Quotes about position
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“Yet even though that picture is dark and darkening, there is one factor which has not yet been injected. I do not know whether it will be tomorrow, or next year, or in five years; but it will come. That factor is firearms and explosives. With communities which are so divided nothing can prevent the injection of explosives which we know perfectly well from experience in other parts of the United Kingdom and the world. At first there will be horrified astonishment, and inquiry as to what we have done wrong that such things should be happening. Then there will be feverish endeavour to find methods to allay the supposed grievances which lie behind the violence. Then follows exploitation by those who use violence of the ascendancy they have thus gained over the majority and over authority. The thing goes forward, acting and reacting, until a position is reached in which—I shall dare say it—compared with those areas, Belfast today will seem an enviable place.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1976/may/24/immigration-and-emigration in the House of Commons (24 May 1976) on the consequences of immigration. 1970s

Lie, World, Communication, Parting

“A member of the Bar is not entitled to refuse his services to anyone who seeks to employ him. He has been said to be like a cabman on the rank: it is his duty to place himself at the disposal of the first person who hails him and he has no right to exercise any discrimination… This principle also has its origin in the conception of the special position of the advocate in the public administration of justice. It is essential that no citizen should be unable to procure the adequate presentation of his case in Court, however unpopular or even unworthy he may be.”

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

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 132

Justice, Exercises, Personality

“Nothing is so unpopular as positive change amongst friends.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 148

Change

“Ever since language allowed human cultural evolution to impinge upon age-old processes of biological evolution, humankind has been in a position to upset older balances of nature in quite the same fashion as disease upsets the natural balance within a host's body. Time and again, a temporary approach to stabilization of new relationships occurred as natural limits to the ravages of humankind upon other life forms manifested themselves. Yet, sooner or later, and always within a span of time that remained miniscule in comparison with the standards of biological evolution, humanity discovered new techniques allowing fresh exploitation of hitherto inaccessible forms of life.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

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

Life, Age, Disease, Fashion

“Hinduism has destroyed all positive elements that normally exist in a human being. During the post-colonial period their energies were diverted to manipulate education, employment, production and development subtly. Their minds are poisoned with the notion that productive work is mean and that productive castes are inferior. No ruling class in the world is as dehumanized as the Indian brahminical castes. They can be rehumanized only by pushing them into productive work and by completely diverting their attention from the temple, the office, power-seeking, and so on.”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

Excerpt from Why I Am Not A Hindu : A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy (1996) http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_ilaiah.htm.

World, Education

“Sometimes economists in official positions give bad advice; sometimes they give very, very bad advice; and sometimes they work at the OECD.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Beatings Must Continue" http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/the-beatings-must-continue-2/, 30 April 2013 The Conscience of a Liberal blog

“The Old Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competitors.”

George V of the United Kingdom (1865–1936) King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India

Speech at Guildhall, 5 Dec 1901, quoted in Harold Nicolson, King George V (1952), p.73

Country

“There are all kinds of myths that a people has about itself, some positive, some negative, some healthy and some not healthy. I think that one job of the historian is to try to cut through some of those myths and get closer to some kind of reality. So that people can face their current situation realistically, rather than mythically. I guess that's my sense of what a historian ought to do.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

People, Thinking, Reality, Sense

“Today, in the era of the complete triumph of the spectacle, what can be reaped from the heritage of Debord? It is clear that the spectacle is language, the very communicativity or linguistic being of humans. This means that a fuller Marxian analysis should deal with the fact that capitalism (or any other name one wants to give the process that today dominated world history) was directed not only toward the expropriation of productive activity, but also and principally toward the alienation of language itself, of the very linguistic and communicative nature of humans, of that logos which one of Heraclitus' fragments identified as the Common. The extreme form of this expropriation of the Common is the spectacle, that is, the politics we live in. But this also means that in the spectacle of our own linguistic nature comes back to us inverted. This is why (precisely because what is being expropriated is the very possibility of common good) the violence of the spectacle is so destructive; but for the same reason the spectacle remains something like a positive possibility that can be used against it.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Source: The Coming Community (1993), Ch. 18 : Shekinah

World, History, Communication, Nature

“Pre-Constantinian Christians had been pacifists, rejecting the violence of army and empire not only because they had no share of power, but because they considered it morally wrong; the post-Constantinian Christians considered imperial violence to be not only morally tolerable but a positive good and a Christian duty.”

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

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 135

“He told me in a private situation, when I wasn’t working as a journalist. I was sat in the bedroom some years ago, and I asked him point blank, ‘look Lance, the way I talked you up on television, I would have to back off and resign if you one day went positive’. And he looked at me and he said ‘man I’ve seen death in the face and I don’t take drugs.’ And that’s all he said. I have no reason to disbelieve him.”

Phil Liggett (1943) sports journalist, commentator

Liggett on Armstrong: The whole investigation was a waste of money http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/liggett-on-armstrong-the-whole-investigation-was-a-waste-of-money (2 February 2015)

Death, Way

“Spirits incarnate themselves as men or as women, because they are of no sex and, as it is necessary for them to develop themselves in every direction, both sexes, as well as every variety of social position. furnish them with special trials and duties, and with the opportunity of acquiring experience. A spirit who had always incarnated itself as a man would be only known by men, and vice versa.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 131.

Women, Men, Sex

“Mathripala Sirisena: The main thing in the 2nd year is the country's economy, because poverty is still prevalent. 22% of the population of this country is malnourished, and 15-17% of the population suffers from diabetes. 7-8% of the population is disabled, disabled by war, natural disaster or other causes. Therefore we must take all these into account. Priority has been given to eradicate poverty, to strengthen people's financial position, to strengthen the national economy.”

