Quotes about preparation
page 10

Ellen Kushner photo
Joan Robinson photo
Mary Astell photo
E. B. White photo

“There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don’t want.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Harper's Magazine (October 1938); quoted in Scott Elledge, E.B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984), ch. X: Mr Tilley's Departure (p. 209)

Christopher Vokes photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“I would like to congratulate everybody with the commencement of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercises. This exercise is running simultaneously in Armenia and Germany. We have about 130 participants from 6 countries, this being evidence of importance and actuality of the event. It is notable that the cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of Armenia and the US European Command is developing and implementing a number of projects, and the vivid evidence of this cooperation is this military exercise. This is not the first military exercise in Armenia. Since 2003, we have hosted a number of military exercises organized with the NATO/PfP and the US European Command. It is important that the running of military exercises in Armenia is growing into a good tradition. Especially since, we already have an arrangement of hosting "Cooperative Longbow/Lancer" military exercises in Armenia for 2008. I would also like to mention with appreciation that the planning conference and working meetings before the military exercise would be held in a constructive atmosphere. We have effectively managed to run all preparation activities with joint efforts of the US European Command, the MOD of Armenia and other partners. The communication field is that chain which has fundamental importance for realizing multinational activities. The effectiveness and successes of our cooperation is related to that. This military exercise not only supports the testing of capabilities of participating units and experts, but also an opportunity for developing effective mechanisms for ensuring an interoperability and carrying out the tasks jointly. It is not accidental that Armenia has always expressed its readiness to host such kinds of events, and all participants have been trying to create appropriate conditions for their work. Taking this opportunity, one more time, I would like to thank all participants for their presence here and the US European command for their assistance in organizational matters. I am sure that due to our joint activities, the military exercise would be on a high professional and organizational level. I also hope that while you are in Armenia, you have a chance to make yourselves familiar with our history, culture and will have wonderful impressions. I am sure that on the 10th of May, after the completion of the military exercise, we will ascertain one more time that another multinational military exercise was held with success and fulfilled its tasks. I would like to wish all participants fruitful work and further success. I allow the commencement of the opening of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercise.”

Mikael Harutyunyan (1946) Armenian general

Quoted in 2007 article. [April 27, 2007]

Herbert Marcuse photo

“No matter how close and familiar the temple or cathedral were to the people who lived around them, they remained in terrifying or elevating contrast to the daily life of the slave, the peasant, and the artisan—and perhaps even to that of their masters. Whether ritualized or not, art contains the rationality of negation. In its advanced positions, it is the Great Refusal—the protest against that which is. The modes in which man and things are made to appear, to sing and sound and speak, are modes of refuting, breaking, and recreating their factual existence. But these modes of negation pay tribute to the antagonistic society to which they are linked. Separated from the sphere of labor where society reproduces itself and its misery, the world of art which they create remains, with all its truth, a privilege and an illusion. In this form it continues, in spite of all democratization and popularization, through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The “high culture” in which this alienation is celebrated has its own rites and its own style. The salon, the concert, opera. theater are designed to create and invoke another dimension of reality. Their attendance requires festive-like preparation; they cut off and transcend everyday experience. Now this essential gap between the arts and the order of the day, kept open in the artistic alienation, is progressively closed by the advancing technological society. And with its closing, the Great Refusal is in turn refused; the “other dimension” is absorbed into the prevailing state of affairs. The works of alienation are themselves incorporated into this society and circulate as part and parcel of the equipment which adorns and psychoanalyzes the prevailing state of affairs.”

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 63-64

Iain Banks photo
Václav Havel photo

“I know we have still done very little, and that the main tasks still lie ahead of us. I would say that we have just completed a year of preparation in which the conditions for a new environment have been created.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Frank Lampard photo
James Hudson Taylor photo
George Eliot photo
Robert Owen photo

“Once, along with The Transfigured Night, he played a class Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead. Most of the class had not seen the painting, so he went to the library and returned with a reproduction of it. Then he pointed, with a sober smile, to a painting which hung on the wall of the classroom (A Representation of Several Areas, Some of Them Grey, one might have called it; yet this would have been unjust to it—it was non-representational) and played for the class, on the piano, a composition which he said was an interpretation of the painting: he played very slowly and very calmly, with his elbows, so that it sounded like blocks falling downstairs, but in slow motion. But half his class took this as seriously as they took everything else, and asked him for weeks afterward about prepared pianos, tone-clusters, and the compositions of John Cage and Henry Cowell; one girl finally brought him a lovely silk-screen reproduction of a painting by Jackson Pollock, and was just opening her mouth to—
He interrupted, bewilderingly, by asking the Lord what land He had brought him into. The girl stared at him open-mouthed, and he at once said apologetically that he was only quoting Mahler, who had also diedt from America; then he gave her such a winning smile that she said to her roommate that night, forgivingly: “He really is a nice old guy. You never would know he’s famous.””

