Quotes about possibility (6358 quotes, page 52)

“There is much cloudy unpredictable process throughout the whole of the physical world. It is a coherent possibility that God interacts with the history of creation by means of "information input" into its open physical process. The causal net of the universe is not drawn so tight as to exclude this possibility. Mere mechanism is dead, and a more subtle and supple universe is accessible to the providential interaction of the Creator.”

John Polkinghorne (1930) physicist and priest

page 89.
Quarks, Chaos & Christianity (1995)

God , World , History , Universe

“Biology is truly a land of unlimited possibilities. We may expect it to give us the most surprising information, and we cannot guess what answers it will return in a few dozen years. …They may be of a kind which will blow away the whole of our artificial structure of hypothesis.”

Sigmund Freud book Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
1920s

“Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou in: Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India https://books.google.co.in/books?id=IMSngEmfdS0C&pg=PA17, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1 August 1993 , p. 17.

Age , Way , Sense

“I want to tell you that, when the army of Egypt came down the streets, came to protect you, and stayed for 18 months, none of the soldiers harmed you, Our hands must be cut if they would harm you. I am repeating this for you to know, during those 18 months, there were 150,000 soldier in the streets. it means for 500 days with 150,000 soldier in the street there were 7.5 million possibilities, we were struggling not to harm any Egyptian!”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi on Sinai liberation celebrations day (28 April 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1xN8LUYG4.
2013

“Economic growth in Australia did not require the incorporation of a backward, unproductive rural sector. When farming later developed on the pastoral runs, it was commercial farming. Australia, as its greatest historian Keith Hancock said, was born modern. The United States, by contrast, imitated to an extent the history of Europe. In areas which had been self-sufficient there was more regional variety in speech and habit. There were pockets of settlement which for a long time remained outside the commercial world, even when access to it became possible. Backwoodsmen, hillbillies and country music were the results.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

Australian History in 7 Questions (2014)

World , Music , History , Time

“It is always possible that that may happen here which has happened in Belgium—the elimination of Liberalism, leaving the two forces of Socialism and Reaction face to face. Whether that shall happen here depends on the Liberal Party.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Letter to Canon Scott Holland (21 August 1895), quoted in D. A. Hamer, Liberal Politics in the Age of Gladstone and Rosebery: A Study in Leadership and Policy (Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 223.

Dependency

“It is my greatest wish to enable our people to live with nothing to envy at the earliest possible date, and it is my greatest pleasure to work energetically, sharing my joys and sorrows with our people, on the road of translating my wish into reality.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

Source: Response to questions from Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency (13 October 2011) http://naenara.com.kp/en/news/news_view.php?22+1477

People , Pleasure , Reality , Joy

“I'm a big believer that as much as possible, and there's obviously political limitations, freedom of migration is a good thing.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

"Bill Gates backs immigration reform on Mexico trip" Reuters (21 March 2007) http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2024750720070321
2000s

Freedom

“Thinking withdraws radically and for its own sake from this world and its evidential nature, whereas science profits from a possible withdrawal for the sake of specific results.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 56.

World , Nature , Thinking , Science

“I am afraid I can hold out but cold comfort'for the present at least'to those of your correspondents who are lamenting the present state of things. Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible'and anything however paradoxical seems possible in the present perturbed world. The best thing for them is to realise that all this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of, if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time…. Also they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remember too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern, and that it must come by other means'from within and not from without; so the best way is not to be too much preoccupied with the lamentable things that are happening outside, but themselves to grow within so that they may be ready for the new world, whatever form it may take.”

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

July 18, 1948 (From a letter.)
India's Rebirth

World , Way , Time , Night

“The main theme of this report is a particular facet of the general problem of pre-organization in self-organizing systems, namely, the theory and circuitry of information processing networks. One may consider these networks as a special type of parallel computation channels which extract from the set of all possible inputs a particular subset which is deﬁned by the internal structure of the network. The advantage of such operationally deterministic networks in connection with adaptive systems is the obvious reduction in channel capacity of the adaptors, if it is possible to predetermine classes of inputs which are supposed to be meaningful for those interacting with the automaton”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Von Foerster (1963, p. ii) as cited in Peter M. Asaro (2007). "Heinz von Foerster and the Bio-Computing Movements of the 1960s," http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20HVF%26BCL.pdf
1960s

Problem

“The utmost possible regarding an individual is a statement as to some order of probability about the future. Heisenberg's principle has been seized upon as a basis for wild statements to the effect that the doctrine of arbitrary free will and totally uncaused activity are now scientifically substantiated. Its actual force and significance is generalization of the idea that the individual is a temporal career whose future cannot logically be deduced from its past.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea , Past , Future

“Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life , Pain , Dreams , Soul

“Not to know one another to a degree that went beyond all possibility of knowing one another was beautiful.”

