Quotes about person
page 80

“In the root of the word "faith" itself… there is implicit the idea of confidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidence is placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we perceive as something personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is something impersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in the person that gives us hope, that we believe, not directly or immediately in truth itself or in hope itself.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity

Fate, Truth, Faith, Hope

“Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 135.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law, Change, Time, Personality

“Thus we stand in this medley all the days of our life. But He willeth that we trust that He is lastingly with us. And that in three manner. — He is with us in Heaven, very Man, in His own Person, us updrawing; and that was shewed in the Spiritual Thirst. And He is with us in earth, us leading; and that was shewed in the Third, where I saw God in a Point. And He is with us in our soul, endlessly dwelling, us ruling and keeping; and that was shewed in the Sixteenth, as I shall tell.”

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

Summations, Chapter 52

Life, God, Soul, Personality

“President Obama keeps insisting that ISIS is not Islamic. Well, maybe they don't practice the Muslim faith the same way he does, but if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea, or drawing a cartoon, or writing a book, or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS. There's so much talk … about wiping out ISIS. You can't, not with bombs. You can only expose that something is a bad idea … Cultures are different. It's okay to judge that rule of law isn't just different than theocracy, it's better. If you don't see that, you're either a religious fanatic or a masochist, but one thing you certainly are not is a liberal. To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. Free speech, separation of church and state, freedom to practice any religion or no religion without the threat of violence. Respect for minorities including homosexuals, equality for women.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/27/maher_rips_liberals_over_islam_if_were_giving_no_quarter_to_intolerance_shouldnt_we_start_with_honor_killers.html September 26, 2014. Real Time with Bill Maher

Women, Books, World, Faith

“A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 10
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Death, Democracy, Communication, Passion

“Every interview with a public figure should include the question "What have you been wrong about, and how did that change your views?" The answer will tell us if the person is intellectually honest or a tale spinner with delusions of infallibility.”

Stewart Brand book Whole Earth Discipline

Whole Earth Discipline (2009), page 230.

Question, Change, Personality

“How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back "What?"”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955)

Love, Personality

“The people who run the show in the NBA don't know anything about Islam. I think that may also be why some people are against me personally--because I am a Muslim. It's the same way people can be against you because of the color of your skin. They don't look past these things. But it always depends on the individual.”

Hakeem Olajuwon (1963) Nigerian–American basketball player

Slam dunk - interview with basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon - Interview, Feb, 1994 by Spike Lee.
Sourced Quotes

People, Color, Way, Thinking

“To-day Christ, in a certain sense, is on trial before us all. In these living hearts, in every one to-day, there will be a judgment of some sort passed upon His sacred person.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 102.

Sense, Heart, Christ, Personality

“It is odd enough to see how the entrance of a person of the opposite sex into an assemblage of either men or women calms down the little discordances and the disturbance of mood.”

Elizabeth Gaskell book Wives and Daughters

Wives and Daughters, ch. 11
Wives and Daughters

Women, Men, Sex, Mood

“To come out from under the protective wall of role, habit, and frozen perception, a person must throw himself into a situation of heightened exposure. He must put himself at greater risk to the harm that other people may do to him and to the destructive influence that enlarged experience may have on what he had previously regarded as his enduring core of identity.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), pp. 12-13

People, Personality

“We object to bringing this question down to the level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Cross of Gold Speech (1896)

Question, Personality

“The Bible declares blasphemy to be a very serious offense, because any society which begins by profaning God and His authority will soon profane all things. Nothing will be sacred. No authority will stand. The alternative to authority is total terror by the power of State. This is why, as I’ve pointed out more than once, when the authority of God is destroyed, and when the doctrine of Creation was replaced with the doctrine of Evolution, Marx and Engels congratulated one another in that now their position was established. The foundations of all godly authority were shattered when God was no longer viewed as the creator. His Law, His Word, His person became thereby irrelevant to creation. If the Lord God of scripture did not make the Heavens and the earth and all things therein to the last atom, His Word does not govern creation. If Creation is a product of Evolution, then no law outside of itself can govern it. So the alternative to the authority of God is total terror by the power of State. Where there is no authority, there is soon no justice, because men then no longer speak the same moral languages of law and authority. The respect for God’s authority establishes communication and healthy dissent, the kind of dissent which thrives in an anarchist situation is the dissent of increasing evil, violence and destruction. Godly dissent is constructive, not destructive, and its goal is justice and holiness.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Blasphemy (n. d.)

Men, God, Justice, Law

“What if the deaf person falls down?”

Gina Barberi

Radio From Hell (March 27, 2006)

Personality

“Sandy Koufax. Sandy was a special problem for me because he possessed exceptional control, speed and a great curve ball. He was highly disciplined, extremely committed and a very private person. These qualities enabled him to concentrate on his profession without a lot of unnecessary distractions.”

