Quotes about point
page 28

“So long as the man with ambition is a failure, the world will tell him to let go of his ideal; but when his ambition is realized, the world will praise him for the persistence and the determination that he manifested during his dark hours, and everybody will point to his life as an example for coming generations. This is invariably the rule. Therefore pay no attention to what the world says when you are down. Be determined to get up, to reach the highest goal you have in view, and you will.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 6, p. 101

Life, World, Failure

“My view point is essentially that of questioning layman, who enquires in order to find out the why and whither of human conduct and the achievements of history as well as the prospects of civilization.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

During his scholarly lecture tours as a philosopher, in Ghana, in Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar http://www.mysoresamachar.com/j_wadiyar_ann2.htm

History, Question

“And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"….
At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that Causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the Classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other Civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 104–06 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n573/mode/2up/search/depopulation The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Life, Marriage, Children, World

“Ah, sigh for us whose hearts unseeing
Point all their passionate love in vain,
And blinded in the joy of being,
Meet only when pain touches pain.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Love, Pain, Passion, Heart

“The opinion appears to be gaining ground that this very general conception of functionality, born on mathematical ground, is destined to supersede the narrower notion of causation, traditional in connection with the natural sciences. As an abstract formulation of the idea of determination in its most general sense, the notion of functionality includes and transcends the more special notion of causation as a one-sided determination of future phenomena by means of present conditions; it can be used to express the fact of the subsumption under a general law of past, present, and future alike, in a sequence of phenomena. From this point of view the remark of Huxley that Mathematics "knows nothing of causation" could only be taken to express the whole truth, if by the term "causation" is understood "efficient causation." The latter notion has, however, in recent times been to an increasing extent regarded as just as irrelevant in the natural sciences as it is in Mathematics; the idea of thorough-going determinancy, in accordance with formal law, being thought to be alone significant in either domain.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), p. 290 ; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 29): The Nature of Mathematics.

Truth, Law, Mathematics, Idea

“I know what turns me on, and it's that fine line, that point where you're falling off the edge of a cliff, where your stomach turns, [and] I'm always trying to find that point in music. You rarely hit it, and again, that's the joy of playing live, because there you can be just at that point where you've lost balance. I'm always walking between polarities, trying to find the opposing sides.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On creative aspirations, Drowned in Sound http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4562-i-want-to-have-a-past (2002)

Music, Joy

“… You should see the crowds of idle gapers that throng the depots at my arrival, and the swarms of females (they can't be called "ladies") that crowd the hotel halls and parlors in every place. It is unpleasant for me, who hate notoriety and publicity. They point at and touch me, exclaiming to one another, "That 's him!" "That 's Booth!" To-day they tried to get on the carriage that brought me to the hotel. Policemen had to keep the crowds back for me to pass through. I suppose they mean it all in kindness, but it is very disagreeable.”

Edwin Booth (1833–1893) 19th century American actor

letter to his daughter, 27 February 1876, quoted in Edwin Booth; recollections by his daughter Edwina Booth Grossman, and letters to her and to his friends https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.ajd9889.0001.001;view=1up;seq=68, 1902, p. 46

Hate

“In modern industry the managerial groups in many areas rise to a position more significant than that of the owners or the workers. Decision often rests largely in their hands, providing, of course, they are able to point to a generous measure of financial success in their particular enterprise. Wages to the workers, profits to the owners, prices and goods to the consumers--these are allocated in great measure by the managers of the concern and tolerated on the terms just stated.
The managerial group develops also in other social groups as well as in industry. Labor, agriculture, and professional associations tend to set up a strong structure in which the managerial skills and personalities are very prominent. In the ecclesiastical groupings this form of organization has long been evident, not only in the Catholic church but in other creeds and organizations as well.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

Source: Systematic Politics, 1943, p. 162-3 ; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 15-16

Decision, Strong, Success, Personality

“At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 12 (p. 116)

Question, Knowledge

“I was at a really low point, thinking of going to university and doing a course because the music thing just wasn't happening for me. But I went on the show and…”

Leona Lewis (1985) British singer-songwriter

Daily Mail, October 2007

Music, Thinking, Universe

“Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis
The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)

Country

“The night was long and dark and just
Another dagger to my trust.
I thrust it in until I bleed
I wiped my point for you to see. And anyway,
It's over now.
Nothing left to say.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

"Anyway" Official Video http://vimeo.com/12147261 - Performance on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (1 July 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TduFqUob4o Lyrics, Alicia Witt (2009) Context: I'm bruised again, I wear it well, The self-inflicted tale they tell. I singed my hair, I broke my nails. You'd love me then, If all else failed. The night was long and dark and just Another dagger to my trust. I thrust it in until I bleed I wiped my point for you to see. And anyway, It's over now. Nothing left to say. I don't know why, I don't care how, It's over anyway. It's broken in pieces. You've got the space you needed. Too late to try, Just say good-bye It's over anyway.

Night

“I believe people can solve complex problems eventually. By repeated trial and error they will get there; but they need a long time. At this point I agree with Herbert Simon. People do not learn immediately, as those rational expectations models seem to imply. I don't believe that.
The statement that assumptions do not matter is nonsense. It is funny. Yes, I assume people are consistent in their behavior. I assume that not because I believe everybody actually is, but because I believe, on the average, you do not get too far from it.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Conversations with Economists (1983)

People, Behavior, Error, Problem

“Everything I've done in the last few years has been grim and gritty and traumatic. I've played floozies, psychopaths, assassins, crackheads…. It's nice to do something with a lighter touch, something that makes you laugh but has a serious point to make. I get to wear a lot of great clothes as well.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Take a Girl Like You Cast and Credits http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/takeagirl/credits.html. pbs.org. 2000. Guillory speaks about her role in the television film, w:Take a Girl Like You.

