Quotes about point
page 18

“I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2 which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the manmade part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, you know, moisture in the air. There's a variety of factors that contribute to the earth warming and cooling, and to me, this is an opportunity for the left to create — it's really a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm. And so it's been on a warming trend so they said, "Oh, let's take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it's getting warmer." Just like they did in the '70s when it was getting cooler. They needed the government to come in and regulate your life because it's getting cooler. It's just an excuse for more government control of your life. And I've never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Life, History, Idea, Thinking

“I hate plays. I've never seen the point of paying money to watch people shout a lot and pretend to die, and now that I'm the father of three young children I don't have to.”

Tim Moore (1964) British travel writer and humorist

Do Not Pass Go (2002)

Money, Hate, Children, People

“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down-from high flat temples-in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blonde Satan.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“As so often I have pointed out, intuition is a level of the highest range. In details, I don’t have to think or to worry about the realization of my interpretation; no, it’s something that spreads out of my artistic all-compassion. Probably I have to be sorry for it, but this is my deepest artistic conviction for the rightness of an interpretation - interpretation as a summary of something unique and whole, not of a combining of details. Intuition is a level that includes all levels of emotion, intelligence, structure, and architecture. And I’m also confronted with the question of poetry and poesy, something that is so often neglected - especially in Bach.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Intelligence, Question, Thinking

“In his Gospel, St. John, through long and deep contemplation, acknowledges Jesus to be the Logos of God. In his epistles he points entirely away from himself toward Christ. Finally, in the Apocalypse, in the vision of the Lamb of God, Old and New Testaments are united, and the whole drama of salvation is summed up.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Our Task https://books.google.it/books?id=yEjT5yVci2gC&pg=PT0, trans. John Saward, Ignatius Press, 1994. Our Task: A Report and a Plan (1984)

God, Christ

“That God is quoted verbatim, that God is said to be speaking (when, in fact, he is being spoken for) points to either the remarkable arrogance of the biblical contributors or their unshakeable conviction that their access to the deity was total.
The fateful, and perhaps even unwitting, manipulation performed by the Hebrew Bible is to have convinced its readers that what stands in front of them is not a hodgepodge of texts worked over by countless men position across time and motivated by mundane political and theological interests. Instead, it presents itself as a self-evident treasury of the actual words, though, actions, political opinions, and future aspirations of Yahweh. From early on, apparently, interpreters wholly swallowed this argument.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (2005), p. 65

Men, God, Fate, Quotes

“This is my sixth attempt to introduce the Bill with the support of hon. Members and pensioner organisations all over Britain…Many statistics show the condition of elderly people. When the Social Security Act 1988 abolished supplementary benefit and what went with it, 30 per cent. of Britain's retired population were living on or below supplementary benefit levels. Despite the Government's claim that many elderly people are quite wealthy, at that time only 39 per cent. lived more than 140 per cent. above the level of supplementary benefit. In other words, at least 60 per cent. of Britain's elderly people live at a poor level, and 30 per cent. of them live below the poverty line. That is a scandal and the House should draw attention to it and enact my Bill to improve that situation…The Bill is a seven-point plan which, if carried into law, would change the face of Britain and eliminate poverty among the elderly… Britain is the seventh richest country in the world. It is a disgrace that so many elderly people die alone and in misery through hypothermia, not for lack of resources to provide for them, but for the lack of political will to distribute those resources to ensure that pensioners are well cared for and can live in decency in their retirement.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/jan/18/elimination-of-poverty-in-retirement in the House of Commons (18 January 1989). 1980s

People, World, Law, Support

“This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn’t have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn’t necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn’t need to get involved.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 20
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

People, Way, Understanding, Reality

“An important point is that the p-adic field, or respectively the real or complex field, corresponding to a prime ideal, plays exactly the role, in arithmetic, that the field of power series in the neighborhood of a point plays in the theory of functions: that is why one calls it a local field.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

as translated by Martin H. Krieger "A 1940 letter of André Weil on analogy in mathematics." http://www.ams.org/notices/200503/fea-weil.pdf Notices of the AMS 52, no. 3 (2005) pp. 334–341, quote on p. 340

“I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Interview in the San Francisco Examiner (26 August 1928)

Life, Men, Religion, Soul

“A man can trust his luck, but a society can’t; and cultural change, like random mutation, may make things chancier. So they have gone very slowly. At any one point in their history a hasty observer would say that all technological progress and diffusion had ceased. Yet it never has. Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 8 “Another Way into Orgoreyn” (p. 98)

History, Change

“Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know I'd suffer the same”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Frozen (February 23, 1998) from the album Ray of Light (March 3, 1998), cowritten with Patrick Leonard.

Suffering

“The Episcopals don't demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages — it's much like The New York Times editorial board. They acknowledge the Ten Commandments — or "Moses' talking points" — but hasten to add that they're not exactly "carved in stone."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2004

Marriage, Way, Girl, Time

“In 2000, he offended a Billings woman when he pointed to her nose ring and asked her what tribe she was from.”

Conrad Burns (1935–2016) United States Marine

“Why should you shake hands with somebody who's keeping Americans in prison? I mean, what's the point? Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler.”