Maithripala Sirisena (1951) Sri Lankan politician, 7th President of Sri Lanka

Talk to Al Jazeera - Sri Lankan president: No allegations of war crimes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udGmG-eqJ6o

War, People, Nature, Suffering

“[T]he intelligence and ability of a colored person are in pretty direct proportion to the amount of white blood he has, and … most of the positions of leadership, influence, and prominence in the Negro race are held not by real Negroes but by Mulattoes, many of whom have very little Negro blood.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

Color, Intelligence, Personality

“I love acting. Oh, God, I love it. But all this fame and all this bullshit attention. I'm not supernatural. I've done nothing extremely special to deserve the position. It happens every couple of years, and it's happened to hundreds of people before me.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted in Newsweek, July 10, 2000.

Love, God, People

“About my approach to law making. Despite waiting a long time - a very, very long time - to govern, it is not my position that legislative change is always or often the best way to effect change.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Strategic objectives of new Government (May 23, 2007)

Law, Way, Change, Time

“As the anima does with men, the animus also creates states of possession in women. In myths and fairy tales this condition is often represented by the devil or an "old man of the mountain," that is, a troll or ogre, holding the heroine prisoner and forcing her to kill all men who approach her or to deliver them into the hands of the demon; or else the father shuts up the heroine in a tower or a grave or sets her on a glass mountain, so that no one can get near her. In such cases, the heroine can often do nothing but wait patiently for a savior to deliver her from her plight. Through her suffering, the animus (for both the demon and the savior are two aspects of the same inner power) can be gradually transformed into a positive inner force.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man

Women, Men, Mountain, Suffering

“The savage mind finds mysterious and arbitrary spiritual powers everywhere, in rivers and springs, inherent in the wind and rain, and presiding over the crops; but, with advance in civilization and the development of ordered knowledge, an ever wider compass is established as the for the reign of natural laws. Those who base their faith in God on the ever-receding miraculous phenomena, on the tacit assumption that human limitations prove the validity of religious interpretations, are ever pointing out some weak spots in the scientific web of cause and effect and saying "Here Science is baffled, and you must admit the need of God." But Science keeps extending her domain; and so the history of the thought of these men is the history of a continuous retreat. Their position is fundamentally a bad one because it makes God a personified symbol of our residuum of ignorance, and justifies Reinach's definition of religion as a "sum of scruples impeding the free use of the human faculties."”

Ralph Vary Chamberlin (1879–1967) American biologist (1879-1967)

No, the Creator must be seen as God of all Nature and of every natural law.
Life and Philosophy of W. H. Chamberlin (1925) pp.144-145

Men, God, Faith, Religion

“On the need to respond to the crisis in Greece, and broaching the subject of the Truman Doctrine ("it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.") with Congress: "In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western Europe. The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to will all the possibilities. Even one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a position to break up the play. These were the stakes that British withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean offered to an eager and ruthless opponent."”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Truman Doctrine, Cold War

People, History, Support, Past

“People afraid of criticism but I always put myself in a sacrificial position, they been know I ain't just rappin for fame”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave And The Master)
On Albums, Untitled (2008)

People

“My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Devil (Ivan's Nightmare)
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Feeling, Gratitude

“While it's impossible to be completely prepared for a downturn of this magnitude, we began priming ourselves for a weakening economy earlier last year. We have implemented strict cost cutting measures across all our operations. We have reduced headcount in individual businesses where appropriate and we've scaled back on capital expenditures. Even in plush times, we have never been a company that tolerates fat. So in times like these, we are better positioned to weather this cycle than our competitors.”

Rupert Murdoch (1931) Australian-American media mogul

About News Corp. 6.4 billion quarterly lost in 2008-09 Source: News Corporation F2Q09 (Qtr End 12/31/08) Earnings Call Transcript http://seekingalpha.com/article/118935-news-corporation-f2q09-qtr-end-12-31-08-earnings-call-transcript?page=-1

Business, Time, Weather

“When I left your Excellency at Haverstraw, you desired me to go forward and reconnoitre the country, and fix upon some proper position to draw the troops together at, I was a stranger to all this part of the country, and could form no judgment of a proper place, until I had thoroughly examined the ground.”

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

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Parting, Drawing, Country

“…the position of the body significantly influences the emotions and sensations during the desired stage of hypnotism; also, whatever the passion which one wants to express by the attitude of the patient, when the muscles necessary to this expression are brought into play, the passion itself bursts forth suddenly and the whole organism responds accordingly. The upright body, the expanded chest, the contracted extensors, all that suggests the feeling of self-esteem, self-determination, resolve and unconquerable pride. As soon as one decreases the contraction of these muscles, that gives to the patient a depressed attitude, with a sunken chest, the expression of the features changes in a very manifest way, the voice and the whole manner of being of the individual now express humility, abasement and pity.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Way, Feeling, Passion, Change

“Narcissism is often the driving force behind the desire to obtain a leadership position. Perhaps individuals with strong narcissistic personality features are more willing to undertake the arduous process of attaining a position of power.”

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (1942) Dutch academic

Manfred Kets de Vries and Danny Miller. "Narcissism and leadership: An object relations perspective." Human Relations 38.6 (1985): 583-601.

