Quotes about preference (1352 quotes, page 6)

“More often than not, [people] expect a painting to speak to them in terms other than visual, preferably in words, whereas when a painting or a sculpture needs to be supplemented and explained by words it means either that it has not fulfilled its function or that the public is deprived of vision”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote of Naum Gabo (1962), as cited in: Joseph Goguen (1999) Art and the Brain. p. 76
1936 - 1977

People , Painting

“Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Supposedly made to Governor Fletcher S. Stockdale (September 1870), as quoted in The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney, pp. 497-500; however, most major researchers including Douglas Southall Freeman, Shelby Dade Foote, Jr., and Bruce Catton consider the quote a myth and refuse to recognize it. “T. C. Johnson: Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney, 498 ff. Doctor Dabney was not present and received his account of the meeting from Governor Stockdale. The latter told Dabney that he was the last to leave the room, and that as he was saying good-bye, Lee closed the door, thanked him for what he had said and added: "Governor, if I had foreseen the use these people desired to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox, no, sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand." This, of course, is second-hand testimony. There is nothing in Lee's own writings and nothing in direct quotation by first-hand witness that accords with such an expression on his part. The nearest approach to it is the claim by H. Gerald Smythe that "Major Talcott" — presumably Colonel T. M. R. Talcott — told him Lee stated he would never have surrendered the army if he had known how the South would have been treated. Mr. Smythe stated that Colonel Talcott replied, "Well, General, you have only to blow the bugle," whereupon Lee is alleged to have answered, "It is too late now" (29 Confederate Veteran, 7). Here again the evidence is not direct. The writer of this biography, talking often with Colonel Talcott, never heard him narrate this incident or suggest in any way that Lee accepted the results of the radical policy otherwise than with indignation, yet in the belief that the extremists would not always remain in office”.
Misattributed

Men , People , Victory

“If somebody prefers an income distribution more favorable to the poor for the sole reason that he is poor himself, this can hardly be considered as a genuine value judgment on social welfare.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

Harsanyi, J. C. (1953). "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking". J. Polit. Economy 61 (5): p. 434

“Long long ago, before the days of Islam, Sikander e Aazem came to India. The Two Horned one whom you British people call Alexander the Great. He conquered the world, and was a very great man, brave and dauntless and generous to his followers. When he left to go back to Greece, some of his men did not wish to go back with him but preferred to stay here. Their leader was a general called Shalakash (Seleucus). With some of his officers and men, he came to these valleys and they settled here and took local women, and here they stayed. We, the Kalash, the Black Kafir of the Hindu Kush, are the descendants of their children. Still some of our words are the same as theirs, our music and our dances, too; we worship the same gods. This is why we believe the Greeks are our first ancestors…”

Michael Wood (1948) English historian and broadcaster

Statement made by a Kalash named Kazi Khushnawaz, "Footsteps of Alexander the Great p. 8
i.e.: Seleucus was one of the Generals of Alexander the Great. He was born in 358 or 354 BC in the town of Europos, Macedonia and died in August/September 281 BC near Lysimathia, Thrace.

Women , Men , God , Children

“I have spoken of the forceful sonnets of that tragic Portuguese, Antero de Quental, who died by his own hand. Feeling acutely for the plight of his country on the occasion of the British ultimatum in 1890, he wrote as follows: "An English statesman of the last century, who was also undoubtedly a perspicacious observer and a philosopher, Horace Walpole, said that for those who feel, life is a tragedy, and a comedy for those who think. Very well then, if we are destined to end tragically, we Portuguese, we who feel, we would rather prefer this terrible, but noble destiny to that which is reserved, and perhaps at no very remote future date, for England, the country that thinks and calculates, whose destiny it is to finish miserably and comically." …we twin-brothers of the Atlantic seaboard have always been distinguished by a certain pedantry of feeling, but there remains a basis of truth underlying this terrible idea — namely that some peoples, those who put thought above feeling, I should say reason above faith, die comically, while those die tragically who put faith above reason.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

Life , People , Truth , Faith

“Raphael, to be plain with you, for I prefer to be candid and outspoken, does not please me at all.... It is Titian that bears the banner.”

Diego Velázquez

As quoted by Hugh Stokes in Francisco Goya, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p 71
Velazquez's remark is to the Italian contemporary painter Salvator Rosa

“My first conflict with NOW erupted in the mid-’70s when NOW chapters increasingly rejected father involvement by rejecting shared parent time as the preferred arrangement after divorce.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 126.