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

Regarding U.S. President Barack Obama shaking the hand of Cuban President Raul Castro at a memorial for Nelson Mandela
2013-12-10
The Takeaway
Radio, quoted in * 2013-12-10
McCain On Obama-Castro Handshake: 'Chamberlain Shook Hands With Hitler' (Audio)
Tom Kludt
Talking Points Memo
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mccain-on-obama-castro-handshake-chamberlain-shook-hands-with-hitler-audio
2010s, 2013

“It wasn’t so long ago that complexity thinking was synonymous with bottom-up computer simulation. However, in the past 5-10 years we have seen other threads emerge from this mathematically focused starting point that acknowledge the profound philosophical implications of complexity.”

Gerald Midgley (1960) New Zealand acaedmic

Kurt A. Richardson and Gerald Midgley (2007) " Systems theory and complexity: Part 4 http://kurtrichardson.com/publications/richardson_midgley.pdf" in: E:CO Issue Vol. 9 Nos. 1-2 2007 pp. xx–xx.

Mathematics, Thinking, Past

“…introduce the auxiliary concept of first-signal…defined as the fastest message carrier between any two points in space. We now send a first-signal from P, calling the event of departure E1… The event of its arrival at P' is called E'. Simultaneously with the arrival of this signal, another first signal is sent from P'. The arrival of this signal at P is the event E2. …the time interval between E1 and E2 is coordinated to the event E', [E1 is earlier than E' and E2 is later than E'] and every event of this time interval except for the endpoints is inderterminate as to the time order relative to E.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Departure, Time

“If I had done things differently, I'd probably have the paparazzi waiting around for me. At the studio where I've been recording, Jessica Simpson is working there, too. The paparazzi are outside waiting for her to come out. That's the result of her decisions. My decisions have led me to the point that when I walk out in front of the paparazzi, I'm considered a waste of film.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

How he shows self-restraint with his fame Small, Mark (2005). "John Mayer '98: Running with the Big Dogs" http://www.berklee.edu/bt/172/coverstory.html Berlee.edu (accessed February 11, 2010)

Decision, Waiting

“O Love, divine Love, why do You lay siege to me?
In a frenzy of love for me, You find no rest.
From five sides You move against me:
Hearing, sight, taste, touch, and scent.
To come out is to be caught; I cannot hide from You.
If I come out through sight I see Love
Painted in every form and color,
Inviting me to come to You, to dwell in You.
If I leave through the door of hearing,
What I hear points only to You, Lord;
I cannot escape Love through this gage.
If I come out through taste, every flavor proclaims:
"Love, divine Love, hungering Love!
You have caught me on Your hook, for you want to reign in me."
If I leave through the door of scent
I sense You in all creation; You have caught me
And wounded me through that fragrance.
If I come out through the sense of touch
I find Your lineaments in every creature;
To try to flee from You is madness.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

Love, Hunger, Color, Sense

“We are not able to determine, with any certainty, whether those troops, that have taken post above King's Bridge, are the same troops or not that were in or about Haerlem. Several days past they clisap-peared from below, all at once, and some little time after about fifty boats, full of men, were seen going up towards Hunt's Point, and that evening the enemy were discovered at Fort Independence. We suspect them to be the same troops that were engaged in the Sunday skirmish.”

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

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Men, Time, Past

“You basically have to trick yourself into incredible intensity to do this stuff, and I do a good job of pretending that I’m racing to save my mom from getting killed or my sister from being raped—some horrible thing that causes me to dig deep, like old-school ‘Braveheart’ s---. If you come into battle with that in your head, you’re gonna be a different person than if you think you’re just going out for a little swordfight. But when you do that for 10 years straight, it wears your a-- out. It’s like crying wolf to yourself a million times. And at some point, you start to say, ‘Why am I doing this?”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Newsweek, Nov. 2005, pub. 23 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11522274/

School, Moms, Thinking, Sister

“All this will have left you disposed to understand one of our principal Futurist efforts, which consists of abolishing in literature the apparently indissoluble fusion of the two concepts of Woman and Beauty. This ideological a fusion has reduced all romance to a sort of heroic assault that a bellicose and lyrical male launches against a tower that bristles with enemies, a story which ends when the hero, now beneath starlight, carries the divine Beauty-Woman away to new heights. Novels such as Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo or Salammbô by Flaubert can clarify my point. It is a matter of a dominant leitmotif, already worn out, c of which we would like to disencumber literature and art in general.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine' 1911
Source: Poggi, Christine, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. Yale University Press, 2009. p. 89

Beauty, Art, Literature, Understanding

“Capital, explaining the origins of the capitalist mode of production, points towards the inevitable historical decline and fall of this same social system. An economic theory based upon the historical relativity of every economic system, its strict limitation in time, tactlessly reminds Messrs the capitalists, their hangers-on and their apologists that capitalism itself is a product of history. It will perish in due course as it once was born. A new social form of economic organization will then take the place of the capitalist one: it will function according to other laws than those which govern the capitalist economy.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

Law, History, Time

“At some point, Dekteon saw, his own world had come close to such a religion, where women ruled and men died—but the road had taken a different turning. Now the hints of the ancient mystery remained only in songs. It was the men who were the masters. Maybe not for the better, and not for the worse, either. But all this was unimportant.”

