Quotes about pick
page 7

“To be perfectly honest with you, ABC picks you to do this and then the machine goes into action and you shoot promos. But I'm still sitting in my bedroom at home going, 'Jeez, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it.' And it's a weird situation to be in. And I guess we'll all find out.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On getting his own late-night program, Jimmy Kimmel Live! — reported in Alan Sepinwall (January 26, 2003) "A regular guy steps into stardom", The Star-Ledger, p. 1.

Home

“Once you have a basic grasp of the theories underlying music, you can pretty much pick up any instrument you want.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

Music

“All this was being done by [Nehru] in the name of Secularism, which concept he had picked up from the modern West and perverted to mean the opposite of what it meant there.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

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

“We are trying to celebrate in the new album -- 90 Miles [coming out in the summer of 2007] is the fact that after almost 50 years our homeland [Cuba] is not ours. We have amazing musicians on board preparing this album, and some continue to come on board. It's all new music we've wriiten - all new stuff... No relaxing for me... I've got the Connie Francis screenplay I'm working on, which we just finished. We have a producer... I've got to meet the director that I'm going to go hammer... I've been working on it since 2000 with Connie Francis, who is darling. Plus, I'm a mommy... I take her [12-year-old Emily] to games, take her to school, pick her up... We're women, we're used to”

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

constantly juggling responsibilities
cbs4.com (February 9, 2007)
2007, 2008

Women, School, Music, Game

“At this point water-tight compartments of university specialization and theories founded on the selected isolation of facts easily break down. Specialized thinking is rarely a sufficient foundation for concrete decisions involving action. The social scientist cannot often form sound administrative judgments solely on the basis of elements which he has picked out simply because they relate directly to his particular specialty. The present emphasis on artificial subdivisions of knowledge and on specialized thinking and teaching in universities, technical schools, and colleges and the relative neglect of administrative problems involving action have a dangerously narrowing effect on graduates of these institutions. While we may and frequently do arouse the intellectual interest of students in a considerable variety of subjects intimately related to the civilization of which they are a part, we pay almost no attention to the web of cross ties among these subjects.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Training for Leadership in a Democracy", 1936, p. 65-70, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 663

School, Knowledge, Problem, Thinking

“I loved the family and everything to do with them. I loved the environment and the cooking. I used to cook and go in my studio. I had to have methods of working. If I was in the middle of a work and the oven burned or the children called for me, I used to make an arrangement with music, records, or poetry, so that when I went back to the studio, I picked up where I left off. I enjoyed it, you see; it was part of me.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), p. 14

Love, Children, Family, Music

“[After struggle with heart disease] I've stopped eating meat, cheese, milk, even fish. No dairy at all. I've lost more than 20 pounds so far, aiming for about 30 before Chelsea's wedding. And I have so much more energy now! I feel great. … I just decided that I was the high-risk person, and I didn't want to fool with this anymore. And I wanted to live to be a grandfather. So I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival. … The main thing that was hard for me actually … was giving up yogurt and hard cheese. I love that stuff, but it really made a big difference when I did it. … [To truly change the conditions that lead to bad habits and poor health] we have to demand it by changing the way we live. You have to make a conscious decision to change for your own well-being, and that of your family and your country.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

" Bill Clinton Explains Why He Became a Vegan http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-08-2013/bill-clinton-vegan.html" by Joe Conason, AARP The Magazine, August/September 2013. 2010s

Love, Health, Disease, Family

“Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line…Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-dog-time-1996 of Mad Dog Time (29 November 1996) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Dogs, Time, Waiting, Madness

“When I went to college, I went to study Veterinary Medicine, which I still study. But I had to take classes with the Animal Science people in the college of Agriculture. … One class I had to take they made the students from part of the class go into a chicken coop and pick out a live chicken and slaughter it themselves. Then we were supposed to take it home and eat it. And I refused to do it. So I ended up getting a C at the class, even though I had As in everything else. … I also had to take a class where I would take care of animals, pigs and cows, and I got to know them. I actually had a cow that I took care of, raised from when she was a baby and I had her till she was about 800 pounds. She would run up to me, she knew me well, just like a dog. She was exactly like a dog. It was sort of the same with the pigs, the babies knew me. And after I had to go in and see what happened to them, it totally broke my heart and it made me sick to my stomach. … There's no way, you know, if you're human and you have a normal brain and mind and feelings, that you can see what I saw and still eat them and allow them to be slaughtered and be ok with it.”

