Quotes about person
page 61

“Libertarianism offers an alternative to coercive government that should appeal to peaceful, productive people everywhere.
No, a libertarian world isn't a perfect one. There will still be inequality, poverty, crime, corruption, man's inhumanity to man. But, unlike the theocratic visionaries, the pie-in-the-sky socialist utopians, or the starry-eyed Mr. Fixits of the New Deal and Great Society, libertarians don't promise you a rose garden. Karl Popper once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out, not the goal of a perfect society, but of a better and freer one. It promises a world in which more of the decisions will be made in the right way by the right person: you.”

David Boaz (1953) libertarian, author and editor

Libertarianism: A Primer (1997) Ch. 1 : The Coming Libertarian Age"; A Note on Labels: Why "Libertarian"? http://www.libertarianism.org/ex-3.html

People, World, Peace, Way

“Either one defines “personality” and “individuality” in terms of their possibilities within the established form of civilization, in which case their realization is for the vast majority tantamount to successful adjustment. Or one defines them in terms of their transcending content, including their socially denied potentialities beyond (and beneath) their actual existence; in this case, their realization would imply transgression, beyond the established form of civilization, to radically new modes of “personality” and “individuality” incompatible with the prevailing ones. Today, this would mean “curing” the patient to become a rebel or (which is saying the same thing) a martyr.”

Herbert Marcuse book Eros and Civilization

“Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism”
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955)

Success, Personality

“I want the ability to do whatever I want without a whole fleet of lawyers and record companies analyzing it and telling me what to do. It's like the success of doing it that way doesn't mean enough to me as an artist or a person for me to fight about it. I'm not going to fight anymore I'm just going to do it the way I want to do it. Why am I going to do it that way and be so obstinate? Because I don't care enough about it to spend that much time on it.”

Devin Townsend (1972) Canadian musician

Blabbermouth.net: DEVIN TOWNSEND Discusses Decision To Put STRAPPING YOUNG LAD To Rest http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=72994

Way, Time, Success, Fight

“Revolution was and is in each step and breath of those who dare follow this man called Jesus. Revolution comes about only when there is at least one person willing to take a stand for God and say "the present system" is wrong and thus will not accomplish the purposes of God. All of God's purposes center on His glory and meeting the needs of people. Jesus was the ultimate revolutionary.”

Kip McKean (1954) minister

http://www.kipmckean.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/Revolution_through_Restoration_1_2_3.pdf, Revoultion Through Restoration, 1992.
Revolution Through Restoration (1992-2002)

God, People, Personality

“Normally we think that it was Jesus’ mission to reveal the mystery of God to us. This he certainly did. But he also revealed to us the mystery of the human person. As the Council declares: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of the human being take on light” (GS 22). First of all, Jesus pointed out the God-dimension of human person.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On God

God, Truth, Thinking, Light

“Here's what I know. I could not be standing here without that undying love that was just sung about by, not Bruce [Springsteen], but Neil Young. And I have that in a lover that is so close to fine, we should all be able to experience such heaven right here on earth. I know also that, I should not be doing this, I should not be here, but I am because of the union of such filmmakers as Ed Saxon, Ron Nyswaner, Kristi Zea, Tak Fujimoto, Jonathan Demme -- who seems to have these [referring to the Oscar] attached to his limbs for every actor that works with him of late. And a cast that includes Antonio Banderas, who, second to my lover, is the only person I would trade for. And a cast that includes many other people, but the actor who really put his film image at risk, and shone because of his integrity, Mr. Denzel Washington, who I really must share this with.”

Tom Hanks (1956) American actor

66th Academy Award Speech (1994)

Love, People, Lovers, Personality

“Since the revelations of NSA surveillance and mass data collection, Leiderman has consistently referred to this as the “tin foil age.” It is a reference to the days when if someone thought the government was spying on them they would be seen as crazy – the kind of person that would wear a tin foil hat to combat the government surveillance. Now that we are all aware that our government is collecting mass data on so many people, we don’t think the tin foil hat wearing people were quite so crazy [sort of], hence “the tin foil age.””

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated on the Jay Leiderman Law Blog December 11, 2014 http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-10-tin-foil-as-reality/

People, Age, Thinking, Personality

“Today, many people blame their situation on family background. Some would say, ‘I am poor because everyone in my family is poor.’ If you make excuses for being poor, your poverty cannot be excused. Remember, you are responsible for what you give your attention to; so it is unnecessary to blame your situation on anyone. Today, it is common for people to blame their failure on their family background, whereas they attribute their success to their personal effort.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

People, Family, Failure, Effort

“We must always give our users pure sex. It's like a rendezvous in the back seat of an automobile with a beautiful girl. One's experience with the personal computer should be better than the greatest orgasm you could have.”

