Quotes about place
page 26

“Novick, Finkelstein, and Chmiel have made important and crucial contributions to a topic about which little discussion has taken place, namely the rise in holocaust consciousness in the United States. All three books are indispensable for anyone interested in understanding how international Zionism, Israel, and the United States have collaborated in producing an elaborate ideological defense system of Israeli crimes, crimes which are supported, funded, and supplied by the U. S. government.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness"

Books, Understanding, Support

“The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Anacharsis, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Men

“The UK does not deserve its place on the UN Security Council when it is a consistent violator of the principles it is meant to uphold: It is like having a gangster as a judge. To call Britain a rogue state is not to take an ideological position so much as to describe a basic fact in current international affairs.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

When it comes to Middle East policy, the UK is nothing but a rogue state http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/when-it-comes-middle-east-policy-uk-rogue-state-1677623456 (6 April 2018), Middle East Eye.

“Light fills the air, wind is aglow, drink of it, breathe of it, make leafing.
Rainfall sows itself, it grows down through soil to the secret places where stones abide; it brings the strength of them up rootward.
Lie still, molder away, then be again grass.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Harvest of Stars (1993), Ch. 55

Lie, Secret, Drink, Light

“Men and women, in and of themselves, are desirable. There can not be too many inhabitants of the right kind, distributed in the right place. Great work, there is for each and every one of them to perform. The country needs all the intelligence, and skill, and strength of mind and body it can get. whether we draw such from those within our gates, or from those without, seeking entrance. But since we are confronted by the clamor of multitudes who desire the opportunity offered by American life, we must face the situation unflinchingly, determined to relinquish not one iota of our obligations to others, yet not so sentimental as to overlook our obligations to ourselves.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Life, Women, Men, Intelligence

“All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Harlem Ghetto" in Commentary (February 1948); republished in Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Girl, Boy

“You’re from Liverpool, of course,” He was very proud of his ability to place different accents.
“No,” Sylvia told him. “Boston.”

Michael Kurland book The Unicorn Girl

Source: The Unicorn Girl (1969), Chapter 1 (pp. 9-10)

“Went for a walk, whistling. Saw a throne in a window. I said: What chair is this? Is it the one great Ferdinand sat in, when he sent the ships to find the Indies? The seat is frayed. Hardly a day passes without an announcement of some kind of marriage, a pregnancy, a cancer, a rebirth. Sometimes they drift in from the Yukon and other far places, come in and sit down at the kitchen table, want a glass of milk and a peanut-butter-and-jelly, I oblige, for old times’ sake. Sent me the schedule for the Little League soccer teams, they’re all named after cars, the Mustangs vs. the Mavericks, the Chargers vs. the Impalas. Something funny about that. My son. Slept with What’s-Her-Name, they said, while she was asleep, I don’t think that’s fair. Prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights. They went away, then they came back, at Christmas and Eastertide, had quite a full table, maybe a dozen in all including all the little…partners they’d picked up on their travels….”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

Marriage, Cars, Travel, Thinking

“In order to complete the history of the human mind, and attain to a perfect knowledge of its nature and operations, we must contemplate man in all those various situations wherein he has been placed. We must follow him in his progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually advances from the infant state of civil life toward its maturity and decline.”

William Robertson (historian) (1721–1793) Scottish historian, minister of religion, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh

The History of America, Vol. I (1777), Book IV, pp. 281–282

Life, History, Nature, Knowledge

“The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Translated from the 2d German ed. by E.B. Speirs, and J. Burdon Sanderson: the translation edited by E.B. Speirs. Published 1895 p. 49-50
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1 (1827)

Peace, Faith, Religion, Way

“So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!' … The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment— it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability— I have not feared to give: it is— to use words I used two years and a half ago— that 'the people of England will not endure it'.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 202-203.
1970s

People, Truth, Fear, Feeling

“My troubles started there. It blighted my personality permanently. I have spent all my emotional life searching for my grandfather and in my formative years no one was there to take his place.
It is the custom up there in Fraserburgh that when there is a death in a household they draw the blinds and curtains. When my grandfather died it seemed that these blinds had been drawn across my life… Relatives would pretend that he had gone to a 'better place'. 'Why', I thought, 'should he go to a better place and not take me with him?”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

'So death was a nice thing,' I thought. 'Then why does it make me miserable?'
As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 46, ISBN 1446428737

Life, Death, Search, Drawing

“Salvation is not in the manipulation of man’s environment: it is the regeneration of man’s heart, and hence … the apostles were clearly forewarned against proclaiming a social (or socialist) gospel in place of the atoning, redemptive work of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Writings, The Mediator: Christ or the Church? The Witness of Jesus Christ (n. d.)

