Quotes about point
page 26

“It’s just like when the Allies were victorious over Nazi Germany in World War II, when we occupied the country, we left a lot of Nazis in place because they were the ones who made the trains run on time and the bureaucracy function properly, etc. And it was distasteful, but you needed them. And in fact, our experience in Iraq kind of demonstrates the wisdom of that, because in Iraq we replaced the Baathist bureaucrats and the result was chaos. Not to compare Wall Street to Iraq or Nazi Germany, but the point is you need people who know what they’re doing.”

Mark Haines (1946–2011) American journalist and television show presenter

Wisdom, War, People, World

“There is another responsibility of the states. It is quite aside from this one of jurisdiction. It is the subject of law enforcement. We are not a lawless people, but we are too frequently a careless one. The multiplicity of laws, the varied possibilities of appeals, the disposition to technicality in procedure, the delays and consequent expense of litigation which inevitably inure to the advantage of wealth and specialized ability — all these have many times been recounted as reproaches to us. It is strange that such laxities should persist in a time like the present, which is marked by a determined upward movement in behalf of the social welfare. But they do exist. They demonstrate a need for better, prompter, less irksome, and expensive administration of the laws. They point the necessity for simplification and codification of laws; for uniformity of procedure; for more accurate delimitation of State and Federal authority.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

People, Law, Time, Wealth

“I became aware of Louise Bourgeois in my first or second year at Brighton Art College. One of my teachers, Stuart Morgan, curated a small retrospective of her work at the Serpentine, and both he and another teacher, Edward Allington, saw something in her, and me, and thought I should be aware of her. I thought the work was wonderful. It was her very early pieces, The Blind Leading the Blind, the wooden pieces and some of the later bronze works. Biographically, I don't really think she has influenced me, but I think there are similarities in our work. We have both used the home as a kind of kick-off point, as the space that starts the thoughts of a body of work. I eventually got to meet Louise in New York, soon after I made House. She asked to see me because she had seen a picture of House in the New York Times while she was ironing it one morning, so she said. She was wonderful and slightly kind of nutty; very interested and eccentric. She drew the whole time; it was very much a salon with me there as her audience, watching her. I remember her remarking that I was shorter than she was. I don't know if this was true but she was commenting on the physicality of making such big work and us being relatively small women. When you meet her you don't know what's true, because she makes things up. She has spun her web and drawn people in, and eaten a few people along the way.”

Rachel Whiteread (1963) British sculptor

Rachel Whiteread, " Kisses for Spiderwoman http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/oct/14/art2," The Guardian, 14 Oct. 2007: on Louise Bourgeois

Women, People, Art, Way

“Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M. D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contact. But in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 145-146.

Life, Wisdom, Family, Problem

“I wanted a break. I had been on the road more or less since I was 18, you know? And I hadn't known any other life, other than, you know, hotel rooms and concerts and records and studios and press conferences. … and to me, here was a chance to jump off that kind of wagon and see life for real. You know, actually my last album was called Back to Earth. So that was the meaning of it. I wanted to join the human race again. I didn't want to be a star. I didn't want to continue with that thing, because so much illusion and non-reality is connected to it. I wanted to be real. And so I — I kind of — I found an opportunity. And the actual point about music was — the imam who I met and who I first embraced Islam with in London's Central Mosque, he actually told me to continue making records.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On the abandonment of his music career after converting to Islam, on Larry King Live (7 October 2004) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/07/lkl.01.html

Life, Music, Star, Reality

“Though sincerity and confidence have many points of resemblance, they have yet many points of difference. Sincerity is an openness of heart, which shows us what we are, a love of truth, a dislike to deception, a wish to compensate our faults and to lessen them by the merit of confessing them.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), I. On Confidence

Love, Truth, Confidence, Heart

“Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a conceivable mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a conceivable mode, but for the actual mode.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Development Hypothesis (1852)

Support

“As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) pointed out, many Jewish refugees fled from Russia in 1905 and from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. If the Bill had been law at that time, they could not have come here. There are also the victims of the Iran-Iraq war, the Fascist junta in Chile, and so on. The list is endless. The Minister should come clean about it. He should be honest enough to say that he is turning his back on all the asylum problems in the world. The racist connotations of not having anything to do with the problems of the Third world show that the Minister is working in concert with other European Governments to turn their backs on problems which in many cases were created by west European Governments in the first place…All that the Minister is trying to do is to appeal to the basic sense of xenophobia in the media, in the country and throughout Europe. They want to turn their backs on the problems of the rest of the world. I hope that there will be a greater sense of civilised values on this side of the House when we come to vote against the Bill than has ever been shown by the Tory party.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/mar/16/immigration-carriers-liability-bill in the House of Commons (16 March 1987). 1980s

