Quotes about possibility (6356 quotes, page 32)

“We may make progress only by freeing ourselves from the rut of the past, but without this rut an orderly society would hardly be possible in the first place.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter IV, Part 6, The Inertia of History, p. 195

Past

“Perhaps you will not only have some appreciation of this culture; it is even possible that you may want to join in the greatest adventure that the human mind has ever begun.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume III, "Feynman's Epilogue", p. 21-19 (closing sentence)
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“It had been some years since I had lost my Faith, save in my own capacity to survive a world at War, but evidently in the back of my mind there had always been some sense that through God one might find salvation. Now, as I journeyed in quest of the Holy Grail (or something identified as the Holy Grail), I not only questioned the possibility that salvation existed; I questioned whether God’s salvation was worth the earning. Again I began to see the struggle between God and Lucifer as nothing more than a squabble between petty princelings over who should possess power in a tiny, unimportant territory. The fate of the tenants of that territory did not much seem to matter to them; and even the reward of those tenants’ loyalty seemed thin enough to me.”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 8 (pp. 91-92)

God , Fate , War , World

“The time has gone by when a Huxley could believe that while science might indeed remould traditional mythology, traditional morals were impregnable and sacrosanct to it. We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion.
There does not seem to be any particular reason why a religion should not arise with an ethic as fluid as Hindu mythology, but it has not yet arisen. Christianity has probably the most flexible morals of any religion, because Jesus left no code of law behind him like Moses or Muhammad, and his moral precepts are so different from those of ordinary life that no society has ever made any serious attempt to carry them out, such as was possible in the case of Israel and Islam. But every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. This is no doubt an argument for Christianity as against other religions, but not as against none at all, or as against a religion which will frankly admit that its mythology and morals are provisional. That is the only sort of religion that would satisfy the scientific mind, and it is very doubtful whether it could properly be called a religion at all.”

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Daedalus or Science and the Future (1923)

Life , Religion , Law , Learning

“Coherence and harmony in relations and interactions between the members of a human social system are due to the coherence and harmony of their growth in it, in an ongoing social learning which their own social ( linguistic) operation defines and which is possible thanks to the genetic and ontogenetic processes that permit structural plasticity of the members.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Source: The tree of Knowledge (1987), p. 199 as cited in: Vincent Kenny (1989) " Life, the Multiverse and Everything; an Introduction to the Ideas of. Humberto Maturana http://www.oikos.org/vinclife.htm".

Learning

“I am tired of playing in a shadow Everything I do they compare to Paul Waner. I am not Paul Waner's shadow. I try not to let it bother me, but I get tired of the things some people say. They call me a showboat because I make basket catches. They don't call Willie Mays a showboat, do they? They say I'm a hypochondriac, too. When I have trouble with my back, they say it's in my mind. In Houston last year, right before the end of the season, I was still in the race for the batting title and Murtaugh told me to do everything possible to win it. One time I was being intentionally walked and I swung at one of the pitches. Then I wasn't a team player any more. People said I was out for myself.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Roberto's Not Happy; Clemente in Waner's Shadow" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/15674492/ by Sandy Padwe (NEA), in The Indiana Gazette (July 2, 1964), p. 16
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

People , Time , Season

“He tried to put more conviction into his voice than he felt, and he mentally cursed any God that there might be, for having made this coming ordeal not only tremendously difficult and dangerous, but possibly pointless too.”

Tim Powers book The Stress of Her Regard

Source: The Stress of Her Regard (1989), Chapter 26 (p. 400)

God

“His formidable originality within the picture-book convention may not have been altogether apparent to Keeping himself, which is both a strength and a weakness: the strength that he could communicate with unrivalled emotional intensity — but possibly only with one child in twenty; the concomitant weakness is that there was not a lot he could do to broaden this minority appeal and ensure that his books remained in print over longer periods. ~ Douglas Martin in Charles Keeping: an illustrator's life (1993) he is a good auther”

Charles Keeping (1924–1988) British illustrator and children's writer

Life , Books , Communication

“The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side — the side of corruption and prerogative.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" Preface.htm http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/"
Political Essays (1819)

Life , Sense , Strong

“The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 6.

Fear , Courage , Dependency , Forgetting

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

from lecture "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy (1964)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

People , World , Search , Question

“In this fact we have reached the essential form of every spirit or person — the organic union of the particular with the universal, of its private self-activity in the recognition of itself with its public activity in the recognition of all others. That is, self-consciousness is in the last resort a conscience, or the union of each spirit's self-recognition with recognition of all. Its self-definition is therefore definite, in both senses of the word: it is at once integral in its thorough and inconfusible difference from every other, and yet it is integral in terms of the entire whole that includes it with all the rest. Thus in both of its aspects — and both are essential to it — in a commanding sense it excludes alternative, and there is universal determinism, that is, universal and stable definiteness, just because there is universal self-determination, or genuine freedom. But this universal self-defining implies and proclaims the universal reality, the living presence in all, of one unchangeable type of being — the self-conscious intelligence; and this, presented in all really possible forms, or instances, of its one abiding nature.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.353-4

Intelligence , Nature , Reality , Sense

“Now, I recognize that these are very real possibilities." I said. "But let's pretend for a second that they aren't.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

"Where Are You Off To Now?"
Anthology

“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

“Well, I have a very simple method of painting. It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method. It's very simple... Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer... I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Oral history interview with Edward Hopper' (1959, June 17), conducted by John Morse; 'Archives of American Art', Smithsonian Institution

Business , Help , Painting

“Attention must be given to the study of the given operations. Their study with due allowance made for the existing means of warfare will make it possible to reach a number of useful theoretical conclusions for conducting operations in the initial phase of a war.”

