Quotes about performance
page 9

“The new "ambiguity" means, in a way adjudged favorable to literary, poetic, intellectually and psychologically well-devised and praiseworthily executed linguistic performance, uncertainty of meaning, or difficulty for the interpreter in identifying just what the meaning in question is: it means the old meanings of ambiguity with a difference. It means uncertainty of meaning (of a word or combination of words) purposefully incorporated in a literary composition for the attainment of the utmost possible variety of meaning-play compressible within the verbal limits of the composition.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"On Ambiguity" in Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).

Way, Question

“Th[e] uniqueness [of the role of dean] stems from an absence of objective and immediate measures of performance combined with arcane governance procedures that may permit some deans to hold office for years without being confronted by those who disagree with their judgments…”

Arthur G. Bedeian (1946) American business theorist

Arthur G. Bedeian, "The dean's disease: How the darker side of power manifests itself in the office of dean." Academy of Management Learning & Education 1.2 (2002): 164-173; As cited in: "Art Bedeian on "Dean's Disease" With Commentary by Duane Cobb," at usmnews.net, 2007.

“[Being vegan] improved my performance off and on the field. Plant-based foods have no cholesterol, so I don’t have a cholesterol issue. My blood pressure is good, and the toxicity level in my body is good. You’re able to take more energy from plant-based sources than animal-based sources. The list goes on, and it translates to the field and how I recover.”

Montell Owens (1984) American football player, running back

"Hey, Arian Foster—Where's the Beef? Going Vegan in the NFL" https://www.si.com/edge/2014/04/24/going-vegan-nfl-0, interview with Sports Illustrated (April 24, 2014).

Food, Animals

“The Croatian parliament elected me to be the Croatian member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. I went to Belgrade, where first, for several months, I was not allowed to take up my duties because the Federal Assembly was unable to meet. After that, the Serbian bloc boycotted my election as president under… Finally, under pressure from the international community, I was elected president. Croatia adopted a decision on its independence. Croatia, in agreement with the international community, postponed its secession from Yugoslavia by three months. This time period had elapsed. Yugoslavia no longer existed. The federal institutions were no longer functioning. I returned to Zagreb, and that's precisely what I said. Because I [had not gone] to Belgrade to open up a house-painting business. I went there as a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. Since Yugoslavia no longer existed and the Presidency no longer existed, I had performed the tasks entrusted to me by the Croatian parliament and was reporting back, ready to take up a different office. What was I to do in Belgrade when the Presidency no longer existed?… The accused is a lawyer. He understands very well what I'm talking about. My 'task' was to represent Croatia in the Federal Presidency.”

Stjepan Mesić (1934) Former Croatian and Yugoslav president

ICTY Transcript, Page 10636 - Mesić's cross-examination by Slobodan Milošević at the ICTY on 2 October 2002, 8 April 2012 http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/021002IT.htm, Responding to an earlier quote in which he stated My task has come to an end. There is no more Yugoslavia. ("Moj posao je završen - Jugoslavije više nema") 5 December 1991 in the Croatian parliament having left the presidency of the Yugoslav presidency.

Communication, Understanding, Business, Decision

“Listening to that performance changed my life. It changed the course of my musical career. I could listen to my heart's voice clearly because the music had helped me understand my mind's deepest desires. Today, I am happy and feel blessed that I followed the path dictated by my heart.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On hearing a performance on a woodwind by Pandit Bhola Nath of Varanasi.
My father's wrestling techniques made my lungs strong: Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia

Life, Happiness, Music, Feeling

“Even the death we feel approaching is not absolute but only incidental. At that moment we perform yet another act. The act is the form, the way in which death is faced.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Death, Way, Feeling

“It's depressing to realize how few of the teams in our lives use their human capital and opportunities well, when it comes to sustaining performance, innovating, or adapting. That's true whether we're talking about families, sports, projects, management, or research.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Boyatzis (2012) " The Resonant Team Leader http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/the_resonant_team_leader.html" at HBR Blog Network, April 13, 2012.

Family, Sport

“O Rāma, the noble son of Kausalyā! The Sandhyā of the morning commences. O the lion amongst men! Arise, the Vedic daily tasks are to be performed.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

kausalyāsuprajā rāma pūrvā saṃdhyā pravartate ।
uttiṣṭha naraśārdūla karttavyaṃ daivamāhnikam ॥
Śrīsītārāmasuprabhātam

Men

“Religious ritual survives cultural transmission by embedding episodes of intense, life-defining personal experiences in public performances. These performances involve sequential, socially interactive movement and gesture (chant, dance, murmur, sway) and formulaic utterances that rhythmically synchronize affective states among group members in displays of cooperative commitment. This is often accompanied by sensory pageantry, which further helps to emotionally validate and sustain the moral consensus.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 16
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Life, Help, Dance, Personality

“Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 236

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Appearance

“Mark: I have to acknowledge the fact that the Australian Public loves you, they admire your tenacity and they know that you're a great girl. I'm not going to say what I think… What I am going to say is that it's been 3 weeks since we had our producer meeting where you said that you didn't know what type of cd that you wanted to perform…. What kind of record are you going to make?”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 6

Love, Girl, Thinking

“It’s really life and death [not art]. When they tell you your mother is 80 years old but you cannot see her again, you can never call it performance art. Or when your son is three, and they tell you that when you are released he will be in his teens and can never recognize you as a father. You feel terrible inside, to lose those chances. Each day, they tell you, 'You will spend your life day after day the same, minute after minute the same. You just have to pay [with] your life for this kind of so-called freedom that you are fighting for.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

There is no sense of justice there. Why do I have to do this with them? Why do I have to argue or play this game?"
2010-, You’re There but You’re Not Existing, 2012

Life, Death, Justice, Art

“Perhaps the most surprise, the most shock, should arise when what is said is really most orthodox and ancient, since the tradition is so rarely re-performed in practice today.”