Jean-Louis Gassée (1944) French businessman

Personal Computer World, July 1990
On the user experience of the Apple Macintosh

Beauty, Sex, Girl, Personality

“This contemplation establishes us in purity and in limpidity above all our understanding, for it is a special enrichment and a heavenly crown, and in addition, an eternal reward for all virtues and for all lives. And no one can arrive at this by means of science or subtlety, nor by any practice, but only he whom God wishes to unite with His Spirit and to illumine with Himself may contemplate God, and nobody else. The hidden divine nature is eternally active, contemplating and loving with respect to each person, and always enjoying the embrace with each person, in unity of essence.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, God, Understanding, Nature

“The recently passed law to "end welfare as we know it" came about because a lethargic public has been aroused at last, not by the failure of the welfare system but by its success. The public indignation, however, would have been of no effect had we not elected a Republican Congress. No Democratic Congress would ever have passed such a law. Just as welfare reform may help end the poverty industry, the California Civil Rights Initiative on the November ballot may lead to the demise of another 1960s product, the racism and sexism industry. The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based upon race, sex, color, religion or ethnic origin. The act was based on the premise that the only race to which a person must belong is the human race. With respect to God-given natural rights, "all men are created equal."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Men, God, Religion, Law

“[Carl] Rogers’s Encounter Groups … is copy for the campaign of self-manipulation in an age of mass manipulation. … The notion here is simple: the real person is locked within the artificial, the role, and needs a little encouragement to step out into the fresh air. As with the neo-Freudians, society is conceived as an external factor, an outside force acting on the individual, but not decisively casting the individual from without and from within. The mechanical conception, severing within and without, and presupposing that only the outside is prey to social forces, is assumed or stated throughout the post-Freudian writings.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), pp. 67-68

Age, Decision, Personality

“Experience has shown that the mass-armies of “democratic” states fight with greater zeal when they are animated by hatred and supported by a hate-crazed populace that fancies it is fighting a holy war. Lies have therefore become military equipment, a kind of mental logistics; but it is the essence of such propaganda that its spuriousness is known only to the persons who manufacture it. The model of such operations is the famous lie-factory managed by Lord Bryce during the First World War, in which a corps of expert technicians forged photographs, while expert liars, including Arnold Toynbee, concocted stories, of “atrocities,” to inspire the emotionally overwrought British with a fanatical hatred of the incredibly bestial Germans and with a noble Christian ardor to kill them.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Hate, War, Lie, World

“Objectively, class differences in accent, dress, manners, and general style of life are very much smaller; and one cannot, strolling about the street or travelling on a train, instantly identify a person’s social background as one can in England. Subjectively, social relations are more natural and egalitarian, and less marked by deference, submissiveness, or snobbery, as one quickly discovers from the cab-driver, the barman, the air-hostess and the drug-store assistant.”

Anthony Crosland book The Future of Socialism

The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland.
The Future of Socialism (1956)

Life, Travel, Nature, Personality

“The whole world knows that virtue consists in the subjugation of one's passions, or in self-renunciation. It is not just the Christian world, against whom Nietzsche howls, that knows this, but it is an eternal supreme law towards which all humanity has developed, including Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the ancient Persian religion. And suddenly a man appears who declares that he is convinced that self-renunciation, meekness, submissiveness and love are all vices that destroy humanity (he has in mind Christianity, ignoring all the other religions).

One can understand why such a declaration baffled people at first. But after giving it a little thought and failing to find any proof of the strange propositions, any rational person ought to throw the books aside and wonder if there is any kind of rubbish that would not find a publisher today. But this has not happened with Nietzsche´s books. The majority of pseudo-enlightened people seriously look into the theory of the Übermensch, and acknowledge its author to be a great philosopher, a descendant of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. And all this has come about because the majority of pseudo-enlightened men of today object to any reminder of virtue, or to its chief premise: self-renunciation and love—virtues that restrain and condemn the animal side of their life. They gladly welcome a doctrine, however incoherently and disjointedly expressed, of egotism and cruelty, sanctioning the idea of personal happiness and superiority over the lives of others, by which they live.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

Love, Life, Men, People

“During the final months of the campaign, as polls indicated that I had a real chance of becoming the next leader, opposition from the supply management lobby gathered speed. Radio-Canada reported on dairy farmers who were busy selling Conservative Party memberships across Quebec. A Facebook page called Les amis de la gestion de l’offre et des régions (Friends of supply management and regions) was set up and had gathered more than 10,500 members by early May. As members started receiving their ballots by mail from the party, its creator, Jacques Roy, asked them to vote for Andrew Scheer.
Andrew, along with several other candidates, was then busy touring Quebec’s agricultural belt, including my own riding of Beauce, to pick up support from these fake Conservatives, only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges. Interestingly, one year later, most of them have not renewed their memberships and are not members of the party anymore. During these last months of the campaign, the number of members in Quebec had increased considerably, from about 6,000 to more than 16,000. In April 2018, according to my estimates, we are down to about 6,000 again.
A few days after the vote, Éric Grenier, a political analyst at the CBC, calculated that if only 66 voters in a few key ridings had voted differently, I could have won. The points system, by which every riding in the country represented 100 points regardless of the number of members they had, gave outsized importance in the vote to a handful of ridings with few members. Of course, a lot more than 66 supply management farmers voted, likely thousands of them in Quebec, Ontario, and the other provinces. I even lost my riding of Beauce by 51% to 49%, the same proportion as the national vote.
At the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa a few days after the vote, a gala where personalities make fun of political events of the past year, Andrew was said to have gotten the most laughs when he declared: “I certainly don’t owe my leadership victory to anybody…”, stopping in mid-sentence to take a swig of 2% milk from the carton. “It’s a high quality drink and it’s affordable too.” Of course, it was so funny because everybody in the room knew that was precisely why he got elected. He did what he thought he had to do to get the most votes, and that is fair game in a democratic system. But this also helps explain why so many people are so cynical about politics, and with good reason.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