War, World, Law, Hope

“In point of fact, the meteor was something like 30 km when it exploded. It was over north Waterloo and I was north of St Agatha. Two spherical clouds, and two explosions. Unfortunately, I was dealing with a goat that was trying to eat an oil truck's fuel line, goats having this optimistic 'Well, maybe it has become edible since they last time I tried this' worldview, and I missed seeing the explosions.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[cbp39u$gbq$1@panix1.panix.com, 2004]
2000s

Time

“Matthew's response: To me the conception of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr Darwin here seems to have more merit in the discovery than I have had; to me it did not appear a discovery. He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an a priori recognisable fact – an axiom requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

Gardeners' Chronicle

Law, Way, Nature, Effort

“Without preparedness superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either. Having grasped this point, a force which is inferior but prepared, can often defeat a superior enemy by surprise attack.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Protracted Warfare (1938)

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Morality and literature,” p. 164
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Marriage, Beauty, Girl, Literature

“I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, 1998
1990s

“Our program was a scientific one it must be constantly changed at minor points to meet the continuous advance of science. And I maintain that no man – Marx, in spite of his comprehensive and deep intellect, as little as any other – can bring science to final perfection; and this position is for everyone who understands the nature of science a foregone conclusion. No socialist, therefore, has the right to condemn attacks on the theoretical ideas of the Marxian teachings or to excommunicate any one from the party because of such attacks. But it is wholly different when such attacks imply a complete overturning of our whole conception of society, as, for example, is the case with Bernstein. Then vigorous defense is in order. Far more dangerous than theoretical assaults are practical disavowals of our principles. Theoretical discussions interest only a comparatively small portion of our membership; whereas practical disavowal of principles and tactical offenses against the party program touch every party comrade and arouse the attention of every party comrade; and when they are not quickly checked and corrected they bring confusion into the whole party.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Idea, Understanding, Nature, Science

“Demand and supply are the opposite extremes of the beam, whence depend the scales of dearness and cheapness; the price is the point of equilibrium, where the momentum of the one ceases, and that of the other begins.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book II, On Distribution, Chapter I, p. 290

Dependency

“Compared with Brancusi, Matisse, Miro, I'm a barbarian. If people would understand the barbaric force of my paintings, instead of always pointing out how well I understand Picasso. I'm a Viking who has read French literature.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/obituaries/robert-motherwell-master-of-abstract-dies.html Undated

People, Literature, Understanding, Reading

“We're not masturbating around with some research project. We never were. Even when Linux was young, the whole and only point was to make a *usable* system. It's why it's not some crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy thing.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linus Torvalds - LKML, Torvalds, Linus, 2012-03-08, 2012-09-11 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/8/495, 2010s, 2012

“But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

People, Books, World, Education

“Clash was destined to be my last hero picture, and looking back, the decision to end my career at that point was absolutely right. With all the problems involved in production, and the knowledge that I was losing precious control of solo animation, I was forced to concede that it was time to stand aside for others and their new technology to take over.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Source: An Animated Life (2003), pp. 280-2

Knowledge, Problem, Decision, Time

“The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message.”

Phillip E. Johnson (1940–2019) American Law clerk

Foreword to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000)
1990s

God, Intelligence

“And why do soldiers wear uniforms? It certainly is not to protect the soldier. As a matter of fact, a soldier’s uniform is actually a big flashing neon arrow pointing to some kid that says to the enemy, SHOOT ME!”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

SANCTUARY (part 1) https://web.archive.org/web/20050521031500/http://ejectejecteject.com/archives/000125.html (18 May 2005) 2000s

“This was human glory—a sad and exhaust-darkened memorial for good citizens to ignore and drunks to piss upon on their way home from the brothels. Here was the omega-point of all ambition.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (p. 317)

Sadness, Way, Home, Memory

“In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe……We live in a special time, the only time, where we can observationally verify that we live in a special time.”

Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist

"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

Law, Light, Universe, Science

“I am just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan's book and am trying to learn it by heart. It is a first-class book and classical on all points.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to an American friend (1893), quoted in John Rohl, Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy 1888-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 1003
1890s

Books, Learning, Reading, Heart

“Religion was the pole-star for my father. Rude and uncultivated as he otherwise was, it made him and kept him "in all points a man." Oh! when I think that all the area in boundless space he had seen was limited to a circle of some fifty miles' diameter (he never in his life was farther or elsewhere so far from home as at Craigenputtoch), and all his knowledge of the boundless time was derived from his Bible and what the oral memories of old men could give him, and his own could gather; and yet, that he was such, I could take shame to myself. I feel to my father — so great though so neglected, so generous also towards me — a strange tenderness, and mingled pity and reverence peculiar to the case, infinitely soft and near my heart. Was he not a sacrifice to me? Had I stood in his place, could he not have stood in mine, and more? Thou good father! well may I forever honor thy memory. Surely that act was not without its reward. And was not nature great, out of such materials to make such a man?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Life, Men, Religion, Feeling

“Since I’ve basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I’m not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don’t care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do. … I’m looking for people to help connect me to more fans, because I believe fans will leave a tip based on the enjoyment and service I provide. I’m not scared of them getting a preview. It really is going to be a global village where a billion people have access to one artist and a billion people can leave a tip if they want to. It’s a radical democratization. Every artist has access to every fan and every fan has access to every artist, and the people who direct fans to those artists. People that give advice and technical value are the people we need. People crowding the distribution pipe and trying to ignore fans and artists have no value. This is a perfect system.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

From "Courtney Love does the math", a speech given on the corruption of the music industry, from Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ (14 June 2000) 1996–2005

People, Music, Help, Dance

“His poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Arguing against seeking the death penalty for the anarchist who had attempted to assassinate him on 19 February 1919, shooting at him seven times and hitting him only once in the chest, as quoted in A Time for Angels : The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations (1975) by Elmer Bendine, p. 106
Prime Minister

War, History, Time, Training

“I believe that there are varying points of contact. You have to be able to see the whole thing first. All great paintings are sculptures – there's so much of the factualness about it that a great painting forces you into a visual, physical movement of yourself. That's what determines the way you experience a painting kinetically. You move closer, you sight down it, you till your head, you step back, you feel as though you are in it. That being in it is just as important as looking from a distance.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 10
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Way, Feeling, Painting

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

People, Education, Study, Freedom

“What is the right exchange rate at one point is not necessarily the right exchange rate at another.”

Norman Lamont (1942) British politician

As he stated on Channel 4 News, 15th December 2008

“The moment when the scientists became engineers was a historical turning point.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 8, The End of Nature, p. 152.

“The basic point-of-view is that science is a social process.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. xi

Science

“The hope of the nation and of Christendom, and of the lands called heathen, alike is to be found in the indoctrination of little children in the knowledge of God's truth; for the missionaries will tell you that the adult heathen population of to-day are to die heathen; the minister will tell you that the adult, virtually heathen population of Christian lands to-day are to die in that condition, unless God showers down altogether unprecedented grace — with only such occasional exceptions as confirm this general and terrible law. If this be so, the hope of Christianity is in childhood. Towards childhood must be directed the work of the sappers and miners of the church. Here is the weak point of the enemy's fortress. Here let the breach be made, and his topmost turret shall be laid low.”

Cyrus David Foss (1834–1910) American bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 570.

God, Children, Truth, Law

“Most authorities in economics and sociology regard such an organization as a city an impossible structure, not only from the economic standpoint, but from the sociological and psychological as well. No creature of the highly nervous structure necessary to develop a culture, they point out, would be able to survive within such restricted limits. The result, if it were tried, these authorities say, would lead to mass neuroticism which in a short period of time would destroy the very culture which had built the city.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Notes on the First Tale (pp. 9-10)
City (1952)

Time

“I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. It doesn’t suddenly become a human being at a certain point in time. I’ve also asked leading scientists across our country to please show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being. I didn’t want to be pro-life, but this is not a woman’s rights issue but a human rights issue. If I see someone abusing a child I am going to stand up against that, and that’s how I feel about abortion. Women are not given all the facts, they’re told it is a harmless procedure and now it has turned into such a political football.”

Kathy Ireland (1963) American model and businesswoman

Supermodel Kathy Ireland Lashes Out Against Pro Choice https://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/04/27/supermodel-kathy-ireland-lashes-out-against-pro-choice.html (April 27, 2009)

Life, Women, Way, Feeling

“A river is nearly the ultimate symbol for the very essence of change itself. It flows unceasing from one point of being to another, yet continuously occupies the same bed or pathway, and accommodates life’s endings with the same musical grace with which it accommodates life’s beginnings, along with all the muted and explosive moments that surface between the two extremes.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Evolution of a Vision: from Songs of the Angelic Gaze to The River of Winged Dreams, p. 3).
Book Sources, The River of Winged Dreams (2010)

Life, Music, Change

“Thus we have reached the point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.”
Quin eo deventum est ut iam (proh dolor!) non existimentur sapientes nisi qui mercennarium faciunt studium sapientiae.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