John Milbank (1952) British philosopher

The World Made Strange (1997)

“Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Science and Religion" (1939-1941), p. 22 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false 1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)

Life, Religion, Intelligence, Thinking

“A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed." Then he added, "Can you, while the Muslim fighter is in the battle-field, enter your mosque to perform prayers without cease and fast and never break your fast?" The man said, "But who can do that?" Abu- Huraira added, "The Mujahid (i. e. Muslim fighter) is rewarded even for the footsteps of his horse while it wanders about (for grazing) tied in a long rope."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Abu Huraira, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 44
Sunni Hadith

Horse

“In your number of March 3rd [1860] I observe a long quotation from The Times, stating that Mr. Darwin "professes to have discovered the existence and modus operandi of the natural law of selection," that is, "the power in nature which takes the place of man and performs a selection, sua sponte," in organic life. This discovery recently published as "the results of 20 years' investigation and reflection" by Mr. Darwin turns out to be what I published very fully and brought to apply practically to forestry in my work Naval Timber and Arboriculture, published as far back as January 1, 1831, by Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh, and Longman & Co., London, and reviewed in numerous periodicals, so as to have full publicity in the "Metropolitan Magazine," the "Quarterly Review," the "Gardeners' Magazine," by Loudon… and repeatedly in the "United Service Magazine" for 1831, &c. The following is an extract from this volume, which clearly proves a prior claim.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

excerpt follows
Gardeners' Chronicle

Life, Law, Nature, Time

“It was a very British and utterly unconvincing performance.”

Agatha Christie book Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile (1937)

“Every time I perform, I work really hard to give part of myself to the audience. Then I do an interview and I read some story that just isn't true, or someone draws a crazy conclusion about my life, and it's such a betrayal. It hasn't happened here, but in Croatia, I've had to stop reading about myself. I don't think actors mean to be secretive - they just don't want strangers looking through their kitchen window.”

Goran Višnjić (1972) Croatian actor

Goran Visnjic on why he doesn't give many interviews.

Life, Secret, Thinking, Betrayal

“The dissatisfaction with life and the world, felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect by every discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a rather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to their active energies. For it must be said, that the strength of will of which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itself principally in manner. With great zeal for human improvement, a strong sense of duty and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any intellectual task of magnitude. He had so high a standard of what ought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own performances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount of elaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not only spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by over-labouring it, but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought, that when his task ought to have been completed, he had generally worked himself into an illness, without having half finished what he undertook. From this mental infirmity (of which he is not the sole example among the accomplished and able men whom I have known), combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in comparison with what he seemed capable of;”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/74/mode/1up pp. 74-75

Life, Men, Health, World

“We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage: the last lines of his 'Autobiographical Statement', April, 1990 http://www.johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html 1990s

People, School, Music, Change

“Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements, external or internal, which occurred during this period - neither the insurrection of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings of the pirates and the slaves - constituted of itself a mighty danger necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet the state had in all these struggles well-night fought for its very existence. The reason was that the tasks were left everywhere unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing of equality. The democracy and the servile insurrection were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them. It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief Sertorius and his Spanish guerrillas, and that it was only the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour[sic] of the legitimate government. As to the slaves, it was far less an honour[sic] to have confronted them in equal strive for years. Little more than a century had elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush to the cheek of the honourable[sic] Roman, when he reflected on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age. Then the (the Roman) Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success, but always with honour, not it was difficult to find among all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency. Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired, merely that they might be able to defend themselves against the insurgent slaves at home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian Straights, beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with a blockade; the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti. Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories over insurgents and robber-chiefs?”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Chapter 2. "Rule of the Sullan Restoration"
The Government of the Restoration as a Whole
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Life, War, Age, Democracy

“Homer is the most simple in his style of all the great poets, and resembles most the style of the poetical parts of the Old Testament. They can have no conception of his manner, who are acquainted with him in Mr. Pope's translation only. An excellent poetical performance that translation is, and faithful in the main to the original. In some places, it may be thought to have even improved Homer. It has certainly softened some of his rudenesses, and added delicacy and grace to some of his sentiments. But withal, it is no other than Homer modernised. In the midst of the elegance and luxuriancy of Mr. Pope's language, we lose sight of the old bard's simplicity. I know indeed no author, to whom it is more difficult to do justice in a translation, than Homer.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1784), Lecture XLIII: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey—Virgil's Aeneid.