Parent , Time

“…we live in such an instantaneous age. We want everything right away—whether it’s an Uber or your favorite TV show—and we want it tailored to our exact preferences and beliefs. We fill our Twitter feed with voices that confirm, rather than challenge, our views. If we dislike someone’s Facebook post, we just un-follow them, we un-friend them. …in the real world, there are plenty of people who think very differently than you do, and they hold their opinions just as passionately. So if you want to change their minds, if you want to work with them to move this country forward, you can’t just shut them out. You have to persuade them, and you have to compromise with them. That is what so many of our heroes of history have done.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Oberlin College Prep graduates (2015)

People , Age , World , History

“Urban people, of course, are terribly scared nowadays. They may yearn for society, but it is risky to go around talking to strangers, for a lot of reasons, one being that people are so accustomed not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Small Kicks in Superland" (p.56)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Life , People , Way

“Anybody wants to call me the Triple H of Ring of Honor, I think that's hilarious. I would prefer to call Triple H the CM Punk of the WWE”

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

CM Punk mulls over his future http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2005/06/06/1073740.html, interview with Slam! Sports. June 6th, 2005.
In reference to Triple H and his status in WWE
Personal

Thinking

“My lord and Dr Johnson disputed a little, whether the savage or the London shopkeeper had the best existence; his lordship, as usual, preferring the savage.”

James Boswell (1740–1795) Scottish lawyer, diarist and author

The lord was James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, (21 August 1773)
See similar debate in Angel.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

“A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), pp. 51-52

God , Pleasure , Fear , Nature

“I prefer concrete things and I don't like to learn more about abstract stuff than I absolutely have to.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 5, Cornell, p. 112

Learning

“It is a truism, of course, that in “democratic” states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Imagination , Idea , Decision , Animals

“Either you have a rival or you don't. If you have one, you must set out to please, so as to be preferred to him. If you don't have one, you must still please so as to obviate the possibility of having one.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

Ou vous avez un rival ou vous n'en n'avez pas. Si vous en avez un, il faut plaire pour lui être préféré; si vous n'en n'avez pas, il faut encore plaire pour éviter d'en avoir.
Letter 152: La Marquise de Merteuil to le Vicomte de Valmont. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_152
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

“Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.”

Erik H. Erikson book Childhood and Society

Childhood and Society (1950)

Love , Hate , Children , Failure

“What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

68-71.
Every Good Man is Free

Wisdom , Justice , Soul , Search

“Perhaps the editor may be accused of nationality, when he says, that, taking the total merits of this work together, he prefers it to the early exertions of even the Italian muse, to the melancholy sublimity of Dante, and the amorous quaintness of Petrarca…Here indeed the reader will find few of the graces of fine poetry, little of the attic dress of the muse; but here are life and spirit, and ease and plain sense, and pictures of real manners, and perpetual incident and entertainment. The language is remarkably good for the time, and far superior in neatness and elegance even to that of Gawin Douglass, who wrote more than a century after.”

John Barbour (1316–1395) Scottish poet

John Pinkerton, in his edition of The Bruce (London: G. Nicol, 1790) vol. 1, p. x.
Criticism

Life , Sense , Time

“In reviewing the several levels of life which morality defines, we may observe two types of universal value. The lower values m relation to the higher are indispensable. There is no health without satisfaction, no achievement without health, no rational intercourse without achievement, and no true religion except as the perfecting and completing of a rational society. The higher values, on the other hand, are more universal than the lower in that they surpass these in validity, and are entitled to preference. Thus the lower values are ennobled by the higher, while the higher are given body and meaning by the lower. Satisfaction derives dignity from being controlled by the motive of good-will, while the moral kingdom at large derives its wealth, its pertinence to life, and its incentive, from the great manifold of particular interests which it conserves and fosters.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Moral Economy https://books.google.com/books?id=TjdWAAAAMAAJ (1909)

Life , Health , Religion , Motivation

“They [human beings] are unwilling to gamble that God made those people who are skilled at rational argumentation uniquely virtuous. They protect themselves and others from cleverness by obscuring their preferences.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

Jame G. March "How Decisions Happen in Organizations"; Human-Computer Interaction, 1991, Volume 6 pp. 95-117

God , People

“I was a young man in the ’80s, and I was into medieval weapons, Harleys and Heavy Metal. I even played D&D back when that was supposed to induct players into real-life witchcraft. So I remember all the ridiculous superstition surrounding the secret meanings of ear piercing, the pseudo-paganism of Procter & Gamble, the seemingly Satanic messages in back-masking, and the allegedly suicidal insinuations of some metal albums. I attribute a lot of that to the fact that atheism didn’t have any appreciable presence back then. In those days, if you didn’t buy into Christian dogma and were openly critical of it, then you were a witch. You were either a neo-pagan or (more likely) you were Satanic. The latter would be applied regardless how you might prefer to identify. To my cultural experience, there was no such thing as a skeptic as that is known today. Back then, skeptics were considered cynics who refused to open their minds. It must have been a great time for paranoid Christian conservatives. They actually like Satanists a lot more than atheists. Because Satanists not only play the Christian game; they give Christians the moral high ground. Whereas atheists piss everybody off by pointing out that it is a game and that every believer in any religion is just pretending.”