24. 155; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Wisdom, Pain, Personality

“I think so many of the objects we're surrounded by seem trivial. And I think that's because they're either trying to make a statement or trying to be overtly different. What we were trying to do was have a very honest approach and an exploration of materials and surface treatment. So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think "of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?"”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.
In an interview in Icon Magazine (July 2003)

Way, Thinking, Sense

“As Gauss first pointed out, the problem of cyclotomy, or division of the circle into a number of equal parts, depends in a very remarkable way upon arithmetical considerations. We have here the earliest and simplest example of those relations of the theory of numbers to transcendental analysis, and even to pure geometry, which so often unexpectedly present themselves, and which, at first sight, are so mysterious.”

George Ballard Mathews (1861–1922) British mathematician

Part 1, sect. 167.
Theory of Numbers, 1892

Way, Problem, Parting, Dependency

“The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial.”

Peggy Noonan (1950) American author and journalist

"The Good Guys Finally Won" http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=37 (21 December 1998), concerning accusations against Bill Clinton

Justice, Law, Business

“The turning point was the Tea Act and the resulting Tea Party in Boston in December 1773.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter IV, THE LOGIC OF REBELLION, p. 118

Tea

“I think if we call in the experts we can draw up the full scheme, with the rallying points arranged.”

Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956) Italian general during both World Wars and a Prime Minister of Italy

Quoted in "Twenty Angels Over Rome: The Story of Fascist Italy's Fall" - Page 72 - by Richard McMillan - 1945

Thinking, Drawing

“A word about the title--"Nature's Miracles." Some may claim that it is unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as "miracles." But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things--as wonderful as any miracle that was ever recorded--subservient to the rule of law. "But," you say, "a miracle does not come under any rule of law." Ah! are you sure of that? It is true that we may not understand the law that the so-called miracle comes under, but the Author of all natural law does.”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar Talks on Science, Volume 1, 1899, p. V
(See Charles Babbage's for a similar commentary on miracles)
Nature's Miracles (1900)

Law, Understanding, Nature

“When you recognize that half of everything we're spending on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons is drug related. What are we getting for that? Well, we're arresting one point eight million people a year in this country and we now have two point three million people behind bars in this country. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world and isn't this America; liberty, personal freedom, and responsibility that goes along with that? I think that when it comes to drug policy, we've thrown that notion out the window.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement from CNN Interview
YouTube
2011-04-21
http://youtu.be/VFf4P20cWmU
2012-02-24
2011

People, World, Law, Thinking

“The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 4 The Running-Down of the Universe

Law, Hope, Nature, Thinking

“Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than we can see, that's the point. We can see the stars and the galaxies and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not fly apart, there needs to be a lot more of it — to make gravity work, you see. But no one can detect it. So there are lots of different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this is one of them. … We think it's some kind of elementary particle. Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the particles are very hard to detect.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Dr. Mary Malone, in Ch. 4 : Trepanning
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

Star, Thinking, Universe, Flying

“"When challenged, Wilt could do almost anything he wanted. In 1961 a new star named Walt Bellamy came into the league. Bellamy was 6-foot-11, and was scoring 30 points a game. First time they played against each other, they met at half court. Bellamy said, 'Hello, Mr. Chamberlain. I'm Walter Bellamy.' Chamberlain reached for Bellamy's hand and said, "Hello, Walter. You won't get a shot off in the first half." Wilt then blocked Bellamy's first nine shots. At the start of the second half Wilt said to Bellamy, 'Okay, Walter. Now you can play.'"”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=9389 Blocking

Game, Star, Time

“When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart;
When that my tears, as floods of rain,
Bear witness of my woful smart;
When sighs have wasted so my breath
That I lie at the point of death:
I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troyè town:
And how the boisterous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown;
Till Agamemnon's daughter's blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Lover Comforteth Himself with the Worthiness of his Love", line 1.

Love, Death, God, Pain

“The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy, so as to pursue the course of the Mean. He cherishes his old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety. Thus, when occupying a high situation he is not proud, and in a low situation he is not insubordinate. When the kingdom is well governed, he is sure by his words to rise; and when it is ill governed, he is sure by his silence to command forbearance to himself.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Nature, Knowledge, Study, Silence

“From the preceding examples, we may get some idea of the change in perspective that may occur in our reading and interpretation of the philosophical works of antiquity when we consider them from the point of view of the practice of spiritual exercises. Philosophy then appears in its original aspect: not as a theoretical construct, but as a method for training people to live and to look at the world in a new way. It is an attempt to transform mankind. Contemporary historians of philosophy are today scarcely inclined to pay attention to this aspect, although it is an essential one. The reason for this is that, in conformity with a tradition inherited from the Middle Ages … they consider philosophy to be purely abstract-theoretical activity.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

