Quotes about point
page 40

“By this point he had seen enough of them to know that they were cooler under pressure, and better to be within a tight spot, than 999 out of 1,000 women. But their presence obliged him to divert a significant fraction of his attention into being considerate of their needs, responding to their inquiries, and keeping them alive.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 21
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

Women

“The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=505&invol=672 (concurring opinion) (26 June 1992).

“I've seen how other writers have approached the relationships in the Arthurian cycle in this century, and it does seem to me that while some of the characters get treated fairly, others do not. And the point is, it's one of those kinds of legends in which no one is totally wrong, not even Modred. It presents a collision of necessities, and Modred has his own political reality.”

C. J. Cherryh (1942) United States science fiction and fantasy author

The Camelot Project interview (1996)

Reality

“It was irritating to have one's physical shortcomings pointed out quite so plainly twice in one evening, once by a beautiful girl and once by a dying badger.”

Tom Holt book Expecting Someone Taller

Expecting Someone Taller (1987)

Beauty, Girl

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Way, Science

“What is philosophy? This is a notoriously difficult question. One of the easiest ways of answering it is to say that philosophy is what philosophers do, and then point to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and other famous philosophers. However, this answer is unlikely to be of much use to you if you are just beginning the subject, as you probably won’t have read anything by these writers.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

Way, Question, Reading

“The Christian's life on this side and beyond the grave is essentially the same, differing only as a song which, at a certain point, changes from the minor to the major key, and thenceforth wells along with still more glorious harmonies.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 118.

Life, Change

“And so I look back on not just the last ten years but everything that I've done as being sort of an ongoing growing continual film school. I mean I don't think I've got to a point where I've achieved anything that feels like, a particular milestone, but there's still a lot more to learn and hopefully a lot more films to make.”

Peter Jackson (1961) New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter

Darkhorizons interview (27 March 2006)

School, Feeling, Thinking, Learning

“The universality, invariance, and elegance of principles governing the universe may be reflected in principles of the minds that have evolved in that universe - provided that the mental principles are formulated with respect to the abstract spaces appropriate for the representation of biologically significant objects and their properties. (1) Positions and motions of objects conserve their shapes in the geometrically fullest and simplest way when represented as points and connecting geodesic paths in the six-dimensional manifold jointly determined by the Euclidean group of three· dimensional space and the symmetry group of each object. (2) Colors of objects attain constancy when represented as points in a three-dimensional vector space in which each variation in natural illumination is cancelled by application of its inverse from the three-dimensional linear group of terrestrial transformations of the invariant solar source. (3) Kinds of objects support optimal generalization and categorization when represented, in an evolutionarily shaped space of possible objects, as connected regions with associated weights determined by Bayesian revision of maximum entropy priors”

Roger Shepard (1929) American psychologist

R. N. Shepard, (1994). "Perceptual-cognitive universals as reflections of the world." Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 1, 2–28.

Color, Way, Optimism, Support

“It was G. K. Chesterton who trenchantly reminded us that, if one was going to preach, then it was more sensible to expend one's energies on addressing the converted rather than the unconverted. It was the former, after all, that were—and even more so are—in constant danger of missing the point and sliding away from the Faith into some vague sort of syncretistic, gnostic, gobbledegook. Chesterton, as ever, was right and should you think this is just another of his tiresome paradoxes may I urge you to re-read him: his prescience concerning our present situation and, worse, where we are heading is astounding.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

The Boyle lecture (2005)

Faith, Thinking, Reading

“.. personal credit was guaranteed in the most summary and extravagant fashion; for the law entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent debtor like a thief, and granted to him in sober earnest by legislative enactment what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy, guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to cutting off too much more carefully than did the Jew.”

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

Vol. 1, Pt. 1, Translated by W.P.Dickson
Character of Roman law in relation to Debt in the Roman Kingdom.
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Law, Fashion, Personality

“Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, though looking at the world from opposite stand-points, agreed in this: that the scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the longer it was followed, the greater was its mischief.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World, Falseness

“It was one to three football fields in length. It was massive, about 300 feet above the ground. It had three lights on the points of its triangle and a large red light beneath.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Greer describing a close encounter he had with a UFO.
Undated
Source: [Hawley, David, Reach Out And Touch ... An Extraterrestrial, St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 8, 1993, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=PD&s_site=twincities&p_multi=SP&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB5DCD1EE3CE7FE&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM, 2007-05-13, http://nbgoku23.googlepages.com/REACHOUTANDTOUCH...ANEXTRATERRESTRIA.htm, 2007-05-13]

Light, Football

“It is worth noting how, in coming into contact with that unusual man, all things withdrew, as it were, to the root of their being, rebuilt their phenomenon down to its metaphysical core. They returned to their primordial idea, only to betray it at that point and lurch into those dubious, daring, and equivocal regions which I shall here succinctly call, the Regions of the Great Heresy.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Mannequins” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/mannequins.htm His father

Idea

“Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought.”

Franz Boas (1858–1942) German-American anthropologist

Franz Boas (1975) Facial paintings of the Indians of northern British Columbia. p. 4.

“My recollection of meeting him [ Jackson Pollock ] outside of this one incident, was at a show that John Graham did at the MacMillin Gallery [1942]. He invited someone called Jackson Pollock and myself, and, I believe, de Kooning. There were three unknown Americans put into that show and it turned out we were the three and it was through that source, my trying to track down the other unknown American who was painting abstractly at that point, as though I knew them all in New York City.... and I promptly went up to Pollock's studio and that's when I say I met Pollock for the first time.... And then, you see, after I saw Pollock, met him, saw the work, I said, "I understand the third painter is de Kooning," and he said he didn't know de Kooning and I said, "Well, I do and I'll take you over and introduce you."”