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

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Life , Secret , Religion , Game

““It would please me your not being obsequious. That is a trait of marketplace people who are selling shoddy goods. I am sure to prefer endless, stupid questions to that.”
“Ob… obseek…?”
“Obsequious. Flattering with oiliness. It is not liked by me. In Yiqanuc we say: ‘Send the man with the oily tongue to go and lick the snowshoes.’””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 18, “A Net of Stars” (p. 262).

People , Stupidity , Question

“I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Way

“When the government grants preferences on the basis of race, it teaches the people that discrimination is acceptable. Our laws must reflect the principle that the government discrimination on the basis of race or sex is not to be tolerated. Americans look to our government to exemplify what is right and just. So long as the federal government recognizes people as unequal under the law, we cannot achieve the fundamental truth the American people already know: we are all entitled to equal protection of the law. This legislation will ensure that the federal government leads the way in respecting this basic American principle.”

Charles T. Canady (1954) American politician and judge

The Civil Rights Act of 1997 http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/the-civil-rights-act-of-1997 (December 1, 1997)

People , Truth , Law , Sex

“For my part, I favour an approach to statecraft that embraces principles, as long as it is not stifled by them; and I prefer such principles to be accompanied by steel along with good intentions.”

Margaret Thatcher book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. xxii

Parting

“Though Latin long held sway in Court and bureaucratic circles, the cultural cement of the empire’s core populations was Greek and its education was in the Greek classics and tongue. Imperial tradition, Christian Orthodoxy and Greek culture became even more the bases of Byzantium and her Hellenic community, after she had lost most of her western and Asiatic possessions in the seventh century — to Visigoths and then Arabs m Spain and North Africa, to the Lombards in much of Italy, to the Slavs in the Balkans and to Muslim armies in Egypt and the Near East. Political circumstances, and the resilience of Greek culture and Greek education, made her predominantly Greek in speech and character. After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the establishment of a Latin empire under Venetian auspices, the rivalry of the Greek empires based on Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond to realize the patriotic Hellenic dream of recapturing the former capital further stimulated Greek ethnic sentiment against Latin usurpation. W1cn in the face of Turkith threats, the fifteenth-century Byzantine emperor, Michael Palaeologus, tried to place the Orthodox Church under the Papacy and hence Western protection; an inflamed Greek sentiment vigorously opposed his policy. The city’s populace in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their Hellenic sentiments fanned by monks, priests and the Orthodox party against the Latin policies of the government, actually preferred the Turkish turban to the Latin mitre and attacked the urban wealthy classes. But the Turkish conquest and the demise of Byzantium did not spell the end of the Orthodox Greek community and its ethnic sentiment. tinder its Church and Patriarch, and organized as a recognized milliet of the Ottoman empire, the Greek community flourished in exile, the upper classes of its Diaspora assuming privileged economic and bureaucratic positions in the empire. So Byzantine bureaucratic incorporation had paradoxical effects: as in Egypt, it helped to sunder the mass of the Greek community from the state and its Court and bureaucratic imperial myths and culture in favour of a more demotic Greek Orthodoxy; but, unlike Egypt, the demise of the state served to strengthen that Orthodoxy and reattach to it the old dynastic Messianic symbolism of a restored Byzantine empire in opposition to Turkish oppression.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987)

Education , Dreams , Communication , Help

“It makes me itchy, this wry fatalism, but it doesn't make me itch nearly as much as the heroes of so many other modern novels for whom stalking the savage libido is more fun than kinship or community; who will leave town either to find their callow selves, as if they'd lost anything important, or, more transgressively, to kill a bear, a bull, a whale, a unicorn, a hippogriff, a signifier or, preferably, their fathers.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"The Accidental Matriarch" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07E6DB133BF933A15756C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3, The New York Times (20 May 2001)

Communication

“I have received a question I have expected, 'Don't you deal with accidents?' Yes, I deal with accidents, just as Arp admits it all the time. And I admit it, too. But I like to have them under my command and not sign them because they are accidents. If it remains only accident then sign it 'accident' or 'fate' or 'the Lord', whatever you prefer. It's not you because you have not visioned it. You see visual formulation deals with vision, visual information and visual reaction. So I speak differently from all those who deliver themselves to uncontrolled accidents.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Fate , Question , Time

“Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums.”

Michael Harrington book The Other America

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 5, sct. 1

Parting

“You know why I am a prisoner—because the laws are so stupid that we prefer to break them than to live by them, although it means life-long imprisonment.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Man on Bridge” p. 87
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Life , Stupidity , Law

“The giraffe's neck supposedly supplies a crucial example for preferring natural selection over Lamarckism as a cause of evolution. But Darwin himself (however wrongly by later judgement) did not deny the Lamarckian principle of inheritance for characters acquired by use or lost by disuse. He regarded the Lamarckian mechanism as weak, infrequent, and entirely subsidiary to natural selection, but he accepted the validity of evolution by use and disuse. Darwin does speculate about the adaptive advantage of giraffe's necks, but he cites both natural selection and Lamarckism as probable causes of elongation.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 312
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Nature

