Quotes about place (8703 quotes, page 32)

“The effects of Asian contacts on Europe, though considerably less, cannot be considered insignificant. The growth of capitalism in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in itself a profound and revolutionary change, is intimately connected with the expansion of European trade and business into Asia. The political development of the leading Western European nations during this period was also related to their exploitation of their Asian possessions and the wealth they derived from the trade with and government of their Eastern dependencies. Their material life, as reflected in clothing, food, beverages, etc., also bears permanent marks of their Eastern contacts. We have already dealt briefly with the penetration of cultural, artistic and philosophical influences, though their effects cannot still be estimated. Unlike the Rococo movement of the eighteenth century, the spiritual and cultural reactions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are deeper, and have not yet fully come to the surface. The influence of Chinese literature and of Indian philosophical thought, to mention only two trends which have become important in recent years, cannot be evaluated for many years to come. Yet it is true, as T. S. Eliot has stated, that most modern poets in Europe have in some measure been influenced by the literature of China. Equally the number of translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, which have been appearing every year, meant not for Orientalists and scholars but for the educated public, and the revival of interest in the religious experience of India, are sufficient to prove that a penetration of European thought by Oriental influences is now taking place which future historians may consider to be of some significance.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Life , Education , Food , Literature

“In Arab countries today, bin Ladenism looks like a nightmare from a bygone era. Many Arabs have discovered that the alternative to despotism is democracy, not al Qaeda. In fact, the Arab Spring became possible partly because the new urban middle classes were convinced that, by rising against despots, they wouldn’t be jumping into the fire from the frying pan. There was a time when bin Laden’s slightest utterance made the headlines in most Arab countries. Gradually, however, he came to provoke only a yawn in most places. Even the Qatari satellite-TV network al-Jazeera, which made its reputation as “bin Laden’s home TV,” stopped giving him star treatment. Left behind by developments in Arab countries, al Qaeda has gradually shed its ideological pretensions and mutated into a purely terrorist franchise. Its motto: One man, one bomb. Shut out of Arab countries, al Qaeda has been recruiting among Muslims in Europe and North America. Hundreds of European, American and Canadian Muslims have been to al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The group also has sleeper cells in some Asian countries — notably India, Thailand and the Philippines. It will also keep Pakistan high on its target list, and continue to help the Taliban in its forlorn attempt at regaining power. Yet al Qaeda is bound to fade away, as have all terrorist organizations in history — though this will take some time. Meanwhile, the major democracies should throw their support behind the Arab Spring and help it find its way to a future free of both despotism and Islamic terrorism.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Evil reign collapsed years before he fell" http://nypost.com/2011/05/03/evil-reign-collapsed-years-before-he-fell/, New York Post (May 3, 2011).
New York Post

Way , Democracy , Home , History

“He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place when all the stars are rotating about it.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Variant: The Master said, "He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it."
Source: The Analects, Other chapters

Exercises , Star

“When then, my Lords, are all the generous efforts of our ancestors, are all those glorious contentions, by which they meant to secure themselves, and to transmit to their posterity, a known law, a certain rule of living, reduced to this conclusion, that instead of the arbitrary power of a King, we must submit to the arbitrary power of a House of Commons? If this be true, what benefit do we derive from the exchange? Tyranny, my Lords, is detestable in every shape; but in none is it so formidable as where it is assumed and exercised by a number of tyrants. But, my Lords, this is not the fact, this is not the constitution; we have a law of Parliament, we have a code in which every honest man may find it. We have Magna Charta, we have the Statute-book, and we have the Bill of Rights…It is to your ancestors, my Lords, it is to the English barons that we are indebted for the laws and constitution we possess. Their virtues were rude and uncultivated, but they were great and sincere…I think that history has not done justice to their conduct, when they obtained from their Sovereign that great acknowledgment of national rights contained in Magna Charta: they did not confine it to themselves alone, but delivered it as a common blessing to the whole people…A breach has been made in the constitution—the battlements are dismantled—the citadel is open to the first invader—the walls totter—the place is no longer tenable.—What then remains for us but to stand foremost in the breach, to repair it, or to perish in it?…let us consider which we ought to respect most—the representative or the collective body of the people. My Lords, five hundred gentlemen are not ten millions; and, if we must have a contention, let us take care to have the English nation on our side. If this question be given up, the freeholders of England are reduced to a condition baser than the peasantry of Poland…Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my Lords, that where law ends, there tyranny begins.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords on John Wilkes (9 January 1770), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 90-4.

People , Books , Justice , Law

“When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction…. On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes. The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil…. But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashrafis… plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors. The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased. the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.”

Nader Shah (1688–1747) ruled as Shah of Iran

About Shah’s sack of Delhi, Tazrikha by Anand Ram Mukhlis. A history of Nâdir Shah’s invasion of India. In The History of India as Told by its own Historians. The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot. John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 74-98. https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_tazrikha_frameset.htm

Pain , People , World , Family

“Al these thynges consydered, there can no man resonably gaynsaye but there was a kyng of thys lande named Arthur. For in al places, Crysten and hethen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the fyrst of the thre Crysten men.”