Tanith Lee book East of Midnight

Source: East of Midnight (1977), Chapter 15, “Dekteon” (p. 163)

Women, Men, World, Religion

“The fact is that Christian art failed at a deeper level. It failed not in execution but in conception and vision, and this failure was at bottom failure of Christian theology in which mysticism is rudimentary and peripheral. Christian theology has no concept of transcendence, non-attachment, recollectedness, equality (samatâ), liberation (moksha), the vast (bhûmâ) and the infinite (ananta), compassion (kurunâ), of cosmic action emanating from restfulness at the centre; therefore, it felt no call to try to convey them in its art-forms. A deeper iconography needed the support of a deeper theology and vision. This explains why Christian art has no equivalents of Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as Huxley notices. The Eastern tradition was shaped by Hindu religious thinking and sensibility. Hindu art tried to portray the inner man: the Man behind the man, the Eye behind the eye, the Seeing behind the seeing, man's inner prânika or life-currents, the nodal points in his subtle body where the individual meets the cosmic. It portrayed man's inner physiognomy. …. But they portrayed the external man; there was no portrayal of the inner man, the luminous man, the transcendental man.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Life, Art, Failure, Support

“You are at a point where you are ready to look into yourselves and to take the next steps that must indeed be taken.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 179
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

“The point about pop culture is that so much of it is borrowed. There's very little that's brand new. Instead, creativity today is a kind of shopping process—picking up on and sampling things form the world around you, things you grew up with”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Ryan Castillo in: Syllabus: Communication & Popular Culture http://www.academia.edu/5379627/Syllabus_Communication_and_Popular_Culture, University of Denver

World

“Religious faith is the only area of discourse where immunity through conversation is considered noble. It's the only area of our lives where someone can win points for saying, "There's nothing that you can do to change my mind and I'm taking no state of the world ultimately into account in believing what I believe. There's nothing to change about the world that would cause me to revise my beliefs."”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "The View From The End Of The World" (9 December 2005)
2000s

World, Faith, Change

“As for the journey of life; at some point you will realize that YOU are the driver and you will drive!”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 41

Life

“When drag queen Carlotta agreed to compere and sit for a portrait at an R-rated charity fundraiser in March, she was not prepared for the tool of trade of the artist. The painter was Pricasso, who releases his artistic side by using a particular extremity. Not to put too fine a point on it (and Pricasso couldnt), Carlotta hovered between humour and horror as her portrait came to life.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Gold Coast Bulletin staff, The 2012 Yoohoo Awards, Gold Coast Bulletin, 29 December 2012, 34, Queensland, Australia, News Limited]
About

Life

“I totally animal-oriented. I've got nine dogs, eight birds, turtles, fish -- and I had wallabies at one point.”

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

Reuters News Agency (October 10, 2005)
2007, 2008

Dogs, Bird, Fish, Animals

“Give me an army of West Point graduates, I'll win a battle. Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war!”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Mike Province, founder and president of The Patton Society http://www.pattonhq.com/ calls this an urban legend and in the Texas A&M Battalion (2 October 2006) http://media.www.thebatt.com/media/storage/paper657/news/2006/10/02/Aggielife/Traditionally.Speaking-2319058.shtml?sourcedomain=www.thebatt.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com is quoted as saying "I've gotten e-mails and questions regarding that quote for several years... People will use it with Texas Aggies, The Citadel, Virginia Military Institute and even Clemson. All of these schools want to be linked to Patton... Anything is possible... I honestly don't believe he said it, because I've heard too many people say that he said it about their school. But if anyone out there can find proof that he said it, I'd love to hear about it and get it out there." If any school has a claim, it is the Virginia Military Institute; Patton's grandfather, grand-uncles, and his father all were VMI graduates. Patton himself spent a year at VMI before going to West Point. VMI has many George Patton relics donated by his family in its museum. Please also note that the photo of Patton as a cadet has him wearing a VMI coatee and cap. Misattributed

War

“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 23
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Error

“Impressions within and His word without are always corroborated by His Providence around, and we should quietly wait until these three focus into one point.”

Frederick Brotherton Meyer (1847–1929) English Baptist pastor and evangelist

The Secret of Guidance (1896)

Waiting

“Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.
Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog[…]”

Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) American author and journalist

Source: I am Charlotte Simmons (2004), p. 368-9, winner of the 12th annual The Literary Review Bad Sex Award

God, Dogs, Way

“The upshot is that the values and goals which provided a unifying center for previous centuries in the modern period no longer are cogent. We have not yet found the new center which will enable us to choose our goals constructively, and thus to overcome the painful bewilderment and anxiety of not knowing which way to move. Another root of our malady is our loss of the sense of the worth and dignity of the human being. Nietzsche predicted this when he pointed out that the individual was being swallowed up in the herd, and that we were living by a "slave-morality." Marx also predicted it when he proclaimed that modern man was being "de-humanized," and Kafka showed in his amazing stories how people literally can lose their identify as persons.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 49

Pain, People, Way, Sense

“The Christianity of the first centuries recognized as productions of good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers, and hymn-singing evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected … This was so among the Christians of the first centuries who accepted Christ teachings, if not quite in its true form, at least not yet in the perverted, paganized form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion of whole nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine, Charlemagne and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ's teaching. And this Church Christianity … did not acknowledge the fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity — the direct relationship of each individual to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all people, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence — but, on the contrary, having founded a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, but not only of these divinities themselves but of their images, it made blind faith in its ordinances an essential point of its teachings.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conception of the Romans such as Julian and others, it was for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints, and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Love, Life, God, People