Lauren Anderson (model) (1980) American model

"Playmate Declares War", video interview with PETA (24 August 2007) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2tstr.

People, Dogs, Way, Feeling

“To learn by example is to submit to authority. …By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. …Common Law …is the most important system of strictly traditional activities.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), pp. 53-54

Law, Art, Knowledge, Effort

“a good woman will pick you apart
a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
and you may be offended. and you may be afraid
but don't walk away, don't walk away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

landlocked blues
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Heart, Box

“I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

“This is our culture; fight for it. This is our flag; pick it up. This is our country; take it back.”

Tom Tancredo (1945) American politician

Lincoln Day Dinner Speech http://blogs.iowapolitics.com/lincolnday/070414tancredo.mp3 (April 14, 2007).

Fight, Country

“I don't mind if someone thinks I'm a sell out. I go to bed happy knowing I do what I do and I'm not doing anything for reasons of money, and if I were trying to pick up chicks, I'm doing a horrible job. And if I wanted to drive awesome cars, I'm doing a really bad job there too.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 1 - 10.06.08

Money, Happiness, Cars, Thinking

“The act of speaking, the release from silence, invariably meant that the prisoner would say too much, give something away, let slip an honest truth in the midst of the self-justification. Inspector Singh, like a fine piano-tuner, could listen to these verbal outpourings and pick up those hints of expression or emotion that were off-key and those that rang true. And so he waited for Jasper Lee to open his mouth, and a door to the truth, at the same time.”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 10

Truth, Silence, Time, Waiting

“The network called up and said 'We piggybacked you on the deal for another show,' I'm like 'Okay, so what you're saying to my writers is that they weren't picked up when they thought they were and now that they are it was because of something that has nothing to do with them. Okay. Great. Stop calling.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Underground Online, interview by Michael Patrick Sullivan
This is in reference to the WB network announcing that Angel had been confirmed for a full fifth season of 22 episodes, when Mutant Enemy Productions had already assumed that to be so.

“Material, space, and color are the main aspects of visual art. Everyone knows that there is material that can be picked up and sold, but no one sees space and color. Two of the main aspects of art are invisible; the basic nature of art is invisible.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

1990s
Source: Artforum International. Vol. 32 (1994), p. 38

Art, Color, Nature

“People (…) have to make choices in life, and in their decisions there will always be a dark side available for foul mouths to pick on.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Life, People, Decision

“Rickey Henderson, pick up the phone, man, it's me… you.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

Shut Up, You Fucking Baby

“And here I cannot help mentioning a very ridiculous show of a learned pig, which of late days attracted much of the public notice, and at the polite end of the town. This pig, which indeed was a large unwieldy hog, being taught to pick up letters written upon pieces of cards, and to arrange them at command, gave great satisfaction to all who saw him, and filled his tormenter's pocket with money. One would not have thought that a hog had been an animal capable of learning: the fact, however, is another proof of what may be accomplished by assiduity; for the showman assured a friend of mine, that he had lost three very promising brutes in the course of training, and that the phenomenon then exhibited had often given him reason to despair of success.”

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

pg. 248
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Money, Learning, Success, Help

“You have to pick yourself up from where you fell.”

Chang Ching-sen (1959) Taiwanese politician

Chang Ching-sen (2018) cited in " Taichung to host first Asia-Pacific Youth Games in 2019: mayor http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201809030021.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 7 March 2018.

“By picking this particular fight [with the FBI], Apple is doing the technology industry a big disservice. … Apple will very likely lose this case in the courts and suffer a public relations disaster.”

Vivek Wadhwa American academic

Apple picked the wrong battle in privacy war http://dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/02/18/vivek-wadhwa-apple-picked-the-wrong-battle-in-privacy-war in The Dallas Morning News (18 February 2016)

Suffering, Fight

“Friends are the family you can pick.”

Red Symons (1949) Australian broadcaster and musician

Attributed quotes

Family, Good Morning, For Friend

“No matter how many times people try to pick my lyrics apart … nobody will really understand what these songs truly mean to me because I would rather not get into it.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Jonathon Moran, Lawrie Masterson, Brett Debritz (May 13, 2007) "Inside Entertainment", Sunday Mail, News Limited, p. 2.