Matvei Zakharov (1898–1972) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Timely Lessons of History: The Manchurian Model for Soviet Strategy" - Page 4 - by John Despres, Lilita Dzirkals, Barton Whaley - History - 1976

War , Study

“Tragedy springs from outrage; it protests at the conditions of life. It carries in it the possibilities of disorder, for all tragic poets have something of the rebelliousness of Antigone. Goethe, on the contrary, loathed disorder. He once said that he preferred injustice, signifying by that cruel assertion not his support for reactionary political ideals, but his conviction that injustice is temporary and reparable whereas disorder destroys the very possibilities of human progress. Again, this is an anti-tragic view; in tragedy it is the individual instance of injustice that infirms the general pretence of order. One Hamlet is enough to convict a state of rottenness.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. V (p. 167).

Life , Spring , Support

“.. it [painting art] has never been so truly realistic, so firmly attached to its own period as it is today. A kind of painting that is realistic in the highest sense is beginning to appear, and it is here today... The advertising billboard, dictated by modern commercial needs, that brutally cuts across a landscape.... this yellow or red poster shouting in a timid landscape, is the best of possible reasons for the new painting; it topples the whole sentimental literary concept and announces the advent of plastic contrast.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Art , Sense , Appearance , Painting

“Why, the very first act of the State, the compulsory assessment and collection of taxes, is itself an aggression, a violation of equal liberty, and, as such, initiates every subsequent act, even those acts which would be purely defensive if paid out of a treasury filled by voluntary contributions. How is it possible to sanction, under the law of equal liberty, the confiscation of a man's earnings to pay for protection which he has not sought and does not desire? And, if this is an outrage, what name shall we give to such confiscation when the victim is given, instead of bread, a stone, instead of protection, oppression? To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. But that is exactly what the State is doing.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

The Relation of the State to the Invididual (1890)

Law

“But first, there will have to be national socialism. Otherwise the people and their governments are not ready for the socialism of nations. It is not possible to be liberal to one’s own country and demand socialism among nations.”

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

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 170

People , Country

“I must say a few words here concerning the solution of the Polish problem…Groeber has posed the question: Do I not overestimate the value of the military guarantees? Are not political guarantees in connection with good relations between Poland and Germany far better and more durable than it is possible fo military guarantees to be? …The past conduct of the Polish fraction in the Reichstag and the House of Deputies, and the attempts to have the German Ostmark question discussed as a question of international importance at world peace congresses, do not give my political friends a sufficient guarantee to think that future relations between Poland and Germany can be based solely on a formal paper friendship.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Source: 1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 21 June 1918, p. 175

Friendship , World , Peace , Question

“I had prayed before Lord Ram that I wish with the help of every section of the society the temple will be constructed as soon as possible.”

Amit Shah (1964) Indian politician

"Exclusive Amit Shah Interview: People are waiting to vote for Modi," 2013

Help

“To increase the number of men and women in all lands who will refuse absolutely to sanction the use of any unchristian weapon, who will follow without compromise the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and who will seek diligently by every possible means to spread abroad in the lives of individuals and of nations the spirit of Jesus, this is the only sure way to abolish war.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 107

Women , Men , War , Way

“I have lesbian impulses, so I understand how a man looks at a woman. … When I was growing up, it wasn't possible for me to do anything about my attraction to women. Lesbianism didn't exist in that time, as far as I knew.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Women , Understanding , Time

“The reason is not to glorify "bit chasing"; a more fundamental issue is at stake here: Numerical subroutines should deliver results that satisfy simple, useful mathematical laws whenever possible. […] Without any underlying symmetry properties, the job of proving interesting results becomes extremely unpleasant. The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work.”

Donald Ervin Knuth book The Art of Computer Programming

Vol. II, Seminumerical Algorithms, Section 4.2.2 part A, final paragraph [Italics in source]
The Art of Computer Programming (1968–2011)

Law , Mathematics , Success

“A hypothetical theory is necessary, as a preliminary step, to reduce the expression of the phenomena to simplicity and order before it is possible to make any progress in framing an abstractive theory.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

Source: "Outlines of the Science of Energetics," (1855), p. 213

“Though it would be unfair to blame all on him, there is no escaping the fact that President Barack Obama has been an exceptionally divisive figure. Failing to find formulae for working with a hostile Congress he has tried to circumvent the legislature whenever possible, adding fuel to the fire of division. He leaves behind a deeply divided government. By turning his power base into a coalition of racial, ethnic and religious minorities, Obama has pushed the majority towards radical messages they had shunned for generations. He leaves behind a divided society. Today, even the two main parties, Democrat and Republican, are split with surprising reversals of alliances within each. He leaves behind a divided establishment.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Clinton or Trump – Better or Less Bad? http://english.aawsat.com/2016/11/article55361471/opinion-clinton-trump-better-less-bad, Ashraq Al-Awsat (November 4, 2016)

Hostility

“In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island... No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

"Britain and the Nuclear Bombs", The New Statesman, 2 November 1957. This article led to the creation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

World , Faith , Hope , Idea

“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean”

Najib Razak (1953) Malaysian politician

Quoted on BBC News, "Flight MH370 'crashed in south Indian Ocean' - Malaysia PM" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26716572, March 24, 2014.