Ernie Banks (1931–2015) American baseball player and coach

Responding to the question, "Who was the toughest pitcher you faced during your career, and why was he a special problem for you?"; as quoted in "Hall of Famers Name Their Toughest Diamond Foes" by William Guilfoile, in The 1991 National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Yearbook; reprinted in Baseball Digest (August 1992), p. 28

Problem, Personality, Speed

“If I wanted to doubt then I could doubt endlessly. But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

World, Hope, Question, Personality

“A natural right in the strict sense is that which is naturally under a person’s control, his body with its faculties of movement, feeling, thought, and speech. By extension, a natural right is what a person brings under his control without violating any other person’s natural rights.”

Frank Van Dun (1947) Belgian law philosopher

Natural Law, Liberalism and Christianity (2001).

Feeling, Nature, Sense, Personality

“Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Associated Press interview in Paris (7 November 1978); repeated on several occasions before Khomeini returned to Iran
Foreign policy

Health, Age, Personality, Country

“But in order for anyone to become successful, sometimes you have to be that driven and focused, and maybe there isn't a lot left over for personal relationships -- although I certainly have had them. It's not as if I cut myself off, but it makes them very difficult. This profession is very hard on relationships.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

John Koch (July 11, 1999) "Nathan Lane", Boston Globe, p. 12.

Success, Personality

“Before my father started using morphine again he sent me to a Japanese person to learn something called Karate. I learn these things fast because I am blank inside, and I have no special way of moving or doing things so one way is the same to me as another. ‘”

William S. Burroughs book The Wild Boys

The Wild Boys (1971)

Way, Learning, Personality

“He wanted me to understand two big things: First, that nobody, no group, is above others. Public servants are obliged to level with everybody, whether or not they'll like what he has to say. And second, that politics was a matter of personal honor. A man's word is his bond. You give your word, you keep it. For as long as I can remember, I've had a sort of romantic notion of what politics should be- and can be. If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game. Nearly forty years after I first got involved, I remain captivated by the possibilities of politics and public service. In fact, I believe- as I know my grandpop did- that my chosen profession is a noble calling.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Pages xv-xvi
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

People, Way, Game, Understanding

“It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern,—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Minute on Education http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html (1835)

People, Education, Personality

“In the Ngong Forest I have also seen, on a narrow path through thick growth, in the middle of a very hot day, the Giant Forest Hog, a rare person to meet.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Out of Africa (1937)

Personality

“The monetary history of the last four hundred years has been replete with financial crises. The pattern was that investor optimism increased as economies expanded, the rate of growth of credit increased and economic growth accelerated, and an increasing number of individuals began to invest for short-term capital gains rather than for the returns associated with the productivity of the assets they were acquiring. The increase in the supply of credit and more buoyant economic outlook often led to economic booms as investment spending increased in response to the more optimistic outlook and the greater availability of credit, and as household spending increased as personal wealth surged.”

Charles P. Kindleberger (1910–2003) American economic historian

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (1978), Ch. 13 : The Lessons of History and the Most Tumultuous Decades Ever

History, Optimism, Personality, Wealth

“I have not done anything to merit being thrown out. I don't understand why I am being attacked and held personally responsible. I am more loyal to my mother-in-law than even to my mother.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On being driven away by her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, as quoted in "Son's Widow Quits Gandhi Household" http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/31/world/son-s-widow-quits-gandhi-household.html, The New York Times (31 March 1982) 1981-1990

Law, Understanding, Personality

“The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero.
An amateur astronomer in Utah was the first person on Earth to realize that something unusual was happening. Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the Reiner Gamma formation, near the moon’s equator. He assumed it was a dust cloud thrown up by a meteor strike. He pulled out his phone and blogged the event.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

Opening paragraphs of the novel; "The Age of the One Moon"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Time, Personality

“I am very liberal on social issues, but I don’t believe we can have personal liberty, which is what that means, without having economic liberty. We have economic tyranny when you add in Obamacare, we have about 50 percent of the U. S. GDP in the public sector. That means that you have a tyrannical and overregulating, and politicized economy, not a market economy, not the invisible hand.”

Scott McNealy (1954) American businessman

Source: Why Sun Co-Founder Scott McNealy Supports The Romney-Ryan Ticket http://techpresident.com/news/22727/why-sun-co-founder-scott-mcnealy-supports-romney-ryan-ticket

Personality

“It is impossible for us in words to describe the ineffable dignity of the soul, and we cannot in any way comprehend it. If we had here with us a human being in his primal nobility, pure as Adam in paradise in his natural state apart from grace, his simple nature unadorned — that person would be so luminous and pure, so ravishing and richly favoured by God that no one would be able to comprehend his purity nor with his reason conceive of it.”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, From Our Daily Bread

God, Way, Soul, Nature

“The aim of preaching is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person … Our task is … the sharing of intense faith and experience.”