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) American artist

So I brought Pollock up to de Kooning's studio. De Kooning was in a loft at that time because he was something, and that is how Pollock met De Kooning.
n.p.
Oral history interview with Lee Krasner, 1964 Nov. 2 - 1968 Apr. 11

Understanding, Time, Painting

“Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

La Système de la nature; quoted by Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment p. 220 (paperback edition)

Universe, Sun, Parting

“Another lottery mystery that raised many eyebrows occurred in Germany on June 21, 1995. The freak event happened in a lottery called Lotto 6/49, which means that the winning six numbers are drawn from 1 to 49. On the day in question the winning numbers were 15-25-27-30-42-48. The very same sequence had been drawn previously, on December 20, 1986. It was the first time in 3,016 drawings that a winning sequence had been repeated. What were the chances of that? Not as bad as you'd think. When you do the math, the chance of a repeat at some point over the years comes out to around 28 percent.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 4, Tracking The Pathways To Success, p. 65

Question, Thinking, Chance, Time

“Completely strange faces pop up as interesting points through the crowd. I am carried along with the current, lacking will. To move becomes an unacceptable effort”

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

describing the crowds in Dresden quote in a letter to fellow-painter Erich Heckel, from Dresden, before 1910; as quoted in 'the information added to his painting Street, Dresden' by the MOMA museum https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/ernst-ludwig-kirchner-street-dresden-1908-reworked-1919-dated-on-painting-1907 1905 - 1915

Effort

“America is a faith, perhaps pancakes its sacrament. Opportunity comes to those who put away the disadvantages of family or circumstance and entrust themselves to the future. The point of the American story is simple enough for a child, particularly an immigrant child, to grasp: The past holds no sway in America.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Family, Faith, Past, Future

“If I go out of public life with one feeling, with one conviction, it is this : a deep regret for many bitter words I have used in my life, deep sincere repentance for my violence of language. But I hope they will be forgiven me by God and man, because not once in all my life have I attacked anybody unjustly from my point of view, and without believing it was my duty to do so.”

Henri Bourassa (1868–1952) Canadian politician

Henri Bourassa, Fiery Politician, Dies, The Globe and Mail, September 1, 1952, page A1.

Life, God, Hope, Feeling

“In 1963, when I completed my PhD, it was mostly on the steady-state theory using mathematical formulations to describe creation of matter. People always argued that you cannot have matter coming out of nothing, what would happen to the law of conservation of matter. It is a normal criticism of the steady-state theory. One could answer it either in one sentence by saying what is the big-bang theory where the entire universe came out of nothing, so you are violating the law of conservation of matter and energy in a big way. But that would be to point out the weakness of the other theories and not answering your own theory.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

People, Law, Way, Mathematics

“The modern world [of survivalism] is full of pundits, poseurs, and Mall Ninjas. Preparedness is not just about accumulating a pile of stuff. You need practical skills, and those come only with study, training, and practice. Any armchair survivalist with a credit card can buy a set of stylish camouflage fatigues and an “M4gery” carbine encrusted with umpteen accessories. Style points should not be mistaken for genuine skills and practicality.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009), p. 13

World, Study, Training

“Decision Points is based primarily on my recollections. With help from researchers, I have confirmed my account with government documents, contemporaneous notes, personal interviews, news reports, and other sources, some of which remain classified. There were instances in which I had to rely on memory alone. If there are inaccuracies in this book, the responsibility is mine. In the pages that follow, I have done my best to write about the decisions I got right, those I got wrong, and what I would do differently if given the chance. Of course, in the presidency, there are no do-overs. You have to do what you believe is right and accept the consequences. I tried to do that every day of my eight years in office. Serving as president was the honor of a lifetime, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to share my story.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. xii

Books, Decision, Memory, Chance

“Early in 1954 I was appointed Lecturer in Economics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Then, in 1956, I was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, enabling me and Anne to spend two years at Stanford University, where I got a Ph. D. in economics, whereas Anne got an M. A. in psychology. I had the good fortune of having Ken Arrow as advisor and as dissertation supervisor. I benefitted very much from discussing many finer points of economic theory with him. But I also benefitted substantially by following his advice to spend a sizable part of my Stanford time studying mathematics and statistics. These studies proved very useful in my later work in game theory.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

"John C. Harsanyi - Biographical," 1994

Game, Mathematics, Study, Universe

“When I am asked about my own motivations for changing, my response is that the alternative of not changing seems far worse and more frightening. Mine is not idealistic rebellion or personal sacrifice. From my point of view it is a matter of survival. I do not want to pay the price I see extracted from most of the men around me.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

He and His Changes, p. 244
The New Male (1979)

Men, Motivation, Change, Personality

“Cubism is not a formula, it is not a school. Cubism is a philosophy, a point of view in the universe. It is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work, 1966, p. 199

School, Mountain, Universe

“Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 57.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Children, Birth

“At some point, after years or even centuries of submitting like sheep to slaughter, Hindus—whom the Mahatma once gently called cowards—erupt in uncontrolled fury. And it hurts badly. It happened in Gujarat. It happened in Jammu, then in Kandhamal, Mangalore, and Malegaon. It may happen again elsewhere.”

François Gautier (1959) French journalist

Quoted from "The Hindu Rate Of Wrath" http://www.outlookindia.com/article/the-hindu-rate-of-wrath/238886, Outlook (10 November 2008)

Hurt

“He liked slim books which he could slip into his overcoat pocket and leave there unread for months. What was the point of a book if you couldn’t carry it around with you as a theoretical defence against boredom?”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Bad News, Chapter 3

Books

“A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

Truth, Success

“The search for happiness is natural, because it is the constitutional position of the spirit soul to be eternally joyful. But our search for happiness in the external, physical world is always frustrated; we look everywhere, never realizing permanent pleasure. Temporary, relative pleasure is certainly here to be had, but it is always accompanied by its counterpart: pain. Those who are wise, then, look within, learning how to pursue not only the relative pleasure of this world but, more to the point, they focus on the higher pleasure of the spiritual realm.”