“I have always regretted having gotten involved with literature up to my neck. I would have preferred to have been a monk; but, as I said, I was torn between wanting fame and wishing to renounce the world. The basic problem is that if God exists, what is the point of literature? And if He doesn’t exist, what is the point of literature? Either way, my writing, the only thing I have ever succeeded in doing, is invalidated.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

God, World, Way, Literature

“"Among the types of human activity which have always played a role in history, the soldier is least subject to ressentiment. Nietzsche is right in pointing out that the priest is most exposed to this danger, though the conclusions about religious morality which he draws from this insight are inadmissible. It is true that the very requirements of his profession, quite apart from his individual or national temperament, expose the priest more than any other human type to the creeping poison of ressentiment. In principle he is not supported by secular power; indeed he affirms the fundamental weakness of such power. Yet, as the representative of a concrete institution, he is to be sharply distinguished from the homo religiosus—he is placed in the middle of party struggle. More than any other man, he is condemned to control his emotions (revenge, wrath, hatred) at least outwardly, for he must always represent the image and principle of “peacefulness.” The typical “priestly policy” of gaining victories through suffering rather than combat, or through the counterforces which the sight of the priest's suffering produces in men who believe that he unites them with God, is inspired by ressentiment. There is no trace of ressentiment in genuine martyrdom; only the false martyrdom of priestly policy is guided by it. This danger is completely avoided only when priest and homo religiosus coincide."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Men, God, Peace, History

“The persona can eventually become ourselves, or an aspect of ourselves, to the point where we don't know which is the mask and which is the I.”

F. David Peat (1938–2017) British physicist

From Certainty to Uncertainty (2002)

“Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience. The point of approach which I wish to suggest is that of dealing with experience from the standpoint of society, at least from the standpoint of communication as essential to the social order. Social psychology, on this view, presupposes an approach to experience from the standpoint of the individual, but undertakes to determine in particular that which belongs to this experience because the individual himself belongs to a social structure, a social order.”

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: Mind, Self, and Society. 1934, p. 1 , lead paragraph

Communication

“Passing round Point Conception, and steering easterly, we opened the islands that form, with the mainland, the canal of Santa Barbara. There they are, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa, and there is the beautiful point, Santa Buenaventura; and there lies Santa Barbara on its plain, with its amphitheater of high hills and distant mountains. There is the old white mission with its belfries, and there the town, with its one-story adobe houses, with here and there a two-story wooden house of later build; yet little is it altered — the same repose in the golden sunlight and glorious climate, sheltered by its hills; and then, more remindful than anything else, there roars and tumbles upon the beach the same grand surf of the great Pacific… the same bright-blue ocean, and the surf making just the same monotonous, melancholy roar, and the same dreamy town.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Beauty, Mountain, Distant, Housing

“Each year she taught him the names of the flowers in her language and in his, and from one year to the next he could not even remember the English. For nearly thirty years Sabbath had been exiled in these mountains, and still he could name hardly anything. They didn't have this stuff where he came from. All these things growing were beside the point there. He was from the shore. There was sand and ocean, horizon and sky, daytime and nighttime - the light, the dark, the tide, the stars, the boats, the sun, the mists, the gulls. There were the jetties, the piers, the boardwalk, the booming, silent, limitless sea. Where he grew up they had the Atlantic. You could touch with your toes where America began. They lived in a stucco bungalow two short streets from the edge of America. The house. The porch. The screens. The icebox. The tub. The linoleum. The broom. The pantry. The ants. The sofa. The radio. The garage. The outside shower with the slatted wooden floor Morty had built and the drain that always clogged. In summer, the salty sea breeze and the dazling light; in September, the hurricanes; in January, the storms. They had January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, December. And then January. And then again January, no end to the stockpile of Januaries, of Mays, of Marches. August, December, April - name a month, and they had it in spades. They'd had endlessness. He had grown up on endlessness and his mother - in the beginning they were the same thing. His mother, his mother, his mother, his mother, his mother… and then there was his mother, his father, Grandma, Morty, and the Atlantic at the end of the street. The ocean, the beach, the first two streets in America, then the house, and in the house a mother who never stopped whistlîg until December 1944. If Morty had come alive, if the endlessness had ended naturally instead of with the telegram, if after the war Morty had started doing electrical work and plumbing for people, had become a builder at the shore, gone into the construction business just as the boom in Monmouth County was beginning…Didn't matter. Take your pick. Get betrayed by the fantasy of endlessness or by the fact of finitude. No, Sabbath could only have wound up Sabbath, begging for what he was begging, bound to what he was bound, saying what he did not wish to stop himself from saying.”