William Caxton (1422–1491) English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer

Preface to Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte Darthur (1485); cited from Sir Thomas Malory (ed. Eugène Vinaver) Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) p. xiv.

Men

“While we could agree with the psychological phenomenologists and assign an important place to generalization within the realm of the individual, we were quite sure that some data must be lifted from the realm of the individual and construed nomothetically that is, in a realm comprising many individuals.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The Psychology of Personal Constructs, 1955, p. 677-678

“If to be great means to be good, then Denis Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles, then none can refuse him a place in the temple of the Immortals.”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 2 : Diderot : The Talker, p. 61

“If he [ Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own place until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 3
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Way , Bee

“Generally speaking, a temple is a 'Place of Worship'. It is also called the 'House of God'. However, for a Hindu, it is both and yet still more. It is the whole cosmos in the miniature form.”

Swaraj Prakash Gupta (1931–2007) Indian archaeologist and art historian

Elements of Indian Art (2002)

God , Housing

“Unlike Rachel, Player One has a complete overview both of the world and of time. Player One’s life is more like a painting than it is a story. Player One can see everything with a glance and can change tenses at will. Player One has ultimate freedom, the ultimate software on the ultimate hardware. That realm is also the one place where Player One feels, for lack of a better word, normal.”

Douglas Coupland book Player One

Player One (2010)

Life , World , Feeling , Freedom

“The Mole had long wanted to make the acquaintance of the Badger. He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt by everybody about the place.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 3, "The Wild Wood"

“A little sleep and then a little wakefulness. Then a slipping to some soothing place in between.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Sleep

“Looked at from the point of view of Islam, it was a dazzling period indeed. Islam acquired an empire over a large country full of unrivalled riches. Islam had the immense satisfaction of 1) sending millions of accursed kãfirs to hell in a continuous jihãd, 2) demolishing and desecrating thousands of idolatrous places of worship and pilgrimage, 3) killing thousands of Brahmins and Bhikshus and forcing the rest to eat beef, 4) collecting vast amounts of booty and distributing it among the mu’mins according to rules laid down by the Prophet, 5) capturing millions of men and women and children and selling them into slavery and concubinage in the far-flung Islamic world, 6) usurping power and privilege over a vast population which was reduced to serfdom, and 7) proving the superiority of Islamic scriptures by the power of the sword.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Women , Men , Children , World

“In my constituency there were a large number of privately rented flats and rooms occupied mostly by low-paid single people or by low-paid or unemployed families. Now those people are being persuaded—I use the word advisedly—to leave those places so that they can be converted into up-market flats or second or city homes for the wealthy. Those tenants are literally forced on to the street and come under the care of the local authority, if the local authority can provide anything. There is a great increase in homelessness, but there is no increase in the number of homes available at cheap rents. Decontrol has forced those people on to the streets and caused homelessness. It is the enemy of good housing and working-class people. We need much more money spent on local authority and social ownership schemes to provide cheap rented houses for the people who need them, not for the yuppies that the Conservative party wants to bring into central London.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/mar/03/local-government-bill in the House of Commons (3 March 1987).
1980s

Money , People , Family , Home

“It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

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

Hate , Nature , Solitude , Personality

“You came to LA this week to peek into the future. But if all you want is next generation, you're in the wrong place. Because what you'll see from Nintendo is not just 'next'. Instead, it's what's absolutely new. What we're unveiling is the next leap in gaming; to a place where playing is no longer just about looks--it's about the feel. Where it's no longer confined to just the few--it's about everyone. And most of all, the next leap is not about what you see, because what you see is not always what you get. The next leap is about playing, because playing is believing.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

On Wii
Source: E3 2006 Press Conference Opening Comments, YouTube http://youtube.com/watch?v=B8tK9qzSs3I

Feeling , Game , Future

“Our people have had the honor to be among those who founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Despite the innumerable errors, both large and small, it is an undeniable fact that only as a part of the USSR have our people been able to survive Turkish invasion, live within secure borders, and progress economically and culturally. In spite of the current criticisms expressed from every quarter, it is a fact that the inhabitants of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic today enjoy a higher standard of living and more security than have Armenians at any other time in their three thousand year history. And all of this has taken place in the face of enormous challenges, including foreign invasion, economic isolation, civil war and an unimaginably costly World War.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

“National Self-Determination or National Suicide?” p. 165. The article was originally written in Armenian, dated October 24, 1988, and posted form Poissy Prison, in France. It was first published in the first edition of The Right to Struggle, 1990.
The Right to Struggle (1993)

War , People , World , Error

“We want to be good, but it’s difficult to know a safe place to start. We want to reach out our hand in friendship, but we don’t want it bitten off.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All shall be well (2014)