page 23 in "Live or die with supply management", chapter 5 previewed April 2018 http://www.maximebernier.com/my_chapter_on_supply_management of "Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada"

People, Game, Drink, Business

“There are several definitions of Depersonalization, which are really descriptions of the symptom. The one offered by Schilder (1914) is perhaps most clear and precise. It is given here in a free English translation: The individual feels totally different from his previous being; he does not recognise himself as a person. His actions seem automatic, he behaves as if he were an observer of his own actions. The outside world appears to him strange and new and it has lost the character if reality. The self does not behave any longer in its former way."
From this definition it can be seen that the core of the symptom is a change in appearance, a "strangeness" of the object of experience: either the self or the external world or both. There is also a disturbance in the subject-object relationship producing perplexity and interfering with the smooth flow of conscious experience. These aspects of depersonalization are stressed in one form or another by all the investigators of this phenomenon.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Depersonalization, (1970), p. 171

World, Way, Feeling, Reality

“In that year [Einstein] had roughly equal numbers of large and small cats. Therefore, quite logically, he cut two holes in each door: a large one for the large cats, and a small one for the small cats. It made perfect sense. … A hole should have a meaningful existence, and the small cats might be offended if a personalized nothing was not prepared for them.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 71
Faster than the Speed of Light

Cats, Sense, Personality, Perfection

“Addiction depends upon keeping the multiplicity of our desires unconscious. When I invite all that I am into awareness, I realize that no one substance, activity, or person has the capacity to satisfy me fully. I leave aside the security of the fix and begin the adventure of falling in love with the multiplicity of the self and the world.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 140

Love, World, Dependency, Personality

“1920
The Times
London, Saturday, May 8, 1920.
“The Jewish peril.”
A disturbing pamphlet
Call for inquiry.
(From a correspondent.)
The Times has not as yet noticed this singular little book. Its diffusion is, however, increasing, and its reading is likely to perturb the thinking public. Never before have a race and a creed been accused of a more sinister conspiracy. We in this country, who live in good fellowship with numerous representatives of Jewry, may well ask that some authoritative criticism should deal with it., and either destroy the ugly “Semitic” body or assign their proper place to the insidious allegations of this kind of literature.
In spite of the urgency of impartial and exhaustive criticism, the pamphlet has been allowed, so far, to pass almost unchallenged. The Jewish Press announced, it is true, that the anti-semitism of the “Jewish Peril” was going to be exposed. But save for an unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ and for an almost equally unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of contribution to the ‘’Nation’’ of March 27, this exposure is yet to come. The article of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ is unsatisfactory, because it deals mainly with the personality of the author of the book in which the pamphlet is embodied, with Russian reactionary propaganda, and the Russian secret police. It does not touch the substance of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The purely Russian side of the book and its fervid “Orthodoxy.” Is not its most interesting feature. Its author-Professor S. Nilus-who was a minor official in the Department of Foreign Religions at Moscow, had, in all likelihood, opportunities of access to many archives and unpublished documents. On the other hand, the world-wide issue raised by the “Protocols” which he incorporated in his book and are now translated into English as “The Jewish Peril,” cannot fail not only to interest, but to preoccupy. What are the these of the “Protocols” with which, in the absence of public criticism, British readers have to grapple alone and unaided?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret, Books, World, Religion

“Some of us personally witnessed what was done on the continent under that sign and it is a symbol we shall never forget.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Reacting to a youth who had given the Hitler salute; from a speech in Wolverhampton (6 June 1970), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 558.
1970s

Personality, Forgetting

“The courtly person (cortegiano, gentilhomme, gentleman, Hofmann) has gone through a training in self-esteem that expresses itself in many ways: in aristocratically pretentious opinions, in polished or majestic manners, in gallant or heroic patterns of feeling as well as in a selective, aesthetic sensitivity for that which is said to be courtly or pretty. The noble, far removed from any self-doubt, should achieve all this with a complete matter-of-factness. Any uncertainty, any doubt in these things signifies a slackening in the nobility’s cultural “identity.” This class narcissism, which has petrified into a form of life, tolerates no irony, no exception, no slips, because such disturbances would give rise to unwelcome reflections. The French nobles did not turn up their noses at Shakespeare’s “barbarism” without reason. In his plays one already “smells” the human ordinariness of those who want to stand before society as the best.
With the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie, the place of the “best” is awarded anew. The bourgeois ego, in an unprecedented, creative storming to the heights of a new class consciousness won for itself an autonomous narcissism.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 62

Life, Way, Feeling, Personality

“I looked about for some of my acquaintance, but in vain, for I saw not one person that I knew, which is very odd, for all the world seemed there.”