Strong, Personality

“We take love for granted. We assume we are all perfect lovers and all we need do is wait and our love will grow and blossom as readily as a flower in spring. Not so. Love doesn't grow unless we do. It takes patience, knowledge, experience, determination, and every positive trait we possess. In addition, love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love, Spring, Flowers, Lovers

“What humans have spontaneously identified as good and bad — or as positive and negative — are evolutionary complementations in need of more accurate identifications.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

“That these ideas will ultimately triumph, I have no doubt. Nor is it open to question that by the combined efforts of the peace-loving peoples they can be made to triumph now, before Europe has been again plunged into a fresh bloodbath.
May Heaven grant that the statesmen of the world may realize this before it is too late and, by the exertion of the needed courage and prudence, restore again to the position of authority which it had only a few years ago, that great institution for the maintenance of peace on which the future of civilization so largely depends. I mean, of course, the League of Nations.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

Love, People, World, Peace

“I am not in a position to enjoy sexual relations.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 132)

“The sequence of different positions of the same particle at different times forms a one-dimensional continuum in the four-dimensional space-time, which is called the world-line of the particle. All that physical experiments or observations can teach us refers to intersections of world-lines of different material particles, light-pulsations, etc., and how the course of the world-line is between these points of intersection is entirely irrelevant and outside the domain of physics. The system of intersecting world-lines can thus be twisted about at will, so long as no points of intersection are destroyed or created, and their order is not changed. It follows that the equations expressing the physical laws must be invariant for arbitrary transformations.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

World, Law, Light, Change

“… one morning, when it was barely light, I woke up because of a golden light that filled the whole wall above my bed, and I saw something like a picture of the Holy Virgin, surrounded by several other personages … and several angels, some of whom were as big as she, while others were like little children. It was like a tableau, and yet the Holy Virgin was alive, in heaven, and the angels were changing position. I believe this lasted for a very long time. I looked, as if praying without words, and I was struck with amazement; I had never seen anything so beautiful. At the beginning, all of the light was like very vibrant gold; it faded little by little, and, as it faded, the face and the hands of the Holy Virgin became more alive and clearer. I was not frightened in the least but filled with a new joy that was both intense and very sweet.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

The vision of Mary, p. 166
My Early Years (1968)

Children, Beauty, Angels, Light

“When [Nigel Farage] was treated in the way he was in Edinburgh Alex Salmond had the opportunity to be statesman like. To deplore what had happened. To say everyone was welcome in Scotland, everyone with an elected position, everyone who had following in Scotland had a right to speak and be heard. But he didn't. It's not just people with a percentage of the vote who have the right to speak. All of us have the right to speak. What happened to Farage looked ugly in the rest of the country and the rest of the world. And the SNP I fear will take you down a road where grudge is everything.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Express http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/407371/Question-Time-Nigel-Farage-blasts-Alex-Salmond-for-not-condeming-hostile-Edinburgh-scenes During an interview on Question time with Nigel Farage condemning the hostility shown by the Scottish people June 14, 2013

People, World, Fear, Way

“In the long run the [Nazi] movement was moving to a position in which the economic New Order would be controlled by the Party through a bureaucratic apparatus staffed by technical experts and dominated by political interests, not unlike the system that had already been built up in the Soviet Union.”

Richard Overy (1947) British historian

Source: War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994), p. 118

“Some people are constructive, if you like. Others are destructive. It's this diversity in humankind that results in some making positive contributions and some negative contributions. It's necessary to have enough who make positive contributions to overcome the problems of each age.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

People, Age, Problem

“Every part of the earth's surface presents unequivocal proofs that the elevation of the bed of the ocean in some places, and the subsidence of the dry land in others, have been, and are still, going on; and that, in truth, the continual changes in the relative position of the land and water, are the effects of laws which the Divine Author of the Universe has impressed on matter, and thus rendered it capable of perpetual renovation:—
Art, Empire, Earth itself, to change are doomed;
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vail,
And gulf's the mountain's mighty mass entombed,
And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Thoughts on a Pebble, or, A First Lesson in Geology (1849)

Truth, Law, Art, Mountain

“In his later works Doesburg tried to destroy static expression by diagonal position of his lines. But in this way the feeling of physic equilibrium which is necessary to enjoy a work of art is lost.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in a letter of Mondrian to Sweeney, 24 May 1943; as cited in: - 102 - Two autobiographical texts (24 May 1943) http://mondrianwritings.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/102.-Two-autobiographical-texts-24-May-1943.pdf This idea was partly the reason of their mutual split in 1924; in 1929 they reconciled in Paris. 1940's

Art, Way, Feeling

“How far our position is a minority one will differ from person to person here. If we are against factory farms, we are morally condemning widespread and perfectly legal practices involving perhaps the majority of the human community. If we are vegetarians, we hold a position which is very much a minority one. If we are pretty radical anti-vivisectionists, we also hold what seems to be a minority position, involving as it does a radical criticism of the law and the establishment of this country.”

Timothy Sprigge (1932–2007) British philosopher

Source: The Animal Welfare Movement and the Foundations of Ethics, p. 87

Law, Communication, Personality, Country

“If he votes against, that's the only principled position. If he abstains, it's a cop-out; if he votes for, it's a sell-out.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

On Nick Clegg and his vote to increase tuition fees http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=234&num=335499, 30 November 2010.

“It seems to me that dominant cinema seems to require an empathy or a sympathy between the film and the audience which is basically to do with the manipulation of the emotions and it seems to me again -- and this is a very subjective position -- that most cinema seems to trivialise the emotions, sentimentalising or romanticising them.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

“A war takes place; an earthquake occurs; a flood of a magnitude not seen in a hundred years washes over the land; a cartel falls apart; oil prices quadruple; tax laws change, and the market in which you had an open position, or even hedged, moves in a magnitude not only unforeseen, but totally outside past models. They always do. You are in trouble.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

"Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs." http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/1990s/TESTIMONYCommitteeBanking100198.html, October 1 1998

War, Law, Change, Past

“Reza Shah had been a powerful leader only partly because of his position, and Mohammad-Reza was fully conscious of the fact that he had few of his father's natural assets. The new Shah had received a democratic training which meant that he knew that there were different views on every issue and that reality could be contemplated from many different angles: this made him hesitant and indecisive where his father had been determined and resolute. Mohammad-Reza wanted to be loved for his person: Reza Shah never knew what love was, asking only to be obeyed. The new Shah was polite and shy and anxious not to offend: the old Shah deliberately terrorised members of his entourage in order to keep them constantly on their guard. Reza Shah had been a born leader; the new Shah had to learn to become one.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love, Nature, Reality, Learning