Clothes

“It is a new form of leadership of states, never encountered yet. I don't know what designation it will be given, but it is a new form. I think that it is based on this state of mind, this state of high national consciousness which, sooner or later, spreads to the periphery of the national organism. It is a state of inner light. What previously slept in the souls of the people, as racial instinct, is in these moments reflected in their consciousness, creating a state of unanimous illumination, as found only in great religious experiences. This state could be rightly called a state of national oecumenicity. A people as a whole reach self-consciousness, consciousness of its meaning and its destiny in the world. In history, we have met in peoples nothing else than sparks, whereas, from this point of view, we have today permanent national phenomena. In this case, the leader is no longer a 'boss' who 'does what he wants', who rules according to 'his own good pleasure': he is the expression of this invisible state of mind, the symbol of this state of consciousness. He does not do what he wants, he does what he has to do. And he is guided, not by individual interests, nor by collective ones, but instead by the interests of the eternal nation, to the consciousness of which the people have attained. In the framework of these interests and only in their framework, personal interests as well as collective ones find the highest degree of normal satisfaction.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

On the form of government he plans on creating.
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

People, Pleasure, World, Soul

“The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it's told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

George Lucas, in Marc Lee "Film-makers on film: George Lucas"
2000s

People, Truth, Princess

“It returns us to the dark ages of human oppression, which America was founded to remove humanity from, and it is the whole point of the push for homosexual marriage and homosexual rights. The aim is not compassion for homosexuals, respect for homosexuals and all of this; the aim in the mind of these hardheaded, calculating, leftist, Communist, totalitarians is to destroy the family and to establish the notion that once you have seized power there is no limit whatsoever to what you can do. If you want to tolerate abuses then those abuses can be imposed upon the people. Once you establish that, the abuses are then not going to be confined to egregious outrages like this; those abuses are going to be committed against the whole society and they will in the end include the murder of the masses as has occurred in all Communist regimes that existed.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

2013-04-12
The Talk to Solomon Show Live, quoted in * 2013-04-12
Keyes: Gay Marriage Will Lead to Communism and 'The Murder of the Masses'
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/keyes-gay-marriage-will-lead-communism-and-murder-masses
2009

Marriage, People, Age, Family

“Everybody knows I worked with Rajiv closely and we also fought each other over our beliefs. We fought the elections on the (Bofors) issue and the people gave their electoral verdict. It was an honest fight and I want to make it clear that at no point of time did I make the charge that Rajiv personally took money in the Bofors affair.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

Source: Rediff.com, At no point did I charge that Rajiv personally took money in the Bofors affair http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/feb/07inter.htm, rediff.com, 7 February 2004.

Money, People, Time, Fight

“I think there are three possible scenarios for the future of Chinese writing, in all of which the government plays a major role. In the first, and at present apparently the least likely scenario, the government abandons its hostility to an expanded role for Pinyin and instead fosters a climate of digraphia and biliteracy in which those who can do so become literate in both characters and Pinyin, and those who cannot are at least literate in Pinyin. This is essentially a reversion to the Latinization movement of the 1930s and 1940s, when Mao Zedong and other high Communist Party officials like Xu Teli, the commissioner of education in Yan'an, lent their prestigious support to the New Writing. Such a change within the governing bureaucracy would in all likelihood result in an explosion of activity that might end in Pinyin ascendancy in use over characters in less than a generation.
In the second scenario the government adopts a policy of benign indifference that involves abandoning its hostility toward Pinyin but without actively supporting it, leaving it up to the rival protagonists of the two systems to contest for supremacy among themselves. This is likely to result in a somewhat longer struggle.
In the third scenario the government continues its present policy of repression, resulting in a much more protracted struggle (though surely not as long as the fascinating parallel struggle between Latin and Italian in Italy, where it took 500 [! ] years after Dante’s start in 1292 for academics, the last holdouts, to finally abandon their long resistance and start using Italian in university lectures).47 In this long struggle, PCs and mobile phones and other innovations still to come will undoubtedly allow more and more advocates of writing reform to escape the stranglehold of officialdom, to the point where (in a century or so?) characters are finally relegated to the status of Latin in the West.
My own view is that this is actually the least likely scenario, the most probable one being that the Chinese pragmatism that has manifested itself so strongly in economics will extend further into writing, and that, perhaps sooner rather than later, given the success of the promotion of Mandarin, some influential Party bureaucrats will finally arrive at the conclusion that the "some day in the future" anticipated by Mao has arrived, and that wholehearted Party support should now be unleashed for his anticipated "basic reform."”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

In any case it is basically all a matter of time. And the decisive factor that will seal the ultimate fate of Chinese characters is the new reality, noted by a perceptive observer, that "the PC is mightier than the Pen." "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006, p. 20-21) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006)

Hostility, Fate, Education, Support

“I don’t know whether I am [a world historical figure] or not. But certainly, I do know that I am probably the most Nigerian of Nigerians alive today. I also know that the failure of Nigeria has created a reflex and that reflex can be called Biafra. I know that in the context of Biafra that existed, I am very important. Having said that, I feel that I have a responsibility to always point out the deficiencies of Nigeria and to keep alive the alternative. That’s why I say that there will always be, if not the Biafra of territory, Biafra of the heart.”