Frances Burney book Evelina

Letter X
Evelina (1778)

World, Personality

“The humble person who confesses his faults and duly atones for them is the one best equipped to manage defeat, accept his own losses, and to overcome the setbacks that are the routine cost of doing business.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 78.

Business, Loss, Personality

“Just as in literature, where memorable characters like Hamlet or Heathcliff or even Dirty Harry stand out and become symbols for a larger segment of humanity, so in marketing can whole target-customer populations become imagined as teenyboppers, yuppies, pickups and gun racks, or the man in the gray flannel suit. These are all just images—stand-ins for a greater reality—picked out from a much larger set of candidate images on the grounds that they really “click” with the sum total of an informed person’s experience. These were, in short, the memorable ones.”

Geoffrey Moore book Crossing the Chasm

Source: Crossing the Chasm, 1991, p. 67

Imagination, Literature, Reality, Personality

“Every home run gives me the deepest personal thrill, although I've hit droves. Last year at Lincoln I hit 66, yet it gave me the deepest personal thrill every time I seen that ball flying nine miles out of the park.”

Dick Stuart (1932–2002) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Man Who Hit Too Many Home Runs" https://books.google.com/books?id=UD8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA85&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjm9ZTw6JXQAhVH1CYKHazgBPcQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Every%20home%20run%22&f=false by Mark Harris, in Life (September 2, 1957), p. 86

Home, Time, Personality, Flying

“"… whatever… you pretend… if any of you be a prayerless person, or a scoffer, or a lover of evil company (Proverbs 13:20), in a word, if you are not a holy, strict, and self-denying Christian, you cannot be saved." (Hebrews 12:14; Matthew 15:14).”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: An Alarm to the Unconverted aka A Sure Guide to Heaven (first published 1671), P. 21.

Lovers, Evil, Personality

“The magnitude of crimes credited to Muslim monarchs by the medieval Muslim historians, was beyond measure. With a few exceptions, Muslim kings and commanders were monsters who stopped at no crime when it came to their Hindu subjects. But what strikes as more significant is the broad pattern of those crimes. The pattern is that of a jihãd in which the ghãzîs of Islam 1) invade infidel lands; 2) massacre as many infidel men, women, and children, particularly Brahmins, as they like after winning a victory; 3) capture the survivors to be sold as slaves; 4) plunder every place and person; 5) demolish idolatrous places of worship and build mosques in their places; and 6) defile idols which are flung into public squares or made into steps leading to mosques.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Women, Men, Children, Victory

“As used in the Due Process Clauses, 'liberty' most likely refers to 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one's own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. That definition is drawn from the historical roots of the Clauses and is consistent with our Constitution’s text and structure. Both of the Constitution’s Due Process Clauses reach back to Magna Carta. Chapter 39 of the original Magna Carta provided ', No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land'. Although the 1215 version of Magna Carta was in effect for only a few weeks, this provision was later reissued in 1225 with modest changes to its wording as follows: 'No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

In his influential commentary on the provision many years later, Sir Edward Coke interpreted the words 'by the law of the land' to mean the same thing as 'by due proces of the common law'. Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015). 2010s

Law, Way, Change, Personality

“When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part III

Personality

“We who know personal religion by experience know that there is nothing on earth to compare with the moral force exerted by it. It has demonstrated its social efficiency in our own lives.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103 http://books.google.com/books?id=f8z9hCMTGOwC&pg=PA103

Religion, Personality

“We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn’t destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there’s a better way: By developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems.
Simple rules are a hands-on tool to achieve some of our most pressing personal and professional objectives, from overcoming insomnia to becoming a better manager or a smarter investor. Simple rules can help solve some of our most urgent social challenges from setting interest rates at the Federal Reserve to protecting endangered marine wildlife along California’s coast.”

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt American economist

Book abstract
Simple Rules, 2015

Way, Home, Problem, Time

“There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Nixon: Maestro of Resentment" (1990).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

Guy, Success, Personality

“A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Personality

“I knew Muhammad Mujeeb personally. He was Head of the Department of History and Shaikh-ul-Jamia… In 1972, however, there was a mild 'confrontation' between him and me. Sometime that year there was a Selection Committee meeting for the post of Professor of History in Delhi University. I was then a Reader and candidate for the post of Professor. Mujeeb was an 'expert'… Mujeeb asked me a question: "Why did the Hindu convert to Islam?" It was a loaded question carrying the suggestion that the initiative for conversion came from the Hindu. In all probability Mujeeb expected me to say that the Hindus suffered from the injustices of the caste system, that Islam was spiritually so great and its message of social equality so attractive that the Hindus queued up for conversion the moment they came in contact with Islamic invaders. A tactful candidate (not a truthful one) would have said what Mujeeb desired, but my answer was different. I said that Hindus did not (voluntarily) convert to Islam; they were converted, often forcibly, as told by Muslim chroniclers. Muslim invaders and rulers felt proud of their achievements in the fields of loot and destruction, enslavement and proselytization. Their chroniclers, writing at their command or independently, speak about their achievements in these spheres in glowing terms. They repeatedly write about the choice offered to the Hindus - "Islam or death". Mujeeb expected a different answer. I was not selected.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 6

Death, Truth, History, Question

“It's very hard not to be a scoundrel nowadays. Everywhere there are pressures that work towards our personal and collective debasement.”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

"Flor de Obsessão: as 1000 melhores frases de Nelson Rodrigues," page 34.