Heart, Christ

“Here's the thing, it's the same person. It's just that some things that are appropriate on stage aren't appropriate at a dinner party, you know with a bunch of judges and lawyers. It's still saying how you feel, it's still being yourself, it's just knowing when and where. It's also knowing when to let someone else take the lead. That's exactly why Erika Jayne is so great, because when she's onstage, that's what she's supposed to do. To be over the top, to be peacocking. But it still resonates from the same place inside”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

me
Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

Feeling, Personality

“I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French Revolution, which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the English Revolution had begun the era of new governments. This revolution not only modified the political power, but it entirely changed the internal existence of the nation. The forms of the society of the Middle Ages still remained. The land was divided into hostile provinces, the population into rival classes. The nobility had lost all their powers, but still retained all their distinctions: the people had no rights, royalty no limits; France was in an utter confusion of arbitrary administration, of class legislation and special privileges to special bodies. For these abuses the revolution substituted a system more conformable with justice, and better suited to our times. It substituted law in the place of arbitrary will, equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of law, one people.”

François Mignet (1796–1884) French historian and journalist

History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 http://clc-library-org-docs.angelfire.com/hfrr.html, Introduction

Men, Hostility, People, Age

“It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this Republic could not long endure half slave and half free; and the same may be said with even more truth of the black citizens of this country. They cannot remain half slave and half free. They must be one thing or the other. And this brings me to consider the alternative now presented between slavery and freedom in this country. From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I see nothing for the negro of the South but a condition of absolute freedom, or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so-called negro problem. There are forces at work in both of these directions, and for the present that which aims at the re-enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. Take this from him, and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master-class a complete mastery over him. I showed this in my last annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here. The payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the storekeeper controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that the negro must buy there and nowhere else–an arrangement by which the negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer, year in and year out–puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. He who could say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work for me or be whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work for me, or I will starve you to death… This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and unexaggerated condition of the plantation negro in the Southern States today.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Death, Truth, Way, Problem

“God honoured us and so we harvested their heads and tore up their bodies in many places: the United Nations in Baghdad; the coalition forces in Karbala; the Italians in Nasiriya; the US forces on Khalidiya Bridge; the US intelligence in Al-Shahin Hotel and the Republican Palace in Baghdad; the CIA in the Rashid Hotel; and the Polish forces in Al-Hilla.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

From a taped message on an Islamist website. Zarqawi in his own words http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5058474.stm BBC News (April 2004)

God, Intelligence

“I will never tell anyone how much fun it is in this place.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Oath by Captain Roadstrum not to tell how much fun Valhal is, written in blood from the roots of his torn-out tongue, Ch. 2
Space Chantey (1968)

“It is my interpretation that on the deepest archetypal level the feminist movement is partially fueled by an intuitive sensing of the decay and demise of the male. Women are rushing in to take men's places, as much for survival's sake as for any sociological or philosophical reasons. He has become a hyperactive, hyper-cerebral, hyper-mechanical, rigid, self-destructive machine out of control.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Cardboard Goliath, p. 8
The New Male (1979)

Women, Men, Sense

“The sense of local community, the feeling of espirit de corps, the satisfaction one gets from belonging to a settled traditional or even tribal order, and the feeling of centeredness and place one gets in the family: These are all wonderful things. But they can, and often do, become poisonous, oppressive, and even tyrannical when the state tries to impose them on the entirety of society. When we try to make the macrocosm of society like the microcosm of the family or tribe, we destroy it every bit as much as when we try to make the microcosm operate according to the rules of the macrocosm.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Family, Feeling, Communication, Sense

“I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything. I was in the workshop and watched him. So as a child so-called art was not my view. That was, in my opinion, my father's job. But I liked to watch him; he comes, as my mother also, from a very craftsman's background. My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theater and all such nonsense, you know. On my mother's side there was much more heavy craft. They were blacksmiths. They made a specialty horse shoes and nails for them... So, as a child, my main fun was to watch others working. I loved to walk to the neighboring carpenter's place and up to the neighboring shoemaker in my home town.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Love, Art, Shoe, Home

“With Moondance, I wrote the melody first. I played the melody on a soprano sax and I knew I had a song so I wrote lyrics to go with the melody. That's the way I wrote that one. I don't really have any words to particularly describe the song, sophisticated is probably the word I'm looking for. For me, Moondance is a sophisticated song. Frank Sinatra wouldn't be out of place singing that.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

As quoted in Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison (1997) by Brian Hinton, p. 106

Way, Singing

“This changed attitude toward slavery was, however, part of a changed attitude toward morality in general that was sweeping over Western civilization. This change was marked by the apotheosis of "change" itself. What had heretofore been regarded as moral absolutes came to be regarded as merely relative to a particular time and place—to History or Progress—with no enduring claim upon our consciences. Lincoln praised Jefferson for embodying in the Declaration "an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times." But the idea of such truth, and of the correlation of such truth with justice, was increasingly repudiated by the most educated and influential minds in the Western world. Representative of this triumph of historicism and moral relativism was historian Carl Becker's assertion in a landmark 20th-century work that "To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question."”