Friendship

“The Prophet said, "I have been given five things which were not given to any one else before me.
:1. Allah made me victorious by awe, (by His frightening my enemies) for a distance of one month's journey.
:2. The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) a place for praying and a thing to perform Tayammum, therefore anyone of my followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due.
:3. The booty has been made Halal (lawful) for me yet it was not lawful for anyone else before me.
:4. I have been given the right of intercession (on the Day of Resurrection).
:5. Every Prophet used to be sent to his nation only but I have been sent to all mankind.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah, in Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 7, Number 331

::*I have been given the keys of eloquent speech and given victory with awe (cast into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping last night, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me till they were put in my hand.
::** Narrated in Bukhari by Abu Huraira, Vol. 9, Book 87, Hadith 127 http://sunnah.com/bukhari/91/17

::*I have been sent with Jawami al-Kalim (i.e., the shortest expression carrying the widest meanings), and I was made victorious with awe (caste into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me and were put in my hand.
::** Narrated in Bukhari by Abu Huraira, Vol. 9, Book 87, Hadith 141 http://sunnah.com/bukhari/91/31

::*I have been given superiority over the other prophets in six respects: I have been given words which are concise but comprehensive in meaning; I have been helped by terror (in the hearts of enemies): spoils have been made lawful to me: the earth has been made for me clean and a place of worship; I have been sent to all mankind and the line of prophets is closed with me.
::**[4, 1062]

::*I have been commissioned with words which are concise but comprehensive in meaning; I have been helped by terror (in the hearts of enemies): and while I was asleep I was brought the keys of the treasures of the earth which were placed in my hand. And Abfi Huraira added: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) has left (for his heavenly home) and you are now busy in getting them.
::**[4, 1063]

::* I have been helped by terror (in the heart of the enemy); I have been given words which are concise but comprehensive in meaning; and while I was asleep I was brought the keys of the treasures of the earth which were placed in my hand.
::**[4, 1066]

::* I have been helped by terror (in the hearts of enemies) and I have been given words which are concise but comprehensive in meaning.
::**[4, 1067]

::*I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand.
::** Narrated in Abu Huraira, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220
Sunni Hadith

Law , Time , Victory

“These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: We are the hollow men”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

The Outsider (1956)

Men , Travel , Reading

“Yeah, they're just too good. But also, this is the worst I've seen Brazil play and start a game. Yes they've started slow in other games, Ian. But, I've never seem them so disorganized. At least France in the quarter-final were nice and tight and compact to try to stop the Germans playing football. Brazil are just all over the place, so open.”

Steve McManaman (1972) English footballer

2010s, 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil v. Germany (2014)

Game , Football

“Bishop Köyu said (it seems to me very admirably), 'It is only a person of poor understanding who wishes to arrange things in complete sets. It is incompleteness that is desirable.' In everything regularity is bad. To leave a thing unfinished gives interest, and makes for lengthened life. They say that even in building the [imperial] palace an unfinished place is always left. In the writings of the ancients, inner and outer [Buddhist and non-Buddhist], there are many missing chapters and parts.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Life , Understanding , Parting , Personality

“The revelation of God, in which man's fulfilment of the true knowledge of God takes place, is the disposition of God in which He acts towards us as the same triune God that He is in Himself, and in such a way that, although we are men and not God, we receive a share in the truth of His knowledge of Himself. Certainly it is the share which He thinks proper and which is therefore suitable for us. But in this share we have the reality of the true knowledge of Himself.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

Men , God , Truth , Way

“Americanization is the science of racial relations in America, dealing with the assimilation and amalgamation of diverse races in equity into an integral part of its national life. By "assimilation" is meant the indistinguishable incorporation of the races into the substance of American life. By "amalgamation" is meant so perfect a blend that the absence or imperfection of any of the vital racial elements available will impair the compound. By "an integral part" is meant that, once fused, separation of units is thereafter impossible. By "in equity" is meant impartiality among the races accepted for the blend, with no imputations of inferiority and no bestowal of favors. With anything less than this in mind, America will fall short of a science and of giving the world anything of lasting value for its racial problems. Nation building is to be in the future a deliberate formative process, not an accidental, dynastic, geographical, and economic arrangement. It is to consider the rights and desires and hopes of races. It is to be a deliberative process, and as such must be selective. If the Allies succeed in freeing the small nations, as now seems certain, the world will witness the most interesting and dramatic re-assemblage of races that has ever taken place in history.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life , World , Hope , History

“USA Today doesn't like my "tone," humor, sarcasm, etc. etc., which raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them in the first place. Perhaps they thought they were getting Catherine Coulter.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

As quoted in "Banned In Boston: Too Hot for USA Today" in Human Events (26 July 2004) http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=4646.
2004

Question

“Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 15: In the Sierra Foot-Hills

Beauty , Way , Mountain , Learning

“I haven't heard them [n. d. r. he's talking about some Spanish popular folk songs] and probably never shall because I no longer go to the places where one could hear them, for I have got into my head that I should maintain a certain presence and air for dignity.... that a man should have, and you can imagine that I'm not very happy about it.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter 206, c. 1787; in Goya, A life in Letters, edited and introduced by Sarah Simmons; transl. Philip Troutman, London, Pimlico, 2004
Goya understands that the social role he has reached (he is royal painter from 1789) will prevent him from attending places where people sing http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/09/goya-life-in-letters-edited-and.html
1780s