Personality

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. […]
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. […] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that the degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.
"A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
Some of these ideas were included in the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949) (see below).

Life, Men, People, Truth

“My girlfriend bought me a down jacket, she said it fit my personality.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Personality

“In my vision, space-age objects, in the form of small computers, will cross these cultural barriers to enter the private worlds of children everywhere. They will do so not as mere physical objects. This book is about how computers can be carriers of powerful ideas and of the seeds of cultural change, how they can help people form new relationships with knowledge that cut across the traditional lines separating humanities from sciences and knowledge of the self from both of these. It is about using computers to challenge current beliefs about who can understand what and at what age. It is about using computers to question standard assumptions in developmental psychology and in the psychology of aptitudes and attitudes. It is about whether personal computers and the cultures in which they are used will continue to be the creatures of "engineers" alone or whether we can construct intellectual environments in which people who today think of themselves as "humanists" will feel part of, not alienated from, the process of constructing computational cultures.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Introduction
Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980)

Children, People, Books, Age

“Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Alexander the Great

Thinking, Personality

“I see that issue as a states rights issue and I defer to what the states believe is the best policy. Personally, I don’t like marijuana and I hate its effects on the human body; but I am also a states rights guy. I trust that Alabama will do the right thing.”

Mo Brooks (1954) American politician

Mo Brooks Interview http://www.alreporter.com/2017/06/28/mo-brooks-interview/ (June 28, 2017)

Hate, Guy, Personality, Marijuana

“The population of Athens and ns, imported from the coasts of the Propontis…. They were employed for domestic purposes, or were let out for hire in gangs as labourers, or were allowed to work by themselves paying a yearly royalty to their masters.
… hardly any Athenian citizen can have been without two or three. The family of Aeschines (consisting of 6 persons) was considered very poor because it possessed only 7 slaves. On the other hand, Plutarch says that let out 1,000 and Hipponicus 600 slaves to work the gold mines in Thrace. The state possessed some slaves of its own, who were employed chiefly as policemen and clerks.
Slaves enjoyed considerable liberties in Athens, and had some rights, even against their masters. They did not serve as soldiers, or sailors, except when the city was in great straits, as at the battle of Arginussae… The worst prospect in store for them was that their masters might be engaged in a lawsuit, for the evidence of a slave (except in a few cases) was not admitted in a court of justice unless he had been put to torture.
Slaves were sometimes freed by their masters, with some sort of public ceremony, or (for great services) by the state which paid their value to their masters.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

Family, Justice, Personality

“The poet needs to be deluded about his poems—for who can be sure that it is delusion? In his strongest hours the public hardly exists for the writer; he does what he ought to do, has to do, and if afterwards some Public wishes to come and crown him with laurel crowns, well, let it! if critics wish to tell people all that he isn’t, well, let them—he knows what he is. But at night when he can’t get to sleep it seems to him that it is what he is, his own particular personal quality, that he is being disliked for. It is this that the future will like him for, if it likes him for anything; but will it like him for anything? The poet’s hope is in posterity, but it is a pale hope; and now that posterity itself has become a pale hope…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, p. 109
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)

People, Hope, Sleep, Future

“I believe from history and my own gut, instinct, that if I go ahead and lay it all out here, what we're really facing, you've got courage and you've got will, and you're gonna get angry and stop caring. It begins with not caring about what your slack-jawed knuckle-dragging cowardly pseudo tough-guy football-watching neighbor thinks. Okay? That's where it begins. It begins with not caring what happens to your individual person. And when you have that attitude, when you have that attitude, then the enemy doesn't have anything over you anymore. Stop being gelded domesticated garbage. Stop being weak! And when you see a threat coming down on you, deal with it! Become a human again! Stop being weak! We have a bunch of criminals coming down on us. God, ugh! Murdering scum. I wanna get humanity awake. I wanna get our forces up. And I wanna bring these people to justice. And you know what I mean. You know what I mean! I wanna unleash humanity, not have a bunch of con artist pot-bellied chicken-neck pieces of garbage running our world! More importantly they act like effeminate cowardly chicken necks cuz they want to train you to act like that they want to train you to be weak they want to train you. That's a nasty taste coming up in my mouth. Tastin' those globalists. I can taste their fear and their weakness. I taste metal, I taste blood.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex's Bill Gates Chicken-Neck Bastard 'Rant' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-5WgcMV_o, September 2011.

