Quotes about periodical
page 13

Albert Speer photo
Donald Rumsfeld photo

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html

Tori Amos photo
Benito Mussolini photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“Journalism has become a great god of the period, and gods have a way of ruthlessly and demonically taking over their servitors.”

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Two, The Encounter With Nothingness, p. 27

Charles Dodgson (archdeacon) photo
Paul Cézanne photo
John A. Eddy photo

“It has long been though that the sun is a constant star of regular and repeatable behavior. Measurements of the radiative output, or solar constant, seem to justify the first assumption, and the record of periodicity in sunspot numbers is taken as evidence of the second. Both records, however, sample only the most recent history of the sun.”

John A. Eddy (1931–2009) American astronomer

Source: Eddy, J.A., "The Maunder Minimum", Science 18 June 1976: Vol. 192. no. 4245, pp. 1189 - 1202 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/citation/192/4245/1189, PDF Copy http://bill.srnr.arizona.edu/classes/182h/Climate/Solar/Maunder%20Minimum.pdf

Ben Gibbard photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar photo

“It is ironic that the accumulation of arms is one of the few expanding industries in a period of economic depression and gloom.”

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1920) 5th Secretary-General of the United Nations

UN Secretary-General, as quoted in Watching the World, Awake! magazine (22 October 1982).

William Thomson photo
Jane Roberts photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Sexual Personae seeks to demonstrate the unity and continuity of western culture — something that has inspired little belief since the period before World War I.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. xiii

Leo Tolstoy photo
David Graeber photo
Henri Matisse photo

“We are born with the sensibility of a period of civilization. We are not masters of our production; it is imposed upon us.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

As quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 9
Posthumous quotes

Patrick White photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Justus von Liebig photo
Edward Allington photo
Scott McClellan photo
Erik Naggum photo

“Whoever decided to use the semicolon to end something should just be taken out and have his colon semified. (At least COBOL and SQL managed to use a period.)”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Read table modification question. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e41a53e66cc1572f (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.”

credited to Lowell Stone, M.D., born 2144; chapter 15, p. 185
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

Walter Bagehot photo

“One of the chief reasons for the widespread fear of the Huns rested on their ability to travel very long distances in relatively short periods. This ability may well have been based on their use of horseshoes.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 349

Calvin Coolidge photo
Michael Johns photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“One of the most natural of reactions during the war was intolerance. But the inevitable disregard for the opinions and feelings of minorities is none the less a disturbing product of war psychology. The slow and difficult advances which tolerance and liberalism have made through long periods of development are dissipated almost in a night when the necessary war-time habits of thought hold the minds of the people. The necessity for a common purpose and a united intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else. But when the need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as a military demobilization. Progress depends very largely on the encouragement of variety. Whatever tends to standardize the community, to establish fixed and rigid modes of thought, tends to fossilize society. If we all believed the same thing and thought the same thoughts and applied the same valuations to all the occurrences about us, we should reach a state of equilibrium closely akin to an intellectual and spiritual paralysis. It is the ferment of ideas, the clash of disagreeing judgments, the privilege of the individual to develop his own thoughts and shape his own character, that makes progress possible. It is not possible to learn much from those who uniformly agree with us. But many useful things are learned from those who disagree with us; and even when we can gain nothing our differences are likely to do us no harm. In this period of after-war rigidity, suspicion, and intolerance our own country has not been exempt from unfortunate experiences. Thanks to our comparative isolation, we have known less of the international frictions and rivalries than some other countries less fortunately situated. But among some of the varying racial, religious, and social groups of our people there have been manifestations of an intolerance of opinion, a narrowness to outlook, a fixity of judgment, against which we may well be warned. It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion. To a great extent this country owes its beginnings to the determination of our hardy ancestors to maintain complete freedom in religion. Instead of a state church we have decreed that every citizen shall be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as to his religious beliefs and affiliations. Under that guaranty we have erected a system which certainly is justified by its fruits. Under no other could we have dared to invite the peoples of all countries and creeds to come here and unite with us in creating the State of which we are all citizens.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Warren Farrell photo
George W. Bush photo

“I hear there's rumors on the internets [pause] that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a draft, period.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2nd Presidential Debate, October 8, 2004 http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004c.html
2000s, 2004