Max Frisch book Gantenbein

Gantenbein (1964)

Beauty

“Jesus' message is about love and compassion, but there is nothing loving or compassionate at factory farms and slaughterhouses, where billions of animals endure miserable lives and die violent deaths. Jesus mandates kindness and mercy for all God's creatures. He'd be appalled by the suffering that we inflict on animals today to indulge our acquired taste for their flesh. Catholics, and all Christians, have a choice. When we sit down to eat, we can add to the violence, misery and death in the world, or we can respect God's creatures with a vegetarian diet. I believe we're obligated to make choices that are as merciful as possible, and we can all do that at the dinner table with a vegetarian diet. There won't be any factory farms and slaughterhouses in heaven.”

Bruce Friedrich (1969) Member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

"Is Eating Meat A Catholic Sin?", interview by Hank Pellissier, in SFGate.com (2 February 2004) http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Is-Eating-Meat-A-Catholic-Sin-2802645.php

Love , Death , God , World

“In the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal “to go along” appears neurotic and impotent. This is the socio-psychological aspect of the political event that marks the contemporary period: the passing of the historical forces which, at the preceding stage of industrial society, seemed to represent the possibility of new forms of existence. But the term “introjection” perhaps no longer describes the way in which the individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the “outer” into the “inner.” Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies—an individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public opinion and behavior. The idea of “inner freedom” here has its reality: it designates the private space in which man may become and remain “himself.” Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole. This immediate, automatic identification (which may have been characteristic of primitive forms of association) reappears in high industrial civilization; its new “immediacy,” however, is the product of a sophisticated, scientific management and organization. In this process, the “inner” dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of negative thinking—the critical power of Reason—is at home, is the ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition. The impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to the dynamic capability of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life. The efficiency of the system blunts the individuals' recognition that it contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of the whole. If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things—not the law of physics but the law of their society.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 9-11

Life , Law , Way , Behavior

“However far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.”

Lewis Mumford book Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 8, sct. 13

Science

“Endless discussions of multiculturalism proceed from the unsubstantiated assumption that numerous distinct “cultures” constitute American society. Only a few historians or observers even consider the possibility that the opposite may be true: that the world and the United States are relentlessly becoming more culturally uniform, not diverse.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: The End of Utopia (1999), pp. 47-48

World

“We had a very respectable force, as to numbers; between eight and nine thousand, rank and file, upon the ground; but of these we attempted to select a particular corps to possess ourselves of the enemy's lines, partly by force, and partly by stratagem; but w r e could not make up the necessary number that was thought sufficient to warrant the attempt, which was five thousand, including the Continental and State troops. This body was to consist of men, who had been in actual service before, not less than nine months. However, the men were not to be had, and, if they could have been found, there was more against it than for it. Colonel Laurens was to have opened the passage by landing within the enemy's lines, and getting possession of a redoubt at the head of Easton's beach. If we had failed in the attempt, the whole party must have fallen a sacrifice, for their situation would have been such that there was no possibility of getting off.”

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

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“Change is healthy. Any actor can depart this show and it will survive. In my mind, there is nothing unclear about how I got here. You go to different shows and hear the chirping about who’s No. 1 on the call sheet or who has the biggest trailer. For me, it’s about doing a job as well as you can. If your job is to get somebody coffee—and I did that in my early days—then make it the best cup of coffee possible. Do the work. And do it with pride.”

Mark Harmon (1951) actor from the United States

TV Insider interview (2017)

Coffee , Change

“It is well enough to say that we shall be consistent, but consistent with what?... The origins of the rule? The course and tendency of development? With logic or philosophy? With the fundamental conceptions of jurisprudence? All these loyalties are possible. All have sometimes prevailed.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 64
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Loyalty

“Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 3. Some System Concepts in Elementary Mathematical Consideration, p. 69

Parting

“"Nothingness" is generally forced into a relationship with "being" and made to serve as its negation, leading to its conception as something that "is" nothingness because it "is not" being. This seems to be especially evident in Western thought, even in the "nihility" of nihilism. But insofar as one stops here, nothingness remains a mere concept, a nothingness only in thought. Absolute nothingness, wherein even that "is" is negated, is not possible as a nothingness that is thought but only as a nothingness that is lived. It was remarked above that behind person there is nothing at all, that is, that "nothing at all" is what stands behind person. But this assertion does not come about as a conceptual conversion, but only as an existential conversion away from the mode of being of person-centered person. Granted what we have said about the person-centered self-prehension of person as being intertwined with the very essence and realization of the personal, the negation of person-centeredness must amount to an existential self-negation of man as person. The shift of man as person from person-centered self-prehension to self-revelation as the manifestation of absolute nothingness - of which I shall speak next - requires an existential conversion, a change of heart within man himself.”

Keiji Nishitani book Religion and Nothingness

Source: Religion and Nothingness (1983), p. 70

Change , Heart , Personality

“The goal of the right is not to stop abortion but to demonize it, punish it and make it as difficult and traumatic as possible. All this it has accomplished fairly well, even without overturning Roe v. Wade.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Escape from Freedom," Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, Vol 1, No 2 (2006)

“War is possible only if you have a lot of enemies. If all the enemies get together and form one front - if you cut down the number of enemies - there would be no war.”