Sadness

“I've had letters from Chinese scientists at the peak of the SARS epidemic who said the problem is a hybridization between the viruses planted into GMO feed, which is then fed to animals, then the virus jumped from the animals to humans. We're going to see more and more of these kinds of risks. I think the whole issue of the H1N1 virus was the fact that it had genes for three influenza types--human, chicken, pig. All of these crossings are becoming possible because of the crossing of genes across species barriers.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On the SARS epidemic, as quoted in " A Visit to My Kitchen: Vandana Shiva http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-rodale/a-visit-to-my-kitchen-van_b_775298.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in", The Huffington Post (28 October 2011)

Problem , Thinking , Animals

“A few months after Khieu Samphan’s now famous “admission” that his regime was responsible for the deaths of about one-sixth of the population of Cambodia, Indonesian Prime Minister Adam Malik admitted that 50-80,000 people, close to the same percentage of the population, had been killed in East Timor in the course of what the Indonesia propaganda ministry and the New York Times called the “civil war” – that is, the U. S. backed Indonesian invasion and massacre – though one would not have discovered that fact from the U. S. media. While Khieu Samphan’s “admission” was concocted by the media and scholarship on the basis of remarks that quite possibly were never made, Malik’s admission, by contrast, was clear and explicit. A comparison of media reaction to the actual admission by Malik and the concocted “admission” by Samphan gives some insight into what lies behind the machinations of the Free Press.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 177.

Death , War , People , Time

“The explosion of financial innovation unaccompanied by credible systemic regulation has made the financial system vulnerable. The resulting crisis of confidence threatens global prosperity in the increasingly interdependent world in which we live. There is, therefore, a need for a new international initiative to bring structural reform in the world's financial system with more effective regulation and stronger systems of multilateral consultations and surveillance. This must be designed in as inclusive a manner as possible.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On the financial crisis of 2007–08, as quoted in "Full text of Manmohan Singh's speech at UN General Assembly" http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/full-text-of-manmohan-singh-s-speech-at-un-general-assembly/article1-340789.aspx, Hindustan Times (27 September 2008)
2006-2010

World , Confidence

“True science consists in systematically examining all possible cases. Exact political economy has not achieved this until now. It does not even encompass all actual cases. This is one of the reason why exact theory finds itself in opposition to the historical school and why it does not have an awful lot to say to those economists who occupy themselves with issues of practical interest, theories of crisis, cartels and trusts.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1940s and later, Otto Neurath Economic Writings. Selections 1904-1945 (2004), p. 278

School , Science

“All those who support her continued detention, anyone who is silent while she remains in jail, and all those who make her detention possible are saying: Forget democracy. That’s not what we are. Get used to it.”

Gideon Levy (1953) Israeli journalist

In a Democracy, Palestinian Lawmaker Khalida Jarrar Would Be Free (June 21, 2018)

Democracy , Support , Forgetting

“Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. (Cheers.) It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds. It is for this process that Mr. MacDonald asks us to make ourselves responsible. We are to render these tyrannies possible by lending to their authors money to pay for the ammunition to murder the Georgians, to enable the Soviet sect to keep its stranglehold on the dumb Russian nation, and to poison the world, and so far as they can, the British Empire, with their filthy propaganda. (Cheers.) That is what we are asked to take upon ourselves. It is an outrage on the British name.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Edinburgh (25 September 1924), quoted in The Times (26 September 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

Money , People , World , History

“It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible differently—though isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed?”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 11-12

Faith , History

“The abolition of enslavement to interest on money signifies the only possible and conclusive liberation of productive labor from the hidden coercive money-powers.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" (1919)

Money

“To me it was so natural that companies should seek their own survival. I had seen nothing else in my life. Companies struggle to keep going and to grow, for as long as possible.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Source: The Living Company, 1997, p. 182

Life , Nature

“The struggle for existence is very difficult here [Berlin! - in 1911 Kirchner and his Brücke-friends moved from Dresden to Berlin], but the possibilities are also greater. I hope that we can create a fruitful new school and convince many new friends of the value of our efforts.”

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

quote in a letter to Louise Schiefler, from Berlin, 5 November 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Grosstad, Eros und Natur, aus der verborgenen Sammlungen der Region, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst Germany, 2005, pp. 113-114
about the move of Die Brücke artists from Dresden to Berlin, Kirchner was optimistic in the beginning
1905 - 1915

School , Hope , Effort

“Over the years the Flying Scotsman has travelled the world and been owned by pretty well everyone except my wife, and possibly Kate Moss. As I write he's for sale again, for a not inconsiderable 2.5 million Pounds. That may seem a lot for something that no longer has a purpose, even if he is Britain's engineering heritage. But he is not simply a machine. Like an Aston Martin DB7 or an F-16 fighter, he works as an art form too, a piece of sculpture. So what if you can't go anywhere in him anymore. Put him in your garden and spend your days just looking at him.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World , Art , Travel , Flying

“The political dismemberment of these once British colonies from the parent island, though involving a valuable principle, and many possible results, would scarcely merit a yearly commemoration, even in this country, had it not been accompanied by other occurrences more novel, and far more important.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)

Parent , Country

“It is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 613.