Halford E. Luccock (1885–1960) American Methodist minister

As quoted in "Religion : Go Ye and Relax?" in TIME magazine (20 April 1953)

Faith, Personality

“He's probably the single most untalented person I've heard in my life. He's a two-bit pretentious academic, and he can't play rock'n'roll, because he's a loser. And that's why he dresses up funny. He's not happy with himself, and I think he's right.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

On Frank Zappa in Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story (1996) by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga

Life, Thinking, Personality, Happiness

“Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 35.

Dreams, Personality, Happiness

“I'm not the youngest person at the table anymore. I'm not the young precocious one. I feel like I'm engaging with people in a different way now. I am a woman. I'm treated with respect, as an equal.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977) American actress

On being 30 years old, Marie Clare (2008)

People, Way, Feeling, Personality

“I. We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. Most emphatically do we demand that such laws as have been recently enacted, which therefore may fairly be presumed to embody the present will and to be dictated by the present needs of the Republic, and which, after due consideration have received your personal sanction, shall by you be carried into full effect, and that you publicly and decisively instruct your subordinates that such laws exist, that they are binding on all functionaries and citizens, and that they are to be obeyed to the letter.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Law, Decision, Personality

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Women, Men, Money, Children

“He [ Jasper Johns ] and I were each other's first serious critics. Actually he was the first painter I ever shared ideas with, or had discussions with about painting. No, not the first. Cy Twombly was the first. But Cy and I were not critical. I did my work and he did his. Cy's direction was always so personal that you could only discuss it after the fact. But Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, 'I've got a terrific idea for you' and then I'd have to find one for him.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

remark on his cooperative relation with Jasper Johns, to his biographer Calvin Tomkins
As quoted in Lives of the great twentieth century artists, Edward Lucie-Smith, London 1986, p. 31
1980's

Idea, Painting, Personality

“A thought is an upshot of the desire. When someone thinks about what he wants, he does not think of something undesirable. For example, a person never thinks about the day of his death. On the contrary, he will always contemplate his perpetuity, for this is his desire. Thus, one always thinks of what is desirable (…) It turns out that thought serves desire, and desire is the “self” of the person. Now, there is a great self, or a small self. A great self dominates the small selves. He who is a small self has no dominion whatsoever, and the advice is to magnify the self through the diligence of the thought on the desire, since it grows to the extent that one thinks of it.”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On Thoughts and Desires

Death, Thinking, Personality

“When I was very young I was Judy. On good days I was Dorothy, on bad days I was the Wicked Witch. The interesting thing about it, too, is that I’ve always related to it mainly because I don’t relate much to Frank Sinatra. I appreciate Frank, but there are so many Frank Sinatra imitators, whether it’s Harry Connick Jr. or Michael Bublé—the kind of guys who [Snaps his fingers in quick succession] basically want to get laid. And there’s nobody being the flip side of that, which is the hungry, lonely, desperate, crazy-person singer [Laughs]. So I wanted to pick up that mantle and try to be a little less cool.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

About Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall concert, Time Out New York Issue 551, April 20–26, 2006

Guy, Success, Personality

“An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling (1977), p. 255

Life, Education, Idea, Personality

“There are some things in this establishment that are fundamental… about which I shall deal plainly with you… the government by a single person and a parliament is a fundamental… and… though I may seem to plead for myself, yet I do not: no, nor can any reasonable man say it… I plead for this nation, and all the honest men therein.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

To the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)

Men, Personality

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i. e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Life, Death, People, Fear

“I was told by a teacher in the Deep South once when I spoke on the necessity for Christian education at the request of the pastor, it was a hostile congregation, they did not like the fact that their pastor was strong for a Christian school, and one person after another at the door told me ‘well, you, of course, are not southern, you don’t know the south. This is the Deep South, every person in our schools, every teacher is a born again Christian’. After everyone was gone, this teacher had been standing, watching, came up and said ‘they don’t know what they’re talking about. We may be born again Christians, but our textbooks that we are required to stick to are anti-Christian to the core’.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

Hostility, Education, School, Strong

“I certainly hope I'm not a scary person in real life, it's not like people run from me when they see me. People are usually pretty nice when they meet me. If they're scared, they keep their shuddering to themselves. But even if you're a nice person, it's easy to be scary as a character in a movie. All you need to do is devoid yourself of any feeling toward other people and regard them as a piece of meat. If you can imagine eating someone, or if you can imagine that person being dead, that can make you seem pretty scary. But if you want to get technical about it, most of what's scary is in the writing, not in the acting.”

Brad Dourif (1950) British actor

Brad Dourif Will Act In Horror Movies, But Won`t Watch One http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-11-15/features/9004040566_1_brad-dourif-exorcist-iii-cerebral-palsy-victim (November 15, 1990)

Life, People, Hope, Feeling

“The executive power is better to be trusted when it has no screen. Sir, we have a responsibility in the person of our President; he cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes… far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment.”