“There are no Reconstruction reenactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word "reconstruction"--he qualified it with add-ons like "what is called reconstruction" or "a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)"--and preferred to speak of the "re-inauguration of the national authority" or the need to "reinaugurate loyal state governments." Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. Although we usually bookend the period with the Confederate surrender in 1865 and the withdrawal of federal occupation troops in 1877, people had been talking about "reconstruction" even before the shooting began in 1861, and the federal occupation troops who were withdrawn in 1877 were by that time little more than a corporal's guard. In some sense, Reconstruction ended when Democrats managed to regain control of the House of Representatives in 1874; other parts of it spluttered on…”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

War , People , Disappointment , History

“Put the picture away or, preferably, send it back to me, dear Valentin. If people cannot understand it is based on their inner engagement with these matters, then there is no point in showing the thing at all.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

In a letter to his art-dealer Curt Valentin, Amsterdam, 11 February 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 52
1930s

People , Understanding

“Thinta flew safely, and I realized how much I preferred being with Hergal and feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright. Actually when I’m with Hergal I always realize how much I prefer being with Thinta and not feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright.”

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

Part 1, Chapter 3 (p. 22)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

Feeling

“As one is always obliged to explain when tiptoeing around this territory, I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture — rule of law, universal suffrage — is preferable to Arab culture. That's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders (2002)

Law , Support , Universe

“At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.”

Louis Bourdaloue (1632–1704) French serman writer

as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137

People , Soul

“The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Men , Truth , World , Nature

“I am not thinking of those shining precepts which are the registered property of every school; that is to say — learn as much by writing as by reading; be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause of the weakness of the good; never be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton; judge talent at its best and character at its worst; suspect power more than vice, and study problems in preference to periods.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Many of these precepts which he quotes here have been quoted as originating with Lord Acton.
The Study of History (1895)

Men , Books , School , Idea

“Every culture, or subculture, is defined by a set of common values, that is, generally agreed upon preferences. Without a core of common values a culture cannot exist, and we classify society into cultures and subcultures precisely because it is possible to identify groups who have common values.”

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

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 12

“Lady Cannon's gone to a matinée at the St. James's. We had tickets for the first night, but of course she wouldn't use them then. She preferred to go alone in the afternoon, because she detests the theatre, anyhow, and afternoon performances give her a headache. If she does a thing that's disagreeable to her, she likes to do it in the most painful possible way. She has a beautiful nature.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love's Shadow (1908), Chapter ii.

Pain , Beauty , Way , Nature

“Although I am not averse to wasting a few hours playing computer games, I have never tried my hand at Doom. Judging by sales figures and testimonials, playing the game has to be an infinitely preferable experience to watching this pathetic excuse for a movie.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=928 of Doom (2005).
One-star reviews

Game

“I remember one clear example of the problem of communicating what is to be learned. You may have heard of or gone through a similar experience with a student or your child. Years ago, the child of a friend whom I was visiting arrived home from his day at school, all excited about something he had learned. He was in the first grade and his teacher had started the class on reading lessons. The child, Gary, announced that he had learned a new word. "That's great, Gary," his mother said. "What is it?" He thought for a moment, then said, "I'll write it down for you." On a little chalkboard the child carefully printed, HOUSE. "That's fine, Gary," his mother said. "What does it say?" He looked at the word, then at his mother and said matter-of-factly, "I don't know."The child apparently had learned what the word looked like — he had learned the visual shape of the word perfectly. The teacher, however, was teaching another aspect of reading — what words mean, what words stand for or symbolize. As often happens, what the teacher had taught and what Gary had learned were strangely incongruent.As it turned out, my friend's son always learned visual material best and fastest, a mode of learning consistently preferred by a number of students. Unfortunately, the school world is mainly a verbal, symbolic world, and learners like Gary must adjust, that is, put aside their best way of learning and learn the way the school decrees. My friend's child, fortunately, was able to make this change, but how many other students are lost along the way?”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.237

World , School , Way , Home

“You can say with safety that nowadays women have finally acknowledged their position of not liking men. We could say now that women don't like men. They can acknowledge that they prefer the company of their own kind. I think we can also say generally that most men do not like other men. Most men prefer to like women. So women are the most liked by the most people. Men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters. A one-way slide. There is little going back the other way. Can hamsters love children? I leave you to deduce the rest.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Palmira
8 1/2 Women

Love , Women , Men , Children

“If, then, at the end of this analysis, I am asked to take off the mortar-board of the academic and put on the hat of someone deeply involved in the political developments of the age he lives in, I have no hesitation in saying that my preference is for the rule of law rather than of men. The rule of law is now celebrating its final triumph as the basis of the democratic system. What is democracy other than a set of rules (the so-called rules of the game) for the solution of conflicts without bloodshed? And what constitutes good democratic government if not rigorous respect for these rules? I for one have no doubts about how such questions are to be answered. And precisely because I have no doubts I can conclude in all good conscience that democracy is the rule of law par excellence. The very moment a democracy loses sight of this, its inspiring principle, it rapidly reverts into its opposite, into one of the many forms of autocratic government which haunt the chronicles of historians and the speculations of political thinkers.”

Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004) Italian legal scholar

The Future of Democracy: A Defence Of The Rules Of The Game (1984), Ch. 7: The Rule of Men or the Rule of Law

Men , Age , Law , Democracy

“The very first thing the President did was to show me the new Presidential Seal, which he had just redesigned. He explained, 'The seal has to go everywhere the President goes. It must be displayed upon the lectern when he speaks. The eagle used to face the arrows but I have re-designed it so that it now faces the olive branches … what do you think?' I said, 'Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand.”

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

An exchange (March 4, 1946) with Harry S. Truman aboard the Presidential train in Washington, D.C.'s Union Station before journeying to Fulton, Missouri; as quoted in "The Genius and Wit of Winston Churchill" http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=825 by Robin Lawson.
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Thinking

“It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes… It is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it, out of eight or ten words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Familiar Style" (1821)
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

People , Intelligence , Decision

“Here it is, in quintessence: You are either a man with a gun, or you are mere human cattle for the slaughter. The choice is yours. I prefer to be armed and vigilant rather than being at the mercy of some would-be slave master. There is no notch in my ear.”

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

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 150

“Delay is preferable to error.”

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

Letter to George Washington (16 May 1792)
1790s

Error

“I always feel that the young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. After they’ve whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

A Murder is Announced (1950)

Feeling , Fashion

“There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

"Pacifism and Class War" in The Essays of A. J. Muste (1967) edited by p. 179-85; also quoted in American Power and the New Mandarins (2002) by Noam Chomsky, p. 160.

Life , Peace , Thinking , Evil

“Martin, rather than step into the spotlight, would prefer to die in an unarmed attack on the power station supplying its electric current. His genuine modesty is the main reason for the fateful discrepancy between him and the journalistic literary sexton beetles who make copy out of him: they would like to receive the degree of attention that he would like to avoid, and the clearer it becomes that he would like to avoid it, the more they resent him for failing to appreciate their generosity.”

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

On Martin Amis, p. 205
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

Fate

“The system of scholastic disputations encouraged in the Universities of the middle ages had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation, and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater skill was required to maintain them; the end and object of such intellectual combats being victory and not truth.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 28
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Men , Truth , Age , Universe

“[A] good Christian does not care for miracles very much, because a miracle is God looking after His own affairs, and we prefer looking after them for Him.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Chantal to Dr. La Pérouse, p. 188
La joie (Joy) 1929

God

“The prescriptions and proscriptions held by members of a role set are designated as role expectations. … The role expectations held for a certain person by some member of his or her role set will reflect that member's conception of the person's office and his or her abilities. The content of these expectations may include preferences with respect to specific acts and personal characteristics or styles; they may deal with what the person should do, what kind of person he should be, what he should think, or believe, and how he should relate to others.”

Robert L. Kahn (1918–2019) American psychologist

Source: Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity, 1964, p. 14

Thinking , Personality

“Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Sixteen Americans, (1959) Dorothy C. Miller, Moma, New York, p. 22
1950s

Nature , Change , Time , Painting

“It is a grand book worthy of one’s hopes of you. A most powerful piece of well organized analysis with high aesthetic qualities, though written more perhaps than you see yourself for the cognoscenti in the temple and not for those at the gate. Anyhow I prefer it for intellectual enjoyment to any recent attempts in this vein.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Letter to Abba Lerner, 1942, On The Economics of Control

Books , Hope

“Confronted, when the weather is fine and I am in propitious emotional circumstances, with certain landscapes, certain works of art, certain human beings, I know, for the time being, that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. On other occasions, skies and destiny being inclement, I am no less immediately certain of the malignant impersonality of an uncaring universe. Every human being has had similar experiences. This being so, the sensible thing to do would be to accept the facts and frame a metaphysic to fit them. But with that talent for doing the wrong thing, that genius for perversity, so characteristically human, men have preferred, especially in recent times, to take another course. They have either denied the existence of these psychological facts; or if they have admitted them, have done so only to condemn as evil all such experiences as cannot be reconciled in a logical system with whatever particular class of experiences they have chosen, arbitrarily, to regard as "true" and morally valuable. Every man tries to pretend that he is consistently one kind of person and does his best consistently to worship one kind of God. And this despite the fact that he experiences diversity and actually feels himself in contact with a variety of divinities.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” pp. 3–4
Do What You Will (1928)

Men , God , World , Art

“In choosing people for specific jobs previous experience should not be a guide. I never put a man in the job which he thought he knew. Often the 'experts' make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the Oxford University Law Society (14 June 1957), quoted in The Times (15 June 1957), p. 4.
1950s

People , Country

“Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

On the Monad, Number, and Figure (1591)