People, Understanding, Time

“Darwin believed that the crossing of two types generally led to a blend, and that consequently bisexual reproduction tended to make a species uniform. He therefore had to postulate some cause constantly at work to keep up the inheritable variation within a species. He very naturally looked to the effects of differences of environment. …It was shown that Darwin had been wrong in supposing that variations due to environment were inheritable. Selection merely picked out the best available line from a given population, and would not, as Darwin had believed, give rise to an unlimited amount of change.”

J. B. S. Haldane book The Causes of Evolution

Introduction, pp.14-20.
The Causes of Evolution (1932)

Nature, Change

“On the diamond, I had been rough on Babe. I'd never taken my spurs out of his hide and one day he'd come looking for me in the Detroit clubhouse with fistic mayhem in mind. We'd won and lost duels to each other way back since 1915, when Babe had been a rookie pitcher with Bill Carrigan's Boston Red Sox. To add heat to the situation, some press association or other was always holding a poll to pick between Ruth and Cobb as the all-time star player.”

Ty Cobb (1886–1961) American baseball player

On Babe Ruth, in Ch. 16 : The Babe and I, p. 214
My Life In Baseball : The True Record (1961)

Way, Star, Time

“I don't think I need to tell you that there are jobs that Americans will not do. I don't think I have to tell you that there are. … [audience response] Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here fifty dollars an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. [audience response] So, OK, sign up! Ok, when you sign up, you sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season, OK, not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Declaring at an AFL-CIO convention in April 2006 that no Americans would be willing to do agricultural work for as little as $50/hour http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12155322/. 2000s, 2006

Thinking, Season

“It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 11

“Like any bully, Putin only picks fights that he is sure he can win. History tells us that sooner or later, he will become so overconfident, so accustomed to his opponents folding their cards against his weak hand, that he will overstep, potentially resulting in a catastrophe on a global scale.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

History, Fight

“Let's define "terrorist organization." A terrorist organization is an organization that makes you feel scared all the time and makes you change your behavior. What does CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC do all the time? That's right. Wolf Blitzer? Terrorist. Glenn Beck? Terrorist. Nancy Grace? Terrorist. AND her plastic surgeon. The only news organization that is not a terrorist organization is the BBC. Because the BBC can make the worst things sound okay. [British accent] Hello, welcome to the BBC. Satan has re-entered the planet. He is picking up babies with his talons, ripping off their heads, and sucking out their souls. We're in for a thousand years of darkness, all hope is lost and now, the World Cup update.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

World, Hope, Behavior, Feeling

“He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come.”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw (1898), Ch. XXIII.

Beauty, Way, Idea, Light

“Look at Mother Teresa. She spent her whole life being holy. She didn't benefit anyone in any real sense. She didn't work on stopping disease, helping poverty, doing anything that would relieve the condition of her countrymen. She just went around the city, picked up dying people, and took care of them while they died. It was a good thing, no doubt, but it meant no betterment, no progress, no help, no relief from pain. She longed to be holy. She wanted to be a saint. Now she's a saint.
Salk isn't a saint. But he did more for the human race than Mother Teresa did. He didn't long to be holy, which meant having faith, not asking questions, doing something unpleasant without thought or complaint. He longed to do good, which meant finding things out, asking hard questions, and thinking hard, deep thoughts. Goodness and holiness are two different things, unfortunately.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Strange Horizons interview (2008)

Life, Pain, People, Disease

“I just heard what was said, it isn't strictly accurate by any means, I'm a man who's just been lucky on having wonderful partners, Schoedsack alot more than I did on Grass and Chang, and right down the line I've only had John Ford as a partner, Thomas is a great friend on technicolor, and for cinerama, Fred Waller invented it, Thomas picked up the ball and ran with it, and there's a young man in this audience, Bob Bendick, that most of you have never heard, that did far more of the production then I did. I want to thank all the great partners I've had in my life, thank you. I just want to add I'm still John Ford's partner.”