“We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Speech in Boston (2002)

World , Peace , Madness

“In zero gravity, SAS aside, it's possible to perform amazing physical feats. Ironically, it's more like being there as a mind.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

“Affirmative action, rightly understood, would justify a wide variety of outreach programs for those whose lives have been stultified by poverty, broken families, bad schools, and neighborhoods filled with drugs, crime and gangs. One can heartily commend a program for tutoring young blacks, or young whites, who had never had a genuine teacher in a real classroom. One cannot, however, commend a program of raising the grades of young blacks, but not young whites, without having raised their skills. And what possible justification can there be there for giving scholarship assistance to the child of a black middle-class family, while denying it to a poor white? Can one imagine a more crass disregard for the genuine meaning of the Equal Protection Clause? The priests of this new religion of 'affirmative action' are not without material interests. Hundreds of millions of corporate dollars are spent annually on 'sensitivity training'. Within the universities, centers for black, brown and women's (i. e., feminist) studies are being established, with vast amount of patronage bestowed upon them. Traditional courses in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare and the Bible continue to appear in the catalogs, but they are increasingly taught by 'deconstructionists', who have no interest in the texts, but only in subjective reactions to the texts.”

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

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Women , School , Family , Religion

“The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Louisiana Treaty of Cession, Art. III (30 April 1803)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Religion , Time

“An analysis of social relations in 2 parts: the properties of 2-person relations, and an extension of the chief concepts to the complex relations of larger groups. Beginning with the assumption that most social interactions must be reinforced to be repeated, the authors analyze 2-person matrices designed to express all the possible interactions and their outcomes in terms of rewards and costs to the participants. Also investigated are: the exogenous and endogenous determinants of rewards and costs, interactive interference and facilitation, formation and evaluation of the 2-person relation, power and dependence, norms and roles, tasks, and nonvoluntary relations. The chapters on larger groups take up interdependence, status, conformity, and group goals. 300-item bibliog”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Abstract
The social psychology of groups. 1959

Parting , Dependency , Personality

“My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Introduction : The Reason for the Examination
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)

Decision , Light , Evil

“Is object-oriented technology mature enough upon which to build industrial-strength systems? Absolutely. Does this technology scale? Indeed. Is it the sole technology worth considering? No way. Is there some better technology we should be using in the future? Possibly, but I am clueless as to what that might be.
It is dangerous to make predictions, especially in a discipline that changes so rapidly, but one thing I can say with confidence is that I have seen the future, and it is object-oriented.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object Solutions: Managing the Object-Oriented Project. (1996), p. 277

Way , Confidence , Change , Future

“In the rich countries, depending on the species, 80 to 95 percent of the animals we eat are “produced” in industrial breeding operations where their short lives are an uninterrupted continuity of pain. All of that becomes possible the moment we begin to regard other living beings as objects for consumption or reserves of meat that we can deal with however we please.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Source: A Plea for the Animals (2014), Chapter 4, p. 74

Pain , Animals , Dependency , Country

“Now if you ask me, in conclusion, “Well, what, then should properly be done?” Obviously war, but I mean in regard to this issue I would say: Any way possible permission should be refused and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity.”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

What do you think of the plan for a mosque in New York City near Ground Zero? (28 June 2010)
2010s

War , Way

“Expulsion from Paradise is in its main aspect eternal: that is to say, although expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in the world unavoidable, the eternity of the process (or, expressed in temporal terms, the eternal repetition of the process) nevertheless makes it possible not only that we might remain in Paradise permanently, but that we may in fact be there permanently, no matter whether we know it here or not.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

65; a slight variant of this statement was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946):
The expulsion from Paradise is in its main significance eternal:
Consequently the expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in this world irrevocable, but the eternal nature of the occurrence (or, temporally expressed, the eternal recapitulation of the occurrence) makes it nevertheless possible that not only could we live continuously in Paradise, but that we are continuously there in actual fact, no matter whether we know it here or not.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Life , World

“This is the exact definition of my ego. When Fox had my head 40 feet high at Shea Stadium they said to me, "We're going to give out 100,000 temporary tattoos of your face at the Super Bowl." And I just swallowed and said, "No. God. Don't. You're not going to, you can't possibly — what do you mean, temporary?"”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" Angry Sportscaster Keith Olbermann has Piazza's Bat—and is Keeping it! http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=10667CA6AE16AADE&p_docnum=1" by Jason Gay, New York Observer (2001-03-19)

God , Tattoo

“The Times was rushing to assure its readers that "prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions." (That's if you set aside Muhammad's many specific instructions to kill nonbelievers whenever possible).”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2004, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (2004)

Time

“The business of the English Commander-in-Chief being first to bring an Enemy's Fleet to Battle, on the most advantageous terms to himself, (I mean that of laying his Ships close on board the Enemy, as expeditiously as possible;) and secondly, to continue them there, without separating, until the business is decided.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

"Plan of Attack" (1805), drawn up during pursuit of the French fleet to the West Indies, as published in The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson with Notes (1866) edited by Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Vol. VI : May 1804 - July 1805, p. 443
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)

Business

“They'll lead us bit by bit toward the revolutionary idea that we've grown about as powerful as it's wise to grow; that the rush of technological innovation that's marked the last five hundred years can finally slow, and spread out to water the whole delta of human possibility. But those decisions will only emerge if people understand the time for what it is: the moment when we stand precariously on the sharp ridge between the human past and the posthuman future, the moment when meaning might evaporate in a tangle of genes or chips.”

Bill McKibben (1960) American environmentalist and writer

Source: Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), p. 198

People , Idea , Understanding , Decision

“The history of credulity would be the most singular page in the great history of mankind. From those vast beliefs which have founded religions and empires, down to the inventions that garnish the last new murder, there has always been a tendency in the human mind to believe with as little expense of the reasoning faculty as possible.”