People, Age, World, Way

“When I returned to China [from the United States], I didn’t have a U. S. passport, a wife, or a university degree. From the Chinese point of view, I was a total failure.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

Failure, Universe

“For Witold Doroszewski, at the root of semantic analysis lies the philosophical issue of the relationship between the general and the particular, the starting point being the analysis of the function of the copula "is". Doroszewski analyses the problem of meaning as closely linked with denotation. It is in that question that he sees the focal point of semantics.
According to Doroszewski, the history of meaning consists in the growth of a "gap" between the sign and its designatum. and the cause of changes in meanings lies in the conflict between the general character of the sign and the need for its being made to rise to the occasion whenever it is concretely embodied.
The attitude of Doroszewski, a representative of linguistic semantics, is of interest not only because he draws concrete conclusions from the general definition of semantics, but also because of his reflections on the relationship between semantics as pursued by linguists, and semantics as pursued by logicians. By touching here upon that issue, I anticipate further analysis. This does not advance the clarity of exposition, but is, unfortunately, often inevitable. In this case, it is justified in so far as it helps us to realize better the specific traits of linguistic semantics and its research objectives.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 6

History, Question, Problem, Change

“At that point I realized that I had been thinking in Russian. It’s a wonderful language for paranoid thoughts.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XIX : Something is gained in translation—, p. 166

Thinking

“I perceived that, in order to make the best use of steam, it was necessary—first, that the cylinder should be maintained always as hot as the steam which entered it; and, secondly, that when the steam was condensed, the water of which it was composed, and the injection itself, should be cooled down to 100°, or lower, where that was possible. The means of accomplishing these points did not immediately present themselves; but early in 1765 it occurred to me, that if a communication were opened between a cylinder containing steam, and another vessel which was exhausted of air and other fluids, the steam, as an elastic fluid, would immediately rush into the empty vessel, and continue so to do until it had established an equilibrium; and if that vessel were kept very cool by an injection, or otherwise, more steam would continue to enter until the whole was condensed.”

James Watt (1736–1819) British engineer

"Notes on Professor Robison's Dissertation on Steam-engines" (1769)

Communication, Water

“Although people cannot define existence and do use the term with some looseness, yet it is possible to give an extensive definition by pointing to the sorts of things that everyone believes to exist. It is still easier to point to the sort of entities that people agree in believing not to exist, and happily, this is really what concerns us most. People mean by saying that causation only applies to things that exist that it applies, if at all, to what can change; and they believe that, if anything can change, it is things like chairs and tables and minds, and not those like the propositions of Euclid and the multiplication table. What would be agreed then is that, if causal laws apply to anything it is to what can change in so far as it changes.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

Perception, Physics, and Reality : An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can Supply about the Real (1914), Ch. 2 : On Causation; and on the Arguments that have been used against Causal Laws

People, Law, Change

“I grew up in Dallas, Texas, drinking sodium fluoridated water. All the scientific studies show my IQ has been reduced by at least 20 points. The shadow of who I would have been calls out from the grave.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Question Your Reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCnXCt4-iYw, 11 February 2008. 2008

Drink, Study, Water

“On a second front, a powerful new technology platform is developing out of the bowels of the Second Industrial Revolution, speeding the central contradiction of capitalist ideology to the end game mentioned above. The coming together of the Communications Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things (IoT)—is giving rise to a Third Industrial Revolution. The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free. The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Way, Game, Intelligence, Communication

“I hope that in Egypt there can be a transition toward a more democratic system without a break from President Mubarak, who in the West, above all in the United States, is considered the wisest of men and a precise reference point.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

On Hosni Mubarak, in the relation to the 2011 Egyptian protests, as quoted in Berlusconi: Hosni Mubarak Is 'The Wisest Of Men http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/04/silvio-berlusconi-hosni-m_n_818651.html, in The Huffington Post (4 February 2011), and Berlusconi: Mubarak is a wise man at al Jazeera (February 2011) http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/02/201124194950335734.html 2011

Men, Hope

“My ambition was not to create a new field, but I would have welcomed a permanent group of people having interests close to mine and therefore breaking the disastrous tendency towards increasingly well-defined fields. Unfortunately, I failed on this essential point, very badly. Order doesn't come by itself.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

A Theory of Roughness (2004)

People

“To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, Spiritualism and Occultism