Merian C. Cooper (1893–1973) American aviator, actor, director and producer

Speech after receiving an Honorary Academy Award at the 25th Academy Awards (March 19, 1953)

Life, Grass, Change

“If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love

“I mentioned the Magna Carta. That’s the foundations of modern law. We will soon be commemorating the 800th anniversary. We won’t be celebrating it – more likely interring what little is left of its bones after the flesh has been picked off by Bush and Obama and their colleagues in Europe.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2010s, 2013, Speech at DW Global Media Forum

Law

“Referring to a professor aboard ship: This passenger — the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port on the coast — was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my smoother days, and the last person I should have expected to see on the coast of California — Professor Nuttall of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of the Botany and Ornithology Department at Harvard University, and the next I saw of him, he was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailors' pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells… I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business… The Pilgrim's crew called Mr. Nuttall "Old Curious," from his zeal for curiosities; and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself this way. Why else would (he)… come to such a place as California to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, who had seen something more of the world ashore said, "Oh, 'vast there!… I've seen them colleges and know the ropes. They keep all such things for cur'osities, and study 'em, and have men a purpose to go and get 'em… He'll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he'll be head of the college. Then, by and by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him he'll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That's the way they do it. This old covery knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over 'em, and come 'way out here where nobody's ever been afore, and where they'll never think of coming."”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. Nuttall's credit, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.
Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 267

Men, Truth, World, Way

“Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae basebaw-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, tha's what, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots.”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Renton, "Relapsing: The Glass" (Chapter 2, Story 2).
Trainspotting (1993)

Hate, Failure, Country

“When they’d gone the old man turned around to watch the sun’s slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn’t even be able to encompass, it’s a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle. Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill…But be willing to die for your choice.”

Tim Powers book The Anubis Gates

Source: The Anubis Gates (1983), Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4)

Youth, Universe, Sun, Night

“The person of faith, (Henri Nouwen) says, is able to see in that moment the faithful presence of God, the one who has never left us, who keeps his word. He comes and picks up those bricks from the crumbling wall and begins to fashion something new, not a wall but a concave space, where we are invited to a deeper intimacy with the ones we love and with God. It is in that greater sharing, that greater intimacy that we begin to realize that the real stability in life is not the wall of our accomplishments but the faithfulness of the ones we love and the faithfulness of God, because both reveal how rich life is in keeping a promise, in keeping one's word. There is nothing to compare with having someone keep their word to us.”

Blase J. Cupich (1949) Catholic bishop

"Homily for the Marriage Jubilee Mass", at Holy Name Cathedral, August 30, 2015, reprinted in the online edition of The Catholic New World, the Chicago archdiocesan newspaper, in the Archbishop's Column (September 20 - October 3, 2015)

Love, Life, God, Faith

“On summer evenings, before bathtime, my dad used to pick me up by the ankles and swing me round and round! Then one arm and one leg! Like an aeroplane - Wheeeee! We trashed that bathroom.”

David Baboulene (1960) UK author

Articles

Summer

“Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books

Wisdom, Men, Age, Learning

“He wanted me to beat him up!
It was an open invitation!
Late at night he picked me up —
an act of open provocation!”

Attila the Stockbroker (1957) punk poet, folk punk musician and songwriter

"Contributory Negligence", from Cautionary Tales for Dead Commuters (1985)

Night

“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 11

Life, God, Imagination, Intelligence

“[about magazines school children sell, which his wife buys without even looking at what she's buying]
We get a magazine called Modern Ferret. It's a magazine about that hairy rat, I swear to God! And if you ever see it, pick it up. On the inside cover, it's a woman and a man, who publish this magazine, and they wrote this inscription: "Someday, we hope to make money doing what we love, playing with our ferret." Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Pee-Wee Herman lose a lot of money playing with his ferret?”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography (2002)

Love, Money, God, Children

“There's a standard Internet phenomenon (I generalize) of a Sneer Club of people who enjoy getting together and picking on designated targets. Sneer Clubs (I expect) attract people with high Dark Triad characteristics, which is (I suspect) where Asshole Internet Atheists come from - if you get a club together for the purpose of sneering at religious people, it doesn't matter that God doesn't actually exist, the club attracts psychologically f'd-up people. Bullies, in a word, people who are powerfully reinforced by getting in what feels like good hits on Designated Targets, in the company of others doing the same and congratulating each other on it.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

from a comment on reddit (January 2015) http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/2n3yh5/what_is_it_with_dark_lord_potter_and_hpmor/cmad6x3?context=3

God, People, Feeling

“Among other dreadful and disgusting images which Custom has rendered familiar, are those which arise from eating animal food. He who has ever turned with abhorrence from the skeleton of a beast which has been picked whole by birds or vermin, must confess that habit alone could have enabled him to endure the sight of the mangled bones and flesh of a dead carcase which every day cover his table. And he who reflects on the number of lives that have been sacrificed to sustain his own, should enquire by what the account has been balanced, and whether his life is become proportionately of more value by the exercise of virtue and by the superior happiness which he has communicated to [more] reasonable beings.”