Steven J. Rosen (1955) American editor, author on Vaishnavism

“The Scent Of Happiness”, in The Agni and the Ecstasy (London: Arktos, 2012), p. 302 https://books.google.it/books?id=fYjX7W6SCLMC&pg=PA302.

Pain, Happiness, Pleasure, World

“But the fact that the word "chattel" has survived as the inclusive legal term for all movable goods, points, not merely to the great importance of cattle in primitive times, but to the importance of the notion of sale or barter in generating the institution of property.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter I, Old English Law, p. 11

Time

“When a war starts people are forced to become soldiers. They carry guns and go to the front lines and have to kill soldiers on the other side. As many as they possibly can. Nobody cares whether you like killing other people or not. It's just something you have to do. Otherwise you're the one who gets killed." Johnnie Walker pointed his index finger at Nakata's chest. "Bang!"”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

he said. "Human history in a nutshell."
Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 16

War, People, History

“Twenty years ago I had been invited to a seminar on Hurdles To Secularism… There were four or five Muslim participants present in that seminar…. They were invited to speak next. But they all smiled and said that they had nothing to add to what their ‘Hindu brethren’ had already said so ‘loudly and so lucidly’. And then all of a sudden I saw some fireworks from the same silent and satisfied Islamic fraternity. They had all stood up, shaking with uncontrollable rage, and were shouting at the same time, “He is lying!” They were pointing their fingers at the gentleman who had been invited to speak by the president, and who had said only a few sentences…. This was the late Hamid Dalwai. I had heard of him. But this was the first time I saw him. He was a tall man with a slight stoop, a smiling face, and a rather relaxed self-possession. He was saying, “All that has been said about Hindu communalism today is nothing new. We have heard it for the nth time. The intention of the working paper of this seminar, however, was to highlight for the first time what has so far been ignored by all progressive people who swear by secularism. What I want to expose today is Muslim communalism which has already divided the motherland, and which is still strong enough to poison our body-politic…”
It was at this point that the Muslim gentlemen had stood up and started shouting… All hell now broke loose as the Islamic fraternity stood up again, and started shouting that they had not come to the seminar to be insulted by “a hired hoodlum of the RSS fascists”. JP could restrain them no more, and declared the proceedings closed with a note of anguish in his voice.”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

About Hamid Dalwai at a seminar. Goel, S. R. (1994). Defence of Hindu society.
About

People, Smile, Communication, Lying

“He saw in this light two glorious personages, one of whom spoke to him, pointing to the other, saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him."”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

This was a glorious vision given to this boy.
Journal of Discourses 14:141 (March 19, 1871).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision

Boy, Light

“I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of any book that has ever been published or any magazine or any fact. The UIS will have individual miniature-computer terminals, central control points for the flood of information, and communication channels incorporating thousands of artificial communications from satellites, cables, and laser lines. Even the partial realization of the UIS will profoundly affect every person, his leisure activities, and his intellectual and artistic development. … But the true historic role of the UIS will be to break down the barriers to the exchange of information among countries and people.”

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

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), The Human Rights Movement (1969-1979)

People, Books, Communication, Universe

“Then the theory of relativity came and explained the cause of the failure. Electric action requires time to travel from one point of space to another, the simplest instance of this being the finite speed of travel of light… Thus electromagnetic action may be said to travel through space and time jointly. But by filling space and space alone [excluding time] with an ether, the pictorial representations had all supposed a clear-cut distinction between space and time.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Travel, Failure, Light, Time

“When people refuse to see how things look from another point of view, their silo mentality has fueled arguments in families, disputes with neighbors, bigotry between races, and conflicts among nations.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

People, Family

“World Encyclopaedia. -- Behind these lies another prospect of greater and more permanent importance; that of an attempt at a comprehensive and continually revised presentation of the whole of science in its social context, an idea most persuasively put forward by H. G. Wells in his appeal for a World Encyclopaedia of which he has already given us a foretaste in his celebrated outlines. The encyclopaedic movement was a great rallying point of the liberal revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The real encyclopaedia should not be what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has degenerated into, a mere mass of unrelated knowledge sold by high-pressure salesmanship, but a coherent expression of the living and changing body of thought; it should sum up what is for the moment the spirit of the age…
The original French Encyclopaedia which did attempt these things was, however, made in the period of relative quiet when the forces of liberation were gathering ready to break their bonds. We have already entered the second period of revolutionary struggle and the quiet thought necessary to make such an effort will not be easy to find, but some effort is worth making because the combined assault on science and humanity by the forces of barbarism has against it, as yet, no general and coherent statement on the part of those who believe in democracy and the need for the people of the world to take over the active control of production and administration for their own safety and welfare.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 306-307. Chapter SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION. The Function of Scientific Publication. See also World Brain

People, Age, World, Democracy

“I think the essential point is a weakness of faith.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

from an interview with EWTN news director Raymond Arroyo in August 2003 as reported by Zenit.org, Aug. 24, 2003
2003

Faith, Thinking

“I would like to take this opportunity to explain the Zone of Ahimsa or peace sanctuary concept, which is the central element of the Five-Point Peace Plan. I am convinced that it is of great importance not only for Tibet, but for peace and stability in Asia.
It is my dream that the entire Tibetan plateau should become a free refuge where humanity and nature can live in peace and in harmonious balance.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Nobel lecture (1989)

Peace, Dreams, Nature

“Parallelism' can be pointed out in the different parts of a single object, looked at alone; it is even more obvious when one puts several objects of the same kind next to each other. Now if we compare our own lives and customs with these appearances in nature, we shall be astonished to find the same principle repeated... When an important event is being celebrated, the people face and move in the same direction. These are parallels following each other..”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

People, Nature, Appearance, Parting

“Of course, the Russian effort affected the outcome. Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense, and credulity to the breaking point.”