Philip Roth book Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath's Theater (1995)

War, People, Mountain, Star

“‘Brethren, if outsiders should speak against me, or against the Doctrine, or against the Order, you should not on that account either bear malice, or suffer heart-burning, or feel ill will. If you, on that account, should be angry and hurt, that would stand in the way of your, own self-conquest. If, when others speak against us, you feel angry at that, and displeased, would you then be able to judge how far that speech of theirs is well said or ill?’
‘That would not be so, Sir.’
‘But when outsiders speak in dispraise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should unravel what is false and point it out as wrong, saying: “For this or that reason this is not the fact, that is not so, such a thing is not found among us, is not in us.”
‘But also, brethren, if outsiders should speak in praise of me, in praise of the Doctrine, in praise of the Order, you should not, on that account, be filled with pleasure or gladness, or be lifted up in heart. Were you to be so that also would stand in the way of your self-conquest. When outsiders speak in praise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should acknowledge what is right to be the fact, saying: “For this or that reason this is the fact, that is so, such a thing is found among us, is in us.””

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

T. W. Rhys Davids trans. (1899), Brahmajāla Sutta, verse 1.5-6 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Brahmajala_Sutta#Brahmaj.C4.81la_Sutta_.5B9.5D_-_The_Perfect_Net (text at archive.org https://archive.org/stream/bookofdiscipline02hornuoft#page/3/mode/1up), as cited in: (1992). A Comparative History of Ideas, p. 221-2 Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses)

Pleasure, Way, Feeling, Suffering

“That is a complete waste of your time and the government's money. You are a native speaker of English; in ten minutes you can produce more illustrations of any point in English grammar than you will find in many millions of words of random text.”

Robert Lees (linguist)

Lees's response when informed that Nelson Francis had received a grant to produce the Brown Corpus.
Biber, D., and E. Finegan. 1991. "On the exploitation of computerized corpora in variation studies." In K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds.), English corpus linguistics: Studies in honour of Jan Svartvik, 204-220. London: Longman.

Money, Time

“Catalan language is one of the most complete and perfect expressions that I know from the point of view regarding language, I not only read it since many years ago, but I understand it. Moreover, I speak it intimately too.”

José María Aznar (1953) Spanish President from 1996 to 2004

On an interview with the Catalan Autonomous Television, just before politically coallitioning with Catalan, Canarian and Basque nationalists Source: L' Aznar destrossant la llengua catalana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m95BZOKDPs, December 2006.

Understanding, Reading, Perfection

“On the one hand, the great focal points and the main arteries of traffic speak of the dignity of government and the easy movement of commerce. But we need also the more intimate side of city planning, the by ways with their little shops, the occasional drinking fountain at a street corner, the glimpse of some secluded garden through a half-open gate.”

Clarence Stein (1882–1975) American architect

A Triumph of Spanish Colonial Style (1916)

Way, Drink

“Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it. The army of so-called reform, in every stage of its advance, necessarily converts a detachment of its force into opponents. The more rapid the advance the more formidable will the desertion become, till at last a point will be reached where the balance between the forces of conservation and destruction will be redressed, and the political equilibrium be restored.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 127, 1869, pp. 551-552
1860s

Men, Strong, Change, Hurt

“Man is not dead when he is cold, stiff, pulseless, breathless, and even showing signs of decomposition; he is not dead when buried, nor afterward, until a certain point is reached. That point is, when the vital organs have become so decomposed, that if reanimated, they could not perform their customary functions; when the mainspring and cogs of the machine, so to speak, are so eaten away by rust, that they would snap upon the turning of the key. Until that point is reached, the astral body may be caused, without miracle, to reenter its former tabernacle, either by an effort of its own will, or under the resistless impulse of the will of one who knows the potencies of nature and how to direct them. The spark is not extinguished, but only latent — latent as the fire in the flint, or the heat in the cold iron.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XIII

Nature, Effort, Dead

“Many leaders are in the first instance executives whose primary duty is to direct some enterprise or one of its departments or sub-units…
It remains true that in every leadership situation the leader has to possess enough grasp of the ways and means, the technology and processes by means of which the purposes are being realized, to give wise guidance to the directive effort as a whole…
In general the principle underlying success at the coordinative task has been found to be that every special and different point of view in the group affected by the major executive decisions should be fully represented by its own exponents when decisions are being reached. These special points of view are inevitably created by the differing outlooks which different jobs or functions inevitably foster. The more the leader can know at first hand about the technique employed by all his group, the wiser will be his grasp of all his problems…
But more and more the key to leadership lies in other directions. It lies in ability to make a team out of a group of individual workers, to foster a team spirit, to bring their efforts together into a unified total result, to make them see the significance of the particular task each one is doing in relation to the whole.”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 115; as cited in: William Sykes " Visions Of Hope: Leadership http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2012/08/leadership_2.php." Published on August 12, 2012.

Way, Problem, Decision, Effort

“The attempt to discover and promulgate the truth is nevertheless an obligation upon all scientists, one that must be persevered in no matter what the rebuffs—for otherwise what is the point in being a scientist?”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

(with Jean Medawar) Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology, 1983
1980s

Truth

“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

Review of Le Misanthrope, by Molière, at the Piccadilly (1962), p. 117
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Way, Question

“No matter where I go in the world, although I can't speak any foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice just how foolish international friction is, and they would put an end to it. We are, after all, at a point where it is almost narrow-minded to think merely in geocentric terms. Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet?”