“Is he really famous?” her roommate asked. “I never heard of him before I got here. ...”
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 4, pp. 138–139

João Magueijo photo
Richard Matheson photo
Albert Speer photo
Frances Kellor photo

“Americanization today is little more than an impulse, and its context, as popularly conceived, is both narrow and superficial. As French has been the language of diplomacy in the past, so English is to be the language of the reconstruction of the world. English is the language of 90,000,000 people living in America. The English language is a highway of loyalty; it is a medium of exchange; it is the open door to opportunity; it is a means of common defense. It is an implement of Americanization, but it is not necessarily Americanization. The American who thinks that America is united and safe when all men speak one language has only to look at Austria and to study the Jugo-Slav and Czecho-Slovak nationalistic movements. The imposition of a language is not the creation of nationalism. A common language is essential to a common understanding, and by all means let America open such a line of communication. The traffic that goes over this line is, however, the vital thing, and what that shall be and how it is to be prepared are matters to which but little thought has been given. Even those who urge the abolition of all other languages are indefinite about the restriction. Shall a man after he has learned English be allowed to get news in a foreign language paper and to worship in his native tongue; and if not, what becomes of the liberty which he is urged to learn English in order to appreciate? Are foreign languages to be encouraged as an expression of culture and to be denied as a means of economic and political expression? The English language campaigns in America have failed because they have not secured the support of the foreign-born. Men must have reasons for learning new languages, and America has never presented the case conclusively or satisfactorily. Furthermore, wherever the case has been presented, it has not been done with the proper facilities and under favorable conditions. The working day must not be so long that men cannot study.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

John McCain photo

“We face many dangerous threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

Karl Freund photo
Robert Owen photo
Conor McGregor photo

“I am cocky in prediction, I am confident in preparation but I am always humble in victory or defeat.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

UFC 178 post-event press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAAC34JzxS0 (September 2014), Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC
2010s, 2014

Christa McAuliffe photo

“No teacher has ever been better prepared to teach a lesson.”

Christa McAuliffe (1948–1986) American educator and astronaut

As quoted in American Heroes of Exploration and Flight (1996) by Anne E. Schraff, p. 102

Henry Clay Trumbull photo

“A loving trust in the Author of the Bible is the best preparation for a wise study of the Bible.”

Henry Clay Trumbull (1830–1903) Union Army chaplain

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 38.

John Bunyan photo

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon<!-- (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, New York and Toronto: Henry Frowde, 1904) -->

Jacques Ellul photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
William Herschel photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Sara García photo

“Spanish for, You have to think that you have to die, that we are here by the way and prepare and do all the good that you can”

Sara García (1895–1980) Mexican actress

Hay que pensar en que se tiene uno que morir que estamos aquí de paso y prepararnos y hacer todo el bien que se pueda.
Sara Garcia

Eric Cantor photo

“Stop the incitement in your media and your schools.
Stop naming public squares and athletic teams after suicide bombers.
And come to the negotiating table when you have prepared your people to forego hatred and renounce terrorism - and Israel will embrace you.
Until that day, there can be no peace with Hamas. Peace at any price isn't peace; it's surrender.”

Eric Cantor (1963) American politician

Eric Cantor (2011) cited in: " Leader Cantor's remarks to AIPAC http://web.archive.org/web/20110526083308/http://majorityleader.gov/newsroom/2011/05/leader-cantors-remarks-to-aipac.html" on majorityleader.gov, posted on May 22, 2011.

Alain Aspect photo
Simon Munnery photo

“"The pen is mightier than the sword," you say. Get out your pens and prepare to have your logic tested by steel.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), Episode One

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part III, Epilogue, p. 204
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

James A. Garfield photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Cary Grant photo

“I’m prepared. I have a gun and I know how to shoot, and whoever comes calling without an invitation will get it in the rear end.”