Imagination , Happiness

“Leisure held the first place at the start, and came to hold a rank very much above wasteful consumption of goods… From that point onward, consumption has gained ground, until, at present, it unquestionably holds the primacy.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 92

“As the enemy have the advantage of a water transportation, and the spring is the most difficult part of the year for a land conveyance, it is most probable, if they have any designs upon this post, they will commence their operations before the grass season. Will it not be worth while, therefore, to form a small magazine of provision and forage, at or near Mr. Erskine's Iron Works, for the purpose of subsisting the army on their march to this place? And another considerable magazine of provision and forage at Chester or Warwick for the support of this army in whatever position it may take for the relief of this garrison? These magazines should be formed from the westward, in the winter season, when there is the least call for transportation, and the roads the most favorable for the purpose.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Spring , Support , Grass , Water

“America, a humane society, ought to take pity on the persecuted descendants of another Protestant patriarchy. However, even if American immigration policy welcomed white South Africans, which it doesn't, Afrikaners would find it hard to leave. The Boers (and British) built the place. Like Heidi away from the Alps, Afrikaners tend to wilt when separated from their homeland. Not for nothing have the Afrikaners been dubbed "The White Tribe of Africa."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa
2010s, <u>Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa</u> (2011)

“Dear brothers and sisters … we cannot but recall the crimes of these criminal [Jews] throughout history. … Why did France, in 1253, expel and uproot the Jewish entity which was represented by the ghetto? Why did they expel them? Because they sucked the blood of the French, because they shed the blood of the French, slaughtered them, stole their money, and conspired against them. At the end of the day, the French had no choice but to expel them in 1253. … The series of expulsions continues to this day, … and Allah willing, their expulsion from Palestine in its entirety is certain to come. We are no weaker or less honourable than the peoples that expelled and annihilated the Jews. The day we expel them is drawing near. … We extend our hands to feed these hungry dogs and wild beasts, and they devoured our fingers. We have learned the lesson: there is no place for you among us, and you have no future among the nations of the world. You are headed to annihilation.”

Mahmoud al-Zahar (1945) Co-founder of Hamas

Speech on Al-Aqsa TV, Video with English captions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UT6grrx8do (5th November 2012)

Money , People , World , Dogs

“Must God be defined in a way that places him or her beyond the scope of science?
I’d always believed that there was nothing beyond the scope of science.
And I still believe that.
Where do you draw the line?
Right here. For me, the answer was right here.
How do you define God?
Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 34 (p. 326)

God , Way , Understanding , Science

“I've found that taking shortcuts will get you to the place you don't want to be much quicker than they get u to the place u want to be.”

Lennox Lewis (1965) British-Canadian boxer

Lennox Lewis (From his Twitter account)

“When I am without orders and unexpected occurrences arrive I shall always act as I think the honour and glory of my King and Country demand. But in case signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

citation needed
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)

Thinking , Country

“Well, the New York Times editorial board, that reliable abettor of all the liars, haters, and fantasists, aka Democrats, who detest the American South and lust to rewrite America's history into party-serving fiction, has endorsed dumping Andrew Jackson in favor of rewarding a woman with his place on the twenty dollar bill. So fundamentally important to the nation is this switch that the Board’s reputedly adult members have decided that the only group sober and knowledgeable enough to decide how to destroy another piece of American history and further persecute the South is 'the nation's schoolchildren' who should be made to 'nominate and vote on Jackson’s replacement. Why not give them another reason to learn about women who altered history and make some history themselves by changing American currency?' Why of course, what geniuses! And, then, why not let these kids — who cannot figure out that the brim of baseball cap goes in the front — go on to decide other pressing national issues. Maybe they can replace General Washington on the $1 bill with a Muslim woman and thereby end America's war with Islam. As the saying goes, you could not make this stuff up. Now Andrew Jackson was not the most unblemished of men, but he risked his life repeatedly for his country; killed its enemies; expanded U. S. territory in North America; defeated the British at New Orleans; was twice elected president; and faced down and was prepared to hang the South Carolina nullifiers when he believed they were seeking to undermine and break the Union. Jackson is one of those southern fellows, and so he is now a target for banishment from our currency and eventually our history because he did not treat slaves and Indians as if they were his equals and, indeed, inflicted pain on both. But he also was, along with Thomas Jefferson, another insensitive chap toward blacks and Indians, the longtime icon of the Democratic Party and its great self-praising and fund-raising feast, the annual 'Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner', which was, of course, a fervent tribute to those that General Jackson would have hanged without blinking.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Life , Women , Men , Pain

“Slip inside the eye of your mind / don't you know you might find / A better place to play
So I'll start a revolution from my bed / Because you said the brains I had went to my head.
Please don't put you're life in the hands / Of a rock 'n' roll band / Who'll throw it all away”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Don't Look Back In Anger
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

Life

“I found it very difficult to suddenly depart [from Berlin] since this year I had risen completely in the landscape and life and hardly needed awareness to access this place.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

original German version: 'Es fiel mir schwer, so plötzlich abzureisen, da ich dies Jahr vollständig in der Landschaft und dem Leben da oben aufging und nur fast ohne Bewusstsein zuzugreifen brauchte.'
as quoted in: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 41 (transl. Claire Albiez )
As Kirchner had been busying himself with nature images since the Summer of 1913, the outbreak of World War 1. brought him back to reality; as he describes here
undated

Life

“Mathematical physics is in the first place physics and it could not exist without experimental investigations.”