James Clapper (1941) US government official

Excerpt from Clapper's memoir Facts And Fears, quoted in [Hains, Tim, James Clapper in New Book: "Of Course" The Russians "Swung The Election To A Trump Win", https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/05/23/james_clapper_in_new_book_of_course_the_russians_swung_the_election_to_a_trump_win.html, 27 July 2018, Real Clear Politics, May 23, 2018]

Sense, Effort

“Now we must remember that there is no Orion's belt in the sky. There is only a collection of stars that appear to us, once they are pointed out, to resemble what we imagine Orion's belt to have been. But there is no more relationship between the stars comprising the belt than there is between all the stars in the universe. The only relationship is that which we have created in our own fantasy. A medical diagnosis is like Orion's belt. It doesn't really exist. It is just putting together a few easily observed findings that seem to have some special relationship. But when we do this, we ignore all the thousands of other findings that are really just as equally related and equally important in the whole universe of the patient.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: Facets of a Diamond: Reflections of a Healer (2002), p. 15

Imagination, Star, Universe, Appearance

“We doubt not the destiny of our country — that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

"American Facts" in Life Without and Life Within (1860) edited by Arthur Buckminster Fuller, p. 108.

World, Way, Nature, Falseness

“Basically, I write from a two person standpoint. First, I let the song take hold and I put down the idea as a raw emotional statement. Then I let it breathe and come back, approaching from more of an objective point of view. This allows me to rediscover the true meaning I intended in the beginning, shedding new light on how I can best represent that to the listener.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

Indie Journal Interview http://web.archive.org/web/20041101084648/http://www.indiejournal.com/indiejournal/interviews/bradleyjoseph.htm

Idea, Light, Personality

“It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive… Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

Painting

“Your Excellency undoubtedly has frequently had under consideration a proper position for winter-quarters. It is not always in the power of a General to take a position most favorable to his wishes, on ac count of provision and forage, or to place himself in the most advantageous point of view for covering the country and securing his capital posts. A certainty with respect to provision and forage is an object of the first consideration in taking a position. All inferior evils, of whatever nature, may, in some sort, be remedied by foresight and precaution; but there is no contending with hunger. Therefore, what would be considered only as secondary objects in some cases, become principals here.”

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

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Hunger, Nature, Winter, Evil

“When someone disagrees with you on a moral point you assume that he is one step behind in his thinking, and he assumes that he has gone one step ahead. But I take both parts, O'Hara, leapfrogging myself along the great moral issues, refuting myself and rebutting the refutation towards a truth that must be the compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), Ch. 2: A Couple of Deaths and Exits.

Truth, Thinking, Parting

“After this I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in mine understanding, — by which sight I saw that He is in all things.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Third Revelation, Chapter 11

God, Understanding

“""You'll always be powerless to this girl. You'll never be in charge. There's something there," George told me, "that makes you crazy and always will. If you don't cut the connection for good, in the end that something will destroy you. You're no longer merely answering natural need with her. This is the pathology in its purest form. Look," he told me, "see it as a critic, see it from a professional point of view. You violated the law of aesthetic distance. You sentimentalized the aesthetic experience with this girl - you personalized it, you sentimentalized it, and you lost the sense of separation essential to your enjoyment. Do you know when that happened? … I'm not against it because it's digusting. I'm against it because it's falling in love. The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open."”

Philip Roth book The Dying Animal

The Dying Animal (2001)

Love, People, Law, Soul

“Punk: I can't help but feel a little resp… hell, who am I kidding? I feel like I started this whole thing. This is all my fault. I've been at the epicenter of everything controversial ever since you took over—actually, since before that, I'm sure you remember, John-Boy.
Cena: I was there.
Punk: You were there. I'm the guy that made walking out look cool. The thing about is I think everybody in the parking lot having a picnic right now have completely misunderstood what I was trying to do. See, I didn't break my contract, I didn't break my word. My contract expired, and I was trying to prove a point to an entire company, not just one man. If anybody has any reason to walk out of the WWE, well you can probably put me at the top of that list. I mean, my microphone constantly cuts out, your friend Kevin Nash runs through the… well, slowly, briskly runs through the crowd, jumps me and screws me not once, but twice. Somebody here doesn't want me to be the WWE Champion. The thing about it is this entire industry is based on men solving their problems in between these ropes. This is the company that gives you Hell in a Cell, this is the company that gives you the Elimination Chamber. I don't wanna sound like a broken record, but "unsafe working environment"? I thrive on that! Hell, this is professional wrestling, this ain't ballet! If you believe in something, you stand and you fight, and you fight on the front line; you don't have a hippie sit-in and grill tofu dogs in the parking lot like a bunch of hippies. [To Triple H] When I had a problem with you and your authority, I dealt with you personally. [To Cena] And you, you big boy scout, when I had a problem with you being the poster boy for this company, I dealt with you personally. Shea-Mo, I'm sure sooner or later, you're gonna step on my toes, I will deal with you personally. Now, I know you three smiley good guys look across the ring from me, and I'm the last guy you expect to see here, [to Triple H] and I know I'm the last guy you expect to see in the foxhole with you. But you know what? Here I am. So… so I got a question—what do we do now?
Triple H: "What do we do now?" That's a big question, "what do we do now?" I say we do what we do on Monday Night Raw—we shut up and fight! How about this? As long as you guys are in agreement, Sheamus, you got yourself a match, fella. Tonight, right here, right now, you will go one-on-one with… [Punk raises his hand] one John Cena. And since I'm the only guy kinda wearing stripes out here, I'll referee. And, foxhole buddy, I got a whole table over there lined up with headphones and pipe bombs just waiting for you with your name on it. And if you want, you can go over there and say anything you feel like.
Punk: You want me to do commentary?!
Triple H: I want you to do commentary.
Punk: Can I wear your blazer?!
Triple H: You can even wear my blazer!
Punk: I'm in!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

October 10, 2011
WWE Raw

Men, Dogs, Guy, Feeling

“When you're stoned, baby, I am drunk.
And we make love, it seems a little desolate
It's hard sometimes not to look away
And think what's the point when I'm having to hold this fire down
I think I'll explode if I can't feel this freely now. When your stalled baby take me home.”