People, Imagination, Reality, Parting

“The floorboards point in parallel lines to a vanishing point that does not concern us -- somewhere beyond the opera house, across the streets, across the houses of the suburbs, all the way to a hypothetical single dot… on the sea's horizon. Far from this sour drama.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

Way, Housing, Sea

“Hayek may still have lessons to teach us. The policies he recommended during the Great Depression may have been badly flawed but his insight that prosperity cannot be restored by unending expansion of debt may have some value at a time when the limits of “Keynesian” quantitative easing are becoming clear. It is in any case far from obvious that Keynes would have supported a continuation of QE once a disastrous collapse had been averted. “Keynesianism” is a confection of Keynes’s more mechanical disciples, not an indication of how this mercurially brilliant mind would have responded to our present dilemmas. Again, Hayek’s claim that nothing can be done to mitigate the impact of free markets on social cohesion was dangerously misguided. But he was right to point out that capitalism cannot be remodelled to fit some conception of an ideally fair distribution of resources. Whether any kind of social democracy can be reconciled with the anarchic energies of global markets is an open question.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Friedrich Hayek I knew, and what he got right - and wrong (2015)

Democracy, Question, Support, Time

“It is also worth noting that it is extremely difficult to be a great buyer of complementary competencies if you do not have any knowledge about the stuff you are acquiring. Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out that a man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access. We need knowledge to be able to outsource knowledge.”

Jonas Ridderstråle (1966) Swedish business theorist

Source: Karaoke Capitalism, 2005, p. 233

Knowledge

“In regard to the first point, the inferiority of the enslaved race. We may concede it is a matter of fact that it is inferior, but does it follow, therefore, that it is right to enslave a man simply because he is inferior? This, to me, is a most abhorrent doctrine. It would place the weak everywhere at the mercy of the strong. It would place the poor at the mercy of the rich. It would place those who are deficient in intellect at the mercy of those that are gifted in mental endowment.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 193 1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

Strong

“Joseph being informed of the precise situation of affairs, he got a horse of Father Johnson, and started without delay, with Hyrum, for Kirtland. On his arrival there, the brethren were collected for meeting. Joseph went upon the stand, and informed the brethren that they were under a great mistake, that the church had not transgressed; "And, as for the keys of the kingdom," said he, "I, myself, hold the keys of this last dispensation, and will for ever hold them, both in time and in eternity; so set your hearts at rest upon that point, all is right."”

Lucy Mack Smith (1775–1856) American religious leader

The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother (1853), "Rigdon's Depression"

Time, Heart, Horse

“He [= Duchamp himself, writing in the third person] CHOSE IT. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote in: 'The Bride and the Bachelors', Tomkins, p. 41; as quoted in The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 171
in this quote Duchamp is quoting himself
posthumous

Life, Personality

“At what point is a wasp ever going to have a chat with a spider?”

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

Podcast Series 1 Episode 3
On Nature

“Jim Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to make him an appealing character, I feel that it would be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the land of the Jelly-beans well below the Mason-Dixon line.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Jelly-Bean"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Feeling, Season

“Like many writers before me, I believe in coincidence and, sometimes, in the novelist’s gift for clairvoyance- the word gift not being the right one, for it implies a kind of superiority. Clairvoyance is simply the part of profession: the essential leaps of imagination, the need to fix one’s mind on detail-to the point of obsession, in fact, so as not to lose the thread and to give in one’s natural laziness. All the, is tension, this cerebral exercise may well lead in the long run to “flashes of intuition concerning events past and future”, as defined by Larousse dictionary under “clairvoyance.””

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

Source: The Search Warrant (2000), pp. 47-48

Exercises, Imagination, Nature, Past

“Kubrick wasn’t making a movie when I was working with him. He was preparing to make a movie, which is something quite different. Part of the charm of working with a director like Kubrick, if there is or was a director like him, was that during the privileged period before he even showed (the script) to the studio, it was just between him and me. You are sort of creating a game in the ball court of theory. There is no film being shot; there is no budget. It was in many ways a very exciting time. It’s also very fraught, particularly for a writer, because you don’t know if it’s going to be of any point.”