John Hawkesworth (book editor)

From his edition of Swift's Works, as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), p. 168.

Life, Happiness, Food, Exercises

“The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Loss of the Future".
The Long-Legged House (1969)

Way

“I'm a sensitive man. When I had my first casualties as a lieutenant, I had a hard time controlling my emotions, but I had a strong sergeant with me who kept me from doing something stupid. I've been around some real tough guys, and I promise you on my honor: The strongest guys I've known in life would pick up a wounded baby kitty on the side of the road. Yet you wouldn't want to go against them in combat. That is not inconsistent. It is part of the same ethos.”

Donnie Dunagan (1934) actor and United States Marine

Marine reflects on being the voice of Bambi http://www.chron.com/entertainment/movies/article/Marine-reflects-on-being-the-voice-of-Bambi-1924410.php (March 7, 2005)

Life, Stupidity, Guy, Strong

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

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

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

Women, Men, War, Books

“On the same day as I started to keep my own pillow-book -- I met my future husband for the first time. I was six, he was ten. We did not exchange a word. He had been hand-picked by my father's publisher.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Nagiko's journal for Sep 16 1993
The Pillow Book

Books, Time, Future

“Some children saw Nasreddin coming from the vineyard with two baskets full of grapes loaded on his donkey. They gathered around him and asked him to give them a taste.
Nasreddin picked up a bunch of grapes and gave each child a grape.
"You have so much, but you gave us so little," the children whined.
"There is no difference whether you have a basketful or a small piece. They all taste the same," Nasreddin answered, and continued on his way,”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Idries Shah, The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin (1985), ISBN 0863040403, p. 60

Children, Way

“I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

As quoted in "What a Real President Was Like: To Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society Meant Hope and Dignity" http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/doc/307079109.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Nov+13%2C+1988&author=Moyers%2C+Bill+D&desc=What+a+Real+President+Was+Like%3B+To+Lyndon+Johnson%2C+the+Great+Society+Meant+Hope+and+Dignity, by Bill Moyers, The Washington Post (13 November 1988). Attributed

Color, Hell

“I’ve tried to make myself someone who can play a decent variety of stuff. I’ve even made myself learn things that I didn’t want to learn, a kind of picking or playing that I just never would’ve gotten into otherwise. It’s made me an all-around better player.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

Learning

“Flowers she would pick like guitar strings, for a real good whiff of how how life behind par seems.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Life, Death, And Love in San Fransisco"
Mixtapes, Friend of the People: I Fight Evil (2011)

Life, Flowers

“In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have made them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior courts are self- chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in chains, forever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real executive as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. They tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most important of all the executive officers of the county; name nearly all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable but by themselves. The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to them. They are chosen by an officer named by the court and executive. Chosen, did I say? Picked up by the sheriff from the loungings of the court yard, after everything respectable has retired from it. Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly. Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)

Life, Men, People, Fear

“When she gets into negotiations with her European counterparts about trade arrangements, could she remind them that cake exists to be eaten and cherries exist to be picked.”

Iain Duncan Smith (1954) British politician

Speech in Parliament https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/03/05/piece-cake-iain-duncan-smiths-peculiar-advice-theresa-may-brexit/ referring to the metaphor, widely-used in reference to the UK government's Brexit policy, that you can't have your cake and eat it (5 March 2018) 2018

“Harry Dresden: In McAnally's pub and grill, there aren't any service people. According to Mac, if you can't get up and walk over to pick up your own order, you don't need to be there at all.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Fool Moon (2001), Chapter 1

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

“It is the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech from Martin Luther King. And what an appropriate day. At first we picked that date, we didn't know and I thought, "oh jeez." But now I think it was almost divine providence. I do. His dream has been so corrupted. Judge a man by the content of his character. Character doesn't even matter anymore in this country. It's time we picked that dream back up and finished the job.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

on his Restoring Honor rally on 2010-08-28
2010s, 2010

Dreams, Thinking, Time, Country

“Look, if you take the best batting team in the world, they too will have their weaknesses -- otherwise, wouldn't they win all the time? You mention any team to me, and I will pick out for you a dozen weaknesses. But that is not the point -- these things, like fielding, running between wickets, all these are technical things, they can be learnt and practised.”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