Dido (1971) English singer-songwriter

Stoned
Song lyrics, Life for Rent (2003)

Love, Making love, Feeling, Home

“You [Hillary Clinton] look at the Middle East, you started the Iran deal, that's another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall, I mean, they were doing so badly. They were choking on the sanctions. And now they're going to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they're going.”

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

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Beauty, Way, Country

“It is remarkable that this generalization of plane geometry to surface geometry is identical with that generalization of geometry which originated from the analysis of the axiom of parallels. …the construction of non-Euclidean geometries could have been equally well based upon the elimination of other axioms. It was perhaps due to an intuitive feeling for theoretical fruitfulness that the criticism always centered around the axiom of parallels. For in this way the axiomatic basis was created for that extension of geometry in which the metric appears as an independent variable. Once the significance of the metric as the characteristic feature of the plane has been recognized from the viewpoint of Gauss' plane theory, it is easy to point out, conversely, its connection with the axiom of parallels. The property of the straight line as being the shortest connection between two points can be transferred to curved surfaces, and leads to the concept of straightest line; on the surface of the sphere the great circles play the role of the shortest line of connection… analogous to that of the straight line on the plane. Yet while the great circles as "straight lines" share the most important property with those of the plane, they are distinct from the latter with respect to the axiom of the parallels: all great circles of the sphere intersect and therefore there are no parallels among these "straight lines". …If this idea is carried through, and all axioms are formulated on the understanding that by "straight lines" are meant the great circles of the sphere and by "plane" is meant the surface of the sphere, it turns out that this system of elements satisfies the system of axioms within two dimensions which is nearly identical in all of it statements with the axiomatic system of Euclidean geometry; the only exception is the formulation of the axiom of the parallels.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The geometry of the spherical surface can be viewed as the realization of a two-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry: the denial of the axiom of the parallels singles out that generalization of geometry which occurs in the transition from the plane to the curve surface.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Way, Feeling, Idea, Understanding

“It is difficult to deny at this point, isn't it? Isn't it? Is it a little hard to deny that radicals, Islamicists, Communists, socialists will work together against Israel, against capitalism, and they'll try to work together to overturn stability? Who in the media is telling you this? Who? NAME THEM! Where are they? How can they possibly deny it at this point? And why wouldn't they tell you these things? Why?”

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

2011-02-22
Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2011-02-24
Jon Bershad
Beck To The Media: How Can You Possibly Deny What I'm Saying At This Point?
Mediaite
2011-02-22
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-beck-to-the-media-how-can-you-possibly-deny-what-im-saying-at-this-point/
2011-02-24
Beck Blows His Stack: "How Can They Possibly Deny" That I Was Right About The Coming Islamo-Commie Global Takeover?
2011-02-22
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102220044
2011-02-24
2010s, 2011

“But that was only a small part of the reason why I quit. The main reason was the disturbing new player-base. The game got bigger with every new expansion that was released, and as it got bigger, it brought in a vast amount of new players. I noticed that more and more “normal” people who had active and pleasurable social lives were starting to play the game, as the new changes catered to such a crowd. WoW no longer became a sanctuary where I could hide from the evils of the world, because the evils of the world had now followed me there. I saw people bragging online about their sexual experiences with girls… and they used the term “virgin” as an insult to people who were more immersed in the game than them. The insult stung, because it was true. Us virgins did tend to get more immersed in such things, because our real lives were lacking. I couldn’t stand to play WoW knowing that my enemies, the people I hate and envy so much for having sexual lives, were now playing the same game as me. There was no point anymore. My best friend Bradley, betrayed me by leaving me and going to some ginger named William. One day, I will get my revenge. I realized what a terrible mistake I made to turn my back on the world again. The world is brutal, and I need to fight for my place in it. My life was at a crucial turning point, and I couldn’t waste any more precious time.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Quitting World of Warcraft

Life, Hate, People, Pleasure

“To find the directions and quarters of the winds your method of procedure should be as follows. In the middle of the city place a marble amussium, laying it true by the level, or else let the spot be made so true by means of rule and level that no amussium is necessary. In the very center of that spot set up a bronze gnomon or "shadow tracker." At about the fifth hour in the morning, take the end of the shadow cast by this gnomon, and mark it with a point. Then, opening your compasses to this point which marks the length of the gnomon's shadow, describe a circle from the center. In the afternoon watch the shadow of your gnomon as it lengthens, and when it once more touches the circumference of this circle and the shadow in the afternoon is equal in length to that of the morning, mark it with a point. From these two points describe with your compasses intersecting arcs and through their intersection and the centre let a line be drawn to the circumference of the circle to give us the quarters of south and north…. and thus we have designed a figure equally apportioned among the eight winds.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 5-7

“Probably the profoundest difference between human and animal needs is made by one piece of human awareness, one fact that is not present to animals, because it is never learned in any direct experience: that is our foreknowledge of death. The fact that we ourselves must die is not a simple and isolated fact. It is built on a wide survey of facts that discloses the structure of history as a succession of overlapping brief lives, the patterns of youth and age, growth and decline; and above all that, it is built on the logical insight that one’s own life is a case in point. Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Philosophical Sketches, Ayer (1979)

Life, Death, Youth, Age

“I told all four [congressional leaders] that I felt like this election happened for a reason; that it pointed out — the delay in the outcome should make it clear to all of us — that we can come together to heal whatever wounds may exist, whatever residuals there may be. And I really look forward to the opportunity. I hope they've got my sense of optimism about the possible, and enthusiasm about the job. I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's okay. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier… [Bush laughs out loud, audience laughs out loud] …just so long as I'm the dictator”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

more laughter Online NewsHour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec00/trans_12-18.htm interview, Washington, D.C., (December 18, 2000)' during his first trip to Washington as President-elect. The last sentence is also included in Fahrenheit 9/11. 2000s, 2000