Cary Grant (1904–1986) British-American film and stage actor

Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Will Eisner photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“… how can I permit my disciples, Mahāmati, to eat food consisting of flesh and blood, which is gratifying to the unwise but is abhorred by the wise, which brings many evils and keeps away many merits; and which was not offered to the Rishis and is altogether unsuitable?
Now, Mahāmati, the food I have permitted [my disciples to take] is gratifying to all wise people but is avoided by the unwise; it is productive of many merits, it keeps away many evils; and it has been prescribed by the ancient Rishis. It comprises rice, barley, wheat, kidney beans, beans, lentils, etc., clarified butter, oil, honey, molasses, treacle, sugar cane, coarse sugar, etc.; food prepared with these is proper food. Mahāmati, there may be some irrational people in the future who will discriminate and establish new rules of moral discipline, and who, under the influence of the habit-energy belonging to the carnivorous races, will greedily desire the taste [of meat]: it is not for these people that the above food is prescribed. Mahāmati, this is the food I urge for the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattvas who have made offerings to the previous Buddhas, who have planted roots of goodness, who are possessed of faith, devoid of discrimination, who are all men and women belonging to the Śākya family, who are sons and daughters of good family, who have no attachment to body, life, and property, who do not covet delicacies, are not at all greedy, who being compassionate desire to embrace all living beings as their own person, and who regard all beings with affection as if they were an only child.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Florence Scovel Shinn photo

“If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.”

Florence Scovel Shinn (1871–1940) American writer

The Game of Life and How to Play It https://archive.org/details/gameoflifehowtop00shin (1925), p. 17.

Amir Taheri photo

“The promised “Pure Mohammadan Islam” is based on three rejections… The first rejection is of traditional Islamic tolerance for Christians and Jews — who, labeled “People of the Book,” could live in a caliphate by paying protection money (jizyeh). The idea is that the “protection” offered by Mohammad belonged to the early phase of Islam when the “Last Prophet” wasn’t strong enough. Once Mohammad had established his rule, the Daeshites note, he ordered the massacre of Jews and the expulsion of Christians from the Arabian Peninsula… The second rejection is aimed against “Infidel ideologies,” especially democracy — government of men by men rather than by Allah… Daesh’s third rejection is aimed against what is labeled “diluted” (iltiqati) forms of Islam — for example, insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. In Daesh’s view, Islam will be a religion of peace only after it has seized control of the entire world. Until then, the world will be divided between the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). There can never be peace between Islam and whatever that is not Islam. At best, Muslims can make truce (solh) with non-Muslims while continuing to prepare for the next war. Daesh also rejects the “aping of Infidel institutions” such as a presidential system, a parliament and the use of such terms as “republic.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The only form of government in “Pure Mohammadan Islam” is the caliphate; the only law is sharia.
"The ugly attractions of ISIS’ ideology" http://nypost.com/2014/11/02/the-ugly-attractions-of-isis-ideology/, New York Post (November 2, 2014).
New York Post

Max Beckmann photo

“The trenches wound in meandering lines and white faces peered from dark dugouts – a lot of men were still preparing the positions, and everywhere among them there were graves. Where they sat, beside their dugouts, even between the sandbags, crosses stuck out. Corpses jammed in among them. It sounds like fiction – one man was frying potatoes on a grave next to his dugout. The existence of life here had already become a paradoxical joke.”

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

a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 21 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213
1900s - 1920s

“I wasn't prepared for what Dora was explorin.”

Radio From Hell (January 31, 2007)

Robert Aumann photo

“It turns out that the Romans were champs in making peace. Their motto was that if you want to make peace, you need to prepare for war. They knew game theory.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

Quoted by Elad Benari in The Frantic Desire for Peace Only Brings War.
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140029#.VDs8U_ldUa4

Samuel R. Delany photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“We now live in a technologically prepared environment that blankets the earth itself. The humanly contrived environment of electric information and power has begun to take precedence over the old environment of "nature." Nature, as it were, begins to be the content of our technology.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, A McLuhan Sourcebook (1995), p. 276

Alexander H. Stephens photo
Gerald Ford photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

I Corinthians 14:8, displayed on the page following the table of contents.
The Uncertain Trumpet (1960)