Life , Death , Fate , Fear

“The spiraling shapes, and the beautiful contrasts of yellow and blue, that are intuitively felt one evening while living the movements of a girl dancing may be found again later, through a process of plastic preferences or aversions, or through combination of both, in the concentric circling of an aeroplane or in the onrush of an express train”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

In his manifesto 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', c. 1914; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 218

Beauty , Girl , Dance , Training

“Decisions and plans made by others… [can be judged to be] quantitatively at least as important as the primary uncertainty arising from random acts of nature and unpredictable changes in consumers' preferences.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. 163; as cited in: Richard Langlois (1989) Economics as a Process. p. 181

Nature , Decision , Change

“Too often, this concern for the big picture is simply obscurantist and is put forward by people who prefer vagueness and mystery to (partial) answers. Vagueness is at times necessary and mystery is never in short supply, but I don’t think they’re anything to worship. Genuine science and mathematical precision are more intriguing than are the “facts” published in supermarket tabloids or a romantic innumeracy which fosters credulity, stunts skepticism, and dulls one to real imponderables.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 4, “Whence Innumeracy?” (pp. 126-127)

People , Mathematics , Thinking , Science

“A self-made man may prefer a self-made name.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

Granting court permission for Samuel Goldfish to change his name to Samuel Goldwyn, as quoted in Lion's Share by Bosley Crowther (1957).
Extra-judicial writings

“Definition of design = Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: 1960s-1970s, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969, p. 130.

Change

“Younger people actually understand how it works. They don't just take what they are fed according to their preferences; they go look at other things. So I've always been more anti-baby boomer and more pro-millennial.”

William Kristol (1952) American writer

As quoted in "Bill Kristol: 'I've Always Been More Anti-Baby Boomer and More Pro-Millennial'" https://bold.global/reneebc/2018/10/30/bill-kristol-ive-always-been-more-anti-baby-boomer-and-more-pro-millennial/ (30 October 2018), by Renee Brown-Cheng, Bold
2010s, 2018

People , Understanding , Baby

“You are not traditionally beautiful; and you know it. We women do. But what most people mean by beauty is really a kind of aesthetic acceptability, not so much character as a lack of it, a set of features and lineaments that hide their history, that suggest history itself does not exist. But the template by which we recognize the features and forms in the human body that cause the heart to halt, threatening to spill us over into the silence of death—that is drawn on another part of the soul entirely…But all sing, chant, hymn the history of the body, if only because we all know how people regard bodies that deviate from the lauded and totally abnormal norm named beauty. Most of us would rather not recognize such desires in ourselves and thus avoid all contemplation of what the possession of such features means about the lives, the bodies, the histories of others, preferring instead to go on merely accepting the acceptable. But that is not who I am.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 5, “Of Matrons, Mornings, Motives, and Machinations” (p. 103; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Death , Women , People , Beauty

“Boughton together with Abbey are making for Harper in New York drawings called "Picturesque Holland".... now I say to myself if the Graphic and Harper send their draughtsmen to Holland they would perhaps not be unwilling to accept a draughtsman from Holland [Vincent himself], if he can furnish some good work for not too much money. I should prefer to be accepted on regular monthly wages rather than to sell a drawing now and then at a relatively high price.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands, Summer 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 288) p. 21
1880s, 1883

Money , Drawing

“In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him. You justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES’s suppositions, not mine. From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Philo to Demea, Part V
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Death , Age , World , Thinking

“In 2014, one of the key agendas of the BJP’s election campaign was highlighting the dismal management of the Indian economy, ironically under an ‘economist’ prime minister and a ‘know-it-all’ finance minister. We all knew that the economy was in the doldrums but since we were not in government, we naturally did not have the complete details of the state of the economy. But, what we saw when we formed the government left us shocked! The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious. When all of this came to light, we had two options – to be driven by Rajneeti (political considerations) or be guided by Rashtraneeti (putting the interests of India First)… Rajneeti, or playing politics on the state of the economy in 2014, would have been extremely simple as well as politically advantageous for us. We had just won a historic election, so obviously the frenzy was at a different level. The Congress Party and their allies were in big trouble. Even for the media, it would have made news for months on end. On the other hand, there was Rashtraneeti, where more than politics and one-upmanship, reform was needed. Needless to say, we preferred to think of ‘India First’ instead of putting politics first. We did not want to push the issues under the carpet, but we were more interested in addressing the issue. We focused on reforming, strengthening and transforming the Indian economy. The details about the decay in the Indian economy were unbelievable. It had the potential to cause a crisis all over. In 2014, industry was leaving India. India was in the Fragile Five. Experts believed that the ‘I’ in BRICS would collapse. Public sentiment was that of disappointment and pessimism.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Narendra Modi, Swarajya Interviews Prime Minister Modi, Interview, R Jagannathan- Jul 02, 2018 https://swarajyamag.com/economy/swarajya-interviews-prime-minister-modi-the-state-of-indian-economy
2018

Disappointment , Nature , Thinking , Light

“I was told I could, if I wished, switch and get a Ph. D. in biochemistry but my preference was to stay with medicine. And I believe that this is all linked to my original ambition, or desire, which was to be of some help to humankind, so to speak, in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis. Just as I intended to study law, to make just laws, so I found myself interested now in the laws of nature, as distinct from the laws the people make.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

People , Law , Nature , Sense

“Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen — the census taker — and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million."”