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

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

World, Feeling, Failure, Heart

“The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related. We have now whole congregations whose preachers, far from magnifying our consciousness of sin, seem devoted rather to making little of it. They ignore, or even deny, eternal punishment, and insist on the dignity rather than on the depravity of man. They look at the continual preoccupation of the old-fashioned Christian with the salvation of his soul as something sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a sanguine and 'muscular' attitude, which to our forefathers would have seemed purely heathen, has become in their eyes an ideal element of Christian character. I am not asking whether or not they are right, I am only pointing out the change.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures IV and V, "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Soul, Fashion, Hell, Change

“I like to take man-made objects and push them to the point where they almost lose their reference, so that they become something else, take on other alliances.”

Cornelia Parker (1956) English artist

Quote in: Cornelia Parker - Quotes - The European Graduate School http://www.egs.edu/faculty/cornelia-parker/quotes/, at egs.edu, 2015.

“Any talk about God that fails to make God's liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. 4

God

“Then, finally, it can become so morbid that it rises to ominous proportions and leads to a tragic sense of persecution. There are persons who come to the point that they are so self-centered that they end up with a persecution complex and the end result is insanity. They end up thinking that the universe stands against them, that everybody is against them. They are turning around within themselves. They are little solar systems within themselves and they can’t see beyond that. And as a result of their failure to get out of self, they end up with a persecution complex and sometimes madness and insanity. These are some of the effects of selfcenteredness.”

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

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Failure, Thinking, Sense, Universe

“The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. …No organ in the history of life has grown faster.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Life, History

“The Gospel of Efficiency. Every era, as Carl Becker has reminded us in his Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, has a few words that epitomize its world-view and that are fixed points by which all else can be measured. In the Middle Ages they were such words as faith, grace, and God; in the eighteenth century they were such words as reason, nature, and rights; during the past fifty years in America they have been such words as cause, reaction, scientific, expert, progress and efficient. Efficiency is a natural ideal for a relatively immature and extrovert culture, but presumably its high development and wide acceptance are due to the fact that ours has been, par excellence, a machine civilization. At any event, efficiency grew to be a national catchword in the Progressive era as mechanization became the rule in American life, and it frequently appears in the literature of the period entangled in mechanical metaphor.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 19

Life, God, Age, World

“At this time it is difficult to put one's finger on any single contribution in the decade 1950 - 1960 which is comparable to those above, and yet progress has probably been even greater. From the point of view of an educator, one cannot overlook the wide distribution which has been given to these ideas. There has been remarkable progress from analysis to synthesis, always a sign of maturity in a field of analytic endeavour. There has been consolidation, for example in the establishment of a more rigorous basis for information theory; there has been unification, for example in the demonstration of the formal similarity between game theory and linear programming; there has been application to mathematically more difficult situations, for example nonlinear servo systems and information channels with memory; there has been implementation, as in commercially available computers which by any reasonable measure are hun- dreds of times more powerful than the primitive devices of 1950; there has been de-limitation of the boundaries of many of these fields.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Information and Decision Processes (1960), p. viii

Education, Game, Mathematics, Idea

“The creationist is a sham religious person who, curiously, has no true sense of religion. In the language of religion, it is the facts we observe in the world around us that must be seen to constitute the words of God. Documents, whether the Bible, Qur'an or those writings that held such force for Velikovsky, are only the words of men. To prefer the words of men to those of God is what one can mean by blasphemy. This, we think, is the instinctive point of view of most scientists who, curiously again, have a deeper understanding of the real nature of religion than have the many who delude themselves into a frenzied belief in the words, often the meaningless words, of men. Indeed, the lesser the meaning, the greater the frenzy, in something like inverse proportion.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Our Place in the Cosmos (1993), p. 14

Men, God, World, Religion

“Q: My wife and I are expecting our first child, in April 2nd, next year. And frankly, we're scared. We're scared of an Obama presidency…
John McCain: First of all, I want to be President of the United States and obviously, I don't want Senator Obama to be. But, I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States. Now, I just— [crowd boos] Now look, if I didn't think I would be one heck of a lot better president I wouldn't be runnin', okay, and that's the point.”

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

2000s, 2008

Thinking, Personality

“The debate has not genuinely altered the old consensus, but it has been an interesting case-study in manipulation by unscrupled academics. How else should we call the practice of seemingly learned publications advertising themselves as "objective" studies of the controversy, but systematically concealing the arguments put forth by one of the parties? … The VHP scholars have pointed out 4 cases of attempted fraud by their opponents”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

removing relevant old books from libraries, adding words on an old map
1990s, The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation (1995)

Books, Fraud, Study, Learning

“We do not mechanically connect the sensation of white with the idea of light, any more than we connect the sensation of black with the idea of darkness. We admit that a black jewel, even if of a dead black, may be more luminous than the white or pink satin of its case. Loving light, we refuse to measure it, and we avoid the geometrical ideas of the focus and the ray, which imply the repetition-contrary to the principle of variety which guides us-of bright planes and sombre intervals in a given direction. Loving colour, we refuse to limit it, and subdued or dazzling, fresh or muddy, we accept all the possibilities contained between the two extreme points of the spectrum, between the cold and the warm tone.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Du Cubisme (1912)

Love, Idea, Light, Dead

“There’s a point, around age twenty,” Bedap said, “when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 8 (p. 249)

Life, Age

“I think it is fair to say that 2007 represents a turning point for the Irish economy.”

