progress of our states. Yet, they have to have a national vision; Unless they are firm in their resolve, our country would not be able to reach its rightful place in the comity of nations. India's federal structure is a basic feature of our constitution... (It) represents unity in diversity. While performing their duties, civil servants would have to respect this aspect.

"Soft Matter" Nobel lecture (9 December 1991) - full text in PDF format http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1991/gennes-lecture.html
Context: Benjamin Franklin performed a beautiful experiment using surfactants; on a pond at Clapham Common, he poured a small amount of oleic acid, a natural surfactant which tends to form a dense film at the water-air interface. He measured the volume required to cover all the pond. Knowing the area, he then knew the height of the film, something like three nanometers in our current units. This was to my knowledge the first measurement of the size of molecules. In our days, when we are spoilt with exceedingly complex toys, such as nuclear reactors or synchrotron sources, I particularly like to describe experiments of this Franklin style to my students.
Surfactants allow us to protect a water surface, and to generate these beautiful soap bubbles, which are the delight of our children.

As We May Think (1945)
Context: Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: In the human form, as nature tries to make it, every feature is useful and every feature is beautiful. Each member is perfectly adapted to the function it has to perform; nothing is superfluous, yet the whole and every part is supremely decorative.<!-- Introduction

More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian (1856), "Religious Difficulties", p. 152-153
Context: Amid the destructive convulsions of the physical world, even pious minds may have for an instant questioned the superintending providence of God. In the midst of famine, or pestilence, or war, they may have stood horror- struck at the scene. In the triumphs of fraud, oppression, and injustice, over honesty, and liberty, and law. Faith may have wavered, and Hope despaired; but in no condition, either of the physical or the moral world, does the mind question the POWER of its Maker. The omnipotence of the Creator, and the exertion of it in every corner of space, — His care over the falling sparrow, and His guidance of the gigantic planet, are the earliest of our acquired truths, and the very first that observation and experience confirm. When Reason gives wisdom to our perceptions, omnipotence is the grand truth which they inculcate. Whatever the eye sees, or the ear hears, or the fingers touch, — every motion of our body, every function it performs, every structure in its fabric, impresses on the mind, and fixes in the heart the conviction, that the Creator is all-powerful as well as all-wise. Omnipotence, in short, is the only attribute of God which is universally appreciated, which skepticism never unsettles, and which we believe as firmly when under the influence of our corrupt passions, as when we are looking devoutly to heaven. All the other attributes of God are inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions of reason, and, however true and demonstrable, they exercise little influence over the mind; but the attribute of omnipotence predominates over them all, and no mind responsive to its power will ever be disturbed by the ideas which it suggests of infinity of time, infinity of space, and infinity of life.

Gene Spafford's Personal Page: the Quotable Spaf http://spaf.cerias.purdue.edu/quotes.html
Context: Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.

As quoted in Management and the Computer of the Future (1962) by Sloan School of Management, p. 273
Context: We must include in any language with which we hope to describe complex data-processing situations the capability for describing data. We must also include a mechanism for determining the priorities to be applied to the data. These priorities are not fixed and are indicated in many cases by the data.
Thus we must have a language and a structure that will take care of the data descriptions and priorities, as well as the operations we wish to perform. If we think seriously about these problems, we find that we cannot work with procedures alone, since they are sequential. We need to define the problem instead of the procedures. The Language Structures Group of the Codasyl Committee has been studying the structure of languages that can be used to describe data-processing problems. The Group started out by trying to design a language for stating procedures, but soon discovered that what was really required was a description of the data and a statement of the relationships between the data sets. The Group has since begun writing an algebra of processes, the background for a theory of data processing.
Clearly, we must break away from the sequential and not limit the computers. We must state definitions and provide for priorities and descriptions of data. We must state relationships, not procedures.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: In order to understand what kind of behaviors classrooms promote, one must become accustomed to observing what, in fact, students actually do in them. What students do in a classroom is what they learn (as Dewey would say), and what they learn to do is the classroom's message (as McLuhan would say). Now, what is it that students do in the classroom? Well, mostly they sit and listen to the teacher. Mostly, they are required to believe in authorities, or at least pretend to such belief when they take tests. Mostly they are required to remember. They are almost never required to make observations, formulate definitions, or perform any intellectual operations that go beyond repeating what someone else says is true. They are rarely encouraged to ask substantive questions, although they are permitted to ask about administrative and technical details. (How long should the paper be? Does spelling count? When is the assignment due?) It is practically unheard of for students to play any role in determining what problems are worth studying or what procedures of inquiry ought to be used. Examine the types of questions teachers ask in classrooms, and you will find that most of them are what might technically be called "convergent questions," but what might more simply be called "Guess what I am thinking " questions.