Faith, Justice, Parting

“The United States stands tall, representing a parade of nations, 300 million strong. That number will grow during today's citizenship ceremony, featuring the national anthem performed by pop star Gloria Estefan. She captures the essence of what makes this country so great: Ms. Estefan arrived from Cuba as a 2-year-old and would eventually chase her amitions of becoming a singer. She would incorporate salsa into mainstream American music, reflecting the true meaning of this country as a melting pot.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

editorial on www.orlandosentinel.com (July 5, 2007)
2007, 2008

Music, Star, Strong, Country

“Professionals identify strongly with their professions, more strongly than with their clients or their employers. They not only observe professional standards, they believe that only members of their professions have the competence and ethics to enforce these standards. Similarly, professionals insist that outsiders cannot properly supervise their activities.
Management consulting and software engineering, for example, do not qualify as recognized professions. Without doubt, those who do these jobs well have rare expertise. Nevertheless, the ultimate judges of their expertise are their clients or their supervisors, and their employers set and enforce their ethical codes and performance standards”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

Source: Learning by knowledge‐intensive firms," 1992, p. 717

“The classical concept of 'physical entity', be it particle, wave, field or system, has become a problematic concept since the advent of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. The recent developments in modern quantum mechanics, with the performance of delicate and precise experiments involving single quantum entities, manifesting explicit non-local behavior for these entities, brings essential new information about the nature of the concept of entity.”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Aerts, D. (1998). " The entity and modern physics: the creation-discovery view of reality. http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/aerts/publications/1998EntModPhys.pdf" In E. Castellani (Ed.), Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics (pp. 223-257). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Behavior, Nature

“Chopin absolutely was influenced by Bach. We know that before Chopin himself performed in concert, he didn’t play anything other than Bach. His own Preludes are a reference to the Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach, and all Chopin’s students had to play Bach. In whole, Chopin admired Bach most of all composers, and it was nothing less than the Well-Tempered Clavier itself that was his musical diary. I also have said that Chopin is the crowning and climax of piano-playing. It’s something so unique, all-affecting in emotionalism, musical architecture, and structure, that all past giants are present in it: Bach and Mozart. Chopin’s elegance is so singular, that again you need much experience to convey his music in the real and original style. The question of rubato is very sensitive: It’s nothing arbitrary, but much more something well calculated and well proportioned, something that is integrated in the classical strength of form, which is constructed on the profound knowledge of the polyphonic and contrapuntal structures of Bach and Mozart. Whether the Goldbergs may relate to this question? Absolutely! I again want to mention a certain and special term: jeu perlé.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Without this you can’t play Chopin, you can’t play Mozart, and lastly absolutely not the Goldbergs.
Talkings on Bach

Music, Question, Knowledge, Past

“We came from a conservative family, many of whom had never even gone to school. But I was sent to a convent and everyone was very proud that I was educated. So once while I was performing in Madras, a director from AVM studios spotted me. They were looking for a fresh face and they immediately wanted to cast me, and my grandmother grudgingly accepted.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In "There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala".

Education, School, Family

“The subordinate's job is not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1990s and later, Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992), p. 138

Books, School, Business

“There is a lot of piety among us, but not enough spirituality. Piety consists in the performance of external devotional practices and is measured by one’s fidelity to these practices. Whether or not the faithful performance of these exercises of piety improves the quality of one’s Christian life is a question that is seldom asked. One is at times surprised that priests, sisters and lay people who are obviously pious are manifestly unfair in their dealings with other people. Some of them show so little of the compassion of Christ and are quite unwilling to forgive others.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Life, People, Faith, Exercises

“I don't perform. Seals perform.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From an interview with Russell Brand in December 2006, also quoted in the March 2007 issue of Uncut.
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

“National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government.”

Richard Perle (1941) American government official

An End To Evil: How To Win the War on Terror, David Frum, Richard N. Perle, Ballantine (reprint,2004), Chapter 5 'The War Abroad,' p. 102 : ISBN 0345477170

“May God give me the wisdom which I need and grant me what I so fervently desire, that is, to finish my studies as quickly as possible and he ordained, so that I can perform the practical duties of a clergyman.”

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

In a letter to Theo, from Amsterdam, 19 Nov. 1877; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 113), p. 18 as student, in Amsterdam, staying in the house of his uncle 1870s

Wisdom, God, Study

“At its core, the argument against racism, at least as it works to further black interests, is an argument against collectivism. You're meant to avoid judging an entire people based on the color of their epidermis or the conduct of a statistically significant number of them. It is, however, deemed perfectly acceptable to malign and milk Europeans for all they're worth, based on the lack of pigment in their skin and their overall better socio-economic performance.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Europeans Abolished Slavery; Africans/Muslims Still Practice It." http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263735/europeans-abolished-slavery-africansmuslims-still-ilana-mercer FrontPage Magazine 8/4/016. 2010s, 2016

People, Color

“I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.”

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) American composer, composition teacher, writer, and conductor

Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

People, Hope

“To the gardener who goes about his task with the right spirit must every plant appear as the most wonderful of laboratories in which miracles of transformation, outmatching the utmost feats of the most skillful conjurer, are being performed every hour.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

Appearance

“Some of these patterns of performance were calculable, though only as types of behaviour, in advance; some were quite unforeseen.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: The Living Brain (1953), p. 130 : Note about the recording of the behavior of a complex system

“!-- I come from the Arts Lab. Most of the writing I used to do was used for performance, so consequently I learnt that when you are reading a poem it has to read properly, which is to do with syllables and stresses. What takes me the longest with my fine writing, like say Voice of the Fire, is reading it through and finding the bits where it clunks, where it’s one syllable too long, and once you find that rhythm – the reader probably won’t be aware of it, consciously, but there is a tidal wave embedded in the prose that the reader is responding to. In the last chapter of Voice in the Fire, where it is actually me talking in my own voice, I don’t use the word ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘mine’. I don’t know why – perhaps I had been reading that Private Eye column where it is all ‘I’ ‘I’ ‘I’ and started to feel a bit self-conscious about it – but --> I thought if I can still be the central voice but without having an ‘I’ there, and by not having it there, it makes it easier for the reader to slip into the consciousness of the narrator. If you remove the letter ‘I’ it becomes a universal I. Everybody is the author walking down those streets while they are in the prose.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Art, Feeling, Universe, Reading