History, Thinking, Courage, Guy

“Selfish people have never understood and travelled the way of the universe in the past. Therefore when we realise the principles and the way of the universe, the universe gives us the responsibility to spread them to the world. Do not think that you cannot help another person. What you learn today, you can teach another the next day. The world is full of people who have lost the way of the universe and suffer illness. Let us do our best to explain the correct principles of the universe to them.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

21 : Setsudo - teaching the way of the universe
Ki Sayings (2003)

People, World, Way, Travel

“After Bjartur had become a person of great worth, even he was prone to admit on occasion that life had sometimes been pretty hard in Summerhouses in the old days, but one has to take a few knocks if one wants to get on, surely, and anyway we never ate other folk's bread. Other folk's bread is the most virulent form of poison that a free and independent man can take; other folk's bread is the only thing that can rob him of independence and the one true freedom.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

Life, Freedom, Personality

“Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book IV, ch. 14 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch14.asp: Of Homicide. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

Life, Law, Nature, Personality

“Answering the question "How do you explain growth of the part of Russians indifferent to politics?", Pavlovsky said: Throughout the last hundred years Russia several times all without exceptions lived with great political projects. Every time livestock of the nation steadily diminished after that, politized condition is always temporary for a person, not quite normal condition. Nowadays we are passing through period of silence, outer peace (most probably, not long) and reconciliation with quiet not rich existence without great risky perspectives. Pray to drag this time out for 4-8 years more.”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Peace, Question, Silence, Time

“Terrorism conjoins with neoliberalism to heighten a sense of insecurity and even a sense that the nation state now fails to provide for the security of the people. That said, the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack remain very low in the order of possible dangers that a human being can face. A person is more likely to be killed by their own furniture than by a terrorist. So, we have fear and panic about improbable yet dramatic and unpredictable dangers, which is how terrorism works. It is supposed to make you frightened in a routine way by non-routine events, and it’s effective in that sense.”

Wendy Brown (1955) American political theorist

Neoliberalism Has Eviscerated the Fabric of Social Life http://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/neoliberalism-has-eviscerated-the-fabric-of-social-life/, interview with Wendy Brown by Adam Ostolski, Green European Journal, March 2017

People, Fear, Way, Sense

“That's why I can dream dreams that God Himself never dreamed. I'm that kind of person. I can believe the things even God can't believe. I can do things even God can't. That's why God hated me more than Satan hated me.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Father's Words in Washington D.C. http://www.unification.net/2003/20030517_1.html (2003-05-17)

God, Hate, Dreams, Personality

“Quality is value to some person”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Source: Quality Software Management: Volume 1, Systems Thinking, 1992, p. 7, also in Weinberg (1993, 108); quoted in Matthew Heusser, Govind Kulkarni (2011) How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing. p. 95

Personality

“There remains the ordinary Communist solution. This has taken various forms; the simplest being a voluntary association of individuals based on the principle of common property, and in which every person works for the community according to fixed rules. There are many successful instances of this, on a small scale, in the United States, but we cannot suppose such a solution to be possible for society as a whole. It has only been tried with picked materials, whereas our object is rather to improve the great mass of the population. The Communism of recent European theorists, of whom the best known is Lassalle, presents a somewhat different aspect. It aims at the appropriation of all instruments of production by the State, which is to take charge of the whole national industry and direct it. But the practical difficulty of such a scheme is obviously overwhelming. The objections to a Communistic solution do not apply to Socialism in a more modified shape. Historically speaking, Socialism has already shown itself in England in the extension of State interference. It has produced the Factory Laws, and it is now beginning to advance further and interfere directly in the division of produce between the workmen and their employers”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 150

Law, Communication, Success, Personality

“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness.
We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us-and in us-and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial.
We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom. We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom-the forced actors who take the consequences-are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Source: Letters & Autobiographical Writings (1954), pp. 184-185.

Men, War, People, World

“Personally, in my home life it's the same, but professionally it's different. I'm not having to fight or push as much to get in to be seen for TV shows or for films. The calls are coming in. Also the fans are great. I love them and I am one myself.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

On how Doctor Who fame changed his life, in Attitude (2005)

Love, Life, Home, Fight

“He's always been the person who's made me laugh most. He uses humour in a very disarming way. I've seen how people enjoy his company and have always envied that, and have wanted to aspire to that.”

Jack Whitehall (1988) British comedian, television presenter and actor

Whitehall, about his father Michael Hattenstone, Simon (14 December 2013), "Comedians and their parents: Jack Whitehall and father Michael" https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/dec/14/jack-whitehall-michael-whitehall-backchat, The Guardian. Retrieved September 25, 2017.