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

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the American Cause

Men, Truth, World, Education

“It is the place of liberal Christianity to state the supremacy of the everlasting ends of life over the means of living, of the believer over the thing believed, the man over the system, the worker over the product. We are not liberals because we believe less but because we believe more. We dare to believe without an infallible guarantee of the substance of our faith in a moral issue. It is not an historical opinion. Liberalism is not a new system of dogma, but a new point of view. … The place of liberal Christianity is to restore to the moderm man his spiritual integrity.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

"New Pastor in Initial Sermon," The Register and Leader (Des Moines), January 16, 1911, p. 5

Life, Faith

“It is always difficult to know which is rumor and which is fact, more so in a place like Nigeria. Certainly, it is clear that the forces of law and order have tended to fail the citizenry. It is equally true that under Obasanjo’s government, though called democratic, more people have been killed for various reasons; that life has not been secured under his government. It is equally true that throughout his government in the two years, Nigeria has had ethnic problems. These are factors, I suppose, with which one can judge the success or failure of Obasanjo’s government. And it is also the factors that would indicate to you that there are underlying problems of Nigeria that need to be looked into and that if Obasanjo is not looking well into them, then he is not doing his job. That’s how I see it.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

Life, People, Law, Failure

“I can assure you that there is no career which you will adopt when you leave college that will bring you a more and greater sense of satisfaction and a greater feeling of participation in a great effort than will your work here or in your state or in your community…this generation of Americans — you here who will be in positions of responsibility for the rest of this century — will deal with the most difficult, sensitive, and dangerous problems that any society of people has ever dealt with at any age…The Greeks defined happiness as the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence, and I can imagine no place where you can use your powers more fully along lines more excellent in the 1960's than to be in the service of the United States.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks to Student Participants in the White House Seminar in Government (334)" (27 August 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx 1963

Happiness, People, Age, Feeling

“Look at the sea and remember the past. Look at the sky and imagine the future. Look at the land and think of the present. And in the most profound place where land, sea and sky are one - there ye shall play volleyball.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), How To Live (2005)

Imagination, Thinking, Past, Future

“The only justifiable stopping place for for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 4, Reason, p. 120

Pain, Pleasure, Feeling

“The best of Welshmen, valiant man,
Lord of the land, of Pywer Llew's line,
A slim strong man, to him the court belongs,
That best of places, worthy to be praised.”

Iolo Goch (1320–1398) Welsh bard

Gorau Cymro tro trylew
Biau'r wlad, lin Bywer Lew,
Gŵr meingryf, gorau mangre,
A phiau'r llys; hoff yw'r lle.
"Llys Owain Glyndŵr yn Sycharth" (Owain Glyndŵr's Court at Sycharth), line 91; translation from Carl Lofmark Bards and Heroes (Felinfach: Llanerch, 1989) p. 100.

Strong

“I love dressing up. I’m from a huge African family and grew up in a really colorful place. The way I dress reflects my environment and wanting to take people into a fantasy world for half an hour.”

Shingai Shoniwa (1981) British musician

http://venuszine.com/stories/music/4102.php

Love, People, World, Family

“Lines formed at Ruby Pier - just as a line formed someplace else: Five people, waiting, in five chosen memories, for a little girl named Amy or Annie to grow and to love and to age and to die, and to finally have her questions answered - why she lived and what she lived for. And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: That each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Love, People, Secret, Age

“Education in Chile has been modeled as a "consumer good" and this was accepted with much resignation by a broad layer of society for many years, they believed that education and health were to be treated like any other topic…. For this reason we cannot fail to recognize the intervention that the student movement made on the consciousness of thousands of Chileans who today are dissatisfied with the reality of today's education model, to whom a change of the outdated constitution makes sense, who understand the need to reform the taxation system, who no longer put up with the overexploitation of our natural resources, to benefit foreign capital, i. e. Chile awoke and once again came to believe in the possibility of building a different country. One which is more just, a country where education and health are guaranteed, a country where workers have dignified working conditions, where young people are not exploited nor ill-treated in their work-place, where women are integrated with rights and equal opportunities, a country where the environment is protected, where natural resources are exploited to improve the living condition of its people, a country were culture develops freely, where there is access to literature, a country where children don't suffer discrimination because they don't have any money, a country where a walk down your street doesn't mean constant fear of being assaulted, a country where the most disadvantaged youth don't have to resort to drugs or delinquency to give sense to their lives, a country where grandparents are not made to feel as burdens, a country where the development of knowledge becomes a task of society as a whole, where advances in science are placed at the service of the people. We are once again beginning to dream of this beautiful country …because we are not the same that we were a year ago, hope has resurfaced despite the elaborate effort of those who foster neoliberal ideology and who are trying to eternalize capitalism in a process of permanent auto-reproduction, excluding all possibility of a social revolution.”

