Quotes about place
page 73

Georg Cantor photo

“I realize that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre [Foundations of a General Theory of Aggregates] (1883)

Josip Broz Tito photo

“No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue. The reason why we were able to settle the nationalities question so thoroughly is to be found in the fact that it had begun to be settled in a revolutionary way in the course of the Liberation War, in which all the nationalities in the country participated, in which every national group made its contribution to the general effort of liberation from the occupier according to its capabilities. Neither the Macedonians nor any other national group which until then had been oppressed obtained their national liberation by decree. They fought for their national liberation with rifle in hand. The role of the Communist Party lay in the first place in the fact that it led that struggle, which was a guarantee that after the war the national question would be settled decisively in the way the communists had conceived long before the war and during the war. The role of the Communist Party in this respect today, in the phase of building socialism, lies in making the positive national factors a stimulus to, not a brake on, the development of socialism in our country. The role of the Communist Party today lies in the necessity for keeping a sharp lookout to see that national chauvinism does not appear and develop among any of the nationalities. The Communist Party must always endeavour, and does endeavour, to ensure that all the negative phenomena of nationalism disappear and that people are educated in the spirit of internationalism. What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative. And what are these negative things? Wars of conquest are negative, the subjugation and oppression of other nations is negative, economic exploitation is negative, colonial enslavement is negative, and so on. All these things are accounted negative by Marxism and condemned. All these phenomena of the past can, it is true, be explained, but from our point of view they can never be justified. In a socialist society such phenomena must and will disappear. In the old Yugoslavia national oppression by the great-Serb capitalist clique meant strengthening the economic exploitation of the oppressed peoples. This is the inevitable fate of all who suffer from national oppression. In the new, socialist Yugoslavia the existing equality of rights for all nationalities has made it impossible for one national group to impose economic exploitation upon another. That is because hegemony of one national group over another no longer exists in this country. Any such hegemony must inevitably bring with it, to some degree or other, in one form or another, economic exploitation; and that would be contrary to the principles upon which socialism rests. Only economic, political, cultural, and universal equality of rights can make it possible for us to grow in strength in these tremendous endeavours of our community.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm Speech held at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 26, 1948, Ljubljana
Speeches

William Gibson photo
Theo van Doesburg photo

“Piet Mondrian realizes the importance of line. The line has almost become a work of art in itself; one can not play with it when the representation of objects perceived was all-important. The white canvas is almost solemn. Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything – that is, the spiritual.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from 'Eenheid' [Dutch art-magazine] no. 283, 6 November 1915; as quoted in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, pp. 105–106
1912 – 1919

Billy Connolly photo

“I come from a place where there are oppportunities staring you in the eye, but its looking for the people who have the heart and the courage to do it and do it right.”

Ibukun Awosika (1962) Nigerian business magnate

As quoted in Season Life Journal (16 August 2015) http://www.seasonedlifejournal.com/2015/08/16-nigerian-inspirational-quotes-of.html by Abraham Ologundudu

Andreas Schelfhout photo

“.. [both of us (Schelfhout ànd J. C. Schotel)] make each a painting that together will form one view, as it were [view of Scheveningen by Schotel / view of The Hague by Schelfhout].... [but] our paintings together will therefore not become one integrated thing, but only pendants... I have taken my drawing from the steps of the Pavilion [in Scheveningen], viewed over the dunes to [the city] The Hague. In the foreground, which is very bare and empty in reality, I have placed some trees.”

Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870) Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout, uit zijn brief:) ..[dat wij beiden, (Schelfhout èn J.C. Schotel )] elk een schilderij te maaken het welk bijde als het ware één gezigt zoude uitmaken [uitzicht van Scheveningen door Schotel, èn uitzicht op het centrum van Den Haag door Schelfhout].. ..[maar] onze schilderijen zullen dus te zamen geen geheel uitmaken, maar slechts pandanten zijn.. .Ik heb de teekening genomen van het bordes of trap van het pavilloen [in Scheveningen] over de duinen naar Den Haag gezien. Op de voorgrond, die in de natuur zeer kaal en ledig is heb ik eenige bomen geplaatst..
In a letter to J.C. Schotel, 18 Nov. 1828; in: collective Stadsarchief van ErfgoedCentrum DIEP, Dordtrecht, No. 48-d
Schelfhout was referring to the assignment from the Dutch King Willem I for two paintings: one view over the old center of The Hague & one view over the beach of Scheveningen.