In an interview on "Fielding, running between wickets" quoted in The Rediff Cricket Interview / Kapil Dev, 20 December 2013, Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/sports/1998/sep/01a.htm,

World, Time

“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

“From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

Groucho Marx on Perelman’s Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1928), quoted in Dorothy Herrmann S. J. Perelman: A Life (1986) p. 61.
Criticism

Books, Laughter, Reading

“We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion — a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

This I Believe (1951)

Age, Faith, Courage, Despair

“I beleave in the universal salvashun ov men, but I want tew pick the men.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Men, Universe

“Good news from France, where the man picked by Nicolas Sarkozy as his foreign minister is not the execrable Hubert Védrine, but Bernard Kouchner - a socialist who supports Israel and the invasion of Iraq.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

May 18, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25539_Breaking-_New_French_FM_Doesnt_Hate_Israel&only

Support

“In my conversation, I shall talk and act as I please. Still I am always aware, when speaking in public, that there are those present who are disposed to find fault with this people, and to try to raise a prejudice against them; and they will pick up isolated words and sentences, and put them together to suit themselves, and send forth a garbled version to prejudice the world against us. Such a course I never care anything about; for I have frequently said, spoken words are but wind, and when they are spoken are gone; consequently I take liberties in speaking which I do not allow when I commit my sentiments to writing.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 2:179 (February 18, 1855)
Young predicts that people will take his written words and rearrange them to suit themselves.
1850s

People, World

“I never had any training. I never had a guy say to me, "Do it this way, do it that way." When I was growing up, I was the last guy to get picked for every team that I was on. If they needed a pitcher, I pitched. If there was a catcher needed, I caught. First baseman, shortstop, whatever position they needed, that's what I played. I felt I was the best all-around athlete on that particular team. Most of them couldn't do that, everybody wanted to play a position. It didn't matter what position I played. I just had fun and enjoyed it.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

Way, Guy, Training

“Well anyone can make a 'weird' [chord] progression by randomly picking triads.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

“When we represent technology to ourselves through its own common sense we think of ourselves as picking and choosing in a supermarket, rather than within the analogy of the package deal. We have bought a package deal of far more fundamental novelness than simply a set of instruments under our control. It is a destiny which enfolds us in its own conceptions of instrumentality, neutrality and purposiveness.”

George Grant (1918–1988) Canadian philosopher

Technology and Justice (Notre Dame: 1986), p. 32

Thinking, Sense

“The man is picked out and somehow he gets to understand what’s expected of him in the way of a contribution, and he ponies up—all from gratitude to the organization that honored him, see? p. 74”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 18, On the Use of Money in Politics

Way, Understanding, Gratitude

“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

“When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand, nor can your hand pick up anything.”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

Source: Roots : The Saga of an American Family (1976), Ch. 51.

“When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Life, People, Books, School

“I divined and chose a distant place to dwell
T'ien T'ai: what more is there to say?
Monkeys cry where valley mists are cold
My grass gate blends with the color of the crags
I pick leaves to thatch a hut among the pines
Scoop out a pond and lead a runnel from the spring
By now I am used to doing without the world
Picking ferns I pass the years that are left”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

World, Color, Spring, Grass

“I never entertained the dreadful thought that my face was anything other than good and fair until, in an act of revelation, I picked up a mirror.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Ni thybiais, ddewwrdrais ddirdra,
Na bai deg f'wyneb a da,
Oni theimlais, waith amlwg,
Y drych.
"Y Drych" (The Mirror), line 1; translation from Carl Lofmark Bards and Heroes (Felinfach: Llanerch, 1989) p. 96.

“Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds. Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebenica.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (2007), p. 332

Happiness, Fools, Perfection

“The young district leader chose Baubaus wallpapers at my suggestion, although I had hinted that these were “Communist” wallpapers. He waved that warning aside with a grand gesture: “We will take the best of everything, even from the Communists.” In saying this he was expressing what Hitler and his staff had already been doing for years: picking up anything that promised success without regard for ideology…”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 22

Success

“The new attitude of the critic toward the artist has been rationalized for me by a leading European art historian who is also an influential critic of current art. It is based on a theory of division of labor in making art history. The historian, he contends, knows art history and, in fact, creates it; the artist knows only how to do things. Left to himself, the artist is almost certain to do the wrong thing — to deviate from the line of art history and thus to plunge into oblivion. The critic's role is to steer him in the proper direction and advise changes in his technique and subject matter that will coordinate his efforts with the forces of development. Better still, critics should formulate historically valid projects for artists to carry out. That not all critics have the same expectations of the future of art does not, I realize, weaken the cogency of my colleague's argument. The surviving artist would be one who has been lucky enough to pick the winning critic. My own view that art should be left to artists seemed to my mentor both out-of-date and irresponsible.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 249, "Thoughts in Off-Season"