Karol Cariola (1987) Chilean politician

Ser un joven comunista, por Karol Cariola, La Jota de Ingenieria, November 2011, 2013-10-03 http://www.jotainjenieria.cl/ser-un-joven-comunista-por-karol-cariola, Ser un joven comunista, por Karol Cariola, Oceansur.com, November 2011, 2013-10-03 http://www.oceansur.com/media/uploads/documents/files/prologo-karol.pdf, Original: La educación en Chile ha sido modelada como un “bien de consumo”, hecho que fue aceptado por un amplio sector de la sociedad, con mucha resignación durante años, ellos creyeron que la Educación y la Salud debían ser tratados como cualquier otro tema.... Por esto no podemos dejar de reconocer el gran acierto del movimiento estudiantil al intervenir en las conciencias de miles de chilenos que hoy , ya no se conforman con la realidad del actual modelo de educación, que le hace sentido el cambio de esta añeja constitución, que entendieron necesaria una reforma tributaria, que ya no aguantan la sobre explotación de nuestros recursos naturales en beneficio de capitales extranjeros, es decir, Chile despertó y volvió a creer en la posibilidad de construir un país distinto, un país más justo, un país donde la educación y la salud estén garantizadas, un país donde los trabajadores tengan condiciones laborales dignas, donde los jóvenes no sean explotados ni mal tratados en su fuente laboral, donde las mujeres sean integradas con igualdad de derechos y oportunidades, un país donde se proteja el medio ambiente, en que los recursos naturales sean explotados para mejorar las condiciones de su pueblo, un país donde la cultura se desarrolle libremente, un país en el que haya acceso a la literatura, un país donde los niños no sufran la discriminación desde que nacen por no tener dinero, un país donde caminar por las calles no sean un temor constante de ser asaltados, un país donde los jóvenes más desposeídos no tengan que recurrir a las drogas y la delincuencia para dar sentido a sus vidas, un país donde los abuelos no se sientan un estorbo, un país donde el desarrollo del conocimiento sea una tarea de la sociedad en su conjunto, un país donde el avance de la ciencia se ponga al servicio del pueblo, ese hermoso país es el que hoy estamos volviendo a soñar, porque con emoción lo vuelvo a mencionar, Chile está cambiando, hoy no somos los mismos que hace un año atrás, las esperanzas han resurgido a pesar del esmero de aquellos que propician la ideología neoliberal y que pretenden eternizar el capitalismo en un proceso de auto reproducción permanente, excluyendo toda posibilidad de una revolución social.

Women, Money, Children, People

“War is smaller in scale than in recent memory, but it is far more ambiguous, intractable, and nasty. Money flows more quickly than ever, but it is still somehow manages to gather and puddle in certain places, for certain people rather then others.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Preface, p. viii.
The World We Want (2000)

Money, War, People, Memory

“Total information awareness has helped to stabilize relations among international powers, and to that end espionage is making the world a safer place.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

World, Help

“The great error of the wisest known nations of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans, was the preference invariable given to the imagined interests of an imaginary existence called the state or country, and the real interests of the real existences, or human beings, upon whom, individually and collectively, their laws could alone operate. Another error was the opposition in which they invariably placed the interests of their own nation to the interests of all other nations; and a third and greater error, was the elevating into a virtue this selfish preference of their own national interests, under the name of patriotism. The moderns are growing a little wise on these matters, but they are still very ignorant.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)

Law, Error, Imagination, Selfishness

“America… It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.”

Thomas Wolfe book Of Time and the River

Book 2, chapter 14, p. 155
Of Time and the River (1935)

Time, Country

“Monday
In Other Place. Did nothing.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Bart's Journal

“The change from one stable equilibrium to the other may take place as the result of the isolation of a small unrepresentative group of the population, a temporary change in the environment which alters the relative viability of different types, or in several other ways…”

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

Source: The Causes of Evolution (1932), Ch. IV Natural Selection, p. 102.

Way, Change

“There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Helpless, from Déjà Vu (1970)
Song lyrics, With Crosby, Stills & Nash

Dreams, Memory, Change

“The poet's job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. He gives you the typical, recurring, or what Aristotle calls universal event.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

Universe

“Here then (belove reader) thou hast this work devided into two treatises, the first is the said introduction and reasoning, for investigation of the true sense of every cheife Theological tearme and date contained in the Revelation, whereby, not onely is it opened, explained and interpreted, but also that same explanation and interpretation is proved, confirmed and demonstrated, by evidente proofe and coherence of scriptures, agreeable with the event of histories. The seconde is, the principall treatise, in which the whole Apocalyps, Chapter by chapter, Verse by verse, and Sentence by sentence, is both Paraphrastically expounded and Historically applyed. …And because this whole work of Revelation concerneth most the discoverie of the Antichristian and Papisticall kingdome, I have therefore (for removing of all suspition) in al histories and prophane matters, taken my authorities and cited my places either out of Ethnick auctors, or then papistical writers, whose testimonies by no reason can be refuted against themselves. But in matters of divinitie, doctrine & interpretation of mysteries (leaving all opinions of men) I take me onely to the interpretation and discoverie thereof, by coherence of scripture, and godly reasons following thereupon; which also not only no Papist, but even no Christian may justly refuse. And forasmuch as our scripturs herein are of two fortes, the one our ordinary text, the other extraordinary citations; In our ordinary text, I follow not altogether the vulgar English translation, but the best learned in the Greek tong, so that (for satisfying the Papists) I differ nothing from their vulgar text of S. Jerome, as they cal it, except is such places, where I prove by good reasons, that hee differeth from the Original Greek. In the extraordinary texts of other scriptures cited by me, I followe ever Jeromes latine translation, where any controverse stands betwixt us and the Papists, and that moveth me in divers places to insert his very latine text, for their cause, with the just English thereof, for supply of the unlearned.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593)

Men, History, Sense, Learning

“I have already mentioned that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto. I, and the others who started the organization, did so for two reasons. Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalize and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence…”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, I am Prepared to Die (1964)

Hostility, War, People, Law

“For a world with so much sun we live in a dark place, in a dark time.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

ibid
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

World, Time, Sun

“We have argued at some length in another place that the mechanical equilibrium model and the organismic homeostasis models of society that have underlain most modern sociological theory have outlived their usefulness”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Society as a complex adaptive system (1968), p. 490.