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

Literary Remains

Religion , History

“Sraffa’s criticisms of the concept of capital also amount – at least in principle –to a deadly blow to the foundations of the so-called ‘neo-classical synthesis’. Combining Keynes’ thesis on the possibility of fighting unemployment by adopting adequate fiscal and monetary policies with the marginalist tradition of simultaneous determination of equilibrium quantities and prices as a method to study any economic problem, this approach has in the last few decades come to constitute the dominant doctrine in textbooks the whole world over. It is only thanks to increasing specialisation in the various fields of economics, often invoked as the inevitable response to otherwise insoluble difficulties, that the theoreticians of general equilibrium are able to construct their models without considering the problem of relations with the real world that economists are supposed to be interpreting, and that the macroeconomists can pretend that their ‘one commodity models’ constitute an acceptable tool for analysis. For those who believe that the true task facing economists, hard as it may be, is to seek to interpret the world they live in, Sraffa’s ‘cultural revolution’ still marks out a path for research that may not (as yet) have yielded all it was hoped to, but is certainly worth pursuing.”

Alessandro Roncaglia (1947) Italian economist

Source: Piero Sraffa: His life, thought and cultural heritage (2000), Ch. 1. Piero Sraffa

World , Hope , Problem , Study

“The possibility to create the context in which people’s lives really matter is undoubtedly the most profound opportunity available to anyone, ever.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

The Graduate Review (April 1980)

People

“Literary translation may be considered as rivalry between two languages (or even between two cultures) which vie to express the original idea better. It should be faithful to the original at least, and beautiful at best. A literary translator should exploit the advantage of the target language, that is to say, make the fullest possible use of the best expressions of the target language in order to make the reader understand, enjoy and delight in the translated text.”

Xu Yuanchong (1921) Translator of Chinese poetry

"New Translation Theories of the New Age" http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-ZGFY200003000.htm, Chinese Translators Journal, 2000, issue 3, p. 2

Faith , Beauty , Idea , Understanding

“The left has, in practice, been prevented from taking advantage of its own frequent disagreements with public opinion by its historically contingent attachment to democratic politics as the primary means to its ends. This allegiance has forced leftist political and cultural critics to presuppose the possibility of rational democratic politics—if only the corrupting influences of money, commercialization, and corporate control could be excised. Libertarians have the basis for a deeper critique of modern culture: they understand that what corporations sell, consumers want to buy. But, precluded by their own ideology—which effectively celebrates whatever consumers choose as, ipso facto, good—from criticizing consumerism, libertarians end up being as unthinkingly apologetic about mass culture in its commercial manifestations as the left is about mass culture in its political guise.”

Jeffrey Friedman (political scientist) (1959) American political scientist

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 453

Money , Understanding

“Capitalism is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.””

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Attributed by Sir George Schuster, Christianity and human relations in industry (1951), p. 109
Recent variant: Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
As quoted in Moving Forward: Programme for a Participatory Economy (2000) by Michael Albert, p. 128
Attributed

Men , World , Motivation

“In the subjectivist view, when ‘reason’ is used to connote a thing or idea rather than an act, it refers exclusively to the relation of such an object or concept to a purpose, not to the object or concept itself. It means that the thing or the idea is good for something else. There is no reasonable aim as such, and to discuss the superiority of one aim over another in terms of reason becomes meaningless. From the subjective approach, such a discussion is possible only if both aims serve a third and higher one, that is, if they are means, not ends.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 6.

Idea

“…there must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientist, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"Brave Words for a Startling Occasion" (1953), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 153.

Truth , History

“Surely just about everybody has faced a moral dilemma and secretly wished, "If only somebody — somebody I trusted — could just tell me what to do!" Wouldn't this be morally inauthentic? Aren't we responsible for making our own moral decisions? Yes, but the virtues of "do it yourself" moral reasoning have their limits, and if you decide, after conscientious consideration, that your moral decision is to delegate further moral decisions in your life to a trusted expert, then you have made your own moral decision. You have decided to take advantage of the division of labor that civilization makes possible and get the help of expert specialists.We applaud the wisdom of this course in all other important areas of decision-making (don't try to be your own doctor, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, and so forth). Even in the case of political decisions, like which way to vote, the policy of delegation can be defended. … Is the a dereliction of [one's] dut[y] as a citizen? I don't think so, but it does depend on my having good grounds for trusting [the delegate's] judgment. … That why those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: if they themselves haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of this delegated authority over their own lives, then they are in fact taking a personally immoral stand.This is perhaps the most shocking implication of my inquiry, and I do not shrink from it, even though it may offend many who think of themselves as deeply moral. It is commonly supposed that it is entirely exemplary to adopt the moral teachings of one's own religion without question, because -- to put it simply — it is the word of God (as interpreted, always, by the specialists to whom one has delegated authority). I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular point of moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because "that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs… ] [sic] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh… ]" [sic], should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life , Wisdom , God , Faith

“It seems, you expect from me an expression of my views on the specific question: What type of missionary workers are wanted in India, rather than on the question whether any missionary workers should come at all to India? I shall respectfully speak my opinion on the latter point. I feel it is not really possible on the ground of logic or on the evidence of miracles to hold that amongst the religions known as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, anyone is nearer the truth than any other. You will permit me to object to the exclusive claims for Truth made on behalf of any one of these faiths. If this my first point is granted, the only justification for missionary work is proselytism. But is it good on the whole for men and women to change from one religion to another? I think it is not desirable to make any effort at proselytism. I feel that such efforts undermine the present faith of the people, which is good enough for promoting right conduct in them and to deter them from sin. They tend to destroy family and social harmony, which is not a good thing to do.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

The National Christian Council Review, December 1956, p. 490. quoted from Madhya Pradesh (India), Goel, S. R., Niyogi, M. B. (1998). Vindicated by time: The Niyogi Committee report on Christian missionary activities. ISBN 9789385485121

Women , Men , People , Truth

“The more libertarian a state, the significantly less internal violence it has, and the significantly and predictably (in variance terms) lower its possible peak violence.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Libertarianism, Violence within States, and the Polarity Principle,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jul., 1984), pp. 443-462. Published by Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University of New York.