Hope, Optimism, Sense, Laughter

“There is one aspect of our own mentality for which it's difficult as yet to foresee what type of explanation would even be relevant. I'm referring, of course, to consciousness. The point is that although I have no reason to believe that my consciousness is implemented by anything other than my brain, I remain convinced that there's something impenetrably mysterious about the relationship between brains and thoughts. And you can understand, therefore, why it's so hard to imagine, let alone tolerate, the idea that the death of the brain necessarily leads to the end of the personal self – and this, of course, is the "trump card" with which religion has consistently played.”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode three: "The Final Hour".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

Death, Religion, Imagination, Idea

“John Major: What I don't understand, Michael, is why such a complete wimp like me keeps winning everything.
Michael Brunson: You've said it, you said precisely that.
Major: I suppose Gus will tell me off for saying that, won't you Gus?
Brunson: No, no, no … it's a fair point. The trouble is that people are not perceiving you as winning.
Major: Oh, I know … why not? Because…
Brunson: Because rotten sods like me, I suppose, don't get the message clear [laughs].
Major: No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that - well partly that, yes, partly because of S-H-one-Ts like you, yes, that's perfectly right. But also because those people who are opposing our European policy have said the way to oppose the Government on the European policy is to attack me personally. The Labour Party started before the last election. It has been picked up and it is just one of these fashionable things that slips into the Parliamentary system and it is an easy way to proceed.
Brunson: But I mean you … has been overshadowed … my point is there, not just the fact that you have been overshadowed by Maastricht and people don't…
Major: The real problem is this…
Brunson: But you've also had all the other problems on top - the Mellors, the Mates … and it's like a blanket - you use the phrase 'masking tape' but I mean that's it, isn't it?
Major: Even, even, even, as an ex-whip I can't stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not, and various things like that. But the real problem is…
Brunson: I've heard other people in the Cabinet say 'Why the hell didn't he get rid of Mates on Day One?' Mates was a fly, you could have swatted him away.
Major: Yeah, well, they did not say that at the time, I have to tell you. And I can tell you what they would have said if I had. They'd have said 'This man was being set up. He was trying to do his job for his constituent. He had done nothing improper, as the Cabinet Secretary told me. It was an act of gross injustice to have got rid of him'. Nobody knew what I knew at the time. But the real problem is that one has a tiny majority. Don't overlook that. I could have all these clever and decisive things that people wanted me to do and I would have split the Conservative Party into smithereens. And you would have said, Aren't you a ham-fisted leader? You've broken up the Conservative Party.
Brunson: No, well would you? If people come along and…
Major: Most people in the Cabinet, if you ask them sensibly, would tell you that, yes. Don't underestimate the bitterness of European policy until it is settled - It is settled now.
Brunson: Three of them - perhaps we had better not mention open names in this room - perhaps the three of them would have - if you'd done certain things, they would have come along and said, 'Prime Minister, we resign'. So you say 'Fine, you resign'.
Major: We all know which three that is. Now think that through. Think it through from my perspective. You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Brunson: They create a lot of fuss but you have probably got three damn good ministers in the Cabinet to replace them.
Major: Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there? What's the Lyndon Johnson, er, maxim?
Brunson: If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Major: No, that's not what I had in mind, though it's pretty good.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Andrew Culf, "What the `wimp' really said to the S-H-one-T", The Guardian, 26 July 1993.
'Off-the-record' exchange with ITN reporter Michael Brunson following videotaped interview, 23 July 1993. Neither Major nor Brunson realised their microphones were still live and being recorded by BBC staff preparing for a subsequent interview; the tape was swiftly leaked to the Daily Mirror.

People, Age, Way, Fashion

“In the field of education. I refer to the meaning of the word "basic," …the meaning given to this word by some educators is not its "real" meaning. The word "basic,"… has been assigned certain meanings in order to further an education philosophy which is thought to be both sensible and effective…. neither you nor I are under any obligation to accept their definition of what is "basic." …In short, the definition of something is usually the starting point of a dispute, not the settlement.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

Education

“The Vice-President's Chamber is adjacent to the Senate Chamber, and so small that to survive it is necessary to keep the door open in order to obtain the necessary cubic feet of air. When the vice-president is in the room [the Capitol Guides] go by with their guests, stop and point him out, as though he were a curiosity.I stood this for about as long as I could, and then went to the door one day, and said: "If you look on me as a wild animal, be kind enough to throw peanuts at me; but if you are really desirous of seeing me, come in and shake hands." In that way I think I restored myself to the position I have always desired to occupy; that of an American, who looks up to nobody, looks down upon nobody, but tries to keep a conscience clean enough that he can look everybody in the face.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter XVII

Way, Thinking, Animals

“I make a point of writing, if only a little, every day, as a kind of discipline so that it is not a whim but a piece of work.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

The Paris Review interview (1982)

“He maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of artistic style running through every expression of a nation's life. On the other hand, the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is, as he points out, neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of culture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say, with want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

On Friedrich Nietzsche's views on culture, p. 6
An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889)

Life

“Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step towards escape from this vicious circle is to recognize that the apparent "ordinariness" of the world is a delusion. If we could become deeply and permanently convinced that the world "out there" is endlessly exciting, we would never again allow ourselves to become trapped in the swamp of "taken-for-grantedness". And we would become practically unkillable. Shaw says of his "Ancients" in Back to Methuselah "Even in the moment of death, their life does not fail them". "Life failure" is that feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we all have to accept defeat in the end. If we could learn the mental trick of causing the dynamo to accelerate, this illusion would never again be able to exert its power over us.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved (2000), p. 14

Life, Death, World, Feeling

“From my point of view it is better to be alive and young again, and broke, than it is to be the richest corpse in Forest Lawn.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 1, p. 24

“As we have learned from ObamaCare, young people are not considered adults until age 26, at which point they are finally forced to get off their parents' health care plans. The old motto was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." The new motto is: "Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to vote."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Repeal the 26th Amendment!" (10 November 2010) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=395. 2010