“My photographs are facts which bring the right accessibility to remote, lonely or otherwise unrecognizable works. Some sculptures are seen by few people, but can be known about by many. My outdoor sculptures and walking locations are not subject to possession and ownership. I like the fact that roads and mountains are common, public land. My outdoor sculptures are places. The material and the idea are of the place; sculpture and place are one and the same. The place is as far as the eye can see from the sculpture. The place for the sculpture is found by walking.”

Richard Long (1945) artist

Richard Long & Kenneth Martin (1980) in: D. Ashton (1985), Twentieth-Century Artists on Art, p. 151
1980s

People, Mountain, Idea

“At a time when it's possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life in the Freezer (1993)

People, World, Nature, Time

“When the honoured month of Ramazdn, 588 H., the season of mercy and pardon, arrived, fresh intelligence was received at the auspicious Court, that the accursed Jatwan, having admitted the pride of Satan into his brain, and placed the cup of chieftainship and obstinacy upon his head, had raised his hand in fight against Nusratu-d din… The armies attacked each other "like two hills of steel, and the field of battle became tulip-dyed with the blood of the warriors."… The Hindus were completely defeated, and their leader slain." Jatwan, who was the essence of vice and turbulence, and the rod of infidelity and perverseness, the friend of grief, and the con- panion of shame, had his standards of God-plurality and ensigns of perdition lowered by the hand of power;" "and the dust of the field of battle was commingled with the blood of that God- abandoned wretch, and the whole country was washed from the filth of his idolatry.'"”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the flight of Jatwan and his death in battle, Kutbu-d din (general of Muhammad of Ghor). Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 217-218. Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

God, Intelligence, Fight, Country

“I hate polite conversation. I hate it when people stand around and go, 'Hi, how are you?' I hate words that don't have any reason or meaning. Also I hate it when people smoke in elevators and closed in places. It's just so rude.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/madonna_2.htm.

Hate, People

“And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

A version of his staple "Hope Speech," quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), p. 363

People, World, Hope, Feeling

“We must expect for a long time yet to see capitalists still striving to obtain the highest possible profits. But observe, that the passion for wealth is certainly in some senses new. It grew up very rapidly at the beginning of the present century; it was not so strong in the last century, when men were much more content to lead a quiet easy life of leisure. The change has really influenced the relations between men; but in the future it is quite possible that the scramble for wealth may grow less intense, and a change in the opposite direction take place.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 134

Life, Men, Sense, Strong

“On the longest of timescales, over millions of years, the workings of chance defied human intuition. Humans were equipped with a subjective consciousness of risk and improbability suitable for creatures with a lifespan of less than a century or so. Event that came much less frequently than that—such as asteroid impacts—were place, in human minds, in the category not of rare, but of never. But the impacts happened even so, and to a creature with a lifespan of, say, ten million years, would not have seemed so improbable at all.
Given enough time even such unlikely events as ocean crossings from Africa to South America would inevitably occur, over and again, and would shape the destiny of life.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 6 “The Crossing” section IV (p. 185)

Life, Chance, Time

“If I was a better poet like William Carlos Williams I’d be able to write about anything, but I’m just a minor poet. So I just write about things like moments of crisis that tend to be on the sadder, darker side. You can spend ten minutes in a really dark place and write a song about it that lasts forever.”

John Doe (1954) American singer, songwriter, actor, poet, guitarist and bass player

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11304560, John Doe: The 'X' Man Returns, 2008-06-02, Wertheimer, Linda, 2007-06-23, audio, Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio

“This greyhound Math left the King and went to the Duke of Lancaster, showing him all the marks of affection which he used to show to the King. He placed his forepaws on his shoulders and began to lick his face. The Duke of Lancaster, who had never seen the dog before, asked the King: "What does this greyhound want?"…"The dog is hailing and honouring you today as the King of England which you will be, while I shall be deposed."”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Ce lévrier nommé Blemach…laissa le roy et s'en vint tout droit au duc de Lancastre, et luy fist toutes les contenances telles que en devant il faisoit au roy Richart, et luy assist ses deux pies sus les epaules et le commença moult grandement à conjouir. Adont le duc de Lancastre qui point ne congnoissoit le lévrier, demanda au roy et dist: "Mais que veult ce lévrier faire?"…"Cestuy lévrier vous recueille et festoie aujourd'huy comme roy d'Angleterre que vous serés, et j'en seray déposé."
Book 4, p. 453.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Dogs

“To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

As quoted in Don't Try to Live Your Life in One Day! (2008) by Johnny Ong, p. 171