James Wilson (1742–1798) one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independe…

Arguing for a single executive at the Philadelphia Convention (1787).

Law, Personality

“There is a relation between persons and role. But the relationship answers to the interactive system—to the frame—in which the role is performed and the self of the performer is glimpsed. Self, then, is not an entity half-concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing oneself during them. Just as the current situation prescribes the official guise behind which we will conceal ourselves, so it provides where and how we will show through, the culture itself prescribing what sort of entity we must believe ourselves to be in order to have something to show through in this manner.”

Erving Goffman (1922–1982) Sociologist, writer, academic

Frame Analysis (1974) quoted by Edward O. Wilson in On Human Nature (1978) Ch. 4 "Emergence" p. 93
1970s-1980s

Personality

“It seems to me that the individual today stands at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a new way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, a way that ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large; in other words, to turn to God.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 218

God, Way, Personality

“This article [entitled A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations], was one of three independent statements in 1967 of what came to be called "contingency theory." It held that the structure of an organization depends upon (is ‘contingent’ upon) the kind of task performed, rather than upon some universal principles that apply to all organizations. The notion was in the wind at the time.
I think we were all convinced we had a breakthrough, and in some respects we did — there was no one best way of organizing; bureaucracy was efficient for some tasks and inefficient for others; top managers tried to organize departments (research, production) in the same way when they should have different structures; organizational comparisons of goals, output, morale, growth, etc., should control for types of technologies; and so on. While my formulation grew out of fieldwork, my subsequent research offered only modest support for it. I learned that managers had other ends to maximize than efficient production and they sometimes sacrificed efficiency for political and personal ends.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow, in "This Week’s Citation Classic." in: CC, Nr. 14. April 6, 1981 (online at garfield.library.upenn.edu)
Comment:
The other two 1967 publications were Paul R. Lawrence & Jay W. Lorsch. Organization and environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967, and James D. Thompson. Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
1980s and later

Way, Support, Thinking, Learning

““He who exalts himself shall be humbled; and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12) The person who exalts himself … will be humbled, because a person who considers himself to be good, intelligent, and kind will not even try to become better, smarter, kinder. The humble person will be exalted, because he considers himself bad and will try to become better, kinder, and more reasonable.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 110

Intelligence, Personality

“I guess people don't understand that I'm just a person.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1970s

People, Understanding, Personality

“In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all of them, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

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

Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill ‘Bolshevism versus Zionism; a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people’ in Illustrated Daily Herald, 8 February 1920.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Men, People, World, Faith

“Everyone lets the present moment slip by, and then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this. But while grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. Once a man has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear his truth in mind.”

Rati Tsiteladze (1987) Georgian Filmmaker

As Quoted in The Gerorgian Times in 2008 http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=12354.eng

Truth, Understanding, Personality

“My eyes are magical glass [when looking at] the outside world, and it can transform a lot into bewitching beauty. Paris, Munich.... they're all the same. The country is nice, because it is closer to nature and bad because we [Werefkin and Jawlensky] are no longer people from nature. I saw this at Blagodat. The more a person improves himself, the more one is doomed to loneliness. One doesn't need friends, one needs oneself and anybody who loves you like themselves.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote of Marianne Werefkin, in a letter to Jawlensky, 1909-1910, fond 19-1460, 38-39 as reprinted in Lauchkaite-Surgailene, Vilnius no. 3, sec. 16, 136;; as quoted in 'Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home', c. 1909; Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909 'Blagodat' is the name of the family landed estate in the Russian country where Jawlensky often accompanied Werefkin before their common move to Munich. 1906 - 1911

Love, People, World, Beauty

“When we are told that the record is scanty and unreliable, we can reply, with the support of the highest scholarship, that we know enough to be sure of his basic ideas and experiences, and that his personality looms up more brilliantly than the Morning Star.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

The Personality of Jesus (1932)

Star, Idea, Support, Personality

“Psycho-pathologists very often have to deal with people whose thinking is thus “compulsive.” And when analysis is possible, it is usually found that such persistent ideas are associated with some unconscious impulse. It is characteristic of all compulsive thinking that it is not the outgrowth of conscious reasoning and cannot be modified by evidence. Persons whose thinking is compulsive often seek to “rationalize” it—that is, they resort to ingenious devices to render it plausible or to explain away that which would contradict it. This sort of thinking, as I have tried to show, is a common characteristic of the crowd mind. The thinking of the crowd is dogmatic as a result of causes which are similar to those which render compulsive that of certain neurotics. And dogma is a common element in religion.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Mystery of Religion (1924), pp. 52-53

People, Religion, Idea, Thinking

“I cannot help thinking that where a person appeals to the Law of England, he must take his remedy according to the Law of England to which he has appealed.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

Robinson v. Bland (1760), 2 Burr. Part IV. 1084.