Albert Kesselring (1885–1960) German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

War

“Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army… The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land … and they dreamed about it… They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land… We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was…The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician

On pre-1967 clashes with the Syrians, from a private conversation in 1976 with Rami Tal, as quoted in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/11/world/general-s-words-shed-a-new-light-on-the-golan.html?scp=1&sq=Moshe%20Dayan%20Rami%20Tal&st=cse and Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)

War , Dreams

“Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established and changes its name.
We hear much of the conflict between science and religion, but our conflict is with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and suppressing the various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science, as a beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of possible betterment to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea, without bringing upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done.”

Charles Fort book Lo!

Pt 1, Ch. 4
Lo! (1931)

Religion , Idea , Science , Change

“…if the Legislative Council really ends up with no representatives of industry and commerce, then it is possible that these sectors will comprehensively divest from Hong Kong.”

Gordon Wu (1935) Hong Kong businessman

Original:…如果立法會最終真係無工商界的代表，工商界可以唔同你玩，全面撤資囉。
Source: 胡應湘：爭拗至 2047 都無普選 http://www.hkreporter.com/talks/viewthread.php?tid=870295&page=1

“There have been keen agonies, sore heart-aches, but they have been short, and a sweet peace abides. Can it be His peace? Is it possible that to such a weak, sinful creature as I, the Comforter has indeed come? I must believe this, and that it is His presence that cheers me.”

Arthur Kenney (1776–1855) Irish dean

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 446.

Peace , Heart

“Genet is a man-failure: he wills the impossible in order to derive from the tragic grandeur of this defeat the assurance that there is something other than the possible.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(213).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Failure

“It is absurd to assume that upon the rigid earth-crust the organic originated from the inorganic. In order to explain the nascence of the lowest organisms on the earth-crust, one must assume an already existing organising principle or a thought-process, under conditions that would render organic combinations impossible. We must accordingly assume that these conditions are valid only for the life-process in the actual state of the earth's surface, and only so far as we can explain them may we estimate the possibility of life-processes under other conditions.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Life

“Firstly, because one suffers from being forced to dwell in a house steadily falling to decay; a trial to the housekeeper, arousing a sense of some innate incompetence that the beams of the building should sag, doors open difficultly, windows dim with the dust of time, the outer complexion of the house grow streaked and grey with the weathering of many seasons. There is a certain desperation in the realization that no repairs are possible … one braces one’s self to accept courageously the wrongs of time; to wear the lichens and mosses with silent gallantry.”

Elizabeth Bisland Whetmore (1861–1929) American writer and journalist

On old age, The Truth About Men and Other Matters http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/10/16/elizabeth-bislands-race-around-the-world/.

Courage , Sense , Suffering , Time

“When men feel that they have exhausted all their own resources and have come to an end of all their own innate possibilities and that the problems and conditions confronting them are beyond their solving or handling, they are apt to look for a divine Intermediary…”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter I: The Doctrine of the Coming One (Western Teaching), The Doctrine of Avatars (Eastern Teaching)

Men , Feeling , Problem

“The process which has led us to this result, and which might justifiably be called a Critique of all Scepticism, yields also the final impossibility of materialism in a still clearer way than we noticed before. We saw, some distance back, that the actual of sense could by no possibility be the source of consciousness, being, on the contrary, its mere phenomenon — its mere externalised presentation (picture-object) originated from within. But the hypothetical potential of sense, the assumed subsensible substance called matter, we have now seen to be precisely that self-contradiction talked of as the physical thing-in-itself, and it therefore disappears from the real universe along with that illusion. We have, then, a definitive Critique of all Materialism.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Later German Philosophy, p.170-1

Way , Sense , Universe

“For you it is possible to do anything; the only thing impossible for you to do is to do wrong, inasmuch as you are knowledge and justice and love.”

Harold W. Percival book Thinking and Destiny

Source: Thinking and Destiny (1946), Ch. 14, Thinking: The Way to Conscious Immortality, p. 943

Love , Justice , Knowledge

“If there is no possibility or, to put it in plain terms, if there is no money… What can you do? You can't go to a store, you can't buy anything, either a cannon, or a missile, or a medicine. For this reason the economy is at the basis of everything. In the beginning it was Karl Marx and then Freud and others…”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

During a meeting with representatives of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, May 13. 2006
http://web.archive.org/web/20060614140558/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/05/13/1557_type82915type82917type84779_105660.shtml
2006- 2010

Money

“As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce…As a natural silent comedian Marilyn might possibly have qualified, with the proviso that she was not to be depended on to invent anything. But as a natural comedian in sound she had the conclusive disadvantage of not being able to speak. She was limited ineluctably to characters who rented language but could not possess it, and all her best roles fell into that category. She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.”

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

'Mailer's Marilyn
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Nature , Dependency

“"Overwrite — put down everything that comes to your mind," I was told.
"Be explicit, elaborate. Judicious pruning will be done later. Don't be afraid to name names. Lawyers will tooth-comb the book before it gets into print and protect you from libel suits. Don't be afraid to shock people. Be daring. Be spicy. Tell all!"
I did.
I followed everybody's advice. About seven hundred thirty pages were judiciously pruned in order to protect the innocent, to make it possible for the book to be sent through the U. S. mails, and to prevent me from spending the twilight years of my life in jail for criminal libel.
What's left is here.
PLEASE LIKE IT.”