Art, History, Effort, Change

“The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. I mean, they're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much, they all behave the same, they all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party. Again, the Democrats abduct everybody you can think of. So, as this gentleman was talking about, it's a coalition, a lot of it independent. The problem is, we gotta make sure that turns into a party, which means this: I've gotta spend time in the communities, and our folks gotta spend time in the communities. I think, we're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things, particularly on jobs, and housing, and business opportunities and college opportunities, and so fourth. I think, there has been a lot of progress in the last 20-40 years, but the stakes keep changing. I think there's a lot of folks who vote, maybe right now, in the Asian-American communities, who don't wanna vote Democrats, but they're angry with the President on his immigration policy, the Patriot Act. But, what we need to do while this is going on, is develop a really close relationship with the Asian-American community, so later on there's gonna be a benefit, you know, more equal division. There'll be some party loyalty, as people would rememeber that we were there when it really made a difference. That's really what I'm trying to do. If I come in here 8 weeks before the elections, we're not getting anywhere. Asking if you would vote, you're still mad at the lesser of two evils. So that's why I'm here 3.5 years before the elections. We want different kind of people to run for office, too. We want a very diverse group of people running for office, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos. I think Villaraigosa's election in Los Angeles is incredibly important for the Democratic Party. Bush can go out and talk all he wants about "this is the party of opportunity", you know, he can make his appointments, Condi Rice, or, what's this guy's name, Commerce Secretary, Gutierrez. But you can't succeed electorally if you're a person of color in then Republican Party, there're very few people who have succeeded. You can pick some out, JC Watts, I'm trying to think of an Asian-American who's been a success who's a Republican, I can't think of one off the top of my head. You know, there's always a few, but not many. Because this is the party of opportunity for people of color, and for communities of color. And we're hoping to cement that relationship so that'll always be that way. [Q: You've been very tough on the Republicans, some Democrats criticized you over the weeked for doing that, Joe Biden…] I just got off the phone with John Edwards. What happened was, John Edwards was, in a sense, set up by the reporter, "well you know, Governor Dean said this". Well what I said was, the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people. That's essentially the gist of the quote, and, you know, the RNC put out a press release. I don't think there's a lot of difference between me and John Edwards right now, I haven't spoken to Senator Biden, but I'm sure that I will. Today, it's all over the wires that Durbin and Sheila Jackson Lee and all of these folks are coming to my defense. Look, we have to be tough on the Republicans; the Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to have to go out and try to make ends meet. You know, the context of what I was talking about was these long lines that you have to wait in to vote. How could you design a system that sometimes causes people to vote, to stand in line for 6 or 8 hours, if you had any understanding what their lives are like: they gotta pick up the kids, they gotta work, sometimes they have two jobs. So that was the context of the remarks. [crosstalk/laughter] This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough, but I think we all wanna be tougher on the Republicans.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Discussion with reporters Portia Li and Carla Marinucci, in San Francisco http://web.archive.org/web/20060427191647/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/07/MNdean07.TMP&o=1, June 6, 2005

People, Hope, Angels, Color

“If you get tired of just hanging around
Pick up a guitar, spin a web of sound
And then you could be strung out all day
With lovers and clowns
Now I find myself still hanging around”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Ha Ha Wall"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Lovers

“My generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music, advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work comes out of, for better or for worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile, that it's something other than just more smarmy entertainment—or at least, that it's genuine high quality entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it's revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings! I have an enormous ego and must resist the urge to come on like a know-it-all. Some of the imagery in my work is sorta scary because I'm basically a fearful, pessimistic person. I'm always seeing the predatory nature of the universe, which can harm you or kill you very easily and very quickly, no matter how well you watch your step. The way I see it, we are all just so much chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle, but unfortunately we don't seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of ignorant, depraved behavior. We're all depraved, me included. I can't help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in a never-ending deluge.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 363

Books, World, Fear, Hope

“Lately some picked graduates from Canada are beginning to play their part in looking after those parts of the Empire where the white man goes out, often alone, to teach, to educate and to bring along the more backward races of Empire. There is no more self-sacrificing work, there is no finer work, and you see Canadians to-day in the Sudan, Malaya, Mauritius, and in the colonial service generally—medical men, highly educated men in the Civil Service, helping to bear the white man's burden. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that it is not enough for a country to concentrate solely on making a lot of money for itself; that a real spiritual force comes into it when its sons are ready, as for generations Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen have been ready, to give up the comforts and ease of home life and go out on that pioneer work to bring forward those backward parts of the world and try to help them to benefit from the things that have profited us to much in the years past.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 75-76.
1927

Life, Men, Money, World

“You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they’ll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don’t change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 2.