Peter Debye (1884–1966) Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist

Inaugural lecture for his professorship of mathematical physics at the University of Utrecht (1913), as quoted by Davies, Mansel. Peter Joseph Wilhelm Debye: 1884-1966. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of The Royal Society, Vol. 16 (1970).

Mathematics

“It seemed to me that we knew something about how issues were decided, but that we knew much less about how they got to be issues in the first place.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Preface To The First Edition, p. xvii
Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition)

“The Communists were promising retirement for all state employees at age 35. The Socialists were proposing absolutely nothing because they couldn't elect a leader who would propose things. The centre-right parties (of which there were about ten) were all promising employers that they would no longer have to pay workers and would be exempt from prosecution for any industrial pollution that killed fewer than 100,000 people. The far right was proposing, less realistically, to have immigrants barbecued in every place du marché on Friday nights. And in a similar vein, the rural party promised to change the law on endangered species so that hunters could now shoot dodos, unicorns, mermaids and American tourists.”

Stephen Clarke book A Year in the Merde

on political parties in France before an election:
A Year in the Merde (2005)

People , Age , Law , Change

“I see the future development of painting taking place in workshops.... not in any holy temple of the arts. Painting is manual labor, no different from any other. It can be done well or poorly.”

George Grosz (1893–1959) German artist

Quoted by William Bolcom, in The End of the Mannerist Century / quoted in Art of the 20th Century, Part 1, Karl Ruhrberg, Klaus Honnef, Manfred Schneckenburger, Christiane Fricke; publisher: Taschen 2000, p. 190

Art , Future , Painting

“Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control.”

Robert Smithson (1938–1973) American artist

Cultural Confinement, 1972

Art , Imagination , Support

“Robert Siegel: You've said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.Robert Siegel: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: Well, actually, I think it's confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I'm in favor of. I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven't really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we're going to vote for the Civil Rights Act.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Rand Paul Says He Has A Tea Party 'Mandate'
All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-05-19
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126985068

Truth , Hope , Courage , Business

“The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Flew's review of The God Delusion

God , Books

“There's a slow train rumbling east of a place called Eden
Feeling wind-blown and proud as the trees upon the plain
And a stranger's voice talked to me of liberty and freedom
Yeah, it seems like he done gone wrong again
And he wears that hat like shame
Well he tasted the fruit of another
And when his Margie, when she discovered
Said she's gonna love him ten times more
Ain't nobody's business if she do”

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

"East of Eden"
Lyrics and poetry

Love , Feeling , Business , Tree

“In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 420.

“What does leadership malpractice add to the elements visible in betrayal of what's right by the self in a high-stakes situation? Primarily, it destroys the capacity for social trust in the mental and social worlds of the service member or veteran. I regard this as a kind of wound contamination in the mind, preventing healing and leaking toxins. When the capacity for trust is destroyed, its place is filled by the active expectancy of harm, exploitation, or humiliation.”

Jonathan Shay (1941) American psychiatrist

Source: "Casualties" (2011), p. 184

World , Betrayal

“The moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations. The gain-seeking impulse supported by brute force has taken its place, and so far as the surface of things is concerned human civilization has gone back a full thousand years. Inconceivable though it be, we are brought face to face in this twentieth century with governments of peoples once great and highly civilized, whose word now means absolutely nothing. A pledge is something not to be kept, but to be broken. Cruelty and national lust have displaced human feeling and friendly international co-operation. Human life has no value, and the savings of generations are wasted month by month and almost day by day in mad attempts to dominate the whole world in pursuit of gain.
How has all this been possible? What has happened to the teachings and inspiring leadership of the great prophets and apostles of the mind, who for nearly three thousand years have been holding before mankind a vision of the moral ideal supported by intellectual power? What has become of the influence and guidance of the great religions Christian, Moslem, Hebrew, Buddhist with their counsels of peace and good-will, or of those of Plato and of Aristotle, of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of the outstanding captains of the mind Spanish, Italian, French, English, German who have for hundreds of years occupied the highest place in the citadel of human fame? The answer to these questions is not easy. Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.
Are we, then, of this twentieth century and of this still free and independent land to lose heart and to yield to the despair which is becoming so widespread in countries other than ours? Not for one moment will we yield our faith or our courage! We may well repeat once more the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Most governments have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men, ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it think of it!"
However dark the skies may seem now, however violent and apparently irresistible are the savage attacks being made with barbarous brutality upon innocent women and children and non-combatant men, upon hospitals and institutions for the care of the aged and dependent, upon cathedrals and churches, upon libraries and galleries of the world s art, upon classic monuments which record the architectural achievements of centuries we must not despair. Our spirit of faith in the ultimate rule of the moral ideal and in the permanent establishment of liberty of thought, of speech, of worship and of government will not, and must not, be permitted to weaken or to lose control of our mind and our action.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Life , Women , Men , Children