Law, Thinking, Help, Personality

“There is no man who hates the power of the crown more, or who has a worse opinion of the Person to whom it belongs than I.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to Edmund Burke (24 January 1779), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 41.
1770s

Hate, Personality

“The dispatch of a naval force and the peremptory outcome that Great Britain tried to impose are clear demonstrations that that country persists in addressing the question with arguments based on force, and that the solution is sought through the simple refusal to recognize Argentinian rights. In view of that unacceptable intention, the Argentine Government could have no other response than the one it has just made by taking action. The Argentinian position can in no way be considered a form of aggression against the present inhabitants of the islands. Their rights and ways of life will be respected with the same generosity with which we respected those peoples we liberated during our independence movement. Yet we will not yield to the intimidatory deployment of the British forces; far from using peaceful diplomatic channels, they have threatened the indiscriminate use of those forces. Our forces will act only to the extent strictly necessary. They will in no way disrupt the life of the islanders. On the contrary, they will protect those institutions and persons who agree to coexist with us, but they will not tolerate any excesses either in the islands or on the mainland. We have a clear appreciation of the stance adopted and it is in defence of this stance that the Argentine nation has risen, the whole nation, spiritually and materially.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

President Galtieri’s address to the nation https://teachwar.wordpress.com/resources/war-justifications-archive/falklandsmalvinas-war-1982/#arg1, 2 April 1982

Life, People, Peace, Way

“Look. What happened, that was just business. Personal betrayal I can understand. But never betrayal of one’s people you serve, or your country.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

2000s, A Bag of Earth, A Promise To Keep (2005)

People, Understanding, Business, Betrayal

“I had the image of a spiritual person, but I was bowing down to the idols of religiosity and philosophy.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Personality

“The expected effects of a sea-level rise typify the many consequences of a global warming. On the one hand, they are so big we literally can't understand them. If there is a significant polar melting, the Earth's center of gravity will shift, tipping the globe in such a way that the sea level might actually drop at Cape Horn and along the coast of Iceland—I read this in a recent EPA report and found that I didn't really understand what it meant to tip the Earth, through I was awed by the idea. On the other hand, the changes ultimately acquire a quite personal dimension: Should I put in a wall in front of my house? Does this taste salty to you? And, most telling of all, the human response to the problems, the utterly natural human attempt to preserve the old natural way of life in this postnatural world, creates entirely new consequences. The ocean rises; I build a wall; the marsh dies, and, with it, the fish.”

Bill McKibben book The End of Nature

Source: The End of Nature (1989), p. 117-118

Life, World, Way, Idea

“This Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious.”

William Hazlitt book The Spirit of the Age

"William Gifford" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_the_Age/Mr._Gifford The Spirit of the Age (1825)

Law, Personality

“I came into history from a primary concern with mathematics and science. This has been a tremendous help to me as a person and as a historian, although it must be admitted it has served to make my historical interpretations less conventional than may be acceptable of many of my colleagues in the field.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Preface to the First Edition, p. 27
The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979)

History, Mathematics, Science, Help

“Many years ago I used to read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal experience.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

in Defining Danger: American Assassins and the New Domestic Terrorists
Interviews

Books, Behavior, Game, Knowledge

“There are no excuses for my extremist past, for the suffering I caused to loved ones, to family, to friends, to those many more, those far more, 'unknown others' who were or who became the 'enemies' posited by some extremist ideology. No excuses because the extremism, the intolerance, the hatred, the violence, the inhumanity, the prejudice were mine; my responsibility, born from and expressive of my character; and because the discovery of, the learning of, the need to live, to regain, my humanity arose because of and from others and not because of me. Thus what exposed my hubris - what for me broke down that certitude-of-knowing which extremism breeds and re-presents - was not something I did; not something I achieved; not something related to my character, my nature, at all. Instead, it was a gift offered to me by two others - the legacy left by their tragic early dying. That it took not one but two personal tragedies - some thirteen years apart - for me to accept and appreciate the gift of their love, their living, most surely reveals my failure, the hubris that for so long suffused me, and the strength and depth of my so lamentable extremism.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Pathei-Mathos – Genesis of My Unknowing (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/genesis-of-my-unknowing.html

Love, Family, Failure, Nature

“Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Personality

“One of the reasons I've hesitated to be an actor is you have to do talk shows and interviews. I'm really a private person and not into telling everything about me. Michelle [Pfeiffer] told me to think of doing publicity as the work and acting as the fun part.”

Alison Lohman (1979) American actress

Interview in USA Today, 7 Oct 2002

Thinking, Parting, Personality

“Every person who seeks to practise agriculture with the full success which it admits—and that is the natural aim of every one who engages in it—must possess energy, activity, reflection, perseverance, and a knowledge of all the kindred and accessory sciences.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 8.