People, Health, Age, Parent

“this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up p. 230

World, Way, Parting

“What's left is only bittersweet
For the rest of my life,
admitting the best is behind me Now I'm drunk and afraid
Wishing the world would go away
What's the point of singing songs
If they'll never even hear you?”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Eugene"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

Life, World, Singing

“And then there is a second thing, a second principle that we've got to go back and rediscover. And that is that all reality has spiritual control. In other words, we've got to go back and rediscover the principle that there is a God behind the process. Well this you say, "Why is it that you raise that as a point in your sermon, in a church? The mere fact we are at church, we believe in God, we don't need to go back and rediscover that. The mere fact that we are here, and the mere fact that we sing and pray, and come to church—we believe in God." Well, there's some truth in that. But we must remember that it's possible to affirm the existence of God with your lips and deny his existence with your life. The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism […]. And the world, even the church, is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service. And there is always a danger that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don't. We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live with our lives like he never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That's a dangerous type of atheism.”

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

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

Life, God, People, Truth

“Men's wishes are not always vain, nor is every life too brief to satisfy its possessor. Only when we attempt, from the point of view permitted by physics and biology, to sum up the possibilities of collective human endeavour, do we fully realise the "vanity of vanities" proclaimed by the Preacher.”

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

Theism and humanism

Life, Men

“And what sort of country shall you build upon that watchword, General?" Lord Lyons asked. "You cannot be left entirely alone; you are become, as I said, a member of the family of nations. Further, this war has been hard on you. Much of your land has been ravaged or overrun, and in those places where the Federal army has been, slavery lies dying. Shall you restore it there at the point of a bayonet? Gladstone said October before last, perhaps a bit prematurely, that your Jefferson Davis had made an army, the beginnings of a navy, and, more important than either, a nation. You Southerners may have made the Confederacy into a nation, General Lee, but what sort of nation shall it be?" Lee did not answer for most of a minute. This pudgy little man in his comfortable chair had put into a nutshell his own worries and fears. He'd had scant time to dwell on them, not with the war always uppermost in his thoughts. But the war had not invalidated any of the British minister's questions- some of which Lincoln had also asked- only put off the time at which they would have to be answered. Now that time drew near. Now that the Confederacy was a nation, what sort of nation would it be? At last he said, "Your excellency, at this precise instant I cannot fully answer you, save to say that, whatever sort of nation we become, it shall be one of our own choosing.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

It was a good answer. Lord Lyons nodded, as if in thoughtful approval. Then Lee remembered the Rivington men. They too had their ideas on what the Confederate States of America should become.
Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 183

Men, War, Fear, Family

“The “brightness” of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 85.

Children, Feeling, Question

“The biblical times have come back again, the great invasions of the Medes and the Persians. Has the world, then, reached the point where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in which it has slumbered?”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 355

World, Time

“It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

20 July 1848
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

History, Learning, Universe

“Even when, after centuries of license, the Church reformed its discipline, and, to prove it, burned Giordano Bruno in 1600, besides condemning Galileo in 1630 — as science goes on repeating to us every day — it condemned anarchists, not atheists. None of the astronomers were irreligious men; all of them made a point of magnifying God through his works; a form of science which did their religion no credit. Neither Galileo nor Kepler, neither Spinoza nor Descartes, neither Leibnitz nor Newton, any more than Constantine the Great — if so much — doubted Unity. The utmost range of their heresies reached only its personality.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, God, Religion, Science

“[I]f you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to [participate]. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defense of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side. You are sightseeing with a loved one in a foreign land, and your loved one is brutally murdered in front of your eyes. At the trial it turns out that in this land friends of the accused may be called as witnesses for the defense, testifying about their faith in his innocence. You watch the parade of his moist-eyed friends, obviously sincere, proudly proclaiming their undying faith in the innocence of the man you saw commit the terrible deed. The judge listens intently and respectfully, obviously more moved by this outpouring than by all the evidence presented by the prosecution. Is this not a nightmare? Would you be willing to live in such a land? Or would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon you tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training, he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways, and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign agreement. But we're seriously trying to get at the truth here, and if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into the issue that any philosopher ever has (for none has ever come up with a good defense of this) or you are kidding yourself.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Love, People, Truth, Faith

“You write you could never be a Theosophist. Well I suppose I could say the same thing, if you're referring to what most theosophists are. But that does not alter the fact that I believe that the principles of theosophy are true, and that it leads to clarity in one's spiritual development. Which means that we [= Mondrian ànd the catholic painter and his former teacher L. Schelfhout, after their reconciliation] quite agree on this point. Self-awareness is, in my view, of crucial importance to all human beings. I can understand how the Catholic doctrine may lead to vagueness, but Theosophy, which is a spiritual science, can never do so.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In a letter to Lodewijk Schelfhout, Paris 29 January 1914; as quoted in 'Beeldende Kunst: Opmerkingen over de tentoonstelling van den Modernen Kunstkring.. Der Ploeg (1912)', W. Steenhoff, p. 147
1910's

Understanding, Teachers, Science

“At this point the march of invention brought a new factor upon the scene. Iron was dug and forged. Men armed with iron entered Britain from the Continent and killed the men of bronze. At this point we can plainly recognise across the vanished millenniums a fellow-being. A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modern eyes a man and a brother.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On the end of the Bronze Age and start of the Iron Age, Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Men

“And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere.”

H. G. Wells book The War in the Air

The War in the Air (1908)

“The purpose of sketching out these half-dozen areas of risk is not to claim to know how bad they would turn out to be, but simply to point out how little thought the Brexotics have given to them, or to the suspicions and fears they have roused, not just in their own country but across the whole continent. There remains the last and to me the worst suspicion: that they would be quite happy to put their supposedly beloved country through a period of prolonged turmoil and stagnation simply for the exhilaration of being on their own at last.”