Brian Cowen (1960) Irish politician

Tansey, Paul and Beesley, Arthur, Tough Budget on way as growth slows down", The Irish Times, 19 October 2007, 2008-05-07 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2007/1019/1192737567227.html, 2007

Thinking

“As you know, I do not believe that the Mahatma's principle [of non-cooperation] can be the true foundation or his programme the true means of bringing out the genuine freedom and greatness of India, her Swarajya and Samrajya. On the other hand … I hold that school [of Tilakite nationalism] to be out of date. My own policy, if I were in the field, would be radically different in principle and programme from both, however it might coincide in certain points. But the country is not yet ready to understand its principle or to execute its programme…. Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and forces, which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

December 1, 1922
India's Rebirth

School, Idea, Understanding, Freedom

“The generalist, is like the fox, who knows many things. Just as anthropologists learn to live in many cultures, without rifles, so do certain scientists manage to adapt comfortably to the paradigms of several disciplines. How do they do it? When questioned, these generalists always express an inner faith in the unity of science. They, too, carry a single paradigm, but it is one taken from a much higher vantage point, one from which the paradigms of the different disciplines are seen to be very much alike, though often obscured by special language.”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Source: Introduction to General Systems Thinking, 1975, p. 34; Quote in: Franz Pichler, Roberto Moreno Diaz (1993. Computer Aided Systems Theory. p. 134

Faith, Question, Learning, Science

“At this point water-tight compartments of university specialization and theories founded on the selected isolation of facts easily break down. Specialized thinking is rarely a sufficient foundation for concrete decisions involving action. The social scientist cannot often form sound administrative judgments solely on the basis of elements which he has picked out simply because they relate directly to his particular specialty. The present emphasis on artificial subdivisions of knowledge and on specialized thinking and teaching in universities, technical schools, and colleges and the relative neglect of administrative problems involving action have a dangerously narrowing effect on graduates of these institutions. While we may and frequently do arouse the intellectual interest of students in a considerable variety of subjects intimately related to the civilization of which they are a part, we pay almost no attention to the web of cross ties among these subjects.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Training for Leadership in a Democracy", 1936, p. 65-70, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 663

School, Knowledge, Problem, Thinking

“As they say in Hindi ‘Chalti ka naam zindagi.’ Anybody who is just sitting (even on the right track) will be run over (by the train) at some point in life.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

In the news

Life, Training

“While the Marxist faith in central planning is now confined to a few dingy sects, a quasi-religious belief in free markets continues to shape the policies of governments.Many writers have pointed to the havoc and ruin that have accompanied the imposition of free markets across the world. Whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or post-communist Europe, policies of wholesale privatisation and structural adjustment have led to declining economic activity and social dislocation on a massive scale.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"The end of the world as we know it," http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/sep/15/politics The Guardian (2007-09-15)

World, Faith

“At this moment, God is watching your life and at some point in this trial, He will say enough. You don’t need to falter.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 109

Life, God

“…a few years back, in the 1980s, in our efforts to bring peace and democracy to the world we assisted the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and in our infinite wisdom we gave money, technology and training to Bin Laden, and now, this very year, we have declared that Bin Laden was responsible for the bombing in Africa. So what is our response, because we allow our President to pursue war too easily? What was the President's response? Some even say that it might have been for other reasons than for national security reasons. So he goes off and bombs Afghanistan, and he goes off and bombs Sudan, and now the record shows that very likely the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was precisely that, a pharmaceutical plant… As my colleagues know, at the end of this bill I think we get a hint as to why we do not go to Rwanda for humanitarian reasons… I think it has something to do with money, and I think it has something to do with oil… they are asking to set up and check into the funds that Saddam Hussein owes to the west. Who is owed? They do not owe me any money. But I will bet my colleagues there is a lot of banks in New York who are owed a lot of money, and this is one of the goals…
Dana Rohrabacher: This resolution is exactly the right formula… Support democracy. Oppose tyranny. Oppose aggression and repression… We should strengthen the victims so they can defend themselves. These things are totally consistent with America's philosophy, and it is a pragmatic approach as well… Our support for the Mujahedin collapsed the Soviet Union. Yes, there was a price to pay, because after the Soviet Union collapsed, we walked away, and we did not support those elements in the Mujahedin who were somewhat in favor of the freedom and western values. With those people who oppose this effort of pro democracy foreign policy, a pro freedom foreign policy rather than isolation foreign policy, they would have had us stay out of that war in Afghanistan. They would never have had us confronting Soviet aggression in different parts of the world… Mr. Speaker, the gentleman does not think it is proper for us to offer those people who are struggling for freedoms in Iraq against their dictatorship a helping hand?
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it would be absolutely proper to do that, as long as it came out of the gentleman's wallet and we did not extract it from somebody in this country, a taxpayer at the point of a gun and say, look, bin Laden is a great guy. I want more of your money. That is what we did in the 1980s. That is what the Congress did. They went to the taxpayers, they put a gun to their head, and said, you pay up, because we think bin Laden is a freedom fighter.
Dana Rohrabacher: Well, if the gentleman will further yield, it was just not handled correctly.
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, again reclaiming my time, the policy is flawed. The policy is flawed.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Debate on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 5, 1998 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec98/cr100598.htm 1990s