Robert S. McNamara photo
Henry R. Towne photo
Kent Hovind photo
Daniel Lyons photo
Ben Witherington III photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo
Francis Xavier photo
William Wordsworth photo
Warren Farrell photo

“A father’s traditional role prepared him to love his family by being away from the love of his family.”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

J. C. R. Licklider photo
Geert Wilders photo
Toni Morrison photo

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”

Paradise (1997)

Newt Gingrich photo

“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

1995-08-27
Gingrich Suggests Tough Drug Measure
New York Times
0362-4331
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/us/gingrich-suggests-tough-drug-measure.html
2011-12-12
Former Marijuana User Newt Gingrich Proposed the Death Penalty for Trafficking Marijuana in 1996
Paul
Constant
The Stranger
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/12/former-marijuana-user-newt-gingrich-proposed-the-death-penalty-for-trafficking-marijuana-in-1996
regarding his "Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996" (H.R. 4170) bill
1990s

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo

“It is therefore necessary to prepare the imminent and inevitable identification of man with the motor, facilitating and perfecting an incessant exchange of intuition, rhythm, instinct and metallic discipline, quite utterly unknown to the majority of humanity and only divined by the most lucid mind.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine' 1911
Source: Günter Berghaus (2000) International Futurism in Arts and Literature. p. 318

Didier Sornette photo

“The phenomena and underlying mechanisms discussed in this book may thus become even more relevant to a larger and larger portion of human activity. Understand their origin, and be prepared for subtle but significant precursors!”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 10, 2050: The End Of The Growth Era?, p. 396.

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz photo

“By spreading logical culture, we prepare the foundation for a scientific world-view and by doing this we enable development.”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, (1985b, 142), as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.

Emanuel Moravec photo
Bernard Lewis photo

“The origins of secularism in the west may be found in two circumstances—in early Christian teachings and, still more, experience, which created two institutions, Church and State; and in later Christian conflicts, which drove the two apart. Muslims, too, had their religious disagreements, but there was nothing remotely approaching the ferocity of the Christian struggles between Protestants and Catholics, which devastated Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finally drove Christians in desperation to evolve a doctrine of the separation of religion from the state. Only by depriving religious institutions of coercive power, it seemed, could Christendom restrain the murderous intolerance and persecution that Christians had visited on followers of other religions and, most of all, on those who professed other forms of their own.Muslims experienced no such need and evolved no such doctrine. There was no need for secularism in Islam, and even its pluralism was very different from that of the pagan Roman Empire, so vividly described by Edward Gibbon when he remarked that "the various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship. It did, however, accord to the holders of partial truth a degree of practical as well as theoretical tolerance rarely paralleled in the Christian world until the West adopted a measure of secularism in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Undoubtedly one of the most important provisions in the preparation for national defense is a proper and sound selective service act. Such a law ought to give authority for a very broad mobilization of all the resources of the country, both persons and materials. I can see some difficulties in the application of the principle, for it is the payment of a higher price that stimulates an increased production, but whenever it can be done without economic dislocation such limits ought to be established in time of war as would prevent so far as possible all kinds of profiteering. There is little defense which can be made of a system which puts some men in the ranks on very small pay and leaves others undisturbed to reap very large profits. Even the income tax, which recaptured for the benefit of the National Treasury alone about 75 per cent of such profits, while local governments took part of the remainder, is not a complete answer. The laying of taxes is, of course, in itself a conscription of whatever is necessary of the wealth of the country for national defense, but taxation does not meet the full requirements of the situation. In the advent of war, power should be lodged somewhere for the stabilization of prices as far as that might be possible in justice to the country and its defenders.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Bernard Lewis photo
Manuel Fraga Iribarne photo
Kim Wilde photo
Wendell Berry photo
Alberto Gonzales photo
Damian Pettigrew photo

“It is generally conceded that mercantile capitalism preceded and prepared the ground for modern industrial capitalism.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter II, Commercial Capitalism and its Theory, p. 65

William O. Douglas photo
Antonio Negri photo
William Collins photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Carlos Zambrano photo

“For me, mentally I'll prepare like a normal game, like I was the No. 4 starter. I just wanted to be focused for the game and not worry about anything else, not think about it being opening day.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Baum, Bob, http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/preview?gid=250404129, Yahoo! Sports, Referenced on June 15, 2007
2005

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Harry Chapin photo