“I hold in fact
(1) That small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which is on the average flat; namely, that the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid in them.
(2) That this property of being curved or distorted is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave.
(3) That this variation of the curvature of space is what really happens in that phenomenon which we call the motion of matter, whether ponderable or etherial.
(4) That in the physical world nothing else takes place but this variation, subject possibly to the law of continuity.”

William Kingdon Clifford On the Space-Theory of Matter

Abstract
On the Space-Theory of Matter (read Feb 21, 1870)

World , Law , Nature

“Israel had better rid itself of the territories and their Arab populations as soon as possible. If it did not Israel would soon become an Apartheid State.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Quoted from memory by Hirsh Goodman in Let Me Create a Paradise, God Said to Himself: A Journey of Conscience from Johannesberg to Jerusalem https://books.google.com/books?id=lUvqer1w-QcC&lpg=PP1&ots=NaV9ASJZPf&dq=Let%20Me%20Create%20Paradise%2C%20God%20Said%20to%20Himself&pg=PT90#v=onepage&q&f=false By Hirsh Goodman, page 90. The quote was checked by UK Media Watch against Ben Gurion's relevant diary, Ben Gurion archives and with historians Benny Moris, Martin Kramer, Zaki Shalom and Anita Shapira. Hirsh Goodman "stands by his recollection, but declined, when asked, to provide any further details on the interview, such as the name of the radio station or the name of the interviewer" Did the Independent just publish a fake Ben-Gurion quote? (Update) https://ukmediawatch.org/2017/03/29/did-the-independent-just-publish-a-false-ben-gurion-quote/
Misattributed

“There are far too many people there for comfort. Birth control came late and is still being fought—if you can possibly imagine that. There are just too many of the archaic religions still around, as well as crackbrained ideas that have been long entrenched in custom. The world’s overcrowded. Men, women, children, a boiling mob wherever you look.”

Harry Harrison book Planet of the Damned

Source: Planet of the Damned (1962), Chapter 12

Women , Men , Children , People

“The coordination of information technology management presents a challenge to firms with dispersed IT practices. Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources.
Here we explore three major mechanisms for facilitating inter-unit coordination of IT management: structural design approaches, functional coordination modes, and computer-based communication systems. We define these various mechanisms and their interrelationships, and we discuss the relative costs and benefits associated with alternative coordination approaches.
To illustrate the cost-benefit tradeoffs of coordination approaches, we present a case study in which computer-based communication systems were used to support team-based coordination of IT management across dispersed business units. Our analysis reveals possibilities for future approaches to IT coordination in large, dispersed organizations.”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis and Brad M. Jackson (1994) "Coordination of information technology management: Team-based structures and computer-based communication systems." Journal of Management Information Systems Vol 10 (4). p. 85-110. Abstract

Communication , Business , Support , Study

“There have been women I have loved … A lot, as discreetly as possible.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

"'Affair' story will continue to rumble" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25738177 Christian Fraser, BBC News, 14 January 2014

Love , Women

“Among the various paradigmatic changes in science and mathematics in this century, one such change concerns the concept of uncertainty. In science, this change has been manifested by a gradual transition from the traditional view, which insists that uncertainty is undesirable in science and should be avoided by all possible means, to an alternative view, which is tolerant of uncertainty and insists that science cannot avoid it. According to the traditional view, science should strive for certainty in all its manifestations (precision, specificity, sharpness, consistency, etc.); hence, uncertainty (imprecision, nonspecificity, vagueness, inconsistency, etc.) is regarded as unscientific. According to the alternative (or modem) view, uncertainty is considered essential to science; it is not only an unavoidable plague, but it has, in fact, a great utility.”

George Klir (1932–2016) American computer scientist

Source: Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic (1995), p. 1.

Mathematics , Science , Change

“In secondary immigration, as I await processing, I sit with people for whom I imagine the experience is less of a novelty. To be blunt, non-white people. Mexican and Arabian people, mostly—I assume, I don’t look at their passports; they don’t have them, they’re behind the desks with the border police, equally trapped and obese, behind the counter, often the same color as the people they’re casually harassing. “Who does this notion of nation most suit,” I wonder as I sit there, unable to use my phone. Proper rich people don’t encounter these rooms, these borders, these problems. For them the world is as it is when seen from space, without boundary, without limitation, full of fluid possibility and whispering wonder.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People , World , Color , Imagination

“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

“What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He said, in a regretful tone, 'The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped'. I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation. 'Well', he said, 'I want you to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines'. He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude, and seemed troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, and the growing impatience there was being manifested through the North at the war. He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object, and of failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere, with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger of premature peace, and, like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.”

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

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 434–435.