“The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book The Necessity of Atheism

The Necessity of Atheism (1811)

World , Light , Dead

“My countrymen, as of the twenty-third of this month, I signed Proclamation #1081 placing the entire Philippines under Martial Law.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Televised speech on the proclamation of Martial Law (September 21, 1972)
1965

Law

“From the point of view of the development of Marx’ s theories, his early journalistic writings are important for two main reasons. In his sharp attacks on the censorship law he spoke out unequivocally for the freedom of the Press, against the levelling effect of government restriction (‘ You don’ t expect a rose to smell like a violet; why then should the human spirit, the richest thing we have, exist only in a single form?’), and also expressed views concerning the whole nature of the state and the essence of freedom. Pointing out that the vagueness and ambiguity of the Press law placed arbitrary power in the hands of officials, Marx went on to argue that censorship was contrary not only to the purposes of the Press, but to tbe nature of the state as such.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume I, The Founders, pp. 120-1

Law , Nature , Freedom

“There are those who are willing to be herded in droves through 'scenic' places; who find mountains grand if they be proper mountains, with waterfalls, cliffs, and lakes. To such the Kansas plains are tedious. They see the endless corn, but not the heave and grunt of ox teams breaking the prairie. History, for them, grows on campuses. They look at the low horizon, but they cannot see it, as de Vaca did, under the bellies of the buffalo.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

" Country http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&entity=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile.p0666&id=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile&isize=XL" [1941]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 32-33.
1940s

History , Mountain

“The point of following Jesus isn't simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than than this after we die. Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life. We're called, here and now, to be instruments of God's new creation, the world-put-to-rights which has already been launched by Jesus and of which Jesus's followers are supposed to be not simply beneficiaries but also agents.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006), p. xi

Life , Death , God , World

“Garfield: "Old boy! Do you think my name will have a place in human history?"
Rockwell: "Yes, a grand one, but a grander one in human hearts. Old fellow, you mustn’t talk in that way. You have a great work yet to perform."”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Garfield: "No. My work is done."
Conversation with his secretary, Colonel Rockwell the day before he died. These have been reported as his last spoken words. (18 September 1881)
1880s

Way , History , Boy , Thinking

“Harry Dresden: As I pulled into the parking lot, I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center. But then again, maybe they had. Hell, for all I knew, the Mole Men used the changing rooms as a place to discuss plans for world domination with the Psychic Jellyfish from Planet X and the Disembodied Brains-in-a-Jar from the Klaatuu Nebula. I know I wouldn’t have looked for them there.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002), Chapter 18

Men , World , Hell , Change

“I care nothing for Free Speech in and by itself. All of us place too much value on the power of the printed word and the power of the spoken word. We read too much. We listen too much. We live too little. We act too little…. I speak to you by my actions past and present. I have been gagged, I have been been suppressed, I have have been hauled off to jail. Yet every time, more people ave listened to me, more have protested, more have lifted their voices, more have been responded with courage and bravery…. As a propagandist I see immense advantaged in being gagged. It silences me, but it makes millions of others talk about me, and the cause in which I live.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Ford Hall Forum Boston Speech, Woman Rebel, The Margaret Sanger Story, Peter Bagge.

People , Courage , Silence , Time

“The most beautiful things in this country have the flavor of other places. Chinese food. Pizza came from the Italians, but it's an American experience. French fries. There's always some other cultures involved. You don't have to be a hyphenated American, but you can certainly be an American who doesn't forget where they came from.”

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

quoted in commentary on www.orlandosentinel.com (July 6, 2007)
2007, 2008

Food , Beauty , Country , Forgetting

“You open London Times and you find reviews of Western classical music concerts finding pride of place even if the concerts themselves have less than 200 people in a hall meant for 1,500. They do this because they want to highlight what they see as their socio-cultural legacy.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I've never wanted to fit in Abbaji's shoes: Ustad Zakir Hussain

People , Music , Time

“No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Ch. 2

Evil , Chance , Housing , Despair

“The liberal tradition has its roots in the Enlightenment, that period in the eighteenth-century Europe when intellectuals and political leaders had a powerful sense that reason could be employed to make the world a better place.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 15