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Stephen Fry photo
George Fitzhugh photo

“In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 84

Ibn Khaldun photo
Jane Espenson photo
Willie Mays photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Bill Nye photo

“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You're just not gonna get the right answer. Your whole world is just gonna be — a mystery. Instead of an exciting place.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

Bill Nye: Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children http://youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJfwFgOU on YouTube (23 August 2012)

Wendell Berry photo

“To farm is to be placed absolutely.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Imagination in Place".
The Way of Ignorance (2005)

Muhammad of Ghor photo

“When the army was mustered, it was found to amount to "fifty thousand mounted men clad in armour and coats of mail," with which they advanced to fight against the Rai of Benares… The Rai of Benares, Jai Chand, the chief of idolatry and perdition, advanced to oppose the royal troops with an army… The Rai of Benares, who prided himself on the number of his forces and war elephants," seated on a lofty howdah, received a deadly wound from an arrow, and "fell from his exalted seat to the earth." His head was carried on the point of a spear to the commander, and " his body was thrown to the dust of contempt." "The impurities of idolatry were purged by the water of the sword from that land, and the country of Hind was freed from vice and superstition."… From that place the royal army proceeded towards Benares 'which is the centre of the country of Hind, and here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the fight with the Rai of Banares and capture of Asni and of Benares. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 222-223 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Joseph Conrad photo

“I had been six years at sea, but had only seen Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming places in their way — but Bankok!”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Youth, A Narrative http://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525.txt (1902)

Nathanael Greene photo

“The reader might reflect that an awful lot of supposing has to take place in order for the quantity theory of money to be true.”

Part I, Chapter 5, Mechanistic Modelling, p. 95
The Death of Economics (1994)

Arthur Scargill photo
Dennis Lehane photo
James Macpherson photo

“We may boldly assign him [Ossian] a place among those, whose works are to last for ages.”

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

Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), p. 75.
Criticism

Bruce Springsteen photo
Anna Akhmatova photo
George F. Kennan photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.”

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

A lieutenant of Tiresias, Ch. 7
Space Chantey (1968)

Li Minqi photo
Theodor Herzl photo
Tobin Bell photo
Stig Dagerman photo
Oliver Sacks photo
Wendell Phillips photo

“[T]he Negro race, instead of being that object of pity or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

1860s, Toussaint L'Ouverture (1861)

John Banville photo

“Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Banville on Saturday http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/05/banville_on_sat.html, from The New York Review of Books (source dated 10 May 2005).

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“I learned my trade by going out every evening as a young man," he told art historian Rosamond Bernier. "I went to every pretty house in France and Italy and other places too, and I remembered them all, even down to what was on each little table.”

Vincent Fourcade (1934–1992) French artist

"Vincent Fourcade - CELEBRATING THE PLEASURES OF MAGNIFICENT EXCESS", by Mitchell Owens, Architectural Digest, January 2000, v. 57 #1, p. 169 – one of twenty five persons named by the magazine "Interior Design Legends".

Ray Comfort photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo

“.. as I met with Mr. (Dunning there. There is something exclusive of the clear and deep understanding of that gentleman most exceedingly pleasing to me. He seems the only man who talks as Giardini plays, if you know what I mean; he puts no more motion than what goes to the real performance, which constitutes that ease and gentility peculiar to damned clever fellows... He is an amazing compact man in every respect.... and besides this neatness in outward appearance, his storeroom seems cleared of all French ornaments and gingerbread work, everything is simplicity and elegance and in its proper place, no disorder or confusion in the furniture.... Sober sense and great acuteness are marked very strong in his face.... but there is genius (in our sense of the word). (It) shines in all he says. In short, Mr. Jackson of Exeter [his friend], I begin to think there is something in the air of Devonshire that grows clever fellows. I could name four or five of you, superior to the product of any other county in England.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 2 Sept. 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 384 (Appendix A - Letter VII)
1755 - 1769

John Stuart Mill photo
Tiberius photo

“Let me repeat, gentlemen, that a right-minded and true-hearted statesman who has had as much sovereign power placed in his hands as you have placed in mine should regard himself as the servant of the Senate; and often of the people as a whole; and sometimes of private citizens, too. I do not regret this view, because I have always found you to be generous, just, and indulgent masters.”
Dixi et nunc et saepe alias, p[atres]. c[onscripti]., bonum et salutarem principem, quem vos tanta et tam libera potestate instruxistis, senatui servire debere et universis civibus saepe et plerumque etiam singulis; neque id dixisse me paenitet, et bono et aequos et faventes vos habui dominos et adhuc habeo.