Wisdom, Money, War, People

“To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

Fourth Century, sect. 20.
Centuries of Meditations

Wisdom, World, Thinking

“I will give you more and stronger ones. But if you still persist in refusing to listen to reason and decline to do my bidding, and if you wish deliberately to rush to your ruin, then I will shortly, in your presence, order your Castle to be stormed. (Here he pointed with one hand towards Fort Provintia.) My smart boys will attack it, conquer it, and demolish it in such a way, that not one stone will remain standing. If I wish to set my forces to work, then I am able to move Heaven and Earth; wherever I go, I am destined to win. Therefore take warning, and think the matter well over.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, 1903, William Campbell, Kegan Paul, 424, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=OpdMq-YJoeoC&pg=PA423&dq=koxinga+formosa+always+belonged+to+china&hl=en&ei=vsjiTergDM3TgAekqbzKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=same%20doom%20had%20they%20not%20taken%20to%20flight%20and%20gone%20out%20to%20sea.&f=false, Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)

Way, Boy, Thinking

“I believe they point to a fundamental truth about our economy. It can seem like a zero sum, when you are competing for a job, a promotion, or a contract if someone wins and someone loses, but that is not the full picture. If you step back, you’ll see we’re all in this together. If we can grow together, we can all rise together. Because, you know what I like to say, we are stronger together, and that’s why the fourth question is key.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

Truth, Question

“Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over… [they] now mean the establishment point of view… Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

The Progressive, Interview with John Pilger http://www.progressive.org/nov02/intv1102.html, November 2002

Truth, World, Problem, Thinking

“From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris at Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Discussion on Free Will http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM3raA1EwrI. 2010s

Love

“Certain anthropologists would fain teach us that all races are equally gifted; we point to history and answer: that is a lie! The races of mankind are markedly different in the nature and also in the extent of their gifts, and the Germanic races belong to the most highly gifted group, the group usually termed Aryan… Physically and mentally the Aryans are pre-eminent among all peoples; for that reason they are by right … the lords of the world. Do we not see the homo syriacus develop just as well and as happily in the position of slave as of master? Do the Chinese not show us another example of the same nature?”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

People, Lie, World, History

“We’re about to see a genocide and if Trump doesn’t keep his promises on immigration, in about two generations that’s going to be the United States of America, so get used to it. But we are seeing a genocide there, and if we’re going to take any refugees it seems to me it ought to be particularly these white farmers who are being chosen and killed in really horrible ways,” she declared. “They’re not just going in and shooting them point blank, they’re really disgusting. They’re boiling people to death, just really sick tortures. They’re outnumbered, there aren’t that many of them, they’re going to be wiped out.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Coulter on South African ‘Genocide’: ‘No One Under Fifty Is Getting News from the Mainstream Media Anymore’
2018-04-05
Brietbart News
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/04/05/ann-coulter-south-african-genocide-white-farmers-breitbart-news-town-hall/
2018

Death, People, Way

“The promoters of every private bill have to satisfy the [Parliamentary] Committee that their proposals are sufficiently beneficial to the public to justify the Committee in entrusting them with the special powers necessary to carry them out; it is only on this condition that private rights and interests can be required to give way to public necessity. The task of the Committee is to examine the proposals from this point of view and for this purpose to hear the arguments and evidence both of the promoters and of thhe opponents, being specially vigilant to see that justice is done by way of compensation and protection to those who may be called upon to make sacrifices for the public benefit. The range of the subjects which may come before Parliament by way of private bill is immensely varied, including such matters as the construction of railways, the building of harbours and bridges, the extension of city boundaries, the development of water power and electricity, the provision of water supplies, and the alteration of the constitution and objects of charitable and educational institutions.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 58

Education, Justice, Way, Water

“The end of the government being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the security, the quiet, the happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Life, Happiness

“The essence of U. S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", pp. 365–366

World

“As is known, scientific physics dates its existence from the discovery of the differential calculus. Only when it was learned how to follow continuously the course of natural events, attempts, to construct by means of abstract conceptions the connection between phenomena, met with success. To do this two things are necessary: First, simple fundamental concepts with which to construct; second, some method by which to deduce, from the simple fundamental laws of the construction which relate to instants of time and points in space, laws for finite intervals and distances, which alone are accessible to observation”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

can be compared with experience Die partiellen Differentialgleichungen der mathematischen Physik (1882) as quoted by Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath's Quotation-book https://books.google.com/books?id=G0wtAAAAYAAJ (1914) p. 239

Law, Nature, Learning, Time

“We have seen that though Cristna was said to have left many sons, he left his immense empire, which extended from the sources of the Indus to Cape Comorin, (for we find a Regio Pandionis near this point,) to his daughter Pandæa; but, from finding the icon of Buddha so constantly shaded with the nine Cobras, &c., I am induced to think that this Pandeism was a doctrine, which had been received both by Buddhists and Brahmins.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 439.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Thinking, Daughters

“If you could make people with ten-point-higher IQs, we'd probably have fewer wars.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

What I've Learned: James Watson (2007)

War, People

“Where hate preaching is not illegal it should at least be thoroughly answered point-by-point with a very robust defence of human rights and responsibilities.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2015, The religion of Islam must reform (December 9, 2015)

Hate

“Content is nothing but the sum of organized tensions. From this point of view one can discover the basic identity of the rules of composition in all arts – always accepting that the arts can only represent their object materially by means of organised reactions.... already today one can safely assume that the roots of laws of composition are the same for art as they are for nature.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from: 'Analysis of the Primary Elements of Painting', W. Kandinsky, 1928
1920 - 1930

Law, Art, Nature

“I have never said that the terrorists' interpretation of Islam is the accurate or correct one. But I have pointed out that the terrorists portray themselves quite successfully among Muslims as the exponents of true and pure Islam, and moderates have mounted no successful response as yet.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

Honesty is the best policy, Bob http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2007/07/017443print.html, July 19, 2007: About moderation in Islam

Success

“I still believe that a plant-based diet has tremendous health benefits but I have incorporated more animal protein into my diet. I found that my body personally got to a point where I needed something more. I used to yell at people who said that, but now all of a sudden, my body just kind of went, ‘I need something.”