O. Henry book The Four Million

Preface
The Four Million (1906)

People

“Kandinsky was connected with Die Brücke and the Blue Rider: they had a concept and created a reality. But I prefer Jean Fautrier [French painter-artist; 1898 - 1965] with his suffering and self-absorption. And his purpose on bringing about changes was just as strong. As a result I see in Fautrier a stronger paradigm than in Kandinsky..”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Reality , Strong , Suffering , Change

“I tend to choose a doctor in the forties age range, male or female, in general preference to an older one. … They understand the full implications of modern medical technology a great deal better than their elders, are more open to new ideas, and usually are keenly aware of today's medical controversies, including law and ethics.”

Derek Humphry book Final Exit

"Shopping for the Right Doctor", p. 12
Final Exit

Age , Law , Idea , Understanding

“.. that famous idea of 'beauty', which is, as everybody says, the goal of the arts. If it is their only goal, what becomes of the men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and all the northern natures generally, who prefer other qualities? Demand purity, In a word beauty... In general the men of the north tend less in that direction. The Italian prefers ornament.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote 1847, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 229
1831 - 1863

Men , Beauty , Art , Idea

“Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.”

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

The United States (1971)

World

“As far as patriots and nationalists are concerned, I believe that the Homicide Pact system has many of the same drawbacks as the Doomsday Machine, though not in so extreme a form. The major advantage of the Homicide Pact is that one is not in the bizarre situation of being killed with his own equipment; while intellectuals may not so distinguish, the policy makers and practical men prefer being killed by the other side. It is just because this view no longer strikes some people as bizarre that it is so dangerous.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

ex.:The Star Trek Episode A Taste of Armageddon
The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Men , People

“What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

VIII. Role of the Intellectual and the Scientist. p. 135
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

School , Beauty , Disappointment , Learning

“Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Birth

“I prefer to be on the side of losers, the misunderstood or lonely people rather than writing about the strong and powerful.”

Núria Añó (1973) Catalan writer novelist

People , Strong

“Instead of the dormers, skylights… are easier to make and operate, need no double sash, cost less, and some may prefer their appearance.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Appearance

“Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M. D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contact. But in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 145-146.

Life , Wisdom , Family , Problem

“I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

Regarding the death of her husband, John Diamond.
A woman of extremes (2001)

Feeling , Business

“When my turn comes I propose to take my lethal capsule comfortably in bed at home and preferably on my own.”

P. D. James book The Children of Men

The Children of Men (1992)

Home

“Why the fiction of ideas should be so neglected is beyond me. I can’t explain it, except in terms of intellectual snobbery. … If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I’d have killed myself. I think he was too hung up. I’m glad Kurt Vonnegut didn’t like me either. He had problems, terrible problems. He couldn’t see the world the way I see it. I suppose I’m too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past — a combination of both. But I don’t think I’m too overoptimistic.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

God , World , Way , Idea

“Preference is given to applicants just leaving school, as they have not yet lost their habit of discipline and obedience, and they retain more of what they have learnt there.”

Edward Cadbury (1873–1948) British businessman

Source: Experiments in industrial organization (1912), p. 2; Cited in: Felix Behling et al. (2015; 194)

School

“The same year [1835] I made my debut at the Exposition in Rotterdam with [his painting] "the St. Janskerk in ’s Hertogenbosch, the interior", which immediately found a merchant... The approval by this, [and] the renewed appreciation I got in Felix 38, now concerning a 'church with incident sunlight', together with my personal characteristic tendency to reproduce the impressions which church buildings gave me, led me gradually to choose and prefer this genre [church-interiors], [and to visit] Belgium in '37 and repeatedly to return there, attracted by the abundance of study [many churches], that this country offered me..”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in orogineel Nederlands: In hetzelfde jaar [1835] had ik op de Expositie te Rotterdam gedebuteerd met 'de St. Janskerk te 's Hertogenbosch van binnen', die terstond een kooper vond.. .De bijval hiermee behaald, [en] de hernieuwde bekrooning in Felix 38) nu voor eene 'kerk met inVallend zonlicht', gevoegd bij mijn bijzondere neiging om de indrukken weer te geven, die kerkgebouwen op mij maakten, leidde er mij gaandeweg toe dit genre [schilderijen van kerk-interieurs] bij voorkeur te kiezen; [en om] in '37 in Belgie te gaan bezoeken en herhaaldelijk daar weer te keeren, aangetrokken door den overvloed van studie [veel kerken], dien dat land mij aanbood..
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 11

Study , Painting , Personality , Country

“We communicate with each other to inform, to instruct, to persuade, to amuse, to annoy. Informing and instructing aim to alter the receiver's concepts, whereas persuading, amusing or annoying aim to change his preferences or feelings. In a work situation people do make jokes and enemies, and use the arts of persuasion, but much of their communication has an informal or instructional aspect.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 1.