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

Variant translation: Conscript Fathers, I have often said it both now and at other times, that a good and useful prince, whom you have invested with so great and absolute power, ought to be a slave to the senate, to the whole body of the people, and often to individuals likewise: nor am I sorry that I have said it. I have always found you good, kind, and indulgent masters, and still find you so.
To the Senate, from Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, ch.29

Robert Musil photo

“Questions and answers click into each other like cogs of a machine. Each person has nothing but quite definite tasks. The various professions are concentrated at definite places. One eats while in motion. Amusements are concentrated in other parts of the city. And elsewhere again are the towers to which one returns and finds wife, family, gramophone, and soul. Tension and relaxation, activity and love are meticulously kept separate in time and are weighed out according to formulae arrived at in extensive laboratory work. If during any of these activities one runs up against a difficulty, one simply drops the whole thing; for one will find another thing or perhaps, later on, a better way, or someone else will find the way that one has missed. It does not matter in the least, but nothing wastes so much communal energy as the presumption that one is called upon not to let go of a definite personal aim. In a community with energies constantly flowing through it, every road leads to a good goal, if one does not spend too much time hesitating and thinking it over. The targets are set up at a short distance, but life is short too, and in this way one gets a maximum of achievement out of it. And man needs no more for his happiness; for what one achieves is what moulds the spirit, whereas what one wants, without fulfillment, only warps it. So far as happiness is concerned it matters very little what one wants; the main thing is that one should get it. Besides, zoology makes it clear that a sum of reduced individuals may very well form a totality of genius.”

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Ernest Thayer photo
Harold Pinter photo
Ellen G. White photo

“You need clear, energetic minds, in order to appreciate the exalted character of the truth, to value the atonement, and to place the right estimate upon eternal things.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Counsels On Diet and Foods (1938), Section 2, p. 47

James Madison photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon.”

"The Wall and the Books" ["La muralla y los libros"] (1950)
Variant translation: Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Neil Gaiman photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Erving Goffman photo
N. Gregory Mankiw photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“London is my favourite city in the world. Flying in last night, I felt I was really coming home, and that's unique. It's the only place I actually miss when I'm not here. London appeals to many aspects of me - it just feels like where I belong.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Clarke Hayes The Spectator Blog "Switching off the spotlight" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/10_15/11Spectator.shtml (October 14, 2011)
2010s

Winston S. Churchill photo

“They first sallied forth in a body of about 500 persons to attack the market place of the village known as Poorwa, where they slaughtered a cow. With the blood of the animal they defiled a Hindu temple. Then they hung up the four quarters (of the cow) in the different parts of the market place. They maltreated and wounded an unfortunate Brahmin and threatened to make him a Muslim… The village of Laoghatty in the Nadia district was their next object attack. Here they commenced operations by the repetition of the same outrage to the religious feelings of the Hindus which they had committed at Poorwa, viz, the slaughter of a cow in that part of the village exclusively occupied by Hindu residents. But being opposed by Hardeb Ray, a principal inhabitant of the village, and a Brahmin, at the head of a party of villagers, an affray ensued in which one Debnath Ray was killed and Hardeb Ray and a number of villagers were severely wounded… Titu’s party went on increasing and with growing confidence they went on killing cows in different places, making raids on the neighbouring villages, forcing from the raiyats agreements to furnish grain, compelling many of them to profess conformity to the tenets of their sect… They openly proclaimed themselves masters of the country, asserting that the Mussalmans from whom the English usurped it, were the rightful owners of the empire… The rebels issued parwanas to the principal zamindars of the district. Their tenor was as follows: “This country is now given to our Deen Mohammed. You must, therefore, immediately send grain to the army.’ In a written report the magistrate of Nadia states that a paper written in Bengali and signed in Arabic characters, was put into his hand, purporting to be an order of Allah to the Pal Chowdhuries of Ranaghat to supply russud (rations) to the army of fakirs who were about to fight with the government.”

About the exploits of Titumir. Narahari Kaviraj, Wahabi And Faraizi Rebels of Bengal, New Delhi, 1982, Pp. 37-38, 43-44, 50-51. Quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Pope Benedict XVI photo
Gabrielle Roy photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo

“The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable — hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and "darkness," solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the "deep." To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the "unknown essence" produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end.”