Nature, Knowledge, Science, Success

“I had measured the difference that separated art prior to 1900 from the art which I felt was being born. I knew that all instruction was at an end. The age of personal expression had finally begun. The value of an artist was no longer to be judged by the finish of his execution, or by the analogies his work suggested with such-and-such an archetype. It would be judged – exclusively – by what distinguished this artist from all the others. The age of the master and pupil was finally over; I could see about me only a handful of creators and whole colonies of monkeys. But I could not ask Gleizes to see it that way. Happily, nothing of his social or mystical opinions remained when he was engaged in the work of painting. The work of reconciling an oval and a lozenge, a yellow and a blue, prevailed and saved him.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Age, Art, Way, Painting

“One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, [even if] we can give him all the money in the world.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

Debate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etMwBOexmJM&t=41m with Jack Valenti at Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (1 October 2000)

Money, World, Personality, Dead

“Elements of Gandhism were by and large inherent in my life style and mode of thinking even after I adopted Marxism. While expressing my ideological difference with Gandhism, I became a political activist who upheld the high values of Gandhism and tried to translate them in my personal lifestyle.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

[Namboodiripad, E. M. S., The Mahatma and the Ism, http://books.google.com/books?id=AAw59zNJDYoC, 2010, LeftWord Books, 978-81-87496-98-4, 10]

Life, Thinking, Personality

“The world economy is pumping trillions of dollars into the accounts of a few thousand people. These riches should be directed first and foremost to end the millions of needless deaths caused by extreme poverty, and to educate the hundreds of millions of children who lack schooling. The billionaires would still have enough left over to indulge their longing for mega-yachts, personal space ships, private tropical islands, and other conspicuous consumption.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

"Billionaires reach for the stars while world suffers, CNN, August 15th, 2018 http://jeffsachs.org/2018/08/billionaires-reach-for-the-stars-while-world-suffers/

Death, Children, People, World

“The part assigned to this country in the 'Good Fight of Man' is the total overthrow of the spirit of caste. Luther fought it in the form of ecclesiastical despotism; our fathers fought it as political tyranny; we have hitherto encountered it entrenched in a system of personal slavery. But in all these forms it is the same old spirit of the denial of equal rights. Martin Luther, the monk, had exactly the same right to his religious faith that Giovanni de' Medici, the pope, had to his. Galileo had the same right to hold and teach his scientific theories that the Church doctors had to teach theirs. Patrick Henry, a British subject, had the same right to refuse to be taxed without representation that Lord North, another British subject, had. Robert Small, one of the American people, had exactly the same right to vote upon the same qualifications with other citizens that the President has or the Chief Justice of the United States. The Inquisition in Italy, aristocratic privilege in England, chattel slavery or unfair political exclusion in the United States, are only fruits ripened upon the tree of caste. Our swords have cut off some of the fruit, but the tree and its roots remain, and now that our swords are turned into plough-shares and our Dahlgrens and Parrotts into axes and hoes, our business is to take care that the tree and all its roots are thoroughly cut down and dug up, and burned utterly away in the great blaze of equal rights.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

People, Faith, Justice, Business

“I'm convinced that faith is a matter of inspiration, not a matter of imposition. It is something a person models rather than mandates. Faith does not impose itself on other people. Imposition usually sacrifices somebody else; it seeks to injure or extort others. This is what the terrorist does in an attempt to impose his religion on the world.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 98

People, World, Faith, Religion

“To fortify London by works is impossible—London must be defended by an army in the Field, and by one or more Battles,—one I trust would be sufficient; but for this Purpose we must be able to concentrate in the Field the largest possible Military Force. In order to do so we must have the means of defending our Naval arsenals with the smallest possible Military Force, and this can be accomplished only by Fortifications which enable a small Force to resist a larger one. Thence it is demonstrable that to fortify our Dockyards is to assist the Defence of London. As to Time we have no time to lose. I deeply regret that various circumstances have so long delayed proposing the Measure to Parliament, but it would be a Breach of our public Duty to put it off to another year. There may be some Persons in the House of Commons with peculiar notions on things in General and with very imperfect notions as to our National Interest who will object to the proposed Measures, but I cannot bring myself to believe that the Majority of the present House of Commons, or the House of Commons that would be elected on an appeal on this Question to the People of the Country would refuse to sanction Measures so indispensably necessary.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Gladstone (16 July 1860), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 142-143.
1860s

People, Question, Time, Housing

“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Last will and testament

Life, People, World, Personality

“The party delegate was one of those gloomy, tight-lipped persons who seem to have been made for wearing a red scarf round the neck and a tommy-gun slung from one shoulder.”

Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist

The Stuff from America
Don Camillo and the Prodigal Sun (1952)

Personality

“The Houses of Friedman and Samuelson disagreed on both methodology and policy. Nevertheless, the intellectual battles never encroached upon their personal respect for and friendship to each other.”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

8.Paul Samuelson Knows How to Disagree Agreeably.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

Friendship, Housing, Personality

“We consider the artist a special sort of person. It is more likely that each of us is a special sort of artist.”