Bob Harper (personal trainer) (1965) American personal trainer

"Bob Harper of "Biggest Loser" talks diet, fitness" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-biggestloser/bob-harper-of-biggest-loser-talks-diet-fitness-idUSTRE78F2CV20110916, interview with Reuters (September 16, 2011).

People, Health, Animals, Personality

“…the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves…”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), pp. 3-4

Life, Money, World, Way

“Looked at from the point of view of other organisms, humankind resembles an acute epidemic disease, whose occasional lapses into less virulent forms of behavior have never yet sufficed to permit any really stable, chronic relationship to establish itself.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.1.

Disease, Behavior

“Friends and fellow citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with the broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our congregation — in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Men, World, Law, Beauty

“A theology which has as its points of reference only "truths" which have been established once and for all—and not the Truth which is also the Way—can only be static and, in the long run, sterile.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation (1971), p. 13

Truth, Way

“Well, at first I thought it was a very inappropriate question, you know, for the presidency to be decided on a scientific matter. And uh, I um, I think it's a theory — the theory of evolution. And I don't accept it, you know, as a theory. But it really doesn't bother me, it's not the most important issue for me, to make the difference in my life, to understand the exact origin. I think the creator that I know, uh, you know created us, every one of us and created the universe, and the precise time and manner and uh, you know, I just don't think we're at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

asked if he believes the theory of evolution to be true or false
2000s, 2006-2009

Life, Understanding, Question, Thinking

“Our experiences have taught us that no matter how silly it may look today, it might become correct at some point in the future when the criteria used for evaluation are changed”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

Change, Future

“The Soviets are a new state apparatus which, in the first place, provides an armed force of workers and peasants; and this force is not divorced from the people, as was the old standing army, but is very closely bound up with the people, From the military point of view this force is incomparably more powerful than previous forces; from the revolutionary point of view, it cannot be replaced by anything else.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, (1917)
1910s

People

“The mad idea that the Jews have no right to exist is a potent intensifier of the almost equally mad idea that the State of Israel can somehow be eliminated. I say 'almost' because a friend of mine in Australia recently presented me with a plausible case that the Middle East would probably be a more peaceful area if the State of Israel had never been founded. Like her argument that the Aborigines would have been a lot happier if the Europeans had never shown up, this contention was hard to rebut, except by rudely pointing out that we were both sitting in an Italian restaurant in Melbourne, history having happened.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'The University of the Holocaust: On Anti-Semitism Now' (Sunday Times, March 28, 2004)
Essays and reviews

Peace, History, Idea, Madness

“Have you ever noticed flocks of swallows flying past between the lines of certain books, whole verses of trembling, pointed swallows? One must interpret the flights of those birds…”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Spring” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/spring01.htm His father, Books

Books, Bird, Past, Flying

“Although it may be extremely reasonable (especially from our present vantage point) to conclude that some part of human evolution, if not aspects of the diversification of hominoids in general, is indeed preserved in the fossil record of Africa, this does not in and of itself lead inexorably to the conclusion that humans and African apes are closely related.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

5 History, Morphology, Paleontology, and Evolution
Orang-utan Biology (1988)

Parting

“Squads of soldiers descended upon isolated Cherokee farms and at bayonet point marched the families off to what today would be known as concentration camps”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: ... five thousand finally consented to be marched westward, but another fifteen thousand clung to their neat farms, schools, and libraries "of good books." So General Winfield Scott set about systematically extirpating the rebellious ones. Squads of soldiers descended upon isolated Cherokee farms and at bayonet point marched the families off to what today would be known as concentration camps. Torn from their homes with all the dispatch and efficiency the Nazis displayed under similar circumstances... No way existed for the Cherokee family to sell its property and possessions, and the local Whites fell upon the lands, looting, burning, and finally taking possession.

Family

“About 55 percent of the population believe that (UFOs) are real and that some segment of the government is hiding it from them. That's a majority of the population, more people than voted for Clinton in the last election. About 10 percent of Americans have seen (a UFO) at some point. If you go out and talk to people, they believe this stuff is real.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Greer cites both the Gallup and Harris polls in this quote.
Undated

People

“The day will come, sooner or later, when people will wonder at the necessity of taking all this trouble to expose the folly of a system, so childish and absurd, and yet so often enforced at the point of a bayonet.”

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

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XVII, Digression, p. 159

People

“My Marxist outlook pointed out to me with an illuminating clarity that women's liberation could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and a different economic system.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Women, Victory

“The concept of the infinitely small is involved in the relation of points to a line or the relation of the discrete to the continuous, and Zeno's paradoxes may have caused the Greeks to shy away from this subject.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 175

“But freedom without law is freedom only for the strong at the expense of the weak. Freedom without law is therefore no freedom, but rather anarchy or tyranny. Law is the bond of all civil society. We are not asking a favour of a man when we ask him to obey the law. Obedience of the rule of law is necessary for the continuance of liberty itself. Doubtless you will point out that laws have not always been just—indeed they have been very unjust. In South Africa that certainly has been the case. Thankfully, that is now being remedied. And alongside that, democracy has yet to be achieved.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in South Africa (20 May 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108268 Post-Prime Ministerial

Law, Democracy, Freedom, Strong

“From the way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art.”