People, Way, Envy, Personality

“I’m very interested in the ‘Culture of Interpretation.’ I’m convinced that each great artist has his own personal style, but it is his artistic responsibility in developing this style to respond other interpretations, either prior or at the same time. I’m convinced that Rubinstein would have presented us another Chopin if Cortot had not existed. Cortot presented very romantic Chopin interpretations - really masterly, outstanding, but confused. Rubinstein’s immediate answer was a very classical Chopin. He was really the first to point out the classical line and structure in his oeuvre.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Time, Personality

“Personally I think the only meaning your life will ever have is whatever your involvement means to someone else. The best strategy I think, if you want your life to mean something, try making someone else’s life meaningful. But if you want your life to mean something five billion years from now, it won’t –no matter what. Sorry. But what matters now still matters now.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Life, Thinking, Personality

“We must recognize that in our generation there might come a day with no remaining avenue of escape. State laws can be avoiding simply by moving, but what of unconstitutional Federal laws? At that point we will have no choice but to rebel against tyranny. (Since the alternative would be to live as little better than bleating sheep.) When we reach that juncture I doubt that I will advocate expatriation. Most foreign lands have less freedom than we enjoy here in these United States. I don't think that I will find some ideal "bolt hole" nation with more firearms freedom, better banking privacy, a more positive business climate, lower taxes, full religious freedom, unimpeded personal property rights, fair courts, and assured freedom of speech. If I must die, then I will do so here in America, fully armed and facing my oppressors. I won't die in some ditch, begging for mercy.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Letter Re: Drawing the Line on Noncompliance with Unconstitutional Laws https://survivalblog.com//?s=noncompliance, Survivalblog, 11 June 2013

Law, Business, Thinking, Freedom

“In the Servant is comprehended the Second Person in the Trinity; and in the Servant is comprehended Adam: that is to say, All-Man. And therefore when I say the Son, it meaneth the Godhead which is even with the Father; and when I say the Servant, it meaneth Christ’s Manhood, which is rightful Adam. By the nearness of the Servant is understood the Son, and by the standing on the left side is understood Adam. The Lord is the Father, God; the Servant is the Son, Christ Jesus; the Holy Ghost is Even Love which is in them both.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Love, God, Christ, Personality

“I could almost hear him scrabbling about in his brain for a deft, light opening. His Oscar Wilde touch. Martland has only two personalities – Wilde and Eeyore.”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Don't Point That Thing At Me (1972), Ch. 1.

Light, Personality

“Real quality means making sure that people are proud of the code they write, that they're involved and taking it personally.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Interview with Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation, 2008-09-15, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-12-31 http://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/node/154, 2000s, 2008

People, Personality

“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

“As one who fought in all of Israel's wars, and learned from personal experience that without proper force, we do not have a chance of surviving in this region, which does not show mercy towards the weak, I have also learned from experience that the sword alone cannot decide this bitter dispute in this land.”

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

Ariel Sharon. "Speech at the Knesset, at knesset.gov, October 2004 ( Knesset.gov.il online) http://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/eng/sharonspeech04.htm 2000s

War, Learning, Chance, Personality

“In short, there can be different perspectives, broader or narrower, dealing with particular aspects of people - the biological, psychodynamic, societal, and so on. These perspectives, however are of limited scope and usefulness, although each serves a purpose. Single perspectives do not present the complete view of human beings and do not tell the whole truth about them. Each perspective abstracts certain aspects of the whole person. Each perspective complements one another without exhausting the totality of knowledge about the full meaning of human existence.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

p 338-339. as cited in: " Mental Illness and Mouse Traps http://ccvillage.buffalo.edu/Abpsy/lecture27.html" by David L. Gilles-Thomas, 1989, at ccvillage.buffalo.edu. ( Full program http://ccvillage.buffalo.edu/Abpsy/) Also cited in: Marie L. Thompson (2007) Mental Illness. p. 49 Models of Mental Illness (1984)

People, Truth, Knowledge, Personality

“I am the Government,” she said. “I am a force of omniscience and unparalleled power within the human part of the Archipelago. I am a public-domain distributed artificial intelligence. I have made all human institutions redundant, for I am the personal and intimate friend of each and every one of the trillion humans under my domain. I am the selfless advocate of each of them, from the lowliest to the greatest.
The only problem is…Well, nobody listens to me much anymore.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 12 (p. 126).

Intelligence, Problem, Parting, Personality

“One cannot help but be struck by the diversity that characterizes efforts to study the management process. If it is true that psychologists like to study personality traits in terms of a person's reactions to objects and events, they could not choose a better stimulus than management science. Some feel it is a technique, some feel it is a branch of mathematics, or of mathematical economics, or of the "behavioral sciences," or of consultation services, or just so much nonsense. Some feel it is for management (vs. labor), some feel it ought to be for the good of mankind — or for the good of underpaid professors.
But this diversity of attitude, which is really characteristic of all fields of endeavor, is matched by another and more serious kind of diversity. In the management sciences, we have become used to talking about game theory, inventory theory, waiting line theory. What we mean by "theory" in this context is that if certain assumptions are valid, then such-and-such conclusions follow. Thus inventory theory is not a set of statements that predict how inventories will behave, or even how they should behave in actual situations, but is rather a deductive system which becomes useful if the assumptions happen to hold. The diversity of attitude on this point is reflected in two opposing points of view: that the important problems of management science are theoretical, and that the important problems are factual.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 7-8 1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Behavior, Feeling, Game, Mathematics