“A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 3 The Control of Money, p. 39

Men, Fear, Question, Freedom

“Firuz Shah Tughlaq organised an industry out of catching slaves. Shams-i-Siraj Afif writes in his Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi: “The Sultan commanded his great fief-holders and officers to capture slaves whenever they were at war (that is, suppressing Hindu rebellions), and to pick out and send the best for the service of the court. The chiefs and officers naturally exerted themselves in procuring more and more slaves and a great number of them were thus collected. When they were found to be in excess, the Sultan sent them to important cities… It has been estimated that in the city and in the various fiefs, there were 1,80,000 slaves… The Sultan created a separate department with a number of officers for administering the affairs of these slaves.”. Firuz Shah beat all previous records in his treatment of the Hindus… He records another instance in which Hindus who had built new temples were butchered before the gate of his palace, and their books, images, and vessels of Worship were publicly burnt. According to him “this was a warning to all men that no zimmi could follow such wicked practices in a Musulman country”. Afif reports yet another case in which a Brahmin of Delhi was accused of “publicly performing idol-worship in his house and perverting Mohammedan women leading them to become infidels”. The Brahmin “was tied hand and foot and cast into a burning pile of faggots.””

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

The historian who witnessed this scene himself expresses his satisfaction by saying, “Behold the Sultan’s strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees.”
Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231

Women, Men, War, Books

“Somebody in Germany [the German artist Joseph Beuys, who frequently visited America to discuss and to do performances] has been talking about my 'silence', saying that it is overrated. What does that mean? [this quotes you find also in Joseph Beuys' quotes on Wikiquote], he himself heard this 'rumor' from several American artists! (Joseph Beuys continued: 'I am convinced that he [= Duchamp] knew very well what it meant. If he was unsure about it, he could have written me a letter').”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from: 'Interview with Achille Bonito Oliva', 1986; Republished in: 'Joseph Beuys', Carin Kuoni. Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man. New York, 1993
posthumous

Quotes, Silence

“She may guess what I should perform in the wet, if I do so much in the dry.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 11.

“If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Address to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London quoted in The Independent, London (24 March 1990)

Way

“That uncountable myths and legends and ecclesiastical operas and dirges have at their core, if not in their trappings, near identical mechanisms, performances, and outcomes is proof most solid of the centrality of the panhuman subconscious—or superconscious—experience of the myriad and manifold wonders and terrors of the cosmos.”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Appendix (p. 525)
The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004)

“A homeostat constantly seeks to establish a balance which is perpetually disrupted, and performs a statistical exploration of all the possible combinations of inputs.
The actual research on the apparatus is guided by a triple determinism which integrates:
#. one element of uncertainty created by an "indifferent cell," which systematically makes use of chance;
#. one element of "sensorial reactions" which integrates the effects of the sound atmosphere, of the light atmosphere and of the heat atmosphere;
#. an "internal determinism" created by the feedbacks of the various active chains among one another, in order to liberate the machine progressively. Its degree of liberty can easily be modified.
The objective sought is above all of an experimental order. As for electronic animals, the synthesis of the faculties must be effected very gradually, and the behavior of the "models" man makes of himself must be observed. This exploration by the "models" of physiology, psychology and sociology marks the opening of a new path in research.”

Nicolas Schöffer (1912–1992) French sculptor and plastician

Source: André Giraud-Bours (1963). Nicolas Schöffer. p. 45 ; cited in: " 1956 – CYSP-1 – Nicolas Schöffer – (Hungarian/French) http://cyberneticzoo.com/cyberneticanimals/1956-cysp-1-nicolas-schoffer-hungarianfrench/" in: cyberneticzoo.com, 2015.

Behavior, Light, Chance, Animals

“The average man takes life as a trouble. He is in a chronic state of irritation at the whole performance.
He does not learn to differentiate between troubles and difficulties, usually, until some real trouble bowls him over. He fusses about pin-pricks until a mule kicks him. Then he learns the difference.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Herbert N. Casson in: Sheet Metal Workers' International Association (1928) Sheet Metal Workers Journal p. 22
1920s-1940s

Life, Learning

“The play holds the season’s record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinée. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many. p. 121”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

Season

“Every time the cycle is stopped, some 200 tons of coal are lost. So close is the task interdependence that the system becomes vulnerable from its need for 100 percent performance at each step.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 18

Time

“Every evening after dinner, a new life began. There was no hurry. Some walked in the garden. Others smoked. About nine o’clock we made our way alone or in twos and threes to the Study House. Outdoor shoes came off and soft shoes or moccasins were put on. We sat quietly, each on his or her own cushion, round the floor in the centre. Men sat on the right, women on the left; never together.

Some went straight on to the stage and began to practice the rhythmic exercises. On our first arrival, each of us had the right to choose his own teacher for the movements. I had chosen Vasili Ferapontoff, a young Russian, tall, with a sad studious face. He wore pince-nez, and looked the picture of the perpetual student, Trofimov, in The Cherry Orchard. He was a conscientious instructor, though not a brilliant performer. I came to value his friendship, which continued until his premature death ten years later. He told me in one of our first conversations that he expected to die young.