People, Dependency

“Democracy is not like a long-term loan of property to be entrusted by the people to the government and its small group of advisors. And yet in recent years a small group of people has successfully snatched immigration policy from the public arena, and has even placed a taboo on the discussion of vital aspects of immigration.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

Source: All for Australia (1984)

People, Democracy

“There's a lot of laughter that goes on. Since we're laughing together, we're true community. It's a very safe place to confront your fears. The minute somebody says, "Perform!"”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

your fear comes up...
A Conversation with Martin de Maat (1998)

Fear, Communication, Laughter

“The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

People, Change, Sun, Sea

“I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 131

People, Pleasure, Way, Idea

“Shahjahan was even otherwise interested in making converts. Professor Sri Ram Sharma has collected facts and figures of Hindus converted to Islam from the works of Qazvini, Lahori, Salih, Mohsin Fani, Khafi Khan, etc. during Shajahan’s reign… The following is the summary of what he says. “Early in his reign Shahjahan had appointed a Superintendent of converts to Islam, thus setting up a department for the special purpose of making converts. The one common practice was to make terms with the criminals… The Hindus of the Punjab, Bhimbar, Bhadauri and Sirhind… were all offered remission of their sentences provided they accepted the ‘true faith’. When the war with the Portuguese started, of the 400 prisoners taken a few became Muslims. The rest were kept in prison with orders that whenever they expressed willingness to embrace Islam, they were to be converted, liberated and given daily allowances. An order was issued in the seventh year of his reign that if a Hindu wanted to be converted to Islam, his family should not place any obstacles in his way… Under Shahjahan, apostasy from Islam had again become a capital crime.””

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they, citing Sharma, Sri Ram, The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Asia Publishing House (Bombay, 1962).

War, Family, Faith, Way

“I think it is most appropriate that the President of the United States, whose business place is in Washington, should come to this city and participate in these rallies. Because the business of the Government is the business of the people”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

and the people are right here. Speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City to support his program of "medical care for the aged." (20 May 1962) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=8669 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-038-023.aspx 1962

People, Business, Thinking

“I [Boswell] happened to say, it would be terrible if he should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined in so dull a place.
JOHNSON: "Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained some time here."”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

August 6, 1763, p. 134
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Time

“…The nobles and chiefs said, ‘It seems expedient that the victorious standards should move towards the Dekhin’…Sher Shah replied: ‘What you have said is most right and proper, but it has come into my mind that since the time of Sultan Ibrahim, the infidel zamindars have rendered the country of Islam full of unbelievers, and having thrown down masjids and buildings of the believers, placed idol-shrines in them, and they are in possession of the country of Delhi and Malwa. Until I have cleansed the country from the existing contamination of the unbelievers, I will not go into any other country’…”

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Sher Shah Sur (AD 1538-1545) Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi in Eliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. IV, pp. 403-04.

Time, Victory, Country

“If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often, it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon movie theater, for example, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man and woman-eating lions were running around loose.”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

Beauty, Way, Parting, Weather

“Might and spirit will win and incalculable political and social consequences will follow upon victory. Victory must therefore be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed honour among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her guardians…History, will, in due time, apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in times that have gone. Whoever may be in the wrong, men so inspired will be in the right. The quarrel was not of the people, but the end of it will be the lives and liberties of the people. Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country - which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts, keeping it clear of thought which I believe to be alien to real patriotism - I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. I wish the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood and similar movements to face their duty. To such it is enough to say 'England has need of you'; to say it in the right way. They will gather to her aid. They will protect her when the war is over, they will see to it that the policies and conditions that make it will go like the mists of a plague and shadows of a pestilence.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Mayor of Leicester, declining to speak at a recruitment meeting (September 1914), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 175
1910s

Love, Men, War, People

“Nor are the general laws of economics "institutional." They work in an institutional setting, and upon institutional material; institutions supply much of their content and furnish the machinery by which they work themselves out, more or less quickly and completely, in different actual situations. Institutions may determine the alternatives of choice and fix the limits of freedom of choice, but the general laws of choice among competing motives or goods are not institutional unless rational thinking and an objective world are institutions, an interpretation which would make the term meaningless. Economic activity consists in the use of certain resources by certain processes, to produce "wealth." The content of the concept wealth is largely institutional, and the resources available and processes known and used at any place and time for producing wealth are in a sense historical products; but there are general laws of production and consumption which hold good whatever specific things are thought of as wealth and whatever productive factors and processes in use.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 129 (2009 edition)

World, Law, Motivation, Thinking

“I see it as part of the development of the field. I would always emphasize how much I share with other linguists: I've never either felt particularly distinct or wanted to be distinct. I never saw myself as a theorist; I only became interested in theory, in the first place, because, in the theoretical approaches that I had access to, I didn't find certain areas developed enough to enable me to explore the questions that I was interested in.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday in: G. Thompson (1998) " Interview with M. A. K. Halliday, Cardiff, July 1998 http://www.scielo.br/pdf/delta/v17n1/a06v17n1.pdf". Answer to the question, how he saw his own work as fitting into the development of linguistics. 1970s and later

Question, Parting

“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

Peace, Law, History, Motivation

“The eloquent Lysias, posing as a non-lover, had concealed designs upon Phaedrus, so that his fine speech was really a sheep’s clothing. Socrates discerned in him a “peculiar craftiness.” One must suspect the same today of many who ask us to place our faith in the neutrality of their discourse.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 22.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

Faith, Lovers, Clothes

“Though the river's current never fails, the water passing, moment by moment, is never the same. Where the current pools, bubbles form on the surface, bursting and disappearing as others rise to replace them, none lasting long. In this world, people and their dwelling places are like that, always changing.”