Frederic Raphael (1931) British writer

Of Eyes Wide Shut
Interview, http://www.tipjar.com/dan/raphael.htm

Way, Game, Time, Parting

“Here I have been able to make some good spring studies in oils, and managed to finish my 'Cow-girl' and my 'seared Woman', and my 'London Park', Primrose Hill. I think these pictures have improved a great deal from the point of view of unity. How different from the studies! I am more than ever in favour of taking one's impression from memory; it is less the actual thing - vulgarity disappears, leaving only an aura of truth glimpsed, sensed. To think that this is not understood, so that my anxiety for the future continues as before, despite the success of the exhibition.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

I have no news from Paris about my collectors.
Quote in a letter to his son Lucien, 26 April 1892, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock - , Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 144
1890's

Truth, Girl, Spring, Thinking

“[Talking about the royal family] 'Cause they got in at '52, and then immediately the Queen introduced the new … then in the '60s, the Queen decided to change the way that … and she encouraged people to … and in the '70s she completely redistributed … and realised she had too much wealth, so she decided to … then in the '80s, they set up a charity to do … and then they encouraged other people to … and in the '90s, they just totally relaxed, and they said, "Everyone, why don't you …" And then in the 2000s, they've set a great example by … stop me at any point. I think she's got 20 years left. She's in there, but she essentially does what she does on the stamps.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Stripped (2009)

People, Family, Way, Thinking

“And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of military government in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries. Now let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little known fact, these people declared themselves independent in 1945, they quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom. And yet our government refused to recognize, President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we failed victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years, trying to reconquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America, it came to the point that we were meeting more than 80% of the war cost. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that and even after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought in a real sense to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem, who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition, people were brutally murdered merely because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence, and then by increasing numbers of United States troops, who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of General Ky, who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we're supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government, and the press generally, won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Life, God, War, Happiness

“I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/, Op-Ed, February 9, 2007

Past, Future

“A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 40)
Earth (1990)

Courage

““If there was anything, anything more at all, after this crazy mix-up we call living, I could feel that there might be some point to the whole frantic business, even if I did not know and could not know the full answer while I was alive.”
“And suppose there was not? Suppose that when a man’s body disintegrates, he himself disappears absolutely. I’m bound to say I find it a probable hypothesis.”
“Well— It wouldn’t be cheerful knowledge, but it would be better than not knowing. You could plan your life rationally, at least. A man might even be able to get a certain amount of satisfaction in planning things better for the future, after he’s gone. A vicarious pleasure in the anticipation.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 10, “—the only game in town”, p. 105

Life, Pleasure, Feeling, Business

“The change began with John Stuart Mill and the Utopians. When Mill pointed out that economics had no ultimate solution to the problem of distribution, that society might do with the fruits of its toil as it saw fit, he introduced into the mechanical calculus of the market a conflicting calculus of moral judgment.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter XI, Beyond the Economic Revolution, p. 307

Problem, Change

“We have these two different understandings of human sexuality: the hedonistic, self-indulgent understanding, the self-interested one; and the one that has procreation at its heart, and that is characterized by the need to acknowledge responsibility and obligation. And just so no one will miss the point: the reason that homosexuality epitomizes the [first] one is that homosexuals are not haunted by the prospect or possibility of procreation — because they're simply not capable of it. I think this is pretty obvious, isn't it? And it was understood in human society at one point that if you're not capable of procreation, marriage doesn't have anything to do with you, because marriage is about procreation.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Rally in defense of marriage, Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_05_14boston.htm. 2009

Marriage, Understanding, Thinking, Heart

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Life, Men, Happiness, Beauty

“I think the ideas [as starting point for his paintings] are based upon very obvious physical facts – notions that are also simple-minded, such as, in the 'White Paintings', wanting to know if that was a thing to do or not, or in 'Factum', wondering about what the role of accident is. Those aren't really very involved ideas.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Idea, Thinking, Painting

“Vickery points out that the Kissinger-Nixon policy during the last two years of the war was a “major mystery,” for which he suggests an explanation that appears to us quite plausible. Referring to the “Sonnenfeldt Doctrine,” which holds that “pluralistic and libertarian Communist regimes will breed leftist ferment in the West,” he suggests that “when it became clear [to U. S. leaders] that they could not win in Cambodia, they preferred to do everything possible to ensure that the post-war revolutionary government be extremely brutal, doctrinaire, and frightening to its neighbors, rather than a moderate socialism to which the Thai, for example, might look with envy.” In short, though it was understood that the United States had lost the war in Cambodia (even though it was, quite clearly, still trying to win it in Vietnam), the destruction of rural Cambodia, by imposing the harshest possible conditions on the eventual victors, would serve two classic ends: retarding social and economic progress, and maximizing the brutality of the eventual victors. Then the aggressors would at least be able to reap a propaganda victory from the misery they had sown.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, pp. 218-219

War, Appearance, Victory, Envy

“I do not mean that selling is ignored. Far from it. But selling, again, is not marketing. As already pointed out, selling concerns it with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariably does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs. The customer is somebody "out there" who, with proper cunning, can be separated from his loose change.”