People , Art , Feeling , Communication

“Rather than being a measure and consequence of the power of naturally occurring sexual desire, pornography is a measure of the extent to which people tend to prefer controlling desire through contrivance rather than being surprised by desire that spontaneously arises.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 137

People , Nature

“Every generation of Americans since has had to reenact the loss of our innocence. Smog over L. A. was the loss of our innocence. Vietnam was the loss of our innocence. Gettysburg was the loss of our innocence. Ingrid Bergman’s baby was the loss of our innocence. Oklahoma City was the loss of our innocence. The World Trade Center was the loss of our innocence. Other nations are cynical. America has preferred the child’s game of “discovering” evil—Europe’s or Asia’s, her grandfather’s, even her own.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

World , Game , Evil , Loss

“Also, it should be remembered that Count Lamsdorff, the Russian Foreign Minister, declared to the British Ambassador in St Petersburg that his government `took no interest in missionaries' and would not therefore associate itself with other Powers in demanding punishment of those who had attacked missionaries. This deserves to be contrasted with the demand persistently made by the Western Powers for the execution of those against whom they preferred the charges of attacking missionaries.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

“I have joined, once and for all, the ranks of the intellectual experimentalists. I can hardly bear the sound of the words "expressionism," "emotionalism," "personality," and such, because they imply the wish to express personal life, and I prefer to have no personal life. Personal art is for me a matter of spiritual indelicacy.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

Life , Art , Personality

“I don’t plan things. As a rule I prefer to see what happens.”

Saul Leiter (1923–2013) American photographer

Saul Leiter: The Quiet Iconoclast (2009)

“Vickery points out that the Kissinger-Nixon policy during the last two years of the war was a “major mystery,” for which he suggests an explanation that appears to us quite plausible. Referring to the “Sonnenfeldt Doctrine,” which holds that “pluralistic and libertarian Communist regimes will breed leftist ferment in the West,” he suggests that “when it became clear [to U. S. leaders] that they could not win in Cambodia, they preferred to do everything possible to ensure that the post-war revolutionary government be extremely brutal, doctrinaire, and frightening to its neighbors, rather than a moderate socialism to which the Thai, for example, might look with envy.” In short, though it was understood that the United States had lost the war in Cambodia (even though it was, quite clearly, still trying to win it in Vietnam), the destruction of rural Cambodia, by imposing the harshest possible conditions on the eventual victors, would serve two classic ends: retarding social and economic progress, and maximizing the brutality of the eventual victors. Then the aggressors would at least be able to reap a propaganda victory from the misery they had sown.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, pp. 218-219

War , Appearance , Victory , Envy

“I would like to take your minds back many, many centuries into a familiar experience so significantly recorded in the sacred Scriptures. The Children of Israel had been reduced into the bondage of physical slavery… three groups of people emerged. One group said in substance that "We would rather go back to Egypt." They preferred the flush parts of Egypt to the challenges of the Promised Land. A second group that abhorred the idea of going back to Egypt, and yet they abhorred the idea of facing the difficulties of moving ahead to the Promised Land and they somehow wanted to remain stationary and choose the line of least resistance. There was a third group, probably influenced by Caleb and Joshua who had gone over to spy a bit and who admitted that there were giants in the land but who said, "We can possess the land."”

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

This group said in substance that "We will go on in spite of...," that "We will not allow anything to stop us," that "We will move on amid the difficulties, amid the trials, amid the tribulations."
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

Children , People , Idea , Parting

“The scalar principle is the same form in organization that is sometimes called hierarchical. But, to avoid all definitional variants, scalar is here preferred. A scale means a series of steps, something graded. In organization it means the grading of duties, not according to different functions, for this involves another principle of organization, but according to degrees of authority and corresponding responsibility. For convenience we shall call this phenomenon of organization the scalar chain. The common impression regards this scale or chain merely as a "type" of organization, characteristic only of the vaster institutions of government, army, church, and industry. This impression is erroneous. It is likewise misleading, for it seems to imply that the scalar chain in organization lacks universality. These great organizations differ from others only in that the chain is longer. The truth is that wherever we find an organization even of two people, related as superior and subordinate, we have the scalar principle. This chain constitutes the universal process of coordination, through which the supreme coordinating authority becomes effective throughout the entire structure.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 94-95; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 251-252

People , Truth , Universe

“If men in our evolutionary past did not invest in offspring, they would not have evolved strict mate preferences and thus women would be as drab as peahens. The fact that women are not as drab as peahens suggests a long history of male mate choice, which in turn suggests a long history of pair bonding and high male parental investment.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 149

Women , Men , History , Parent