Kamo no Chōmei book Hōjōki

"An Account of My Hut" (1212), opening sentence as translated by Robert N. Lawson https://washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Hojoki.html

People, World, Water, Change

“My tears, O Ryno! are for the dead; my voice for those that have passed away. Tall thou art on the hill; fair among the sons of the vale. But thou shalt fall like Morar; the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in thy hall, unstrung!
Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the desert; terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm. Thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was a stream after rain; like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm; they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is laid.
Narrow is thy dwelling now! dark the place of thine abode! With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before. Four stones, with their heads of moss, are the only memorial of thee. A tree with scarce a leaf, long grass, which whistles in the wind, mark to the hunter's eye the grave of the mighty Morar.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

War, Lie, Peace, Art

“They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

x.1532-40
Paradise Lost (1667)

Happiness, World, Way, Nature

“To take such generous contracts and screw them up so dramatically must suggest that these are the most probably the worst business people ever assembled in one place to run anything. … the civil servants were taken to the cleaners and on the face of it you still end up with a £750 million overspend based on your mismanagement of them. I think they should be sacked, hung drawn and quartered, thrown out of the country and the whole thing (the London Underground) returned to public ownership. I saw that they (Metronet management) wanted to talk to the Mayor about this — wasting their breath sunshine! — they can go out and raise the money amongst their shareholders who came here to get their snout in the trough — they screwed it up; they are not getting any of our money!”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Remarks made regarding the management of Metronet and the PPP of the London Underground during a Mayor's press conference (13 March 2007)

Money, People, Business, Thinking

“This old familiar craving.
I've been here before, this way of behaving.
Don't know who the hell I'm saving anymore.
Let it pass, let it go, let it leave.
From the deepest place I grieve.
This time I believe
And I let go…”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Love to Be Loved
Song lyrics, Us (1992)

Way, Hell, Time

“Well, all this belongs to the future. And so do I. Even before the cosmic cleavage altered all history I was a misfit in this civilization. And now it just isn't my world anymore. I don't belong here. So I think I'll take my chances in that other place, where I won't have to get used to the little things that keep bothering me here and bother nobody but me…”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 25 : Return Voyage

World, History, Thinking, Chance

“It may be noted that in Neo-Plastic art the crucial thing is the right angel, that is, the right-angle lines. And not whether the position of the lines is vertical or horizontal... So it is possible to make very beautiful things while placing the lines in a diagonal position.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In 'Neo-Plasticism: Home – Street – City', Piet Mondriaan, 'i 10', Jan. 1927
1920's

Beauty, Art, Angels

“Singapore run only by PhDs would be my vision of a purgatory. Equally, a government run by roadsweepers can be no less a terrifying place to live in.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

Rajaratnam (undated)

“The Empty Quarter offered me the chance to win distinction as a traveller; but I believed that it could give me more than this, that in those empty wastes I could find the peace that comes with solitude, and, among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world. Many who venture into dangerous places have found this comradeship among members of their own race; a few find it more easily among people from other lands, the very differences which separate them binding them ever more closely. I found it among the Bedu. Without it these journeys would have been a meaningless penance.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 4.

Hostility, People, World, Peace

“No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time - but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.”

Charles Erwin Wilson (1890–1961) American secretary of Defence

Charles E. Wilson, quoted in: Louis E. Boone, ‎David L. Kurtz (1987), Management, p. 100

Stupidity, Time, Personality

“I have a few business ideas (that I'm going to advertise in High Times, amongst other places), and one of them is a service in which I offer to eat and describe pork to kosher people.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

The Pride is Back

People, Idea, Business, Time

“We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgement of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, Men, World, Birthday

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

Art, Understanding, Thinking, Sense

“[On his Live Aid appearance with members of Led Zeppelin] They wanted me there early to rehearse the old Zeppelin songs, but I couldn't make it and I told them, "Listen, I know the songs. I know them backward and forward." Well, that day the tempos were all over the place, and it may have seemed like it was my fault, because I was the one who hadn't rehearsed, but I would pledge to my dying day that it wasn't me. In fact, it was Tony Thompson who was racing a bit; he was a bit nervous, I guess. It came off because of the magic of being Zeppelin; but I remember in the middle of the thing, I actually thought, How do I get out of here?”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

Playboy interview (October 1986)

Appearance

“I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

Armistice sermon The Unknown Soldier (preached Sunday 12 November 1933, immediately following Armistice Day), published in The Secret of Victorious Living (1934); also in I Renounce War : The Story of the Peace Pledge Union (1962) by Sybil Morrison. The sermon inspired Canon Dick Sheppard to write a letter to the press in 1934, leading to the founding of the Peace Pledge Union.