World , Sense

“Now, at present Britain has no V. A. T., and the questions whether this new tax should be introduced, how it should be levied, and what should be its scope, would be matters of debate in the country and in Parliament. The essence of parliamentary democracy lies in the power to debate and impose taxation: it is the vital principle of the British House of Commons, from which all other aspects of its sovereignty ultimately derive. With Britain in the community, one important element of taxation would be taken automatically, necessarily and permanently out of the hands of the House of Commons…Those matters which sovereign parliaments debate and decide must be debated and decided not by the British House of Commons but in some other place, and by some other body, and debated and decided once for the whole Community…it is a fact that the British Parliament and its paramount authority occupies a position in relation to the British nation which no other elective assembly in Europe possesses. Take parliament out of the history of England and that history itself becomes meaningless. Whole lifetimes of study cannot exhaust the reasons why this fact has come to be, but fact it is, so that the British nation could not imagine itself except with and through its parliament. Consequently the sovereignty of our parliament is something other for us than what your assemblies are for you. What is equally significant, your assemblies, unlike the British Parliament, are the creation of deliberate political acts, and most of recent political acts. The notion that a new sovereign body can be created is therefore as familiar to you as it is repugnant, not to say unimaginable, to us. This deliberate, and recent, creation of sovereign assemblies on the continent is in turn an aspect of the fact that the continent is familiar, and familiar in the recent past, with the creation of nation states themselves. Four of the six members of the Community came into existence as such no more than a century or a century and a half ago – within the memory of two lifetimes.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Lyons (12 February 1971), from The Common Market: The Case Against (Elliot Right Way Books, 1971), pp. 65-68.
1970s

Democracy , Imagination , History , Communication

“Why you think I play this game? I play to win. Competition is the thing. I want to play on a winning team. I don't want to play for sixth place. I like to play for all the marbles, where every game means something. I like to play for real, not for fun.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Says Hitting Does Not Come Easy"
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1968</big>

Game , Thinking

“It belongs to journalism — and to the millennial complex from which so many journalists and journalist intellectuals suffer in our day — that each new phase of Modernist art should be hailed as the start of a whole new epoch in art, marking a decisive break with all the customs and conventions of the past. Each time, a kind of art is expected so unlike all previous kinds of art, and so free from norms of practice or taste, that everybody, regardless of how informed or uninformed he happens to be, can have his say about it. And each time, this expectation has been disappointed, as the phase of Modernist art in question finally takes its place in the intelligible continuity of taste and tradition.Nothing could be further from the authentic art of our time than the idea of a rupture of continuity. Art is — among other things — continuity, and unthinkable without it. Lacking the past of art, and the need and compulsion to maintain its standards of excellence, Modernist art would lack both substance and justification.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

1960s, Modernist Painting (1960)

Art , Disappointment , Intelligence , Idea

“The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live — were an antidemocratic disgrace … I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed … managed to wangle slots in reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

1990s, My American Journey (1996)

Country

“There is no doubt that people are angry. When a family is hit by a bomb and I am the president here with the responsibility -- when a suicide bomb takes places and murders the people of this nation -- I am the president of this country and it is my responsibility to bring peace to these people.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

[http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1072624.html President Karzai Discusses Worsening Security (March 9, 2006)
2006

People , Family , Peace , Suicide

“Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)

Books , Fear , Hell , Reading

“The Amír marched out towards Lamghan, which is a city celebrated for its great strength and abounding in wealth. He conquered it and set fire to the places in its vicinity which were inhabited by infidels, and demolishing the idol-temples, he established Islam in them. He marched and captured other cities and killed the polluted wretches, destroying the idolatrous and gratifying the Musulmans. After wounding and killing beyond all measure, his hands and those of his friends became cold in counting the value of the plundered property. On the completion of his conquest he returned and promulgated accounts of the victories obtained for Islam, and every one, great and small, concurred in rejoicing over this result and thanking Allah.”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, p. 22. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

Victory , Wealth

“You, why do you let me say such things when and where I shouldn’t?” “the problem is not ordering the course of your speech. Its shutting you up in the first place””

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Problem

“In the second place, a system would involve more variables than those which may be supposed to enter into demand relationships, and so the preliminary work of estimating the necessary time series would also be increased. In the third place, in the simultaneous method of estimation the estimates of the original parameters come to depend on most of the remaining estimates, and so it is quite likely that they will have large sampling variances.”

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

Studies in the National Income and Expenditure of the United Kingdom, 1954

Time , Dependency

“It is impossible for the behavior of a single, isolated individual to reach a high degree of rationality. The number of alternatives he must explore is so great, the information he would need to evaluate them so vast that even an approximation to objective rationality is hard to conceive. Individual choice takes place in rationality is hard to conceive… Actual behavior falls short in at least three ways, of objective rationality:”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947

Way , Behavior

“Where does one start with a theory of man if the theory of man as an organism in an environment doesn't work and all the attributes of man which were accepted in the old modern age are now called into question: his soul, mind, freedom, will, Godlikeness?
There is only one place to start: the place where man's singularity is there for all to see and cannot be called into question, even in a new age in which everything else is in dispute.
That singularity is language…”

Walker Percy book The Message in the Bottle

The Message in the Bottle (1975)

Age , Soul , Question , Freedom

“Necessary preparations have been discussed and taken for the complete and fundamental elimination of this concern, which occupies an important place in the exalted state's list of vital issues.”