Akira Kurosawa book Something Like an Autobiography

Something Like an Autobiography (1981)

People, World, Dogs, Way

“It's the old case against symbols: if you get them, they seem obvious and artificial, and if you don't, you miss the whole point.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

Walker Percy Redivivus" (1971), p. 130
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Men, Truth, Books, World

“Yet in a relatively short creative life of twenty years or so, Chopin redrew the boundaries of Romantic music, and his self-imposed restriction to the 88 keys of the piano keyboard sublimated nothing less than the aesthetic essence of piano music. It was his total identification with the instrument which, in its radical regeneration of the lyric and the dramatic, fantasy and passion and their unique fusion, shaped a tonal language which united an aristocratic sense of style and formal Classical training and intuition with an ascetic rigor. Chopin’s precisely marshaled trains of thought permitted no experiments, and so he did not ‘wander about’ within his stylistic points of reference as Scriabin was to do. Chopin’s works may seem light and improvisatory, but they are planned in meticulous details, exactly and well calculated.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Life, Music, Sense, Light

“None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. I
The Open Boat (1894)

Men, Color, Time, Sea

“But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to encrease and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty.”

David Hume book Four Dissertations

Four Dissertations (1757)

Beauty, Art, Nature, Personality

“I make it a point never to trust men with weapons to my windpipe.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Prologue “A Strained Conversation” (p. 2)
Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007)

Men

“The simple point which I am concerned to make is that where ultimate values are irreconcilable, clear-cut solutions cannot, in principle, be found. To decide rationally in such situations is to decide in the light of general ideals, the overall pattern of life pursued by a man or a group or a society.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Introduction (1969)

Life, Light

“Several features or attributes of organizations can therefore be recognized
# Organizations are social institutions (entities) composed of sets of persons with established patterns of interaction.
# Organizations develop to achieve specific goals. Therefore, organizations are social creations that require order and cooperation.
# Organizations are social instruments possessing relatively identifiable boundaries and existing on a relatively permanent basis. While this final point is perhaps less clear than were those that precede it, the identification of fixed boundaries (for instance, the distinction between members and nonmembers) and continuity (that is, existence and identity over time) provide a conceptual framework for the study of organizational activity.”

Arthur G. Bedeian (1946) American business theorist

Source: Organizations: Theory and Analysis, 1984, p. 3-4 (1984: 2-3)

Study, Time, Personality

“It is easier to point fingers than to accept responsibilities. People complain about elected officials but they do not care to vote. They criticize some multinational corporations but their banks and 401K are profiting from the stocks of those companies.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

People

“Eric Bolling: "Corporate personhood", "demolition of capitalism", "if we learn to share, we can all live in prosperity." What do you make of all this, Ann?
Ann Coulter: All of those quotes could have been said in 1789 France before the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution or — with only slight modification — when the Nazis were coming to power. Cuba under Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela - This is always the beginning of totalitarianism.
Eric Bolling: Are you sure, Ann, though- are you sure they couldn't also be found behind one of Obama's economic cabinet meetings?
Ann Coulter: Well, yes! Thus the point of my book, bringing together all of these mob uprisings with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party looooves mob uprisings. It's their path to power. And, you know, they always assume the mob leaders will remain mob leaders, and not end up like Maximilien Robespierre, beheaded a couple years after the revolution began. That is often the way the revolutions go.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

regarding the Occupy Wall Street protests, and referring to her book "Demonic".
2011

Books, Way, Quotes, Learning

“Mugabe has destroyed that country while South Africa has stood by and done nothing. The way Mugabe was feted at the inauguration last month was an embarrassing disgrace. But it served well to illustrate very clearly Mbeki's point of view.”

Helen Suzman (1917–2009) South African politician

As quoted in "Democracy? It was better under apartheid, says Helen Suzman" https://web.archive.org/web/20120901223952/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1462042/Democracy-It-was-better-under-apartheid-says-Helen-Suzman.html (15 May 2004), by Jane Flanagan, The Telegraph 2000s

Way, Country

“It's very exciting we have a new president. It would have been nice if he ended with a 500 point up instead of down. It's certainly very exciting. His speech was great last night. I thought it was inspiring in every way. And, hopefully he's going to do a great job. But the way I look at it, he cannot do worse than Bush.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

"Donald Trump on President-Elect Obama: 'He Cannot Do Worse Than Bush'" Interview with Greta Van Susteren http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/11/06/donald-trump-on-president-elect-obama-cannot-do-worse-than-bush.html Fox News (6 November 2008) 2000s

Way, Night

“I wasn't aware of Chargaff's rules when he said them, but the effect on me was quite electric because I realized immediately that if you had this sort of scheme that John Griffith was proposing, of adenine being paired with thymine, and guanine being paired with cytosine, then you should get Chargaff's rules. I was very excited, but I didn't actually tell Chargaff because it was something I was doing with John Griffith…. This was very exciting, and we thought "ah ha!" and we realized - I mean what anyone who is familiar with the history of science ought to realize - that when you have one-to-one ratios, it means things go to together. And how on Earth no one pointed out this simple fact in those years, I don't know.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The DNA Story (1973, film, VSM Productions)

History, Science

“Thus, there are two points to remember. First, our friends are not just Marxists, they are also Macaulayites. Second, they are Marxists in a special sense. They are Marxists in the sense that they have thought of themselves as Marxists, in the sense that they repeatedly regurgitate a handful of Marxist phrases and assertions. But more than being Marxist historians, they have been establishment historians. Their theories and ‘theses’ have accorded not just with the ‘classics’ of Marxism-Leninism, they have accorded with the ideology of, which in terms of their theory means, the needs of Congressite rulers.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Sense