“No one contemplating the present position and looking back at the whole series of vicissitudes which has beset the British economy throughout the past 20 years can find the prospect other than very difficult at present. But I believe that there is also a great opportunity at present. There is certainly no quick, easy road to prosperity for this country, but the changes which must be made are fairly marginal. They must be made with absolute determination, but if they are so made, and accepted by the people, the whole outlook can change. The Government can only provide the right framework. Unless they do that, our national energies will be misdirected, but once they have done it the opportunities for export and growth and efficiency must be seized by everyone. There will still be two years of hard slog ahead. But at the end of it we could have a more securely-based prosperity than we have known for a generation.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1968/jan/17/public-expenditure in the House of Commons as Chancellor of the Exchequer (17 January 1968) 1960s

People, Change, Past, Country

“It is only with this prelude that the Declaration of 1776 proclaims the right to revolution. The people do not have an indiscriminate or uncontrolled right to establish or to abolish governments. They have a right to abolish only those governments that become "destructive of these ends". "These ends" refers to the security of equal natural rights. It is only for the sake of security of these rights that legitimate governments are instituted, or that governments may be altered or abolished. And governments are legitimate only insofar as their "just powers" are derived "from the consent of the governed". All of the foregoing is omitted from South Carolina's declaration, for obvious reasons. In no sense could it have been said that the slaves in South Carolina were governed by powers derived from their consent. Nor could it be said that South Carolina was separating itself from the government of the Union because that government had become destructive of the ends for which it was established. South Carolina in 1860 had an entirely different idea of what the ends of government ought to be from that of 1776 or 1787. That difference can be summed up in the difference between holding slavery to be an evil, if possibly a necessary evil, and holding it to be a positive good.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), p. 231

People, Idea, Nature, Sense

“The pattern of sex differences found in our species mirrors that found in most mammals and in many other animals. As such, considerations of parsimony suggest that the best explanation for the human differences will invoke evolutionary forces common to many species, rather than social forces unique to our own. When we find the standard pattern of differences in other, less culture-bound creatures, we inevitably explain this in evolutionary terms. It seems highly dubious, when we find exactly the same pattern in human beings, to say that, in the case of this one primate species, we must explain it in terms of an entirely different set of causes — learning or cumulative culture — which coincidentally replicates the pattern found throughout the rest of the animal kingdom. Anyone who wishes to adopt this position has a formidable task in front of them. They must explain why, in the hominin lineage uniquely, the standard evolved psychological differences suddenly became maladaptive, and thus why natural selection “wiped the slate clean” of any biological contribution to these differences. They must explain why natural selection eliminated the psychological differences but left the correlated physical differences intact. And they must explain why natural selection would eliminate the psychological differences and leave it all to learning, when learning simply replicated the same sex differences anyway. How could natural selection favor extreme flexibility with respect to sex differences if that flexibility was never exercised and was therefore invisible to selection?”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), pp. 142-143

Sex, Exercises, Nature, Learning

“"To know the times" means to know the enemy's disposition in battle. Is is flourishing or waning? By observing the spirit of the enemy's men and getting the best position, you can work out the enemy's disposition and move your men accordingly.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Men, Time

“"We treat each other well" In strong families, positive strokes outnumber negative broadsides by a wide margin. Members regularly express appreciation: "Thanks for fixing the drainpipe." "you look so nice in that dress." "The dinner was great" Criticism is offered gently. After all, strong families figure, if we can be kind to strangers, why not to one another.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)

Family, Strong

“It can hardly be argued that the ubiquity of the Playboy Bunny logo or its popularity with young girls are positive developments, but it must be understood that what is being objected to here, as elsewhere, is not sex, but symbol: the black-and-white, liplesss, featureless symbol of a perky, prosthetic sexuality whose alienation from the flesh and intimacy of real sex can be mass-produced.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Source: Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010), Chapter One, Bunny and Brand

Sex, Girl

“Carnap calls such concepts as point, straight line, etc., which are given by implicit definitions, improper concepts. Their peculiarity rests on the fact that they do not characterize a thing by its properties, but by its relation to other things. Consider for example the concept of the last car of a train. Whether or not a particular car falls under this description does not depend on its properties but on its position relative to other cars. We could therefore speak of relative concepts, but would have to extend the meaning of this term to apply not only to relations but also to the elements of the relations.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

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

Cars, Dependency, Training

“Body work must be approached with the same respect and attentiveness that one gives to dreams. The body has a wisdom of its own. However slowly and circuitously that wisdom manifests, once it is experienced it is a foundation, a basis of knowing that gives confidence and total support to the ego. To reach its wisdom requires absolute concentration: dropping the mind into the body, breathing into whatever is ready to be released, and allowing the process of expression until the negative, dammed energy is out, making room for the positive energy, genuine Light, to flood in.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 60

Wisdom, Dreams, Confidence, Support

“One of the evident facts about the world is the stability of empty space-time. In classical general relativity we can explain this as a consequence of the positive energy theorem… the positive energy theorem must extend in some suitable form to any viable quantum theory of gravity.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Positive energy in quantum gravity" arXiv (Jun 10, 2014)

World, Time

“I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of human kind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context… I can see such a use for the future as representing the really progressive character of the idea of understanding art when it is related to the life of humankind within the social body in the future.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Beuys, in Studio International Vol. 195, (1981), p. 46
1980's

Life, Art, Idea, Understanding

“The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline — or continued ascendancy — is in our hands.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Article, October 19, 2009, "Decline is a Choice" http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/056lfnpr.asp at weeklystandard.com. 2000s, 2009

World, Question

“And Lincoln said that by your own argument, if the local regulations are not forthcoming, you must support the federal enforcement; if you don’t, you’re taking the same position as the abolitionists, who denied any obligation to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Law, Support

“Plurality is never to be posited without necessity.”
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate

William of Ockham (1285–1349) medieval philosopher and theologian

Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi [Questions and the decisions of the Sentences of Peter Lombard] (1495), i, dist. 27, qu. 2, K; also in The Development of Logic (1962), by William Calvert Kneale, p. 243; similar statements were common among Scholastic philosophers, at least as early as John Duns (Duns Scotus).
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.
As cited in "The Myth of Occam's Razor" by William Thorburn, in Mind, Vol. 27 (1918), 345–353.