“How many gay people have not had children as a result of coming out of the closet and being gay? Millions, isn't that correct? Some of our most talented, wonderful, intelligent people, because of the openness of modern American society going back for now 40 years, have opted out of being hidden or closeted. In the old days, if a person was gay, or felt an attraction to the same sex, they probably would have gotten married to hide it. And they probably would've had a family, producing children. But because of this 'let it all hang out,' 'if you feel gay, act gay,' 'if it feels good, do it,' they've opted not to have children. And as a result, number one, society has lost millions of remarkable children. That's one point that is almost irrefutable. And for years I have thought about this. Why is society devolving so rapidly? One of the reasons is some of our most talented intelligent people have not had children. That's one point. And then there's another point I wanna make, and this is more important… I kept asking myself, why are gay people liberal? Why are most of them so liberal? Why is society unraveling on so many other levels, putting aside the issue of sexuality. And one of the reasons is because some of our most intelligent…passionate people happen to be gay. And while in the past they would've taken on other causes that are so critical for the betterment of society, they've been single-focused only on gay issues. And as a result society has again devolved, because the gay movement has sucked so many people into a single issue. They've ignored all the other important issues of our society, which is why we're collapsing. Why would a gay person want open borders? Why would a gay person want unlimited welfare? Why would a gay person want to be tolerant for Islamists coming into America? Because they're not focused on any of it. Their community has focused them only on one issue. And as a result the entire society has lost out. … And therefore I would say to you that a traditional society has offered us protections, both obvious and not so obvious, that we may not be aware of, and that openness is not necessarily for the betterment of the people or for society.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-04-29 Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNm7C_uJpI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m27s) 2015

Children, People, Family, Sex

“Mankind cannot, I submit, save itself from destruction through mere cleverness of scientific technology selfishly applied, nor through wishful thinking. But through a deep sense of brotherhood of all life, and a willingness and eagerness on the part of each and every person to work constructively for the preservation and enhancement of life, mankind may yet be preserved and go forward into the next millennium with confidence, competence and compassion.”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics

The Vegetarian Way, Proceedings of the 24th World Vegetarian Conference (India, 1977); as quoted in Jon Wynne-Tyson, The Extended Circle (1985), and in the International Vegetarian Union website https://ivu.org/congress/wvc77/extracts.html.

Life, Confidence, Thinking, Sense

“Before the eighteenth century the demographic impact of the profession of medicine remained negligible. Relatively few persons could afford to pay a doctor for his often very expensive services; and for every case in which the doctor's attendance really made a difference between life and death, there were other instances in which even the best available professional services made little difference to the course of the disease, or actually hindered recovery. …Only with the eighteenth century did the situation begin to change; and it was not until after 1850 or so that the practice of medicine and the organization of medical services begin to make large-scale differences in human survival rates and population growth.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Life, Death, Disease, Change

“I met Ranga on several occasions. He was a fascinating personality, highly organised, a tireless worker, a fierce enthusiast, a charming man. Speaking of his passion for work, he told me once how his young son had stuck a notice on his study door: “Librarianship is unfair to families”… It really was a privilege to have known him.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (31 March 2008); Cited in Claudio Gnoli (2011) " Vickery’s late ideas on classification by phenomena and activities http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/gnoli.pdf".

Family, Study, Passion, Personality

“We are not a Party of unbridled, brutal capitalism, and never have been. Although we believe in personal responsibility and personal initiative in business, we are not the political children of the "laissez-faire" school. We opposed them decade after decade.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

The New Conservatism (Conservative Political Centre, 1955), pp. 11-12

Children, School, Business, Personality

“Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don’t know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

About Nani, (December 2010) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/8222215/Arsene-Wenger-mocks-Nani-for-dismissing-Arsenals-Premier-League-title-chances.html

Game, Intelligence, Time, Personality

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

God, Pain, Way, Feeling

“Certainly, those persons that shall deny sanctification to be a most sure, sweet, and comfortable evidence of man's justification, they must not only blot out, and abolish the epistles of James and John, but must also raze out and abolish all those evangelical promises of grace and mercy, and of happiness and blessedness, that are made to such persons as are invested, enriched, and bespangled with the several graces of the Holy Spirit.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Cabinet of Jewels

Personality, Happiness

“Living in a system under the Communist ideology, an artist cannot avoid fighting for freedom of expression. You always have to be aware that art is not only a self-expression but a demonstration of human rights and dignity. To express yourself freely, a right as personal as it is, has always been difficult, given the political situation.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Ai Weiwei: A Rebel of Poet Roots, 2008

Art, Freedom, Fight, Personality

“That sort of fundamentalism which treats possession of private property not as a desirable economic and personal asset but as a condition of liberty is a form of primitive religion.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Source: Speech to National Housing and Town Planning Conference, Bournemouth (28 October 1986).

Religion, Personality

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life, Men, Truth, Age