Robert Costanza photo
Haile Selassie photo

“In the history of the human race, those periods which later appeared as great have been the periods when the men and the women belonging to them had transcended the differences that divided them and had recognized in their membership in the human race a common bond.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address at Haile Selassie I University http://www.jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/show-jah-word.asp?word_id=radhakrishan (now Addis Ababa University) honoring Indian President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (13 October 1965)

Kurt Lewin photo

“To instigate changes toward democracy a situation has to be created for a certain period where the leader is sufficiently in control to rule out influences he does not want and to manipulate the situation to a sufficient degree. The goal of the democratic leader in this transition period will have to be the same as any good teacher, namely to make himself superfluous, to be replaced by indigenous leaders from the group.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

As cited in: M.K. Smith (2001) " Kurt Lewin, groups, experiential learning and action research http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm". In: The Encyclopedia of Informal Education.
1940s, Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics, 1948

Alan Blinder photo
Burt Rutan photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Habib Bourguiba photo
Morrissey photo
Primo Levi photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Thomas Szasz photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“One may regret living at a period when it's impossible to form an idea of the shape the world of the future will assume. But there's one thing I can predict to eaters of meat: the world of the future will be vegetarian.”

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

Stenographic transcripts translated by Hugh Trevor-Roper Bullock, 11 November 1941, Alan (1993). Hitler and Stalin : Parallel Lives. Vintage. p. 679. ISBN 0-679-72994-1.
1940s

Alasdair MacIntyre photo

“There is information showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began to work with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies Eyes (p. 124) Scheuer later retracted this statement. https://archive.is/nLW4y.
2000s

Marcel Duchamp photo

“Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.... Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era... Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1921 - 1950
Source: 'Appreciations of other artists': Jean (Hans) Arp (sculptor, painter, writer) 1949, by Marcel Duchamp; as quoted in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159

David Sedaris photo

“Periodization is the disciplinary strategy with which the present establishes its rule over all time and encourages conformism, to the detriment of autonomy, individual and aesthetic.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 20.

Samuel Hahnemann photo
Francis Escudero photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo
Taraji P. Henson photo
Chris Cornell photo

“Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Margaret Wheatley (2006) " Leadership Lessons for The Real World http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/leadershiplessons.html". Leader to Leader Magazine, Summer 2006

Dana Gioia photo
Joni Mitchell photo

“Any time I make a record it's followed by a painting period. It's good crop rotation.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story (2003)

A. E. van Vogt photo

“Childhood was a terrible period for me. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new.”

A. E. van Vogt (1912–2000) Canadian writer

As quoted in "Man Beyond Man : The Early Stories of A.E. van Vogt" http://www.panshin.com/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html by Alexei Panshin in The Abyss of Wonder

John Mandeville photo
Otto Weininger photo
William O. Douglas photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Angelique Rockas photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Kent Hovind photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Bram van Velde photo
Leopoldo Galtieri photo

“My own opinion on Mrs Thatcher is very simple: I think she's unsuited to our historical period, and I say this referring to her as a prime minister, and not as a woman.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

Reportaje de Oriana Fallaci a Leopoldo F. Galtieri http://archivohistorico.educ.ar/content/reportaje-de-oriana-fallaci-leopoldo-f-galtieri#sthash.ZQrMQt2O.dpuf, Revista El porteño, August 1982

Neil Patrick Harris photo

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Adolf Hitler photo
Otto Weininger photo

“No two moments in the life of an individual are exactly alike; there is between the later and the earlier periods only the similarity of the higher and lower parts of a spiral ascent.”

Es gibt nicht zwei Momente des individuellen Lebens, die einander ganz gleichen; und es existiert zwischen den späteren und den früheren Perioden nur die Ähnlichkeit der Punkte der höheren mit den homologen der niederen Spiralwindung.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 107.

Theodore Gray photo

“And so it is that we come to the end of our journey through the periodic table not with a bang, but with a committee.”

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe p. 233

Jan Oort photo
David Irving photo
Richard Overy photo
Nicholas Kaldor photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
David Graeber photo

“The attentive reader may have noticed that the core period of Jasper's Axial age—the lifetimes of Pythagoras, Confucius, and the Buddha—corresponds almost exactly to the period in which coinage was invented.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Nine, "The Axial Age", p. 224

William Thomson photo