“Now, Lincoln' position was consistent throughout the debates. A great deal is said—Dr. DiLorenzo says it, but it's been said countless times before—that Lincoln used racist language in the debates. That’s not true. Now what Lincoln argued for in the debates was the recognition of the natural rights of black people, when Douglas said that if the people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, they certainly are good enough to govern a few miserable Negroes. And Lincoln replied by saying, "I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are as good as the average of people elsewhere, what I say is that no man is good enough to govern another without his consent."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

People, Nature, Time

“A second part of criticisms [of our concept, Multitude], which relate closely to the first, focus on the economic conception of the multitude. … "You are really against the workers!" … Industrial labor has been displaced from its hegemonic position over other forms of labor by immaterial labor, which now tends to transform all sectors of production and society itself in line with its qualities. Industrial workers remain important, then, but within the context of this new paradigm. Here arises, then, but within the second criticism of this pair, that our argument of hegemony of immaterial labor replaces the old vanguard of industrial workers with a new vanguard of immaterial workers - Microsoft programmers leading us on the shining path. "You are just postmodern Leninist in sheep's clothing!" they cry. No, the hegemonic position of a form of production in the economy should not imply any political hegemony. Our argument about the hegemony of immaterial labor and the becoming common of all forms of labor is aimed instead at establishing that contemporary conditions tending to form a general communication and collaboration of labor that can be the basis of the multitude.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

(223)
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Communication, Parting, Cry, Clothes

“It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”

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

From speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, . Frequently misattributed to The God Delusion.
quoted in [EDITORIAL: A scientist's case against God, The Independent (London), April 20, 1992, 17] and [2011-05-27, What Should I Believe?: Philosophical Essays for Critical Thinking, Paul Gomberg, Broadview Press, 9781554810130, 146, http://books.google.com/books?id=76WxxHN9I0kC&pg=PA146&dq=%22Faith+is+the+great+cop-out%22]

God, Sense, Christmas

“As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don't have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn't matter as much as how you do what you do.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in Another Door Opens (2006) by Jeffrey A. Wands. p. 29

Life

“After weeks of dancing around the issue, the Obama administration has expressed concern about “heightened military activity” by Russia in Syria. But what if we are facing something more than “heightened military activity?” What if Moscow is preparing to give Syria the full Putin treatment? For years, Russia has been helping Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad cling to a diminishing power structure in a shrinking territorial base without trying to impose an overall strategy. Now, however, there are signs that Russia isn’t content to just support Assad. It wants to control Syria. The Putin treatment is reserved for countries in Russia’s “near neighborhood” that try to break out of Moscow’s orbit and deprive it of strategic assets held for decades. In such cases, unable to restore its past position, Russia tries to create a new situation in which it keeps a sword dangling above the head of the recalcitrant nation. Russia’s military intervenes directly and indirectly, always with help from a segment of the local population concerned. Russia starts by casting itself as protector of an ethnic, linguistic or religious minority that demands its military intervention against a central power vilified with labels such as “fascist” and “terrorist.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Putin is turning the Syrian coast into another Crimea http://nypost.com/2015/09/19/putin-is-turning-the-syrian-coast-into-another-crimea/, New York Post (September 19, 2015). New York Post

Support, Past, Help, Dance

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

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

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith. Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html 1960s

Life, Men, God, People

“All their players tested positive… for being assholes.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

About the French 2006 FIFA World Cup team during his speech at the ESPY Awards, as quoted in "Armstrong accuses France World Cup team of being 'assholes'" in The Guardian (16 July 2006) http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport/story/0,,1821547,00.html; he later commented on his use of profanity: "If they'd lived with me and heard me at home, they'd know it was a step down.."

“There are clear and predictable consequences for the world if human beings continue to rape the earth and plunder its resources; to exploit, oppress, and dominate the weak and the poor for the sake of greed and the hunger for power; to depend on ever-rising levels of violence and ever more lethal instruments of death and destruction in order to secure positions of power and privilege.”

Allan Boesak (1946) South African anti-apartheid activist

Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), pp. 65-66

Death, Hunger, World, Dependency

“We are in the position of the man who has only two ambitions in life. One is to invent the universal solvent which will dissolve any solid substance, and the second is to invent the universal container which will hold any liquid. Whatever this inventor does, he will be frustrated.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

VII. Communication, Secrecy, and Social Policy. p. 129
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Life, Universe

“I think the best thing about the picture is that we do feel for the Creature. We feel for him and his predicament and where he is and so on. I think that’s a very positive thing really. I like that we feel sympathy for the Creature.”

Julie Adams (1926–2019) American actress

Exclusive Interview With Julie Adams http://www.horrorsociety.com/2013/09/23/exclusive-interview-with-julie-adams-star-of-creature-from-the-black-lagoon/ (September 23, 2013)

Feeling, Thinking

“Morphy's principal strength does not rest upon his power of combination but in his position play and his general style…. Beginning with la Bourdonnais to the present, and including Lasker, we find that the greatest stylist has been Morphy. Whence the reason, although it might not be the only one, why he is generally considered the greatest of all.”