Elsa Gidlow (1898–1986) Canadian-American poet

As cited in West, Celeste, 1986, "In Memoriam: Elsa Gidlow", Feminist Studies, 12 (3), 614.

Personality

“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Source: The Conduct Of Life (1951), Ch. 1

Life, Food, Revenge, Animals

“[Describing the bazar held in Delhi near the Red Fort, Francois Bernier (seventeenth century) says that] “Hither, likewise, the astrologers resort, both Mahometan and Gentile. These wise doctors remain seated in the sun, on a dusty piece of carpet, handling some old mathematical instruments, and having open before them a large book which represents the sign of the Zodiac. In this way they attract the attention of the passenger… by whom they are considered as so many infallible oracles. They tell a poor person his fortune for a payssa… Silly women, wrapping themselves in a white cloth from head to foot, flock to the astrologers, whisper to them all the transaction of their lives, and disclose every secret with no more reserve than is practised by a penitent in the presence of her confessor. The ignorant and infatuated people really believe that the stars have an influence (on their lives) which the astrologers can control.””

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Women, People, Secret, Books

“Wittgenstein's personality dominated these meetings. I doubt that anyone in the class failed to be influenced by him in some way. Few of us could keep from acquiring imitations of his mannerisms, gestures, intonations, exclamations. These imitations could easily appear ridiculous when compared with their original.”

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) American philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 1958

Way, Appearance, Personality

“I fear that wisdom is disappearing from modern experience where everything becomes just information. Information is not wisdom. Wisdom is when things are integrated into a historical continuum and one’s personal life experience.”

Juhani Pallasmaa (1936) Finnish architect

The Aura of the Sacred lecture Juhani Pallasmaa's Agora lecture "Christianity as Secularisation" (15 August 2012).

Life, Wisdom, Fear, Personality

“Yes, I've been compared to Jackie Gleason often. I've been often compared to Lou Costello. … But after a while you start to go, 'Well, geez. Do I have a personality in there?' The funny thing about Gleason is, he always used to talk about watching Jack Oakie. And if you ever watch Jack Oakie in an old movie, it's very similar to Gleason. … I think we all steal from one another.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

Laurence Chollet (November 19, 1991) "Knocking Them Dead Even As a Grave Figure, This Actor Has The Last Laugh", The Record, p. D05.

Thinking, Personality

“You tell your Governor, your attorney general and all the bigoted pigs outside that if one person on Rancho Rajneesh is harmed I will have 15 of their heads, and I mean it. You have given me no choice. Even though I am a nonviolent person I will do that.”

Ma Anand Sheela (1949) former chief assistant for the Indian mystic Rajneesh

September 18, 1984 press reports, quoted in — [Congressional Record, The Town That Was Poisoned, United States House of Representatives, February 28, 1985, Congressman James H. Weaver]

Personality

“The personality of firms like Polaroid, Xerox, Control Data, IBM, ITT, LTV and General Motors clearly reflects aspects of company and management intent that are manifested only partially in such activities as research expenditures, choice of product line and recruitment and development of organization members.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Source: Quote, The Concept of Strategy, 1971, p. 30

Personality

“The things we meet in life constitute the raw material from which we may build a larger life and a greater destiny Whatever you meet, be it pleasing or otherwise, remember it is raw material. You can take that material and turn it to excellent use in the creating of a stronger personality, a more brilliant mind and a more beautiful soul.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

What is Truth (1912)

Life, Beauty, Soul, Personality

“I said this one day to the doctor in charge of my case, and he told me that, in a sense, what I was feeling was right, that we are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and feel and see things, …”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

People, Way, Feeling, Problem

“The advent of the new political economy marked a decisive moment in the demise of the republican strand of American politics and the rise of contemporary liberalism. According to this liberalism, government should be neutral as to conceptions of the good life, in order to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their own ends. Keynesian fiscal policy both reflected this liberalism and deepened its hold on American public life. Although those who practiced Keynesian economics did not defend it in precisely these terms, the new political economy displayed two features of the liberalism that defines the procedural republic.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

Life, Decision, Personality

“I have always been a religious person in the sense that I maintain a working partnership with God. I was aware that the best work required more ability than I possessed and therefore I needed help that only God could give me. I made a true estimate of my own ability, then raised it by 50 per cent and put myself in God's hands. In this partnership, I have always received all the power I needed, and in fact have actually felt it flowing through me. Today, I can affirm that the kingdom of God is within you in the form of this power, to help achieve your goals and realise your dreams.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 49.

God, Dreams, Sense, Help

“Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Courage: The Choice That Makes the Difference (2004) by Dwight GoldWinde, p. 93

Love, Thinking, Personality

“We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation"…In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003…the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once.That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible…Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer…In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally…Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country…And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war.”