Walter Slezak (1902–1983) actor

Preface, p. viii
What Time's the Next Swan? (1962)

Life , People , Books

“Internal regulation of the system by the group was thus rendered possible rather than the external regulation of individuals by supervisors.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“The truth is that other systems of geometry are possible, yet after all, these other systems are not spaces but other methods of space measurements. There is one space only, though we may conceive of many different manifolds, which are contrivances or ideal constructions invented for the purpose of determining space.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

Science, Vol. 18 (1903), p. 106, as reported in Memorabilia Mathematica; or, The Philomath's Quotation-Book https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/81/mode/2up, (1914), by Robert Edouard Moritz, p. 352

Truth

“I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law last year. I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty. I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to help those nations that are trying to control population growth. I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America. I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire large river basins. I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire federal system from prevention to probation. I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in federal and state jury selection, by making it a serious federal crime to obstruct public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the federal government by creating a new Cabinet-level Department of Transportation and reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both required as well as rewarded. I will ask you to make it possible for members of the House of Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the nation through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to four years, concurrent with that of the President. Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it. We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop the Great Society. Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion. Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year. Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion. Revenues next year will be $111 billion. On a cash basis—which is the way that you and I keep our family budget—the federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is to say, if we include all the money that your government will take in and all the money that your government will spend, your government next year will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year 1967. I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of the richest nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Women , Men , Money

“The outstanding feature of the social pattern with which the pre-mechanized equilibrium was associated is its emphasis on small group organisation at the coal face. [Indeed], under these conditions there is no possibility of continuous supervision, in the factory sense, from any individual external to the primary work group.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 7

Sense

“'BUT science and art! You are denying science and art: that is you are denying that by which humanity lives.' People constantly make this rejoinder to me, and they employ: this method in order to reject my arguments without examination. 'He rejects science and art, he wishes man to revert to a state of savagery - why listen to him or discuss with him?' But this is unjust. Not only do I not repudiate science, that is, the reasonable activity of humanity, and art - the expression of that reasonable activity - but it is just on behalf of that reasonable activity and its expression that I speak, only that It may be possible for mankind to escape from the savage state into which it is rapidly lapsing thanks to the false teaching of our time. It is only on that account that I speak as I do.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People , Art , Science , Time

“His speech is clumsy, with a toadlike indolence, long winded, pedantic, choppy. The words tumble from his mouth in sentence fragments, which he holds back as much as possible, as if they were earning interest. It takes forever and a day for him to push out a clump of hardened brain snot. Then he writhes in painful ecstasy, as if he had sugar on his rotten teeth. A very slow blab machine. An obsolete model with a non-working switch — it can't be turned off unless you cut off the electric power altogether. So I'd have to smash him in the kisser. No, I'd have to knock him unconscious. But even if he were unconscious he'd keep talking. Even if his vocal cords were sliced through, he'd keep talking like a ventriloquist. Even if his throat were cut and his head were chopped off, speech balloons would still dangle from his mouth like gases emitted by internal decay.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On Werner Herzog, p. 213
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Pain

“At a certain age children are greatly intrigued by the possibility of locating themselves on a map. It appears strange that one's familiar life should actually have all occurred in an area delineated by a set of quite impersonal (and hitherto unfamiliar) coordinates on the surface of the map. The child's exclamations of "I was there" and "I am here right now" betray the astonishment that the place of last summer's vacation, a place marked in memory by such sharply personal events as the ownership of one's first dog or the secret assembling of a collection of worms, should have specific latitudes and longitudes devised by strangers to one's dog, one's worms, and oneself. This locating of oneself in configurations conceived by strangers is one of the important aspects of what, perhaps euphemistically, is called "growing up". One participates in the real world of grown-ups by having an address. The child who only recently might have mailed a letter addressed "To my Granddaddy" now informs a fellow worm-collector of his exact address – street, town, state and all – and finds his tentative allegiance to the grown-up world view dramatically legitimated by the arrival of the letter.”

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) Austrian-born American sociologist

Source: Invitation to Sociology (1963), p. 81

Life , Children , Secret , Age

“The vastest point, the center, the infinity — Faëry, where the gigantic heroes ride across endless landscapes and sail sea upon sea and there is no end to possibility — that circle is so tiny it has no doors at all.”