“.. it seems to me that you could take the opposite point of view, and say that continuity (in language and in thought, B. K.) is the thing that is so distressing and that what one can do is attempt to create a discontinuous situation. It seems to me that continuity is almost a static concept. And since we have the concept of discontinuity it seems to me that it would be more interesting to attempt to establish that.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

interview at John's studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 89
1960s

“An art mode, new or old, is for the creative mind essentially a point of beginning. Content is brought into being by the activity through which the artist translates the movement into himself. In such an appropriation, there is no difference between an ongoing movement and one that is finished. During the reign of Minimalism, a painter might realize the new through Impressionism. That art history has a schedule of continuous advances en masse is a fantasy of the historian. The shared syntax of art movements is constantly replaced by the sensibility and practice of individuals. The avant-garde art of yesterday is the only modern equivalent of an aesthetic tradition. The fading of the ideas of a movement does not mean that it can no longer be a stimulus to creation. At the very dawn of a movement, the work of its artists commences to replace the concept; instead of Cubism there appear Picasso, Braque, Gris. Compared to the activities to which they give rise, ideas in art have a brief life. In the last analysis, the vitality of art in our time depends on works produced by movements after they have died.”

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

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 230, Art on the Edge (1975) "Shall These Bones Live?: Art Movement Ghosts"

Life, Art, History, Idea

“It goes without saying that we have no affinities with the Japanese. They're too foreign to us, by their way of living, by their culture. But my feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance. I feel myself more akin to any European country, no matter which. Everything about the behaviour of American society reveals that it's half Judaised, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together—a State where 80 per cent of the revenue is drained away for the public purse—a country where everything is built on the dollar? From this point of view, I consider the British State very much superiour.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

7 January 1942.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

Way, Feeling, Country

“At least the mentor’s point was made: loneliness was psychological, not statistical.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Old Hundredth” p. 163
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Loneliness

“They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848). http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848
1840s

“If truth were left to a market philosophy, there would be no point in continuing to make an argument for which there are no takers, or to ask a question for which there are no answers. The minority community has other grounds to sustain a wholesome discomfort and thereby keeps the door open for solutions not yet found.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 99

Truth, Communication, Question

“At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

as interviewed by David Van Biema, "Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop," Time Magazine, Feb. 07, 2008 http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html

Christ

“It was a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale. Unpleasant to think about, but in terms of the scale it’s not that unusual. I did say it’s the worst, probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it’s a historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction in which the guns were pointing. That’s new. Radically new.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2001, The New War Against Terror, 2001

Thinking, Change

“Does Madison's belief that separation of powers is necessary to prevent tyranny necessarily require a presidential system or even judicial review? As I pointed out, this reading makes Madison silly, or at least a casualty of historical developments, since almost all other democratic countries have rejected the first and some the second. Of course, like all others of his time Madison had to make judgments about constitutional arrangements with very little directly relevant historical experience to go on. Hindsight gives us the advantage of nearly two centuries of later experience, during which most of the stable democracies adopted a parliamentary system, only a few chose a presidential system, and none adopted the American presidential system.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

Foreword : Reflections on A Preface to Democratic Theory
A Preface to Democratic Theory (Expanded ed., 2006)

Democracy, Time, Reading, Country

“This one is too elegant, too shiny, like jewelry. It seeks applause. This is clear to me, but difficult to explain, which is what makes abstraction so fascinating. In one sense, abstract art is absolutely nothing, stupid. In 100 years, maybe people will just think it's garbage. But somehow we see something in it; we have a sense of quality. [searching for an illustration of his point, Richter leafs through a catalog to find some of his 'gray monochromes']. I was doing these [monochromes] when I was getting divorced. When you feel totally empty, you do this - but then I saw that one picture was actually better than another. Both were miserable, but the difference was interesting. I loved this: that there must be something, some higher faculty, some progressive sensibility that we find in abstraction. But it is impossible to describe.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love, People, Stupidity, Art

“Most people think themselves kind enough, but rather like a magician thinking he is fooling an audience who can see through his trick, we are the worst judges of the effect we have on others. True, we can mentally point out various kindnesses we have committed and those pleasant aspects of ourselves. Yet by doing so, we ignore the real test cases: how we behave under pressure, how nice we are to people we don’t like, how we deal with other people who seem determined to not live up to our unrealistic expectations.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, There’s Probably No God - The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (2009)

People, Fools, Thinking

“We're thinking about building the wall as a solar wall, so it creates energy, and pays for itself. And this way Mexico will have to pay much less money, and that's good, right, is that good? You're the first group I've told that to, a solar wall, makes sense, let's see, we're working it out, we'll see, solar wall, panels, beautiful. I mean actually think of it, the higher it goes the more valuable it is, it's like… pretty good imagination [points to his own head], right, good? My idea.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

President Trump Holds a Rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/21/president-trump-holds-iowa-rally-live-blog.html (21 June 2017) 2010s, 2017, June