Ferdinand Mount (1939) British writer

" Nigels against the World http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n10/ferdinand-mount/nigels-against-the-world", London Review of Books (19 May 2016)

Happiness, Fear, Country

“So I do the test, and we do this scene, and it's the scene at the end where I throw dishes, and so I threw some dishes… and 'Cut!'… And I look around, and there's blood everywhere, because I broke a plate or something, and they're all checking me — 'Oh my God, she cut herself' — and couldn't find any cut, and then I look, and I realise. I see Al's hand is bleeding. And I cut Al Pacino, in my screen test. I think then he liked me. I think that was actually the turning point.”

Michelle Pfeiffer (1958) American actress

On auditioning for Scarface, from Inside the Actors Studio (2007) http://uk.youtube.com/user/pfeifferpfan2

God, Thinking

“Software people seem to have a love-hate relationship with metrics. On one hand, they despise and distrust anything that sounds or looks like a measurement. They are quick to point out the "flaws" in the arguments of anyone who talks about measuring software products, software processes, and (especially) software people. On the other hand, these same people seem to have no problems identifying which programming language is the best, the stupid things that managers do to "ruin" projects, and who's methodology works in what situations.”

Edward V. Berard

Edward V. Berard (1998) " Metrics for object-oriented software engineering http://www.ipipan.gda.pl/~marek/objects/TOA/moose.html." The Object Agency, Inc.

Love, Hate, People, Stupidity

“I am often asked if I would have liked to have been involved with Jurassic Park. The plain answer is no. Although excellent, it is not with all its dollars what I would have wished to do with my career. I was always a loner and worked best that way. Since the very beginning I fought and struggled under constant pressure to keep the design and final result within my hands. As time moved on this became more difficult, until I was forced to bow to the fact that my method of working, in the financial sense, was no longer practical. Model animation has been relegated to a reflection, or a starting point for creature computer effects that has reached a high few could have anticipated. However, for all the wonderful achievements of the computer, the process creates creatures that are too realistic and for me that makes them unreal because they have lost one vital element - a dream quality. Fantasy, for me, is realizing strange beings that are so removed from the 21st century. These beings would include not only dinosaurs, because no matter what the scientists say, we still don't know how dinosaurs looked or moved, but also creatures of the mind. Fantastical creatures where the unreal quality becomes even more vital. Stop-motion supplies the perfect breath of life for them, offering a look of pure fantasy because their movements are beyond anything we know.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Ray Harryhausen & Tony Dalton (2003), An Animated Life, Aurum Press, p. 8

Life, Dreams, Way, Sense

“Four-point-two kilometres is a long way for a frozen body to sink.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 1, describing his North Pole swim (2007)
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Way

“The [president] is right to point to an international [jihadist] movement aimed at the collapse of the United States. He has gone after that threat in the right way and with great energy and vigor, and I applaud the fact that he has taken it on very seriously and has not considered it just a criminal action but instead a war action, which requires a military … response.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Interview with James Taranto, December 2005.
2003–2007 Governor of Massachusetts

War, Way

“I stress that I am not attacking Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the environmental movement in general. They have done some good work overall. I am merely pointing out that they can, and are, used to promote the New World Order, mostly (though certainly not in every case), without their knowledge.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

ibid. p. 267

World, Knowledge

“No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1970s, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

“It's not as simple as that. Knowledge is necessary, too. An intuitive child couldn't accomplish anything without some knowledge. There will come a point in everyone's life, however, where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without ever knowing precisely how. One can never know why, but one must accept intuition as a fact.”

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

In response to statement "You once told me that progress is made only by intuition, and not by the accumulation of knowledge."
Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "It is not quite so simple. Knowledge is necessary too. A child with great intuition could not grow up to become something worthwhile in life without some knowledge. However there comes a point in everyone's life where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without knowing precisely how.":
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 137

Life, Knowledge

“In these and other ways, let us move up the steep and difficult path toward comprehensive disarmament, securing mutual confidence through mutual verification, and building the institutions of peace as we dismantle the engines of war. We must not let failure to agree on all points delay agreements where agreement is possible. And we must not put forward proposals for propaganda purposes.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, UN speech

War, Peace, Way, Confidence

“Pure painting or the art of drawing whose point of departure is based on purely formal criteria is, in my opinion, passé. I do not reject it if other artists make attempts, but as far as I am concerned, this is what I believe. if I do not place a text next to my drawings, I consider the work on such programmes to be futile.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 208 (1993)

Art, Departure, Drawing, Painting

“Sometimes there’s no point in giving up.”

Larry Niven book The Ringworld Engineers

Source: The Ringworld Engineers (1980), p. 282

“"I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.”

Alfred Jules Ayer book Language, Truth, and Logic

Source: Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), p. 47.

Failure, Help

“"McCarthyism" means pointing out positions taken by liberals that are unpopular with the American people. As former President Bush said, "Liberals do not like me talking about liberals." The reason they sob about the dark night of fascism under McCarthy is to prevent Americans from ever noticing that liberals consistently attack their own country.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2003, Treason : Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (2003)

People, Night, Country

“This ideal theory of the true and real being that hides behind phenomena, Professor James, I repeat, puts forward only as a possible hypothesis, to point and emphasise his contention that "when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function."”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.282

Law, Thinking

“Honestly, I love this job — that’s not even some talking point. I love this job, and I want to keep this job. My kids are in school here in Michigan, and my family is here in Michigan.”

Joan Larsen (1968) United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit

POTUS election could have ‘huge’ impact on Mich. judges http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/04/potus-election-huge-impact-mich-judges/85424958/ (June 4, 2016)

Love, School, Family

“You can talk to the man. He is reasonable, and sees your point of view, if you point it out properly.”

Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) German admiral, head of military intelligence service

About speaking to Hitler. Quoted in "Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II" - Page 234 - by David Kahn - True Crime - 2000

Quotes about point page 40

Quotes about point
page 40