Men , War , Peace , Hope

“Yet science is going to tell you that the only things worth describing are those phenomena that can be repeatedly triggered. This is being these are the only phenomena that science can describe and that's the name of the game as far as they are concerned. But we, to claim our freedom, to take advantage of the tiny moment between immense abysses of unknowability, perhaps death, perhaps other reincarnations, perhaps transitions into other life forms, these things we don't know, but in the moment of being human we have the unique opportunity to figure things out. And I have the faith that it is possible, sometime, somewhere, to have a conversation, perhaps no progress will be made until the ninth hour, but to have a conversation in which reality could be literally pulled to pieces, beyond the point of reconstructing.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Psychedelic Society (1984)

Life , Death , Faith , Game

“One starts by seeing the person who poses, but little by little all the possible sculptures of him intervene… The more real a real vision of him disappears, the stranger his head becomes.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

As cited in: Kay Larson, " The thin man https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZckBAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70," New York Magazine, 7 October 1985, p. 70
Giacometti, 1985

Personality

“It should be possible, in a 'debreviation' mode, to type 'clr' on the keyboard and have 'The Council on Library Resources, Inc.”

J. C. R. Licklider Libraries of the future

appear on the display.
Source: Libraries of the future, 1965, p. 100 as cited in: Recent advances in display media (1982). Vol. 3, p. 177.

Appearance

“Some may find these conclusions frightening, and perhaps that's an appropriate reaction. But then again, maybe it’s not. For it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize the virtue of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge unflinchingly that there is probably no God, no afterlife, and no soul; that there is no objective basis to morality or higher purpose behind our suffering; that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal cosmos; that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning; and that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away without trace. It is admirable to acknowledge these uncongenial truths, yet to struggle on as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better place anyway, without promise of eternal reward or hope of ultimate victory, and indeed for no good reason at all.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 308

Life , God , Truth , World

“There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.”

Noah Webster (1758–1843) lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, writer, editor and author

Preface to A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings (1790) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0q9zW406vxSXI6op5n8&id=pcIgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22Fugitiv+Writings%22#PPR11,M1
This quote illustrates the reformed spelling advocated by Webster.

“Individualism, isolation, alienation. The poet is not only different from society, he is as different as possible from other poets; all this differentness is exploited to the limit—is used as subject matter, even. Each poet develops an elaborate, “personalized”, bureaucratized machinery of effect; refine your singularities is everybody’s maxim.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

of modernism; “The End of the Line”, p. 81
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Personality

“Taking the points in order, it's fairly easy to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy's bad guy. He's not just bad in himself but the cause of badness in others. While he survives not only are the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples compelled to live in misery and fear (the sheerly moral case for regime-change is unimpeachable on its own), but their neighbors are compelled to live in fear as well.

However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi'a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2002-11-07
Machiavelli in Mesopotamia
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2002/11/machiavelli_in_mesopotamia.html: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2002

People , Fear , Guy , Business

“Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

90
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Perfection

“While many Christians claim divine revelation — some even claiming that the truth has been revealed to them in such a way that there's no possibility that they could be wrong — there's hardly any points of doctrine upon which all these purported conduits of divine revelation agree. Which means that some if not all of them are wrong. And if you want to know what's wrong with Judaism, you ask a Christian. If you want to know what's wrong with Christianity, you ask a Muslim. If you want to know what's wrong with Catholicism, or Protestantism, or Calvinism, Hypercalvinism, Neocalvinism, Southern Baptists, the Church of Christ, or the First Baptist Church of Memphis, you can go to the Second Baptist Church of Memphis or any other denomination.”

Matt Dillahunty (1969) American activist

Refining Reason Debate: "Is It Reasonable to Believe that God Exists?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL8LREmbDi0, Memphis, TN,

Truth , Way , Christ

“What I have felt at McLaren is good professionalism, a team that is very determined and focused on the championship. There is a new atmosphere within the team, and I saw that when I went to the factory and met all the people. They are so excited. They really think that after a few years without success, this is the year to come back. No-one has doubts. That was a complete surprise to me, yet from my point of view, it was great to see all that optimism, and I feel more ambitious now - a completely new man. Sometimes after a tough season and when the winter arrives, you want to test as late as possible, to be on your holidays as much as you can. But now it's the opposite. I want to be in the car. I feel like when I arrived in Formula One six years ago. I just want to drive.”

Fernando Alonso (1981) Spanish racing driver

About joining a McLaren team that failed to win a grand prix the previous season for the first time in a decade. http://www.planet-f1.com/News/Story_Page/0,15909,3210_3463_1842865,00.html (January 16, 2007)

People , Cars , Feeling , Optimism

““That the historic systems of philosophy, not only those which have been directly influenced by the historic systems of religion and theology, but also those which have originated more or less in opposition to these, or in correction of them, are unequal to meeting the conditions essential to the existence of a moral order and to the possibility of a moral life in individuals, will appear plainly upon a brief analysis of their leading conceptions.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix B: The System in its Ethical Necessity and its Practical Bearings

Life , Religion , Appearance

“If I spent too much time here in Los Angeles, I could probably get a little messed up. It's not real here, being on a set with only actors. I've worked with people who were totally cool, then once they got all the publicity and attention, it just went to their heads. If I did anything like that my friends would say, 'What's up with you? That really doesn't fly here.' I'm lucky I have a really strong network of people I'm close to, so I try to keep as grounded as possible by going home every weekend, where I'm just normal.”

Larisa Oleynik (1981) actress

TV Guide, October 26, 1996.