Money, Beauty, Way, Imagination

“Let's go back to the solar nebula… with the temperature declining the farther we get from the Sun. …at different distances from the Sun, different materials will condense out, because they have different vapor pressures or different melting points. …water condenses out roughly at the vicinity of the Earth, whereas silicates condense out closer to the Sun… you have to go out to somewhere near the present distance of Saturn before methane condenses.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Water, Sun

“Well alright, anyone who has dreams of world empire, look what it did to Britain (chuckles heartily). There's a reason that whole country is one big Smith song. That's actually one exciting thing about studying history, there did come a point towards the end of the 19th century where the British were just like, "this ain't worth it mate". There's a reason why in 1945 they gave us the keys to the world. They were like, "here, it's yours, take it, go, we're fine, no? India, go. Africa, go." Because they'd had enough. Because it's really hard, we can't even run ourselves. We literally have people storming our capital with signs saying, "government, keep your hands off my social security". If we can't handle that, do we really want to try and run, Africa? I think what we need is not so much world empire, I think we need closer cooperation, closer alliances.”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

People, World, Dreams, History

“The things that we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from. From the normal vantage point, it certainly seems that only with discipline can we withstand the temptations that surround us: overeating, drugs, video games, mindless internet surfing, and everything else we consume. These things are undeniably destructive to our own lives and beyond; therefore, it would seem, we cannot always trust desire at all. But when we recognize that these are not really what we desire, our goal becomes not to suppress desire but to identify the true want or need, and to fulfill it. That is no trivial task; it is a profound path of self-realization.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible http://charleseisenstein.net/project/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/ The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

Pleasure, Game, Thinking, Joy

“By any honest assessment of where we are as a party, without a major course correction, we are simply on the way out. The demographic picture of America is rapidly changing, and we have to change with it. George W. Bush got 56 percent of the white vote, and won. Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote, and lost. Every four years in this country, the electorate gets about two percentage points less white; as an increasingly old and increasingly white party, we are skidding with each passing election toward irrelevance in terms of appealing to a broad electorate. We hold out our hand, expecting our share of nonwhite votes, and yet we give these Americans too few reasons to come our way. Instead, we demonize them, marginalize them, and blame them for our country's problems. We all knew of this before the last election, but we quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery. The crash from this sugar high will be particularly unpleasant.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Source: Conscience of a Conservative (2017), p. 8

Way, Problem, Change, Country

“I’ve always wondered if people who block each other from expressing their opinions do so because they have so little confidence in their own. To me, encountering an opposing point of view is a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the issues at stake… and develop my own point of view. But the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to let people speak and you’ve got to listen. And that’s what the first amendment is all about. That’s what really distinguishes this country from others.”

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

http://ww.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=commencement2007&p4=4
Speaking Out

People, Confidence, Understanding, Chance

“The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)*

* The analogy between the sea squirt and the associate professor was first pointed out, I think, by the neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 177

Life, Home, Search, Thinking

“[ Gustav Fechner ] was troubled by materialism… His philosophical solution of the spiritual problem lat in his affirmation of the identity of the mind and matter and in his assurance that the entire universe can be regarded as readily from the point of view of its consciousness… as it can be viewed as inert matter.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 269; Cited in: Robert R. Holt, ‎Sigmund Freud (1989) Freud Reappraised: A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Theory, p. 148.

Problem, Universe

“Whereas reasons may, and usually do, figure among the proximate causes of belief, and thus play a part in both kinds of series (cognitive and causal), it is always possible to trace back the causal series to a point where every trace of rationality vanishes; where we are left face to face with conditions of beliefs social, physiological, and physical— which, considered in themselves, are quite a-logical in their character. /…/ on any merely naturalistic hypothesis, the rational elements in the causal series lie always on the surface. Penetrate but a short way down, and they are found no more.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Lie, Way, Parting

“… in economic political discussions there is a nearly infinite number of specific questions that may be asked. Besides the ones mentioned in section 3 consider for instance these: "Should we build a road between points A and B in the country?", "Should we promote investments that will give employment to many people, or should we on the contrary promote such investment which will save labour?"… "Should we put more emphasis on things that have up to now not been included in the statistical concept of the gross national product? For instance, should we try to avoid air-pollution and all the kinds of intoxications that may be caused by refuse and waste (a problem that must be studied in its totality as a problem of circulation of matter in society, much in the same way as we study interindustry relations in an input-output table)?“, “Should we assess economic value to an undisturbed nature?””

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

etc.
Source: 1970s and later, From Utopian Theory to Practical Applications, 1970, p. 29

People, Way, Question, Nature

“It got to the point where I sat on the side of the bed in a hotel room in London in early-1990 and said to whoever or whatever: 'If you are there will you please contact or leave me because you are driving me up the wall.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: About David Icke: The Man, His Philosophy, and His Work by Icke himself. He claimed to have felt a subtle entities presence in the room.

“I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't really thin at one point, because I was. But it had nothing to do with not eating. I'm not saying that I have more problems than everyone else, but people's weight fluctuates, and five or ten pounds is a lot on me.”

Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author

People, Lie, Problem

“It seems a little paradoxical to construct a configuration space with the coordinates of points which do not exist.”

Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) French physicist

La nouvelle dynamique des quanta (1928), translation by [Bacciagaluppi, G., Valentini, A., Quantum Theory at the Crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 0521814219, 380]