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.xxiv

72. Unified Popular Law-Courts
ABC's of Communism

Teaching of His Holiness Shantanand Saraswati, The Study Society 2018

Quoted in "Remembering Ellen Stewart, Founder of La MaMa Etc." By Ellis Nassour, Theaterlife.com http://theaterlife.com/remembering-ellen-stewart/.

Source: Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978), p. 14

How Does Dan Deacon Work? http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/working/2017/05/working_in_baltimore_how_does_dan_deacon_work.html (May 9, 2017)

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 203

Source: On how she aimed to preserve the spoken word feel for her book The Poet X in “Debut Author Elizabeth Acevedo on 'The Poet X'” https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/76224-q-a-with-elizabeth-acevedo.html in Publishers Weekly (2018 Mar 6)

On masculinity as a performance (as quoted in “Saeed Jones” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/saeed-jones in Poets.org)

On the benefits of being a musician in “Drummer Pete Escovedo will stick with what he knows at Thornton Winery” https://www.pe.com/2017/07/06/drummer-pete-escovedo-will-stick-with-what-he-knows-at-thornton-winery/ in The Press-Enterprise (2017 Jul 6)

On the “self” as a spectacle in “Jenny Xie Interviews Sally Wen Mao” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/01/jenny-xie-interviews-sally-wen-mao (Poetry Foundation; Jan 2019)

On explaining the artistic process to spectators in “Oral history interview with Gronk, 1997 Jan. 20-23” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-gronk-13586#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)

§4, p. 106
Making globalization work (2006)

"Razor Wire Plantations" (2014)

On connecting with your audience in “Life’s Work: An Interview with Trevor Noah” https://hbr.org/2018/09/lifes-work-an-interview-with-trevor-noah in Harvard Business Review (September-October, 2018)
Personal life

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chris-martin-coldplay-interview-jann-wenner-920912/ source
On the X&Y album.

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 65.

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 6

On the expectations for an African American artist in “Art Talk with Kara Walker” https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2012/art-talk-kara-walker (National Endowment of the Arts; 2012 Feb 1)

On her appearance on Bravo’s television show Work of Art in “INSIDE THE ARTIST’S STUDIO: NAO BUSTAMANTE” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/nao-bustamante-work-of-art-bravo in Interview Magazine (2010 Jun 11)

“Speech to the Reichstag Assuming New Powers” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-speech-to-the-reichstag-assuming-new-power-april-1942, (April 26, 1942)
1940s

On how her alter ego helps her cope with adulthood in “Awkwafina: ‘I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I’d do anything for a laugh’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/17/awkwafina-oceans-8-youtube-crazy-funny-nora-lum in The Guardian (2018 Jun 17)

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 2 “The Tyranny of Controls”, pp. 40-41

" Economic Myths and Public Opinion https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/AmSpectator_01_1976.pdf” The Alternative: An American Spectator vol. 9, no. 4, (January 1976) pp. 5-9, Reprinted in Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist’s Protest, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1983) pp. 60-75

"Good Old Neon", Oblivion: Stories
Short stories

'Foreword' (June 1977), Patrick Hutber (ed.), What's Wrong with Britain? (Sphere, 1978), p. 7
Later life

On the topics rarely addressed in theater in “Making Invisible Stories Seen, Heard and Felt Interview with Caridad Svich” http://www.critical-stages.org/3/making-invisible-stories-seen-heard-and-felt-interview-with-caridad-svich/ in The IATC webjournal/Revue web de l'AICT – Autumn 2010: Issue No 3

On what inspired him to write the play Home in “Lyrical, Uplifting HOME by Samm-Art Williams Comes to ICT” https://www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/article/Lyrical-Uplifting-HOME-by-Samm-Art-Williams-Comes-to-ICT-20170915 in Broadway World: Los Angeles (2017 Sep 15)

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 13, “Fimbulwinter” (pp. 258-259)

Peter J. Rabinowitz in Fanfare - The Magazin for Serious Record Collectors, USA, January/February 2011, Chopin-Schumann Anniversary Edition 2010 in the interpretation of Burkard Schliessmann, Volume 34, Number 3, p. 255

"The Ethics of Human Beings Toward Non-human Beings", p. 276
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Individual Culture, p. 266

1920s, Speech at College of William and Mary (May 15, 1926)

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 332)