Yasunari Kawabata book The Master of Go

Source: The Master of Go (1951), Ch. 12, p. 52.

Life, Beauty, Art, Way

“The point of departure is the measurement problem, as it appears in physics; the manner in which measurements allow us to characterize subsystems; the role of such subsystems as tools in system analysis; and the relationships existing between different ways of perceiving or interacting with the same system. Our conclusions are: (1) there exists no universal family of of analytic units appropriate for the treatment of all interactions; (2) there are on the contrary many such families of analytic units, all of which are equally “real” and entitled to be treated on the same footing; (3) the appropriate use of natural interactions can enormously extend the class of physical observables accessible to us; (4) the concept of a model must be formulated, in its most general terms, as the sharing of a subsystem by two otherwise distinct systems, capable of imposing the same dynamic on an appropriate system with which they can both interact. We establish these results through a variety of terminologies which turn out to be equivalent: stability, invariance, symmetry, homeostasis.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Introduction; Quoted in: " Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems by Robert Rosen http://www.panmere.com/?page_id=15" at panmere.com. Fundamentals of measurement and representation of natural systems. (1978)

Family, Way, Departure, Nature

“[T]hough religious thinkers will fight fiercely to show its standpoint to be the one religion really sanctions, each religion has signposts pointing in both ways. One the one hand towards a fundamentalist, authoritarian strain that insists if you want to be faithful you have to crucify your intellect; that is to believe just because your belief is absurd. And on the other hand, each of the three western religions has a rationalist tradition… far from viewing our capacity for reason as threatening our capacity to obey god, this tradition sees thinking as its very fulfillment. There are actually some wonderful Jewish parables, which show God laughing with pleasure as human beings defeat him with a particularly good argument. That is, god would rather be impressed than right on certain Jewish rationalist traditions. So if reason is God’s gift then he meant us to use it even against him if he is wrong or hasty. On this tradition our ability to make sense of the world whether with science or through the right moral actions, is just one more proof of gods goodness.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

God, Pleasure, World, Faith

“The Assault Weapons Ban deals with a fictional distinction. You have guns that are exactly the same guns as are banned, in function, that were banned because of the way they look. And you know, that's the whole truth of this policy: it's to make politicians look as if they are doing something, when in point of fact, they are doing nothing.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Alan Keyes, U.S. Senate debate in Illinois, October 21, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/media/debates/04_10_21debate2.htm. 2009

Truth, Way

“In recent years, demagogy, violence, cruelty, and vileness have seized a great country embarked on the path of socialist development. I refer, of course, to China. It is impossible without horror and pain to read about the mass contagion of anti-humanism being spread by "the great helmsman" and his accomplices, about the Red Guards who, according to the Chinese radio, "jumped with joy" during public executions of "ideological enemies" of Chairman Mao.
The idiocy of the cult of personality has assumed in China monstrous, grotesquely tragicomic forms, carrying to the point of absurdity many of the traits of Stalinism and Hitlerism. But this absurdity has proved effective in making fools of tens of millions of people and in destroying and humiliating millions of intelligent citizens.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

Pain, People, Fools, Intelligence

“I charged into something which might have been a tree, but was not--being, in point of fact, Jeeves.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Tree

“To this I can only reply as follows: Your point of view — taken as theoretical possibility — is incontestable. For me, however, the expectation that the adequate formulation of the universal laws involves the use of all conceptual elements which are necessary for a complete description, is more natural. It is furthermore not at all surprising that, by using an incomplete description, (in the main) only statistical statements can be obtained out of such description. If it should be possible to move forward to a complete description, it is likely that the laws would represent relations among all the conceptual elements of this description which, per se, have nothing to do with statistics.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Cambridge University Press, 1949, p. 672
"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949)

Law, Nature, Universe

“By consequence I hold that no one ever did, or can do, anything for "society."… Comte invented the term altruism as an antonym for egoism, and it found its way at once into everyone's mouth, although it is utterly devoid of meaning, since it points to nothing that ever existed in mankind; This hybrid or rather this degenerate form of hedonism served powerfully to invest collectivism's principles with a specious moral sanction, and collectivists naturally made the most of it.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 305

Way, Nature

“The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular.”

Richard Shweder (1945) American anthropologist

Why do Men Barbecue? (2003).

World

“The first attempts to consider the behavior of so-called "random neural nets" in a systematic way have led to a series of problems concerned with relations between the "structure" and the "function" of such nets. The "structure" of a random net is not a clearly defined topological manifold such as could be used to describe a circuit with explicitly given connections. In a random neural net, one does not speak of "this" neuron synapsing on "that" one, but rather in terms of tendencies and probabilities associated with points or regions in the net.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport. "Cycle distributions in random nets." The bulletin of mathematical biophysics 10.3 (1948): 145-157.
1940s

Way, Behavior, Problem

“It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 18
The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