John Crowley (1942) American writer

Bk. 6, Ch. 4
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Sea

“The possibility to realize a dream is what makes life interesting”

Yamilet Peña (1992) female gymnast from the Dominican Republic

Quoted in "Yamilet Peña La posibilidad de realizar un sueño es lo que hace la vida interesante" in: Diario Libre, by Manauri Jorge. 2012-08-10 ( online http://www.diariolibre.com/olimpiadas2012/2012/08/10/i347393_yamilet-pena-posibilidad-realizar-sueno-que-hace-vida-interesante.html).
ARS Universal Press Conference, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2012-08-19

Life , Dreams

“Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington's house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, pp. 140-141
Paper Towns (2008)

Fear , Feeling , Exercises , Fish

“I’ve always been an animal-lover and when I was about twelve I became a vegetarian. My mom subscribed to PETA’s magazine and I just started looking at the level of what it was. And I just thought it was unkind, so I made my personal choice — which at that point had nothing to do with the global scale of the situation. And so I know it was really early, but I made up my mind then to become an entertainer primarily because I thought I could help. I noticed that all my friends respected entertainers and knew more entertainers names than politicians names, so that was my turning point from possibly doing politics to entertainment … So that was one of the reasons I went into this field. And then the more I kept going career-wise, the more I’ve been able to use that vehicle — that megaphone. And that was exciting — the only exciting part, personally, about being a celebrity. I don’t think there’s anything good about it, except the ability to make positive change.”

Persia White (1972) American actress and singer

"Ecorazzi Celebrates Vegetarian Awareness Month With Actress/Musician Persia White", interview with Ecorazzi (20 October 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/10/20/ecorazzi-celebrates-vegetarian-awareness-month-with-actressmusician-persia-white/.

Moms , Lovers , Thinking , Change

“Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. God’s purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had been too terrible to be accepted without questioning. If a disaster of such magnitude, the most lethal ever known, was a mere wanton act of God or perhaps not God’s work at all, then the absolutes of a fixed order were loosed from their moorings. Minds that opened to admit these questions could never again be shut. Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 123

Death , God , Pain , People

“Perfect freedom, spiritual as well as political or social, … is accomplished in us by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. … But it is strictly intolerable in the fullness of its implications. It is psychologically unbearable. It carries frightening social risks and is politically insulting to every form of power. It was not possible. On every social level and in every culture, people have found it impossible to take up this freedom and accept its implications. This is the basic impossibility, the unanimous refusal of all people, which has resulted in the rejection of Christian freedom.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 43

Death , People , Freedom , Christ

“Decision theory, similarly analyzing rational choices, within human organizations, based upon examination of a given situation and its possible outcomes.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

General System Theory (1968), 4. Advances in General Systems Theory

“I do want to reduce the income tax and if possible, eliminate the income tax…The first thing you do is balance the budget, then reduce the size of government.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2000s

“…he would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp.”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1885/may/04/supply-vote-of-credit-report in the House of Commons (4 May 1885)

Strong , Time

“When Frankie Goes To Hollywood were still going strong, we made a point of being as Spinal Tap as possible. Yes, we had food fights. Yes, items were thrown out of hotel windows. But one childish prank I liked at the time was when we stayed in those really posh hotels where, at night, you could put your shoes out and in the morning they’ve been cleaned. We amused ourselves by roaming the corridors at night and having a crap in each pair of shoes we found. We even made bets: whoever filled the most shoes, won.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

"(untitled)" http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=905 HOLLY JOHNSON : Frankie Goes To Hollywood(untitled) article]at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

Food , Shoe , Strong , Time

“Our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters.”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part One, Ch. I (p. 6)
The Good Soldier (1915)

Music

“Historically, it was Euclidean geometry that, developed to a large extent as a votive offering to the God of Reason, opened men's eyes to the possibility of design and to the possibility of uncovering it by the pursuit of mathematics.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and the Physical World (1959), p. 89

Men , God , Mathematics

“We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can … We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity.”

Harald V of Norway (1937) King of Norway

Interview in Wenche Fuglehaug (November 21, 2005). " Norway's monarchy turns 100 http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1161406.ece", Aftenposten, Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway.

“I swear by the life of Him Whom God shall make manifest! My Revelation is indeed far more bewildering than that of Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, if thou dost but pause to reflect upon the days of God. Behold, how strange that a person brought up amongst the people of Persia should be empowered by God to proclaim such irrefutable utterances as to silence every man of learning, and be enabled to spontaneously reveal verses far more rapidly than anyone could possibly set down in writing. Verily, no God is there but Him, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVI, 18.
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

Life , God , People , Silence

“I saw a woman of thirty-five, living peacefully in the bosom of her family after an interrupted novitiate, show sudden signs of incomprehensible nervous terror, speak of possible 'reprisals', and refuse to go out alone. A very dear friend, took pity on her, offered her shelter. 'Come, child, what have you to fear? You're one of God's little lambs…' 'Harmless? That's all you know! Everybody thinks as you do, and nobody's frightened of me. Well - you can find out for yourself. I had eight men shot, madame…”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.87-88

Men , God , Fear , Family

“A distinction does not have to be clear to be important, and, at some point, there is a common-sense dividing line between procedural and violent conflict. Violence is most closely associated with conquest as a form of conflict settlement, though violence is descriptive of a conflict process rather than of a conflict settlement. It is quite possible, for instance, for conquest to be nonviolent, that is, for one party to be absorbed in another or for one organization to be dissolved by strictly procedural means. Departments are organized out of existence, countries are federated or united, organizations are laid down, and firms are bankrupted by purely procedural processes, without more than perhaps a trace of legal coercion lurking in the background.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Conflict and defense: A general theory, 1962, p. 323

Sense , Country

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland (3 August 1650)