José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942) Cuban chess player

In Pablo Morphy by V. F. Coria and L. Palau.

“As you open up spiritually, your subtle body has a particular effulgence which attracts entities from both the divine and negative natures. You become more sensitive and aware of everything. You become more intuitive and have more experiences in the dream state. If there are messages you should receive, the impressions will always be there, even when you are asleep, and you will act on them without consciously being aware of it. If a communication is really meant for your growth, even though you may forget it or may not be able to understand its significance, it will still have an effect on your consciousness. Ultimately, both the positive and negative experiences are “quality tests” to assess your level of sincerity.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 21

Dreams, Communication, Understanding, Nature

“You know, joining a gang is like having a family. It's feeling like you're part of something bigger than yourself. So we're either going to have gangs that murder and rob and do the things that are so destructive to the gang members and to the community. Or, we're going to have positive gangs. We're going to have positive alternatives for young people.”

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

Clinton: We Need Positive Gangs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVD0pvWL6R4; as quoted in * 2016-04-21 Clinton: We Could Have Positive Gangs Chandler Gill Free Beacon http://freebeacon.com/culture/clinton-need-positive-gangs/. Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

People, Family, Feeling, Communication

“But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Men, Secret, World

“I learned a lot with Paolo Maldini who helped me with defensive positioning and the importance of respecting tactical schemes.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Interview with Sambafoot, 2012 http://www.sambafoot.com/fr/informations/28541_thiago_silva_trouve_son_inspiration_dans_maldini__gamarra_et_juan.html

Learning, Help

“But if I could make just one small positive suggestion. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia is very rich in certain mineral deposits — notably of course, sand. Oh my goodness, it's got so much sand, it could export the stuff. Or, even better, it could import a load of water and cement, mix itself into a giant block of concrete, and do us all a huge favour.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Why are we friends with Saudi Arabia?" (14 May 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=fm8IuR2VF3M 2007

Water

“For Space, when the position of points is expressed by rectilinear co-ordinates, ds = \sqrt{ \sum (dx)^2 }; Space is therefore included in this simplest case. The next case in simplicity includes those manifoldnesses in which the line-element may be expressed as the fourth root of a quartic differential expression…. I restrict myself… to those manifoldnesses in which the line element is expressed as the square root of a quadric differential expression…. Manifoldnesses in which, as in the Plane and in Space, the line-element may be reduced to the form \sqrt{ \sum (dx)^2 }, are… only a particular case of the manifoldnesses to be here investigated; they require a special name, and therefore these manifoldnesses… I will call flat. In order now to review the true varieties of all the continua which may be represented in the assumed form, it is necessary to get rid of difficulties arising from the mode of representation, which is accomplished by choosing the variables in accordance with a certain principle.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

“Let us imagine that from any given point the system of shortest lines going out from it is constructed; the position of an arbitrary point may then be determined by the initial direction of the geodesic in which it lies, and by its distance measured along that line from the origin. It can therefore be expressed in terms of the ratios dx0 of the quantities dx in this geodesic, and of the length s of this line. …the square of the line-element is \sum (dx)^2 for infinitesimal values of the x, but the term of next order in it is equal to a homogeneous function of the second order… an infinitesimal, therefore, of the fourth order; so that we obtain a finite quantity on dividing this by the square of the infinitesimal triangle, whose vertices are (0,0,0,…), (x1, x2, x3,…), (dx1, dx2, dx3,…). This quantity retains the same value so long as… the two geodesics from 0 to x and from 0 to dx remain in the same surface-element; it depends therefore only on place and direction. It is obviously zero when the manifold represented is flat, i. e., when the squared line-element is reducible to \sum (dx)^2, and may therefore be regarded as the measure of the deviation of the manifoldness from flatness at the given point in the given surface-direction. Multiplied by -¾ it becomes equal to the quantity which Privy Councillor Gauss has called the total curvature of a surface. …The measure-relations of a manifoldness in which the line-element is the square root of a quadric differential may be expressed in a manner wholly independent of the choice of independent variables. A method entirely similar may for this purpose be applied also to the manifoldness in which the line-element has a less simple expression, e. g., the fourth root of a quartic differential. In this case the line-element, generally speaking, is no longer reducible to the form of the square root of a sum of squares, and therefore the deviation from flatness in the squared line-element is an infinitesimal of the second order, while in those manifoldnesses it was of the fourth order. This property of the last-named continua may thus be called flatness of the smallest parts. The most important property of these continua for our present purpose, for whose sake alone they are here investigated, is that the relations of the twofold ones may be geometrically represented by surfaces, and of the morefold ones may be reduced to those of the surfaces included in them…”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Imagination, Parting, Dependency

“Control exists only when there is action of will, positively or negatively. Will is resistance. When the mind is learning, there is no resistance.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

3rd Public Talk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (24 May 1971)
1970s

Learning

“I stick to what I know. If I've objected strongly to Christianity, it has been because Christianity is deeply branded by a very virulent humiliation motif. One of its main tenets is 'I, a miserable sinner, born in sin, who have sinned all my days, etc.' Our way of living and behaving under this punishment is completely atavistic. I could go on talking about this humiliation business for ever. It's one of the big basic experiences. I react very strongly to every form of humiliation; and a person in my situation, in my position, has been exposed to whole series of real humiliations. Not to mention having humiliated others!”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Torsten Manns interview 
Bergman on Bergman (1970)

Way, Business, Personality

“To depend on others for salvation is negative, but to depend on oneself is positive. Dependence on others means surrendering one's intelligence and efforts.”

K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera (1919–2006) Sri Lankan Buddhist monk

"No Self Surrender"
What Buddhists Believe (1993)

Intelligence, Effort, Dependency

“It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I'm not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U. S. ] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you.”