War, Democracy, Support

““We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.”
“A church?” asked Alvin.
Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.”
“Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin.
“Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 7.

God, People

“Reality is ungraspable. For convenience we use a limited-reality consensus in which work can be done, transport arranged, and essential services provided. The real reality is something else—only the strangeness of it can be taken in and that's what interests me: the strangeness of human consciousness; the strangeness of life and death; the strangeness of what the living and the dead are to one another; and the strangeness of ideas … that seem to have been with us from long before the stories of them happened. The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can't be put into words; the most that a writer can do—and this is only rarely achieved—is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page.”

Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American British novelist, children's writer and illustrator

The Moment Under the Moment (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), Foreword

Life, Death, Way, Idea

“On the highest steeps of Space he will have his dwelling-place,
In those far, terrific regions where the cold comes down like Death
Gleams the red glint of his pinions, smokes the vapor of his breath. Floating downward, very clear, still the echoes reach the ear
Of a little tune he whistles and a little song he sings,
Mounting, mounting still, triumphant, on his torn and broken wings!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Young Adventure (1918), Winged Man

Death, Singing

“Ardently alert means that when the mind is staying with the breath, you try to be as sensitive as possible in adjusting it to make it feel good, and in monitoring the results of your efforts. Try long breathing to see how it feels. Try short breathing, heavy breathing, light breathing, deep, shallow. The more refined you can make your awareness, the better the meditation goes because you can make the breath more and more refined, a more and more comfortable place for the mind to stay. Then you can let that sense of comfort spread throughout the body. Think of the breath not simply as the air coming in and out the lungs, but as the flow of energy throughout the whole body. The more refined your awareness, the more sensitive you can be to that flow. The more sensitive you are, the more refined the breath becomes, the more gratifying, the more absorbing it becomes as a place to stay.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1949) Theravadin Buddhist Monk and Scholar

"Meditation: The How and the Why" (2003)

Feeling, Thinking, Sense, Effort

“I sit cross-legged on the rock
The valleys and streams are cold and damp
Sitting quietly is beautiful
The cliffs are lost in mist and fog
I rest happily in this place
At dusk the tree shadows are low
I look into my mind
A white lotus emerges from the dark mud”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Beauty, Tree

“If someone is frequently under attack by negative entities, it is because of a polluted consciousness that needs to be upgraded. A negative entity dislikes visiting a clean mind as much as a rat dislikes going to a clean place. […] Putting up spiritual paraphernalia around the home and not allowing any negative activity to go on in the environment can help you greatly. This may mean asking friends and loved ones to refrain from drinking, smoking, taking drugs, gossiping, or doing any activity that does not encourage spiritual thought and action.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 22

Love, Home, Drink, Help

“Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves.”

John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Jacobean playwright

The Nice Valour (c. 1615–25; publsihed 1647), Act iii, scene 3.

Love, Passion

“In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Songs of Travel and Other Verses

No. XV
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)

Men, Country

“The problem of ideology … has especially to do with the concepts and the languages of practical thought which stabilize a particular form of power and domination; or which reconcile and accommodate the mass of the people to their subordinate place in the social formation.”

Stuart Hall (cultural theorist) (1932–2014)

"The Problem of Ideology-Marxism without Guarantees," in Marx:100 Years On (London: 1983), p. 59

People, Problem

“I hope, said the third, that your wanderings in lonely places do not mean that you have any of the romantic virus still in your blood. His name was Mr. Humanist.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 90
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Hope

“From 1931 to 1935, I was an undergraduate at Cambridge in my father's old college, Gonville and Caius, which was particularly strong in medicine and the law. However, after two years of law I switched to economics, much to my father's disappointment. At that time the world was in the depth of the great depression and my motive for wanting to change subject was the belief, bred of youthful ignorance and optimism, that if only economics were better understood, the world would be a better place.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

"Richard Stone - Biographical," 1984

Youth, World, Law, Disappointment

“Special Correspondence. I learn from a very high authority, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, (speaking to me at a place which I am not allowed to indicate and in a language which I am forbidden to use)—that Austria-Hungary is about to take a diplomatic step of the highest importance. What this step is, I am forbidden to say. But the consequences of it—which unfortunately I am pledged not to disclose—will be such as to effect results which I am not free to enumerate.”

Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) writer and economist

The Hohenzollerns in America (1919)

Learning

“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Three years she grew in Sun and Shower.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Secret, Beauty, Star, Dance

“The case for originalism is quite different. It is that in our system of government, written laws (statutes and constitutional provisions) are supposed to provide stable rules around which society can organize itself. Such rules are presumed to remain in place until amended or repealed by the people. Originalism is aimed at preserving the laws enacted by the people or their representatives, and at preserving stability and predictability in our legal system.”

Thomas Rex Lee (1964) Utah Supreme Court justice

A Dialogue with Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas R. Lee https://web.archive.org/web/20150120094848/www.attorneyatlawmagazine.com/salt-lake-city/dialogue-utah-supreme-court-justice-thomas-r-lee/

People, Law