Thinking , Christ

“Eight years ago, no Afghan girls could go to school. Now, a third attend school. Although corruption is rife in the new ruling elite, hundreds of construction projects have finished, with hundreds more under way. More important, perhaps, the vast majority of Afghans think that they’re better off under President Hamid Karzai’s administration — inefficient, arrogant and possibly corrupt as it may be — than under the murderous rule of Mullah Muhammad Omar.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of our Afghanistan debate" http://nypost.com/2009/10/15/myths-of-our-afghanistan-debate/, New York Post (October 15, 2009).
New York Post

School , Way , Girl , Thinking

“One of the big problems is — and here goes the grenade — Israel. The second you mention the word "Israel," the nation Israel, the concept Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We’re not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel. And the other thing we’re not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel and the notion of Israeli interests may in fact be dictating what America is doing, that what we’re doing in the Middle East may not be to the benefit of America’s national security, but to Israel’s national security. But, see, we don’t want to talk about that, because one of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israeli lobby that has successfully enabled themselves to blend the two together, so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say, "No, we’re speaking of American interests."It’s interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli Lobby don’t have to register as agents of a foreign government. It would be nice if they did, because then we’d know when they’re advocating on behalf of Israel or they’re advocating on behalf of the United States of America.I would challenge The New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role of Israel’s influence, the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There’s nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American foreign policy. Let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudis seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is, when they do this and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans, once they take the money of a foreign government and they advocate on behalf of that foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that government, so we know where they’re coming from. That’s all I ask the Israelis to do. Let us know where you’re coming from, because stop confusing the American public that Israel’s interests are necessarily America’s interests.I have to tell you right now, Israel has a viable, valid concern about Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. If I were an Israeli, I would be extremely concerned about Hezbollah, and I would want to do everything possible to nullify that organization. As an American, I will tell you, Hezbollah does not threaten the national security of the United States of America one iota. So we should not be talking about using American military forces to deal with the Hezbollah issue. That is an Israeli problem. And yet, you’ll see The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets confusing the issue. They want us to believe that Hezbollah is an American problem. It isn’t, ladies and gentleman. Hezbollah was created three years after Israel invaded Lebanon, not three years after the United States invaded Lebanon. And Hezbollah’s sole purpose was to liberate southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. I’m not here to condone or sing high praises in virtue for Hezbollah. But I’m here to tell you right now, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization that threatens the security of the United States of America.”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

October 16, 2006
2006

Money , Problem , Singing , Time

“General Systems Theory… possibly the model of the world as a great organization can help to reinforce the sense of reverence for the living which we have almost lost.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Von Bertalanffy (1955) "General System Theory". In: Main Currents in Modern Thought 11: pp.75-83.
1950s

World , Sense , Help

“I'll be philosophical. Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn't have any life — fish or anything. Gradually, about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet—and probably in the entire system—reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin… Now when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible… Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it… I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. Have I given you an answer to your question?”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

On the hazards of nuclear power. Testimony to Congress (28 January 1982); published in Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982)

Life , Question , Nature , Thinking

“In an unrestricted science such as biology or geology, the effects under study are so complex that designed experiments with controls are often not possible. Quantitative models are more vulnerable and the chance of unknown factors dominating the observations is much greater.”

Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

Source: Systems thinking, systems practice: includes a 30-year retrospective, 1999, p. 65

Study , Science , Chance

“San Francisco, I believe, has the most disagreeable climate and locality of any city on the globe. If the winter be not unusually wet, there is some delightful weather to be enjoyed. If it be, you are flooded, and the rainy season closes to give place to what is miscalled summer — a season so cold that you require more clothing than you did in January; so damp with fogs and mists that you are penetrated to the very marrow; so windy that if you are abroad in the afternoon it is a continual struggle. Your eyes are blinded, your teeth set on edge, and your whole person made so uncomfortable by the sand that has insinuated itself through your clothing, that you could not conceive it possible to feel a sensation of comfort short of a warm bath and shower.... What sort of end the unfortunates, who spend their lives there, can expect under such circumstances, one does not easily foresee.”

Eliza Farnham (1815–1864) American novelist, feminist, abolitionist, and activist for prison reform

California, In-doors and Out (1856)

Feeling , Winter , Summer , Personality

“For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia — and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887.
I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again — work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite — ultimately recovering some measure of power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

"Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper" in The Forerunner (October 1913) http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html

Life , Disease , Faith , Hope

“The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the scientific efforts that the great books record, show beyond doubt that the method of controlled experiment under artificial conditions is not the only method used by men who regard themselves and are regarded as scientists. … as the work of astronomers, biologists, and social scientists reveals, experiment in the strict sense is not always possible.”