Keith Ellison (1963) American politician and lawyer

Meeting with Atheists for Human Rights, July 08, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070710224408/http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1291147.html

Country, Box

“The real difficulties which beset this question, do not arise from anything in Ireland, so much as from the constitution of the Government. This House, and the other House of Parliament, are almost exclusively aristocratic in their character. The Administration is therefore necessarily the same, and on the Treasury benches aristocracy reigns supreme. Not fewer than seven Members of the Cabinet are Members of the House of Lords; and every other Member of it is either a Lord by title, or on the very threshold of the peerage by birth or marriage. I am not blaming them for this; it may even be that from neither House of Parliament can fourteen better men be chosen to fill their places. But I maintain that in the present position of Ireland, and looking at human nature as it is, it is not possible that fourteen Gentlemen, circumstanced as these are, can meet round the Council table, and with unbiassed minds fairly discuss the question of Ireland, as it now presents itself to this House, to the country, and to the world.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/aug/25/employment-of-the-poor-ireland in the House of Commons (25 August 1848). 1840s

Men, Marriage, World, Birth

“Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 236

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Appearance

“In 1763 a Croatian Jesuit named Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711 - 1787) identified the ultimate implication of this mechanical atomic theory. One of the crucial aspects of Isaac Newton's laws of motion is their predictive capability. If we know how an object is moving at any instant - how fast, and in which direction - and if, furthermore, we know the forces acting on it, we can calculate its future trajectory exactly. This predictability made it possible for astronomers to use Newton's laws of motion and gravity to calculate, for example, when future solar eclipses would happen.
Boscovich realized that if all the world is just atoms in motion and collision, then an all-seeing mind "could, from a continuous arc described in an interval of time, no matter how small, by all points of matter, derive the law [that is, a universal map] of forces itself … Now, if the law of forces were known, and the position, velocity and direction of all the points at any given instant, it would be possible for a mind of this type to foresee all the necessary subsequent motions and states, and to predict all the phenomena that necessarily followed from them."”

Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) Croat-Italian physicist

Philip Ball, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2006).

World, Law, Universe, Time

“I have always been fascinated with the arts. When I was in Iran in that position I was constantly concerned with promoting our Iranian traditional art but, at the same time, with introducing contemporary and modern art.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Former queen of Iran on assembling Tehran's art collection http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/01/queen-iran-art-collection, The Guardian, (August 1, 2012). Interviews

Art, Time

“Science may fall back on its stupid excuse that science works for science, and that when it has been developed by the scientists it will become accessible to the people also; but art, if it be art, should be accessible to all, and particularly to those for whom it is produced. And the position of our art strikingly arraigns the producers of art for not wishing, not knowing how, and being unable, to serve the people.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People, Stupidity, Art, Science

“We do not need a large land force. The present size of our regular Army is entirely adequate, but it should continue to be supplemented by a National Guard and Reserves, and especially with the equipment and organization in our industries for furnishing supplies. When we turn to the sea the situation is different. We have not only a long coast line, distant outlying possessions, a foreign commerce unsurpassed in importance, and foreign investments unsurpassed in amount, the number of our people and value of our treasure to be protected, but we are also bound by international treaty to defend the Panama Canal. Having few fuelling stations, we require ships of large tonnage, and, having scarcely any merchant vessels capable of mounting five- or six-inch guns, it is obvious that, based on positions, we are entitled to a larger number of warships than a nation having these advantages.”

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

Speech on Armistice Day in Washington (11 November 1928), quoted in The Times (12 December 1928), p. 11.
1920s

People, Distant, Sea

“Aristotle’s enthusiasm for the preservation of social distinction and his emphasis on the social position of the “high-souled” man remind us that even in his favored politeia, with as many respectable and steady men of the middle class admitted to political participation as is possible, Aristotle hankered after the rule of true, that is, natural aristocrats. If that attitude is not unknown two and a half millennia later, his unconcern with those left out of this vision of the world—women, ordinary working people, foreigners, slaves—is happily rather less common. But we shall not see much sympathy for ordinary lives and ordinary happiness for many centuries yet, certainly not in the work of Cicero.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 3 : Aristotle: Politics Is Not Philosophy

Women, Men, People, World

“Has, then, the influence of the crown increased since the Revolution? Down to the period of 1782 I believe the fact will not be much disputed. It was upon the notoriety of the fact, and the bad consequences it had produced, that the motions of the right hon. gentleman in favour of reform were founded. That it has increased, I think every impartial man must be compelled to admit…If, then, while the influence of the crown has so manifestly advanced, while the cause of liberty has remained the same, or has sustained a diminution of its strength, can it be said that we are standing upon the establishment of the Revolution, and adhering to the principles which it ascertained? It is, then, upon this ground of experience and the evidence of facts, upon proof of positive inconvenience and real declination from its original purity, that I should propose to recall our constitution to its true principles and to amend the system of our representation.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (25 April 1800), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXV (London: 1819), pp. 91-93.
1800s

Thinking

“Obama’s manner in dealing with other people and acting in the world fully exemplifies the cheerful impersonal friendliness—the middle distance—that marks American sociability. (Now allow me to speak as a critic. Remember Madame de Staël’s meetings that deprive us of solitude without affording us company? Or Schopenhauer’s porcupines, who shift restlessly from getting cold at a distance to prickling one another at close quarters, until they settle into some acceptable compromise position?) The cheerful impersonal friendliness serves to mask recesses of loneliness and secretiveness in the American character, and no less with Obama than with anyone else. He is enigmatic—and seemed so as much then as now—in a characteristically American way…. Moreover, he excelled at the style of sociability that is most prized in the American professional and business class and serves as the supreme object of education in the top prep schools: how to cooperate with your peers by casting on them a spell of charismatic seduction, which you nevertheless disguise under a veneer of self-depreciation and informality. Obama did not master this style in prep school, but he became a virtuoso at it nevertheless, as the condition of preferment in American society that it is. As often happens, the outsider turned out to be better at it than the vast majority of the insiders…. Together with the meritocratic educational achievements, the mastery of the preferred social style turns Obama into what is, in a sense, the first American elite president—that is the first who talks and acts as a member of the American elite—since John Kennedy …. Obama's mixed race, his apparent and assumed blackness, his non-elite class origins and lack of inherited money, his Third-World childhood experiences—all this creates the distance of the outsider, while the achieved elite character makes the distance seem less threatening.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Quoted in David Remnick, The Bridgeː The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (2010), p. 185-6
On Barack Obama