Theodore Levitt (1925–2006) American economist and professor at Harvard Business School

Source: Marketing Myopia, 1960, p. 19

People, Business, Effort, Change

“From this new point of view, the universe I had inhabited became an object I could perceive in its entirety. It was a hypersphere embedded in a cloud of alternative states—the sum of all possible quantum trajectories from the big bang to the decay of matter. “Reality”—history as we had known or inferred it—was only the most likely of these possible trajectories. There were countless others, real in a different sense: a vast but finite set of paths not taken, a ghostly forest of quantum alternatives, the shores of an unknown sea.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Vortex

Source: Vortex (2011), Chapter 32 (p. 327)

History, Reality, Sense, Universe

“It is important to call on God to intervene in our life, especially when we reach the point where we ourselves have become helpless.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 244

Life, God

“The analysis of laughter had opened to me points of contact between the fundamentals of a communal and disciplined emotional knowledge and those of discursive knowledge.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxiii

Communication, Knowledge, Laughter

“On questions of taste there is notoriously the widest divergence of opinion./…/ if, from a survival point of view, one taste be as good as another, it is not the varieties in taste which should cause surprise so much as the uniformities. To be sure, the uniformities have often no deep aesthetic roots. They represent /…/ tendencies to agreement, which govern our social ritual, and thereby make social life possible.”

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

Theism and humanism

Life, Question

“If your journal consists of the best moments of your life and reading, then rereading it will be like walking a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak without the intervening descent into the trough of routine. Just reading such a journal of high points will tighten your strings and raise your pitch.”

Robert D. Richardson (1934) American historian

Source: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process (2009), p. 19

Life, Mountain, Reading

“This is America: the Knights of Columbus, the Grange, Hadassah, the Disabled American Veterans, the Order of Ahepa, the Business and Professional Women of America, the union hall, the Bible study group, LULAC, "Holy Name"—a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Women, Peace, Star, Business

“A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of these 'Readymade' was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste…. in fact a complete anesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the 'readymade'. That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, Apropos of Ready Mades', 1961

Time, Indifference

“Natural phenomena undisturbed by man point the way to the realization of a new technique. One needs a keen sense of observation. We must understand Nature before we can adapt its way of working to our needs.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Living Water

Way, Understanding, Nature, Sense

“In talking of the Christian world, in English and, I suppose, in all the other languages of the Christian world we use two terms: Christianity and Christendom. Christianity means a religion, in the strict sense of that word, a system of belief and worship and some clerical or ecclesiastical organization to go with it. If we say Christendom, we mean the entire civilization that grew up under the aegis of that religion, but also contains many elements that are not part of that religion, many elements that are even hostile to that religion. Let me give one simple example. No one could seriously assert that Hitler and the Nazis came out of Christianity. No one could seriously dispute that they came out of Christendom. In talking of Islam, we use the same word in both senses, and this gives rise to considerable confusion and misunderstanding. There are many things that are described as part of Islam, which are indeed part of Islam, if we take the word as the equivalent of Christendom, but are very much not part of Islam are even alien or hostile to Islam if we take the word Islam as the equivalent of Christianity. I think this is a very important point, which one should bear in mind.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Hostility, World, Religion, Thinking

“Theology, for the most part, adopts the personal point of view the point of view of our personal wants, fears, hopes, weaknesses, and shapes the universe with man as the centre. It has no trouble to believe in miracles, because miracles show the triumph of the personal element over impersonal law. Its strongest hold upon the mind of the race was in the pre-scientific age. It is the daughter of mythology, and has made the relation of the unseen powers to man quite as intimate and personal. It looks upon this little corner of the universe as the special theatre of the celestial powers powers to whom it has given the form and attributes of men, and to whom it ascribes curious plans and devices. Its point of view is more helpful and sustaining to the mass of mankind than that of science ever can be, because the mass of mankind are children, and are ruled by their affections and their emotions. Science chills and repels them, because it substitutes a world of force and law for a world of humanistic divinities.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. III: Science and Theology

Men, Children, Age, World

“Grandma asked me to confirm if I had landed in Canada and not any other country. I just pointed my camera towards the different direction where grandma could see some Sardar roaming here and there. ‘Aa ta Kanedda hi lagda hai.’ (it is Canada, indeed) grandma said in joy. We all laughed like anything.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

Grandma, Joy, Country

“Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie
y adentro de las casas tampoco?Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas.
Si no tienes dònde dormir
toca una puerta y te abrirán,
te abrirán hasta cierto punto
y verás que hace frío adentro,
que aquella casa está vacía,
y no quiere nada contigo,
no valen nada tus historias,
y si insistes con tu ternura
te muerden el perro y el gato.
Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).