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

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

Men , Books , Sense , Effort

“For me, as I later came to say, cybernetics is the art of creating equilibrium in a world of possibilities and constraints. This is not just a romantic description, it portrays the new way of thinking quite accurately. Cybernetics differs from the traditional scientific procedure, because it does not try to explain phenomena by searching for their causes, but rather by specifying the constraints that determine the direction of their development.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Source: Partial Memories: Sketches from an Improbable Life, 2010, p. 136

Search , World , Thinking , Art

“Clement Greenberg talked about the ideas or possibilities of painting in his - I think -, 'After Abstract Expressionism' article, and he allows a blank canvas to be an idea for a painting. It might not be a good idea, but it's certainly valid. Yves Klein did the empty gallery. He sold 'air', and that was a conceptualized art, I guess.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 122

Art , Idea , Thinking , Painting

“Hitler and all German people knew that the Israelis are not people who are working in the interest of the people of the world and that is why they burnt over six million Jews alive on the soil of Germany. The world should remember that the palestinians, with the assitance of Germany made the operation possible in the Olympic village.”

Idi Amin (1925–2003) third president of Uganda

Telegram sent to Kurt Waldheim in 1972 after the Munich massacre.
Attributed

People , World

“If there is a sectarian war in Iraq today, or perhaps several sectarian wars, we have to understand that this was latent in the country, and in the state, and in the society all along. It was not the only possible outcome, because it had to be willed and organized, but it was certainly high on the list of probabilities.”

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

"Appointment in Mesopotamia" http://www.slate.com/id/2159082/, Slate (2007-02-05): On Iraq
2000s, 2007

War , Understanding , Country

“Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - the opiate which lulled the Hindus into a deep slumber such as they had never known vis-à-vis Muslim aggression…. Anyone who questioned the pious proposition that the Quran was as good as the Vedas and the Puranas, ran the risk of being nailed down as an “enemy of communal harmony”….. That part of the “Muslim minority” which had voted for Pakistan but had chosen to stay in India, restarted the old game when India was proclaimed a secular state pledged to freedom of propagation for all religions. It revived its tried and tested trick of masquerading as a “poor and persecuted minority”. It cooked up any number of Pirpur Reports. The wail went up that the “lives, liberties and honour of the Muslims were not safe” in India, in spite of India’s “secular pretensions”. At the same time, street riots were staged on every possible pretext. The “communal situation” started becoming critical once again. …. And once again, the political leadership came out with a make-belief. The big-wigs from all political parties were collected in a “National Integration Council”. It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People , Religion , History , Game

“In fine, a condition of our making freedom possible in a world ordered by the rigour of natural law is that we accept an idealistic philosophy of Nature: the laws of Nature must issue from the free actor himself, and upon a world consisting of states in his own consciousness, a world in so far of his own making.”

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.325

World , Law , Nature , Freedom

“The rise of the modern corporation has brought a concentration of economic power which can compete on equal terms with the modern state - economic power versus political power, each strong in its own field. The state seeks in some aspects to regulate the corporation, while the corporation, steadily becoming more powerful, makes every effort to avoid such regulation… The future may see the economic organism, now typified by the corporation, not only on an equal plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as the dominant form of social organization. The law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered as a potential constitutional law for the new economic state, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of economic statesmanship.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 357 (1967, p. 313)

Law , Business , Effort , Strong

“The state as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

Men , War , Decision

“It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

Men , People , Family , Hope

“You judge a society by how it treats its citizens. We must do our best to ensure that every child can live in comfort and security, with the best possible education.”

Melania Trump (1970) Slovenian model, wife of Donald Trump and First Lady of the United States

Speech at 2016 Republican National Convention http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-republican-convention-2016-live-melania-trump-speech-is-the-wrong-1468897600-htmlstory.html (July 18, 2016)

Education

“Benjamin describes the revolutionary moment when the past suddenly bursts into the present, as if rising from the grave to rectify the wrongs it suffered at the hands of a banally triumphant progress. Thus Benjamin’s historical materialism implies a capacity to link otherwise separate and distant moments in time through a profound empathy. The empathy takes on a revolutionary character by disrupting the regularity of quotidian temporality. Without this sort of tie to the past, no critical stance in the present is possible.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 18.

Suffering , Distant , Time , Past

“One way or another, the question whether Britain remains a free nation or becomes the vassal of a totalitarian Europe will be settled soon, and those who oppose our further integration would do well to remember, and proclaim as widely and as loudly as possible, the unashamed dishonesty that has characterised the pro-European movement from the beginning. Not since Lenin and Hitler cast their obscene spells has there been a political campaign so blatantly deceitful. In 1972 we were assured it was merely a Common Market, and that no political union could be envisaged: it is now shamelessly admitted that this was untrue, that political union was the aim from the start.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

The Europe Fiasco. p. 71.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Way , Question

“Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.”

Jürgen Habermas book Knowledge and Human Interests

Source: Knowledge and Human Interests, 1971, p. 4

Understanding , Business , Knowledge , Science

“Ecological rationality uses reason – rational reconstruction – to examine the behavior of individuals based on their experience and folk knowledge, who are ‘naïve’ in their ability to apply constructivist tools to the decisions they make; to understand the emergent order in human cultures; to discover the possible intelligence embodied in the rules, norms and institutions of our cultural and biological heritage that are created from human interactions but not by deliberate human design. People follow rules without being able to articulate them, but they can be discovered.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Constructivist and ecological rationality in economics," 2002, p. 509.