The exercises were much the same as those I had seen in Constantinople three years before. The new pupils, such as myself, began with the series called Six Obligatory Exercises. I found them immensely exciting, and worked hard to master them quickly so that I could join in the work of the general class.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 90–91 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Fontainebleau 1923

Life, Death, Women, Men

“With regard to the principle [of using symbols to represent sounds], it matters little whether the symbol is an elaborately detailed picture, a slightly stylized drawing, or a drastically abbreviated symbol of essentially abstract form. What is crucial is to recognize that the diverse forms perform the same function in representing sound. To see that writing has the form of pictures and to conclude that it is pictographic is correct in only one sense -- that of the form, but not the function, of the symbols. We can put it this way:
QUESTION: When is a pictograph not a pictograph?
ANSWER: When it represents a sound.”

John DeFrancis book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 140) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)

Way, Question, Sense, Drawing

“I think there is an incredible crisis now of how we train performers. Their training encourages them to behave as though they are back in the 19th century, and they are not allowed to get out of that box very much. 'If they play a tiny bit of contemporary music, it's looked on as a bit eccentric, and it's sort of tolerated instead of absolutely encouraged. And they certainly can't improvise, and they find it difficult to encounter jazz or jazz styles. 'I think they're all waking up to this, and it's very difficult for them, because the training and the value systems that get put on them go against what we all know to be the real world. Musicians do want to break out of these constraints. It's slightly boring to just play the same cycle of pieces over and over again.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Denver Post, 18/02/2005
On Classical Music

World, Music, Thinking, Training

“Here in this seat, I will not say yes to anybody performing karaoke. It is a principal issue.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Quotes from him, Csillag születik (talent show between 2011-2012)

“In the Roman de la Rose, we read of a dance, the name of which is not recorded, performed by two young women lightly clothed. The original reads, "Qui estoient en pure cottes, et tresses a menu tresse;" which Chaucer renders, "In kyrtels, and none other wede, and fayre ytressed every tresse." The French intimates that their hair was platted, or braided in small braids. The thin clothing, I suppose, was used then, as it is now upon like occasions, to show their persons to greater advantage. In their dancing they displayed a variety of singular attitudes; the one coming as it were privately to the other, and, when they were near together, in a playsome manner they turned their faces about, so that they seemed continually to kiss each other.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 227
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Women, Kiss, Reading, Dance

“I've learned things about myself through singing. I used to have a certain dislike of the audience, not as individual people, but as a giant body who was judging me. Of course, it wasn't really them judging me. It was me judging me. Once I got past that fear, it freed me up, not just when I was performing but in other parts of my life.”

Julie Andrews (1935) British actress, singer, author, theatre director, and dancer

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel {February 2000)

Life, People, Fear, Learning

“National Socialism like Anti-Semitism glimpses in the Jewish-materialistic spirit the primary root of the evil, but it also knows that this most powerful battle of world-history cannot remain standing in purely negative anti-Semitic demands, therefore the entire national- and economic programme of National Socialism rises far above the certainly ground-breaking but negative anti-Semitic battle by positively giving a creative constructive image of how the National Socialist state of work and performance should look. If this main goal is reached, then the National Socialist Party will be dissolved.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 58

World, History, Evil

“Thought-economy is most highly developed in mathematics, that science which has reached the highest formal development, and on which natural science so frequently calls for assistance. Strange as it may seem, the strength of mathematics lies in the avoidance of all unnecessary thoughts, in the utmost economy of thought-operations. The symbols of order, which we call numbers, form already a system of wonderful simplicity and economy. When in the multiplication of a number with several digits we employ the multiplication table and thus make use of previously accomplished results rather than to repeat them each time, when by the use of tables of logarithms we avoid new numerical calculations by replacing them by others long since performed, when we employ determinants instead of carrying through from the beginning the solution of a system of equations, when we decompose new integral expressions into others that are familiar,—we see in all this but a faint reflection of the intellectual activity of a Lagrange or Cauchy, who with the keen discernment of a military commander marshalls a whole troop of completed operations in the execution of a new one.”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

Source: 20th century, "Populär-wissenschafliche Vorlesungen" (1908), pp. 224-225: On thought-economy in m., 203.

Mathematics, Nature, Science, Time

“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.”

Maxwell Maltz book Psycho-Cybernetics

Source: Psycho-Cybernetics (1960), p. 31

Feeling, Imagination

“There was, however, a time not so long ago when Muslim theologians prescribed and Muslim swordsmen practised destruction of Hindu temples on a large scale. Hundreds of Muslim historians have credited their heroes with what they rightly regarded as a pious performance according to the principal tenets of Islam. Most of these histories, written in India as well as elsewhere in the Islamic world, have been printed and translated in one or more of the modern languages. They are on the shelves of public and private libraries all over the world. Then there are inscriptions in Arabic and Persian which proclaim the destruction of Hindu temples or their conversion into mosques with considerable pride. These, too, have been deciphered, translated and published by archaeological surveys covering India, Central Asia, Eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They leave us in no doubt about one of the favourite pastimes of pious Muslim princes in all these countries which constituted at one time the vast cradle of Hindu culture.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

World, History, Time, Country

“We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the production. The constant changes of scene which, incidentally, seem the sign of a decadent art rather than one which is progressing, were shown by placards with the inscription: "A Forest," "A Prison," and so on. Within this conventional setting the onlooker's imagination was free to follow the actions of the various characters who were animated by passions drawn from nature, and that was enough for him. So-called innovations are gratefully seized on as an excuse for poverty of invention and in the same way, the long descriptive passages that so overburden modern novels are a sign of sterility, for it is obviously easier to describe a dress or the outward appearance of an object than to trace the subtle development of a character or portray the emotions of the heart.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