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

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore
2000s, 2004

Life, War, Children, Secret

“The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes. As in the case of the Negro, women themselves have often been brought to believe in their inferiority of endowment.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 1077. Appendix 5

Women, History, Intelligence, Study

“One can't be kind to one person and cruel to another.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

Personality

“The Lookout was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. Partially because both Brick and Mysterious Skin were four to five week shoots, and The Lookout was nine or 10. So there's the marathon aspect, as well as the fact that Chris Pratt is having a harder go of it than either of the other two characters ever did. You know, waking up in the morning is difficult for him. Putting a sentence together is difficult for him. Getting dressed properly, driving a car, all these things. He can do them fine, but it's just much harder than it is for a normal person, so I had to try to make it hard for myself somehow. So it was challenging.”

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

AV Club, March 28, 2007.

Cars, Personality

“Scientific truth, like puristic truth, must come about by controversy. Personally this view is abhorrent to me. It seems to mean that scientific truth must transcend the individual, that the best hope of science lies in its greatest minds being often brilliantly and determinedly wrong, but in opposition, with some third, eclectically minded, middle-of-the-road nonentity seizing the prize while the great fight for it, running off with it, and sticking it into a textbook for sophomores written from no point of view and in defense of nothing whatsoever. I hate this view, for it is not dramatic and it is not fair; and yet I believe that it is the verdict of the history of science.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: History, psychology, and science. 1963, p. 68; Paper "The Psychology of Coutroversy", (1929)

Hate, Truth, Hope, History

“Amusingly, it [astrology] falls foul of our modern taboo against lazy stereotyping. How would we react if a newspaper published a daily column that read something like this: "Germans: It is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical, which should serve you well at work today. In your personal relationships, especially this evening, you will need to curb your natural tendency to obey orders. Chinese: Inscrutability has many advantages, but it may be your undoing today. British: Your stiff upper lip may serve you well in business dealings, but try to relax and let yourself go in your social life.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 0:05:54ff
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)

Life, Business, Nature, Reading

“How long shall we blunder along without the aid of unpartisan and authoritative scientific assistance in the administration of justice, no one knows; but all fair persons not conventionalized by provincial legal habits of mind ought, I should think, unite to effect some change.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

Parke, Davis & Co. v. H. K. Mulford Co. (1911).
Judicial opinions

Justice, Thinking, Change, Personality

“The absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include what, stoning people for adultery, death for apostasy, punishment for breaking the Sabbath. These are all things which are religiously based absolute moralities. I don’t think I want an absolute morality. I think I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed and based upon, I’d almost say, intelligent design [pun intended]. Can we not design our society, which has the sort of morality, the sort of society that we want to live in – if you actually look at the moralities that are accepted among modern people, among 21st century people, we don’t believe in slavery anymore. We believe in equality of women. We believe in being gentle. We believe in being kind to animals. These are all things which are entirely recent. They have very little basis in Biblical or Quranic scripture. They are things that have developed over historical time through a consensus of reasoning, of sober discussion, argument, legal theory, political and moral philosophy. These do not come from religion. To the extent that you can find the good bits in religious scriptures, you have to cherry pick. You search your way through the Bible or the Quran and you find the occasional verse that is an acceptable profession of morality and you say, ‘Look at that. That’s religion,’ and you leave out all the horrible bits and you say, ‘Oh, we don’t believe that anymore. We’ve grown out of that.’ Well, of course we’ve grown out it. We’ve grown out of it because of secular moral philosophy and rational discussion.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins-George Pell Q&A (2012)

Death, Women, People, Religion

“There are such beings in the world — perhaps one in a thousand — as the creature you and I should think perfection; where grace and spirit are united to worth, where the manners are equal to the heart and understanding; but such a person may not come in your way, or, if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a man of fortune, the near relation of your particular friend, and belonging to your own county.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Fanny Knight (1814-11-18) on finding love [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

World, Way, Understanding, Thinking

“The conflict between the theories of Surrealism & pure abstraction leads many to look upon one as black & bad & the other as white & good. Yet it seems to me that a good work of art has always contained both abstract & surrealist elements – just as it has both classical & romantic elements (order & surprise?)... Surrealism is widening the field of contemporary art & is giving more freedom to the artist (& perhaps what is not unimportant, – stretching the appreciation of the public). Abstraction is re-establishing fundamental laws; bringing back form to painting & sculpture. There are many products of surrealism which I personally dislike,.... but equally Unimportant to me are the empty decorations produced in the name of abstraction.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, Unpublished notes' for 'The Sculptor Speaks' (1937), pp. 112-113

Law, Art, Freedom, Painting

“Teaching is a personal matter of the nursery of the mind and should not be on public display.”

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

Attributed to Saul Gorn in: National Association of Educational Broadcasters (1968) Educational Broadcasting Review Vol 2. p. 32; Article "Teaching As A Private Process"

Personality

Quotes about person page 80

Quotes about person
page 80