People , Behavior , Intelligence , Understanding

“It appears that the evolutionary process promotes its own progress: learning about the environment (which demands a certain intelligence) means living in a stable social mileau (which demands at least an equal and possibly a greater intelligence); as social intelligence increases, so too will the ability to learn; this in turn encourages an even longer social apprenticeship; and longer group living leads to more social intelligence.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins (1977)

Intelligence , Learning , Appearance

“For example, Rothko and I came to an agreement on the question of the subject matter; if we were to do something which could develop in some direction other than the accepted directions of that time, it would be necessary to use different subjects to begin with, and 1942, we embarked on a series of paintings that attempted to use mythological subject matter, preferably from Greek mythology. I did a series of paintings on the theme of Oedipus and Rothko did a series of paintings on other Greek themes….. this offered a possibility of a way out [of a. o. Social Realism and Cubism ]”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in ‘Living Arts, June 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 31
1960s

Way , Question , Time , Painting

“There is no doubt that Goya thought that one of the drugs chiefly responsible for the sleep of reason was the Church, and he had the lowest possible opinion of ecclesiastical institutions. However, this did not prevent him from painting religious pictures, completely sincerely because, like all Latin people, however little he believed in Christianity, he felt himself to be within the structure of the Catholic Church. One of his finest works was the decoration of a church near Madrid called S. Antonio de la Florida. He used the kind of device that would have appealed to Tiepolo. He painted a balcony round the drum of a cupola, and behind it he put a crowd of loiterers who are supposed to be watching the saint raise a man from the dead. Very few of them are interested in this unusual event. They are interested in each other or themselves, and show very well the curious tension between the individual and the collective, which is the essence of a crowd.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 3: Goya

People , Sleep , Painting , Sincerity

“The total number of multiplications involved in the practical solution of our problem exceeds 450,000. This task alone would mean a two-year job, at 120 multiplications per hour. Fortunately, the recent invention of the Simultaneous Calculator by Professor Wilbur of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made it possible to perform all the necessary computations in a small fraction of the time they otherwise would have required. This apparatus solves nearly automatically a system of nine simultaneous linear equations.”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 74.

Problem , Time

“It is no longer possible to place a halo around war and speak of it in idealistic terms.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

War

“I think it’s probably one of -- certainly professionally -- one of the greatest honors that any person could ever have to work in any capacity within this building, and to get to do that up here in such a public way and speak on behalf of the President is absolutely an honor and something I will cherish and hope to do my very, very best every single day; and be as open, honest, and transparent with you all as humanly possible. And we’ll always work to operate at the highest level and certainly with the most amount of integrity as you can.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders (1982) American political press secretary

Press Briefing By White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and Incoming White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/21/press-briefing-white-house-principal-deputy-press-secretary-sarah (July 21, 2017)

Hope , Way , Thinking , Personality

“Ionizing radiation has always been with us and will be for all foreseeable time. Our genetic system is probably well adjusted by natural selection to normal background radiation. Added radiation will increase the frequency of mutations; most of these will be harmful. Exposure to radiation in large amounts will increase malignant disease; small amounts may possibly do the same. In view of these potentially harmful effects every reasonable effort should be made to reduce the levels of ionizing radiation to which man is exposed to to the lowest levels that can reasonably be attained.”

George Beadle

in Scientific American, September 1959

Disease , Nature , Effort , Time

“We must… carefully distinguish between two quite different doctrines which Darwin popularised, the doctrine of evolution, and that of natural selection. It is quite possible to hold the first and not the second. Similarly with regard to the doctrines of Darwin's great contemporary Marx, it is possible to adopt socialism but not historical materialism.”

J. B. S. Haldane book The Causes of Evolution

Introduction, p. 2.
The Causes of Evolution (1932)

Nature

“You are sitting under the trees, feeling all the ease, all the tranquility that can possibly be enjoyed; you see some poor figure laden with a faggot come turning out of some little path. The unexpected and always striking way in which this figure appears to you carries your mind instantly to the sadness of human life... In tilled lands you see these figures digging and delving. From time to time you see one straighten his loins and wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. Is this the gay frolicsome work in which some people would have us believe? Yet here for me is the real humanity, the great poetry.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote from his letter, 1851; as quoted in Millet, by Romain Rolland, - translated from the French text of M. Romain Rolland by Miss Clementina Black; published: London, Duchworth & Co / New York, E. P. Dutton & Co, p. 11+12
1851 - 1870

Life , People , Sadness , Way

“There are scarcely fifteen art-collectors in Paris capable of liking a painter without the backing of the Salon. There are eighty thousands of them who wouldn't buy a thing from a painter who is not in the [Paris'] Salon. I am not going to be so foolish as to condemn a thing just because of where it happens to be. In short, I'm not going to waste my time bearing a grudge against the Salon – I don't even want to look as if I do. To my mind, one must simply paint as well as one possibly can – and that's all.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, pp. 127-128 : in his letter to Durand-Ruel (1880's), explaining his choice to participate in the yearly official Salon as well as in the Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, on the same time.

Art , Time , Painting