9 April 1856 (p. 313)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Art, Way, Imagination, Nature

“Mussolini's revolutionary nationalism, while it distinguished itself from the traditional patriotism and nationalism of the bourgeoisie, displayed many of those features we today identify with the nationalism of underdeveloped peoples. It was an anticonservative nationalism that anticipated vast social changes; it was directed against both foreign and domestic oppressors; it conjured up an image of a renewed and regenerated nation that would perform a historical mission; it invoked a moral ideal of selfless sacrifice and commitment in the service of collective goals; and it recalled ancient glories and anticipated a shared and greater glory.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism, (1979), p. 99

People, Change

“To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and performance of a high order.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 398

“The world has recently been treated for nearly a decade to the unusual spectacle of a great empire deliberately taking every possible step to secure its own destruction, because its citizens were so obsessed by prejudice, or incapable of thinking for themselves, as never to perform the few logical steps necessary for proving that they would shortly be involved in a guerre à outrance, which could be neither averted nor escaped.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Powell's inaugural lecture as Professor of Greek (7 May 1938), from Greek in the University. An Inaugural Lecture (Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 9.
1930s

World, Thinking

“That's five stars to start with. That's five stars to start with. That's Gil Evans, isn't it? The only thing that disturbed me about this—the whole thing, in its entirety, was tremendously satisfying: performance, orchestration is good, the harmonic usage is beautiful, the contrasting texture of orchestra, the whole thing is just great—but there are certain sections there when the background was so lovely it just seemed like the alto saxophone was out of place. Now this is the type of thing that just makes me smile. I enjoy every minute of it. I don't have to go for a "peak" and then think about something else while I'm listening. Gil Evans' writing, to me, is such a boon that when he came along with the Miles Ahead album, I was thankful, because since about the Stan Kenton Orchestra of 1952, where the writing had been very good, between Mulligan and Rugolo and the whole works, between those periods there had been a void, a retrogression back to the roots, and this took writing back to a standpoint which just wasn't interesting. So when Evans came along, I just flipped.”

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

Reviewing Evans' arrangement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4dcHdoR4k of Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca,", from New Bottle, Old Wine; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Love, Smile, Beauty, Star

“Heroic epic and saga (Indic as well as Greek and Hebrew, etc.) combine action with genealogy. This is necessary because the action is performed by aristocrats who require genealogies.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible

“This is a comparative study of six organizations operating in the same industrial environment. The subsystems (sales, research, and production) in each organization were differentiated from each other in terms of subsystem formal structures, the member's goal orientation, member's time orientations and member's interpersonal orientations. This differentiation was related to the requirements of the particular subenvironment with which each subsystem dealt. A relationship was found between the extent to which the states of differentiation and integration in each organization met the requirements of the environment and the relative economic performance of the organizations.”

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

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 1

Study, Time

“Starting in 1918 at General Motors I found to my surprise] that if I followed the prevailing practice of intercorporate relations I would no longer be able to determine the rate of return on investment for these accessory divisions individually or as a group. This would necessarily mean that I would lose some degree of managerial control over my area of operations. At that time, material within General Motors was passing from one operating division to another at cost, or at cost plus some predetermined percentage. My divisions in the United Motors Corporation had sold both to outside customers and to their allied divisions at the market price. I knew that I operated a profit-making group, and I wished to continue to be able to demonstrate this performance to the general management, rather than to have my operating results on interdivisional business swallowed up in the extra bookkeeping profits of some other division. It was a case of keeping the information clear.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 48

Business, Time

“You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad — if you're indifferent, Endsville.”

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American singer and film actor

As quoted in Moment of Grace: The American City in the 1950s (2002) by Michael Johns.

World, Perfection, Indifference

“At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Vol II: "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life", as translated by R. B. Haldane, and J. Kemp in The World as Will and Idea (1886), p. 389
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Fate, Age, Time, Drawing

“War is men killing each other, often at close quarters, and doing their damnedest to stay alive. And until you have done that, against a capable enemy, you don't have any idea of what it's like, honestly. Mr Spielberg may splash the screen with gore, and publicists may declare: "You are there!", but you're not. You're snug in a cinema watching a load of crap performed by actors. Hand-to-hand fighting is different, and it's no place for a woman.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

It's no place for anyone, including me, but for a woman least of all.
The Defeat of the British Army. p. 182.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Men, War, Idea, Fight

“In the elemental emotions of fear and rage associated with the most primitive parts of the brain, this swift response without conscious intervention or direction is a condition of survival: but something more than survival comes forth from it; for this very automatism freed the growing brain and ramifying nervous system for more important services, detached from the immediate pressure for survival, performed by the new brain. Here by his conscious symbolic activities man created a second realm that conforms more closely to his higher personal and social needs.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

pg 397
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Fear, Rage, Parting, Personality

“Question: Is not the person who has been transported to interior detachment freed from external exercises?
Answer: One sees few people reach the condition you describe without their strength being wasted. The efforts of those who really achieve it affect them to the marrow. And so, when they realise what is to be done and left undone, they continue to practise the usual exercises, performing them more or less frequently as their strength and the occasion permit.
Question: Where do the pangs of conscience and other anxieties of seemingly good people come from, as well as the unrestrained latitude (of conscience) in other people?
Answer: Both types are focusing their attention on their own image but in different ways; the one group spiritually, the other bodily.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

People, Way, Exercises, Question

“Since 1954, the raw speed of computers, as measured by the time it takes to do an addition, increased by a factor of 10,000. That means an algorithm that once took 10 minutes to perform can now be done 15 times a second. Students sometimes ask my advice on how to get rich. The best advice I can give them is to dig up some old algorithm that once took forever, program it for a modern workstation, form a startup to market it and then get rich.”

Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010) British computer scientist

"A Half Century of Surprises", in Talking Back to the Machine: Computers and Human Aspiration‎, Ed. Peter J. Denning, Springer, 1999, ISBN 0387984135, p. 112

Time, Speed

“The complete closed world consists of three parts-substratum, phenomenal world, and observer. By our experiments we drag up activities from the substratum into the phenomenal world of space and time, but there is no clear line of demarcation between subject and object, and by performing observations on the world, we alter it, much as a fisherman dragging up fish from the depths of the seas disturbs the waters and also damages the fish.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

World, Fish, Water, Time

“I want to bring a change and do something new and different in my profession, but in the beginning I'll have to toe line, I want to be known as a performer not a star.”

Preity Zinta (1975) film actress

Famous quotes

Star, Change

“The clumsiness of people who have to engage their brain at every step is unbearably painful to watch, at least to me, and that's what the novice-friendly software makes people do, because there's no elegance in them, it's just a mass of features to be learned by rote. However, this suits people a hell of a lot better than setting out at age 6 to become a great ballet dancer and achieving their goal 20 years later after every tendon and muscle and joint has been asked to perform just a little bit more than nature ever intended over and over and over again. To most people, this is insanity. But in reality, it's art, and it's the art in what we do that makes us human.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

read the fine manual, please http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/821a0f04bab91864 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Pain, People, Age, Art

“The thirteen Colonies were not unaware of the difficulties which these problems presented. We shall find a great deal of wisdom in the method by which they dealt with them. When they were finally separated from Great Britain, the allegiance of their citizens was not to the Nation, for there was none. It was to the States. For the conduct of the war there had been a voluntary confederacy loosely constructed and practically impotent. Continuing after peace was made, when the common peril which had been its chief motive no longer existed, it grew weaker and weaker. Each of the States could have insisted on an entirely separate and independent existence, having full authority over both their internal and external affairs, sovereign in every way. But such sovereignty would have been a vain and empty thing. It would have been unsupported by adequate resources either of property or population, without a real national spirit; ready to fall prey to foreign intrigue or foreign conquest. That kind of sovereignty meant but little. It had no substance in it. The people and their leaders naturally sought for a larger, more inspiring ideal. They realized that while to be a citizen of a State meant something, it meant a great deal more if that State were a part of a national union. The establishment of a Federal Constitution giving power and authority to create a real National Government did not in the end mean a detriment, but rather an increment to the sovereignty of the several States. Under the Constitution there was brought into being a new relationship, which did not detract from but added to the power and the position of each State. It is true that they surrendered the privilege of performing certain acts for themselves, like the regulation of commerce and the maintenance of foreign relations, but in becoming a part of the Union they received more than they gave.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Wisdom, War, People, Peace

“A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 34

Family, Law, Game

“Loss of market begets unemployment. Emphasis has been on short-term profit, to the undernourishment of plans that might generate new product and service that would keep the company alive and provide jobs and more jobs. It is no longer socially acceptable performance to lose market and to dump hourly workers on to the heap of unemployed.
The basic sickness of American industry and resulting unemployment is failure of top management to manage. Loss of market, and unemployment, are not foreordained. They are not inevitable. They are not acceptable. The day is past when people in management need not know anything about management by which I mean to include problems of production, supervision, training.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position, (1982), p. i; Preface

People, Failure, Problem, Loss

“Cross-functional KAM companies stand out with respect to both performance in the market and adaptiveness.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

"A configurational perspective on key account management", 2002

“In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.”

Niklaus Wirth (1934) Swiss computer scientist

Program Development by Stepwise Refinement (1971)

World

“Viewing the brain from the outside, Libet has shown that the experienced intention to perform an act is preceded by cerebral initiation. Why should the experienced decision to veto that intention, or to actively or passively promote its completion, be any different?”

Max Velmans (1942) British psychologist

Max Velmans (1991) " Consciousness From a First-Person Perspective http://cogprints.org/594/1/199802004.html," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, (4) 702-719; p. 705.

Decision

“(On the Day of Judgment, a group would be seen in the most excellent and honourable of states. They would be asked if they were of the Angels or of the Prophets. In reply they would state): "We are‑neither Angels nor Prophets but of the indigent ones from the ummah of Muhammad (S. A. W.)". They would then be asked: "How then did you achieve this lofty and honourable status?" They would reply: "We did not perform very many good deeds nor did we pass all the days in a state of fasting or all the nights in a state of worship but yes, we used to offer our (daily) prayers (regularly) and whenever we used to hear the mention of Muhammad (S. A. W.), tears would roll down our cheeks".”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Mustadrak al‑Wasail, vol 10, pg. 318
Shi'ite Hadith

Angels, Tear, Night

“The Residents knew what they wanted of their Malayan Civil Service cadets as early as 1883: "What we require out here are young public school men - Cheltenham, for preference - who have failed conspicuously at all bookwork and examinations in proportion as they have excelled at sports." As Resident of Perak, Swettenham “kept an eye out for men who would do credit to both the civil service and the state cricket team, which one sporting official judged as the equal of a good English county team.” Oliver Marks, who performed brilliantly for a visiting Ceylon eleven, was at once urged to come and work for the Perak government….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Men, School, Sport

“I'd never malign another performer, but the style is not good enough. They've done away with laugh pay-offs. We were given nine minutes or eight minutes. Now they wander wherever they like, they don't get to any jokes before they've been on for two minutes. We had to make an impact in ten seconds.”