People, Change, Hurt

“In the Middle Ages, people were born and baptized into the Church. But the Church was the corpus mysticum and it depended upon one's own free will whether one wanted to be a living or a dead member of the Mystical Body of Christ. The cry "traitor" was only raised against those who broke the solemn oath of allegiance, not those who chose to go ways different from their status of birth. The Connêtable Charles de Bourbon who served with Charles V, or Marshal Moritz of Saxony, the great general under Louis XV were hardly considered to be traitors. Soldiers picked out the countries they wanted to serve. Prospective monks chose their orders. There were no "traitors to the proletariat" or "traitors to democracy." Today we live in an age of increased predestination and decreased free will, where Calvin, Freud, Marx, Luther, Darwin, Dewey, and the host of racial biologists have laid down the inexorable laws of anthropological, religious, psychological, environmental, and sociological determinism with no hope for escape. We are merely exhorted to make a virtue out of necessity and to be loyal to our prison and prisoners. Every attempt from our side to escape the artificial shell or to use our dormant remainders of free will to destroy the chains is branded as treason and punished accordingly by State or Society or even by both.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Pg 133, emphasis in the original
The Menace of the Herd (1943)

People, Age, Law, Hope

“Just like a photograph,
I pick you up.
Just like a station on the radio,
I pick you up.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

“The first time you watch it you'll probably cry a bit. The second time you watch it you will probably think - boy that would be bad having a head like that being picked on - the third time you are probably thinking, er, how does he get his jumper on, er, then dunno probably bored of it the fourth time. But, but it's well worth watching.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Xfm 07 December 2002
On The Elephant Man

Boy, Thinking, Time, Cry

“It's a public library. If you don't like the book, magazine, CD-ROM or film, put it down and pick up something else. Libraries provide choice. Our responsibility is to have in our collection a broad range of ideas and information.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

" Oak Lawn Library Vows to Keep Playboy on Shelf http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-06-23/news/0506230234_1_library-board-president-library-officials-magazine" by Jo Napolitano, Chicago Tribune (June 23, 2005)

Books, Idea

“There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity; maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

As quoted in New Statesman (1983); partly quoted in "The Candy Man" by Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker (11 July 2005) http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/11/050711crat_atlarge?printable=true

“But now here is the director's cut, which is 20 minutes shorter, lops off a couple of characters and a few of the infinite subplots, and is even more of a mess. I recommend that Kelly keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/southland-tales-2007 of Southland Tales (16 November 2007) Reviews, One-star reviews

“But there was something else that the Abstract Expressionists taught us: they began to use something besides the conventional means of art; to want other kinds of paint, or kinds of canvas, or ways of making pictures that weren't the usual ways. Some of the next generation, the Pop Art artists [like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, picked up this attitude and began to put actual things into art. We [=w:Morris Louis and Noland] were making abstract art, but we wanted to simplify the selection of materials, and to use them in a very economical way. To get to raw canvas, to use the canvas un-stretched – to use it in more basic or fundamental ways, to use it as fabric rather than as a stretched surface.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

Art, Way, Painting

“They can hopscotch around us," Chris told Laura. They can pop ahead in time to see where we show up, then they pick and choose the easiest place along the time stream to ambush us. It's sorta like… if we were the cowboys and the Indians were all psychic.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Part II, Chapter 5.4; 8-year-old Chris considering the time-travellers' strategy for catching them
Lightning (1988)

Time

“Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 45 (p. 439)

Imagination, Wine

“It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

C'est une épineuse entreprise, et plus qu'il ne semble, de suivre une allure si vagabonde que celle de nôtre esprit; de pénétrer les profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes; de choisir et arrêter tant de menus de ses agitations.
Book II, Ch. 6
Essais (1595), Book II