Money, People, Secret, World

“That whatever position I'm holding right now won't last forever. It will come to an end, and so I better be sure that at the end of it all I'd still be able to hold my head up high and still be able to live and breath freely.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

on the best political advice his father has given to him
"The Commissioner", FHM 01 September 2010, p. 54.
2010

“The main qualifications to the lesser position of painting is that advances in art are certainly not always formal ones.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd (1963), quoted in: Joseph Kosuth, (1969), " Art after Philosophy http://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html" 1960s

Art, Painting

“A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial—say, more than a third from cost—or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 25

Loss

“When I come along [to the landlord] and say, "Here, gentlemen, you have escaped long enough, it is your turn now, I want you to pay just 5 per cent. on the £10,000 odd," they reply:—"Five per cent? You are a thief; you are worse, you are an attorney; worst of all, you are a Welshman." That always is the crowning epithet. I do not apologize, and I do not mind telling you that if I could, I would not; I am proud of the little land among the hills…Whenever they hurl my nationality at my head, I say to them, "You Unionists, you hypocrites, Pharisees, you are the people who in every peroration…always talk about our being one kith and kin throughout the Empire…and yet if any man dares to aspire to any position, if he does not belong to the particular nationality which they have dignified by choosing their parents from, they have no use for him."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Well, they have got to stand the Welshman now.
Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Parent

“They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful.”

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

Part 4, Chapter 1 (p. 114)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

“I don't believe we need the government's help as much as some think we do. That belief sets me apart from the Democrats, since their way of dealing with everything is to tax and spend.
I also believe that government has no business telling us how we should live our lives. I think our lifestyle choices should be left up to us. What we do in our private lives is none of the government's business. That position rules out the Republican Party for me. As the cliché says, "I don't want Democrats in the boardroom and I don't want Republicans in the bedroom."”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

Way, Business, Thinking, Help

“It has often been said that a reformation should begin with each man reforming himself. That, however, is not what actually happened, for the reformation produced a hero who paid God dearly enough for his position as hero. By joining up with him directly people buy cheap, indeed at bargain prices, what he had paid for so dearly; but they do not buy the highest of all things.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age, by Søren Kierkegaard, 1846, Dru translation 1962, p. 56-57
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

God, People

“We show that some known classical results have particularly simple derivations within the Ashtekar formalism. These include Witten's positive energy theorem…”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Positive energy in quantum gravity" arXiv (Jun 10, 2014)

“Buddhism today is a dalitist religion and Hinduism is a brahminic religion with oppositional spiritual positions about human equality and man-woman relations.”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

"Chinese lesson for RSS" in Deccan Chronicle (05 May 2015) http://www.deccanchronicle.com/150505/commentary-columnists/article/chinese-lesson-rss.

Religion

“… don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist. There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. The female loves to play man against man, and if she is in a position to do it there is not one who will not resist. The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal. and torture and damnation. Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

in a letter to Steven Richmond (Published in Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes)
Letters

Love, Women, Feeling, Soul

“This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of public opinion… In my judgment Canada will eventually join with the allied coalition if war on Iraq comes to pass. The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute. In the end it will join out of the necessity created by a pattern of uncertainty and indecision. It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Hansard, January 29, 2003: On the Iraq war.
2003

War, Failure, Indecision

“For us “immigration” is a proxy for race. In that way, immigration can be good or bad: it can be a conquest (as it seems now)… or a European in-gathering, something like White Zionism. It all depends on the immigrants. And we should open our minds to the positive possibilities of mass immigration from the White world.”

Richard Bertrand Spencer (1978) American white supremacist

World, Way, Dependency

“There's been a lot of analysis about the so-called gender wars... me playing the so-called gender card because heavens knows no-one noticed I was a woman until I raised it, but against that background, I do want to say about all of these issues, the reaction to being the first female Prime Minister does not explain everything about my Prime Ministership, nor does it explain nothing about my Prime Ministership. I've been a little bit bemused by those colleagues in the newspaper who have admitted that I have suffered more pressure as a result of my gender than other Prime Ministers in the past but then concluded that it had zero effect on my political position or the political position of the Labor Party. It doesn't explain everything... it explains some things. And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey. What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that - and I'm proud of that.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Resignation Press Conference after leadership ballot "Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard Defeated In Shock Leadership Challenge by Kevin Rudd" http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/26/australia-julia-gillard-defeated-leadership-contest_n_3501448.html?utm_hp_ref=uk, in Huffington Post, 26 June 2013

War, Way, Confidence, Thinking

“Everything we did was done in form and with propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document [the Quebec Resolutions] that has been submitted to the imperial government as well as to this house and which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt about our position in regard to that document we say, question it you may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not.”

Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825–1868) Canadian politician

Hear, hear.
Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865 (Known in Ottawa as "The curse of D'Arcy Mcgee")

Question, Housing

“The bourgeoisie loves so-called “positive” types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one’s innocence, to be a beast and still be happy.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (April 13, 1895)
Letters

Love, Thinking, Happiness

Quotes about position page 15

Quotes about position
page 15