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VI

Antonin Scalia photo
Roger Scruton photo

“I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman — I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"The Clash" (December 1977), p. 235
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Radhanath Swami photo
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey photo
Iltutmish photo
William H. McNeill photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Douglas Coupland photo
David Packard photo
Abby Sunderland photo

“I knew that even if I was able to call for help, I was in a place so remote that it wasn’t likely there would be anyone who could help me. And even if there were, it could take weeks.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 157

James Joseph Sylvester photo

“Number, place, and combination... the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred.”

James Joseph Sylvester (1814–1897) English mathematician

James Joseph Sylvester, Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 1 (1904), p. 91.

Benjamin Butler (politician) photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
William D. Nordhaus photo
Marc Chagall photo

“It's a crushing right hand and that must finish it! It must finish it! Tyson cannot get up from that, surely. He will be counted out. Lennox Lewis seals his place in history forever and closes the book on Mike Tyson!”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=kD9Cf_dAVdg (8 June 2002).
2000s, 2002, Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson (June 2002)

Rick Santorum photo
Aleister Crowley photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“For five years I have talked to the House on these matters – not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. [ … ] Look back upon the last five years – since, that is to say, Germany began to rearm in earnest and openly to seek revenge … historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory – gone with the wind! Now the victors are the vanquished, and those who threw down their arms in the field and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery. That is the position – that is the terrible transformation that has taken place bit by bit.”

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

Speech in the House of Commons (24 March 1938) "Foreign Affairs and Rearmament" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/mar/24/foreign-affairs-and-rearmament#column_1454, 12 days after the Anschluss (the Nazi annexation of Austria).
The 1930s

“Bend color names which should be made of neon or copper tubing. Place an object on a surface – trace the object – then bend the object – leaving some part of it attached.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Book A (sketchbook), p 43, c 1963-64: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 54
1960s

Theodor Mommsen photo

“The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of [221 B. C], he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar. He was still a young man--born in [247 B. C], and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year [221 B. C]; but his had already been a life of manifold experience. His first recollections pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on the Peace of Catulus (also see Treaty of Lutatius), on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While yet a boy, he had followed his father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself. His light and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food. Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language. As he grew up, he entered the army of his father, to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister's husband, Hasdrubal, and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him--the tried, although youthful general--to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had lived and died. He took up the inheritance, and he was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of various sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Laying aside wretched inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the Sammite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times; and all agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy. He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the Phoenician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage--he had regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair, in order to procure information on some point or other. Every page of the history of this period attests his genius in strategy; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the unparalleled influence which as a foreign exile he exercised in the cabinets of the eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2

Charles A. Beard photo

“I present, for what it is worth, and may prove to be worth, the following bill of axioms or aphorisms on public administration, as fitting this important occasion.
# The continuous and fairly efficient discharge of certain functions by government, central and local, is a necessary condition for the existence of any great society.
# As a society becomes more complicated, as its division of labor ramifies more widely, as its commerce extends, as technology takes the place of handicrafts and local self-sufficiency, the functions of government increase in number and in their vital relationships to the fortunes of society and individuals.
# Any government in such a complicated society, consequently any such society itself, is strong in proportion to its capacity to administer the functions that are brought into being.
# Legislation respecting these functions, difficult as it is, is relatively easy as compared with the enforcement of legislation, that is, the effective discharge of these functions in their most minute ramifications and for the public welfare.
# When a form of government, such as ours, provides for legal changes, by the process of discussion and open decision, to fit social changes, then effective and wise administration becomes the central prerequisite for the perdurance of government and society — to use a metaphor, becomes a foundation of government as a going concern.
# Unless the members of an administrative system are drawn from various classes and regions, unless careers are open in it to talents, unless the way is prepared by an appropriate scheme of general education, unless public officials are subjected to internal and external criticism of a constructive nature, then the public personnel will become a bureaucracy dangerous to society and to popular government.
# Unless, as David Lilienthal has recently pointed out in an address on the Tennessee Valley Authority, an administrative system is so constructed and operated as to keep alive local and individual responsibilities, it is likely to destroy the basic well-springs of activity, hope, and enthusiasm necessary to popular government and to the following of a democratic civilization.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Administration, A Foundation of Government (1940)

Elvis Costello photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“In some place in my soul, in a very hidden corner, I am a fanatical Jew. I am very much astonished to discover myself as such in spite of all efforts to be unprejudiced and impartial. What can I do against it at my age?”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Letter to Dr. David Feuchtwang (1931), as quoted in Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home (1990) by Emanuel Rice, p. 25
1930s

Kent Hovind photo
James K. Morrow photo
Arthur Li photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Charles Darwin photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Šantidéva photo
Basil Hume photo