Max Bygraves (1922–2012) Singer, comedian, actor

Deprecating modern comedians; Metro, 2002 http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/202-max-bygraves#ixzz1hg6bdBeK

“Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 9

Death, Art

“Naturally, you know how you would feel on setting out to see a performance of Aucassin and Nicolette done by a company of little ones; you would strive to hurl yourself beneath the wheels of a friendly truck, on your way to the theatre. p. 233”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 4: 1921

Way, Feeling, Nature

“Consistent poetry is made of letters. Letters have no idea. Letters as such have no sound, they offer only tonal possibilities, to be valuated by the performer. The consistent poem weighs the value of both letters and groups.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s
Source: 'Consistent Poetry Art', Schwitters' contribution to 'Magazine G', No. 3, 1924, ed. Hans Richter.

Idea

“I’ve never wanted to fit in Abbaji’s shoes and am happy to walk in my own. My father made it categorically clear even when my brothers or me performed with him. “I don’t expect my sons to be me because what I’m doing is already done. They’ve to be better than me,” he’d say. “Photocopies are eventually consigned to the dust bin and only originals preserved.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I've never wanted to fit in Abbaji's shoes: Ustad Zakir Hussain

Happiness, Shoe

“Artistic responsibility? (Schliessmann answers using Bach performance as his example): After the rediscovery of Bach by Mendelssohn, Bach was interpreted in a very romantic style. This had nothing to do with Bach. Leopold Stokowski made arrangements for orchestra. O. K., the public had a chance to know the works, but it also had nothing to do with Bach. So Tureck and Gould - despite their substantial differences - came and made something completely radical. Only in this way was there a chance to ‘correct’ the ‘picture’ of interpretation and move in the right direction.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Way, Chance

“Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, 'You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/psycho-1998 of Psycho (6 December 1998) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Music, Speed

“We consider an organization to be a set of constraints on the activities performed by agents. This view follows that of Weber, who views the process of bureaucratization as a shift from management based on self-interest and personalities to one based on rules and procedures.
Mintzberg [1983] provides an early (and informal) analysis of organization structure distinguishing among ﬁve basic parts of an organization and ﬁve distinct organization conﬁgurations that are encountered in practice. This “ontology” includes several mechanisms that together achieve coordination, like goals, work processes, authority, positions and communication. The various parts of an organization are distinguished by the speciﬁc roles they play in achieving coordination with the above means.
The “language/action perspective” (Winograd 1987) on cooperative work in organizations provides an ontology that emphasizes the social activity by which “agents” generate the space of cooperative actions in which they work, rather than the mental state of individuals. The basic idea is that social activity is carried out by language and communication.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Source: An Organization Ontology for Enterprise Modelling (1997), p. 2-3

Communication, Idea, Parting, Personality

“Price dispersion is a manifestation — and, indeed, it is the measure — of ignorance in the market. Dispersion is a biased measure of ignorance because there is never absolute homogeneity in the commodity if we include the terms of sale within the concept of the commodity. Thus, some automobile dealers might perform more service, or carry a larger range of varieties in stock, and a portion of the observed dispersion is presumably attributable to such differences. But it would be metaphysical, and fruitless, to assert that all dispersion is due to heterogeneity.”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

Source: "The economics of information," 1961, p. 214

“At the upcoming Grammy Awards, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony will perform together as the first time, as man and wife. Hopefully music.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

Music, Time

“Statutory Warning:These stunts have been performed by an expert. Please don't try at home.”

V. V. S. Laxman (1974) former Indian cricketer

Akash Chopra http://www.scrolldroll.com/quotes-about-vvs-laxman-that-show-he-is-truly-very-very-special/

Home

“[on President Barack Obama's performance in the 2012 Presidential Debate of Oct 3, 2012] Can I state the obvious here, since we all have theories? The obvious is he he didn't bring his game because he doesn't have a game. They have now blamed his performance on everything from strategic — he's a unifier — that's belied by his campaign, calling Mitt Romney everything from from a liar to a tax thief to a felon to a murderer to a dog abuser to a misogynist.”

Mary Matalin (1953) American political consultant

This is one of the most negative campaigns in history... ABC This Week (October 7, 2012) http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/week-1007-robert-gibbs-ed-gillespie-mitt-romney-17416989?tab=9482930&section=1206874&playlist=17417528

Dogs, History, Game

“In many kinds of social interaction, unofficial communication provides a way in which one team can extend a definite but non-compromising invitation to the other, requesting that social distance and formality be increased or decreased, or that both teams shift the interaction to one involving the performance of a new set of roles.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 121

Way, Communication

“In the strife between the North and the South there was no bitterness in Mr. Lincoln's composition; he seemed to think only that he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and endeavored to perform it as smoothly as possible.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 283

Thinking

“One time I woke up on the day of a concert with a stiff neck, and not just a regular stiff neck, I was standing croocked, like the hunchback of Notre Dame. I got some shots then, which did not work. They could have easily put the stage croocked that day so it at least would have looked like I was walking normally. I did perform that night, but I remember nothing from it, was so high from the shots. Later I heared from my manager that I was doin never ending talks between songs. The guy’s at the mix table where trying via the monitor to get me to start singing the next song, but I just kept talking ‘wait wait wait, just one more fun thing I want to say…” I was the stand up comic from hell.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Het stomende dubbelinterview: Natalia en Anastacia http://www.humo.be/humo-archief/29756/het-stomende-dubbelinterview-natalia-en-anastacia, Humo, September 27, 2010. General Quotes

Guy, Hell, Singing, Time