People , Angels , Home , Strong

“There has been a rush of competitors anxious to be first in the field with a new text-book on the more "practical" lines which now find so much favour. The natural desire of each teacher who writes such a text-book is to give prominence to some special nostrum which he has found successful with pupils. One result is, too often, a loss of a due sense of proportion… It is, perhaps too early yet to prophesy what will be the ultimate outcome of the new order of things; but it would at least seem possible that history will repeat itself and that, when chaos has come again in geometrical teaching, there will be a return to Euclid more or less complete for the purpose of standardising it once more.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Books , History , Nature , Sense

“Hitler also anticipated modern economic policy... by recognizing that a rapid approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fear would respond to Hitler as Americans did to F. D. R. is not surprising.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

As quoted in Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1991), by John Toland, also quoted in "Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II (1995) by Jacob G. Hornberger http://www.fff.org/freedom/0795a.asp

Fear

“The reason Smolin's idea is interesting is that it may answer the challenge, "The universe is too good to be true. It looks like a put-up job." But, note that the Smolin hypothesis cannot be used to account in particular for the BIOLOGICAL part of that "too good to be true". Smolinian selection may account for the fact that our universe has the necessary constants, dimensionality and laws to last for last for a long time (not fizzle out or crunch immediately its initiating bang), long enough to spawn daughter universes (and INCIDENTALLY long enough to breed life). But Smolinian selection cannot account for the fact that our universe is specifically congenial to life, or to intelligent life, or to us. My negative conclusion would break down only if life itself is in the habit of engineering the spawning of daughter universes. As far as I am aware, this hasn't been suggested, but it is, I suppose, a theoretical possibility that daughter universes are generated as a consequence of the fooling around of highly evolved physicists.”

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

Richard Dawkins, "Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder" https://www.edge.org/conversation/science-delusion-and-the-appetite-for-wonder, John Brockman, Edge.org, 1.2.97.

Life , Law , Fools , Intelligence

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 5 “The Domestication of Hunch” (p. 70)

Life

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

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

Address at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners (29 April 1962), quoted in The White House Diary, at the JFK Library http://www.jfklibrary.org/white%20house%20diary/1962/April/29
1962

Knowledge , Thinking , Housing

“As absurd as it might sound, there's a strange synergy between very bad movies and very good ones. That's because films on either extreme of the quality scale have the ability to burrow deep into the subconscious, with unpredictable and occasionally remarkable results. Great works of art can cause euphoria, touch a deep emotional chord, or, in rare cases, affect fundamental changes in a person's outlook on life. Conversely, viewing unwatchable tripe can be damaging, possibly resulting in psychotic episodes, an appreciation of '70s fashion, or leaping to the defense of Pauly Shore. There's something almost profound about enduring a horrifically inept piece of cinema, and Coyote Ugly, living up to every letter in its name, offers the opportunity for such an experience.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1611 of Coyote Ugly (2000).
One-star reviews

Life , Art , Fashion , Change

“On the question of the "origin of species" Mr. Haughton enlarges considerably; but his chief arguments are reduced to the setting-up of "three unwarrantable assumptions," which he imputes to the Lamarckians and Darwinians, and then, to use his own words, "brings to the ground like a child's house of cards." The first of these is "the indefinite variation of species continuously in the one direction." Now this is certainly never assumed by Mr. Darwin, whose argument is mainly grounded on the fact that variations occur in every direction. This is so obvious that it hardly needs insisting on. In every large family there is almost always one child taller, one darker, one thinner than the rest; one will have a larger nose, another a larger eye: they vary morally as well; some are more poetical, others more morose; one has a genius for numbers, another for painting. It is the same in animals: the puppies, or kittens, or rabbits of one litter differ in many ways from each other - in colour, in size, in disposition; so that, though they do not "vary continuously in one direction," they do vary continuously in many directions; and thus there is always material for natural selection to act upon in some direction that may be advantageous. […] I will only, in conclusion, quote from it a short paragraph which contains an important truth, but which may very fairly be applied in other quarters than those for which the author intended it: - "No progress in natural science is possible as long as men will take their rude guesses at truth for facts, and substitute the fancies of their imagination for the sober rules of reasoning."”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

"Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species" (1863).

Men , Truth , Family , Way

“If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility. To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility. Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)
Variant: If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility. To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility. Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not.

Way , Thinking , Reality , Sense

“Shipwreck was an ever-present possibility in 1912.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 129

“Most Christians would say that evolution is one of God’s creative methods. But creationists reject that possibility outright, because the issue for them is not whether their God is true; but whether their dogma is true. It can’t be in any case. Even if current concepts of evolution were proven wrong tomorrow, Biblical creationism still couldn’t be true either, because it has already been disproved many times, many ways, and collapses on its own lack of merit. But of course believers can never admit that.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"7th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Q2Db17v5U, Youtube (February 27, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God , Way , Time

“Of all possible resources that a firm might posses, its knowledge base has perhaps the greatest ability to serve as a source of sustainable differentiation and hence competitive advantage.”

Vijay Govindarajan (1949) American academic

Anil Kumar Gupta and Vijay Govindarajan. "Knowledge flows within multinational corporations." Strategic management journal 21.4 (2000). p. 473

Knowledge

“Trägårdh and his collaborator—a well-known Swedish historian and journalist named Henrik Berggre—put together their observations on individualism and formulated something they called “the Swedish theory of love.” The core idea is that authentic love and friendship are possible only between individuals who are independent and equal. This notion represents exactly the values that I grew up with and that I feel are most dear to Finns as well as people from the other Nordic nations, not just Swedes, so I like to call it “the Nordic theory of love.” For the citizens of the Nordic countries, the most important values in life are individual self-sufficiency and independence in relation to other members of the community.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Prologue
The Nordic Theory of Everything

Love , Life , Friendship , People

Quotes about possibility page 32

Quotes about possibility
page 32