Mehmed Talat (1874–1921) Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and Minister of the Interior

Letter to head of parliament, May 26, 1915. Quoted in "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility" - by Taner Akçam, Paul Bessemer - History - 2006 - Page 8

“I see the expression of… economy clearly in the gradual reduction of the statical laws of machines to a single one, viz., the principle of virtual work: in the replacement of Kepler's laws by Newton's single law… and in the [subsequent] reduction, simplification and clarification of the laws of dynamics. I see clearly the biological-economical adaptation of ideas, which takes place by the principles of continuity (permanence) and of adequate definition and splits the concept 'heat' into the two concepts of 'temperature' and 'quantity of heat'; and I see how the concept 'quantity of heat' leads on to 'latent heat', and to the concepts of 'energy' and 'entropy.”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

Mach (1910) "Die Leitgedanken meiner naturwissenschaftlichcn Erkennenislehre und ihr Aufnahme durch die Zeitgenossen", Physikalische Zeitschrift. 1, 1910, 599-606 Eng. trans. as "The Guiding Principles of my Scientific Theory of Knowledge and its Reception by my Contemporaries", in S. Toulmin ed., Physical Reality, New York : Harper, 1970. pp.28-43. Cited in: K. Mulligan & B. Smith (1988) " Mach and Ehrenfels: Foundations of Gestalt Theory http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/mach/mach.pdf"
20th century

Law , Idea

“This law covers many pages. But the heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, States and counties are using regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down. If it is dear that State officials still intend to discriminate, then Federal examiners will be sent in to register all eligible voters. When the prospect of discrimination is gone, the examiners will be immediately withdrawn. And, under this act, if any county anywhere in this Nation does not want Federal intervention it need only open its polling places to all of its people.”

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

1960s, Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)

People , Law , Heart

“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

World

“London had vanished. In place of the lively, thrusting metropolitan conurbation was an empty rural wilderness of damp brown fields under low autumnal skies.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 81

Autumn

“I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.”

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

Extra-judicial writings, Speech to the Board of Regents (1952)

Chance

“For some variation it would be better
to place the donkey seen from behind
[to avoid] all faces looking out of the picture [forward]
And the tree could also have more foliage.
1. Joseph has been portrayed too fat and too recklessly
2. Mary should hold the child more gently
because a vulnerable child can't stand being held so firmly
Joseph is too short fat - his head is growing from his trunk
and both [Joseph & Mary] their heads are too big”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

1640 - 1670

Tree

“For those who are the inheritors of a noble estate and a high place in the world, it is a good thing to pause at intervals and consider by what favor of fortune and of ancestry their lines have fallen in such pleasant places. Thus to meditate upon that course of events, which has given them what they have and made them what they are, will tend to remind them how great is their debt and how little is their share of merit.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

World

“The favourite volume whose reading we commend, is inevitably connected with ourselves — it must bring to our image those lonely hours when the recurrence of an image has such influence — it invests that image with the associations of poetry and fiction, and thus redeems it from the common-place of ordinary life. There is also the sympathy of taste — and how much may be inferred from a passage pencilled originally for no other eyes but our own. Then, too, a book is the prettiest stepping stone to a correspondence; it seems such a simple thing to write a note of thanks, and so natural to add some slight remark on the author; and how often is the criticism of an author's sentiments but the expression of our own!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Literary Remains

Life , Books , Nature , Reading

“I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family.
Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee.
Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.”

James D. Watson book The Double Helix

Description of Rosalind Franklin, whose data and research were actually key factors in determining the structure of DNA, but who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, before the importance of her work could be widely recognized and acknowledged. In response to these remarks her mother stated "I would rather she were forgotten than remembered in this way." As quoted in "Rosalind Franklin" at Strange Science : The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology by Michon Scott http://www.strangescience.net/rfranklin.htm
The Double Helix (1968)

Life , Women , Men , Money

“Y'know, when I said SEIU and ACORN, these were the brownshirts, people said that's crazy and I hope to God it is. But you tell me what they are if they're not thugs, enforcing the will of the masters in Washington. Be very careful, because the things that I have told you on this program were coming are here. We are in the most dangerous point in our republic, I believe, since the Civil War. We may be in the most dangerous place ever, because our people are different, our people are not as connected to God as we once were.”

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

2000s, 2009

God , War , People , Hope

“The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations, not to run away from them. A micro-aggression is exactly that : micro. But in a macro sense, one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is the so-called 'safe space', because it creates a false impression that we can isolate ourselves from those who hold different views. We can't, and we shouldn't try—not in politics or in the workplace. Graduates, in the global economy, and in a democratic society, an open mind is the most valuable asset you can possess.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

Commencement Address given at the Universiy of Michigan, Ann Arbor (30 April 2016), as recorded on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE0VYRPTUrc
Education

Sense , Learning , Falseness