Way

“Of all the ridiculous expressions people use--and people use a great many ridiculous expressions--one of the most ridiculous is "No news is good news." "No news is good news" simply means that if you don't hear from someone, everything is probably fine, and you can see at once why this expression makes such little sense, because everything being fine is only one of many, many reasons why someone may not contact you. Perhaps they are tied up. Maybe they are surrounded by fierce weasels, or perhaps they are wedged tightly between two refrigerators and cannot get themselves out. The expression might as well be changed to "no news is bad news," except that people may not be able to contact you because they have just been crowned king or are competing in a gymnastics tournament. The point is that there is no way to know why someone has not contacted you, until they contact you and explain themselves. For this reason, the sensible expression would be "no news is no news," except that it is so obvious that it is hardly an expression at all.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

People, Way, Sense, Change

“Well I'm not sure which ones you're talking about, but I can tell you the people who have looked at the charges that the Obama campaign comes out with, which is that somehow we outsourced jobs, they've said that those were false and misleading. That the ads are inaccurate. Some have given it multiple Pinocchios. The president keeps on trying to divert any attention he can from his failure to turn around the American economy, and that's what this campaign's about. But the president keeps on trying to find something about Bain which is simply not true. And I left Bain in February of 1999. People can point out how - I was in Salt Lake City for three straight years. I don't recall even coming back once to go to a Bain or management meeting. We were, I was out there running the Olympics and it was a full time job, I can tell you that.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-07-13
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57472298/romney-interview-with-cbs-news-full-transcript/
Romney interview with CBS News: Full transcript
CBS News
2012

People, Failure, Time, Falseness

“(…) I have written so far around 200 books and articles on different aspects of science, philosophy, theology, and hekmat (wisdom). (…) I never entered the service of any king as a military man or a man of office, and if I ever did have a conversation with a king, it never went beyond my medical responsibility and advice. (…) Those who have seen me know, that I did not into excess with eating, drinking or acting the wrong way. As to my interest in lil pump yuhh!! people know perfectly well and must have witnessed how I have devoted all my life to science since my youth. My patience and diligence in the pursuit of science has been such that on one special issue specifically I have written 20,000 pages (in small print), moreover I spent fifteen years of my life - night and day - writing the big collection entitled Al Hawi. It was during this time that I lost my eyesight, my hand became paralyzed, with the result that I am now deprived of reading and writing. Nonetheless, I've never given up, but kept on reading and writing with the help of others. I could make concessions with my opponents and admit some shortcomings, but I am most curious what they have to say about my scientific achievement. If they consider my approach incorrect, they could present their views and state their points clearly, so that I may study them, and if I determined their views to be right, I would admit it. However, if I disagreed, I would discuss the matter to prove my standpoint. If this is not the case, and they merely disagree with my approach and way of life, I would appreciate they only use my written knowledge and stop interfering with my behaviour.”

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865–925) Persian polymath, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher

Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists

Life, Wisdom, People, Books

“One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."… the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion…. The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books, Mathematics, Understanding, Science

“The construction of an economic model, or of any model or theory for that matter (or the writing of a novel, a short story, or a play) consists of snatching from the enormous and complex mass of facts called reality, a few simple, easily-managed key points which, when put together in some cunning way, become for certain purposes a substitute for reality itself.”

Evsey Domar (1914–1997) American economist

Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth (1957)

Way, Reality

“For Muslims the Islamic Shari'ah, or Divine Law, is the concrete embodiment of the Divine Will as elaborated in the Quran for the followers of Islam; and from the Islamic point of view the scriptures of all divinely revealed religions, each of which possesses its own Shari'ah, have the same function in those religions. For Muslims, who accept the Quran as the Word of God, therefore, following the Divine Law is basic and foundational for the practice of their religion.”

Seyyed Hossein Nasr book The Study Quran

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary https://books.google.com/books?id=GVSzBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover (2015)

God, Religion, Law

“Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it.”

M. R. James (1862–1936) British writer

"Some Remarks on Ghost Stories", in The Bookman, December 1929; cited from Michael Cox M. R. James: An Informal Portrait (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 150.

“We should treat with great respect the opinion of eminent American lawyers on points which arise before us, but the practice, which seems to be increasing, of quoting American decisions as authorities, in the same way as if they were decisions of our own Courts, is wrong. Among other things it involves an inquiry, which often is not an easy one, whether the law of America on the subject in which the point arises is the same as our own.”

Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury (1823–1921) British politician

In re Missouri Steamship Company (1889), L. R. 42 C. D. 330.

Law, Way, Quotes, Decision

“I would try out the [C++] language [at AT&T] as it was being developed and make comments on it. It was part of the work atmosphere there. And you'd write something and then the next day it wouldn't work because the language changed. It was very unstable for a very long period of time. At some point, I said, no, no more. In an interview I said exactly that, that I didn't use it because it wouldn't stay still for two days in a row. When Stroustrup read the interview he came screaming into my room about how I was undermining him and what I said mattered and I said it was a bad language.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

Ken Thompson; cited in [Seibel, Peter, Coders At Work, 2009, 475]
"Coders At Work", 2009

Change, Time, Reading, Parting

“.. About my work Howard – I always have two opinions – one is my way of seeing it for myself – and for myself I am never satisfied – never really – I almost always fail – always I think – now next time I can do it – Maybe that is part of what keeps one working – I can also look at myself – by that I mean my work from the point of view of the looking public – and that is the way I look at it when I think of showing. I have always first had a show for myself – and made up my mind – then after that it doesn't matter to me very much what anyone else say – good or bad.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to William Howard Schubart, (nephew of her died husband), Abiquiu, New Mexico, August 4, 1950; as quoted in Voicing our visions, -Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 228
1950 - 1970

Way, Thinking, Time, Parting