Quotes about present (4870 quotes, page 36)

“The power of free discussion is the right of every subject of this country. It is a right to the fair exercise of which we are indebted more than to any other that was ever claimed by Englishmen. All the blessings we at present enjoy might be ascribed to it.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

King v. Reeves (1796), Peake's Nisi Prius Cases, 85.

Exercises , Country

“His profession [ diplomacy ] — offered him something like a long Jesuitical training in self-deception which enabled him to present an ever more highly polished surface to the world without deepening his human experience [-] for he lived surrounded by his ambitious and sycophantic fellows who taught him only how to excel in forms of address, and the elaborate kindnesses which, in pleasing, pave the way to advancement.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

Source: The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Mountolive (1958), II

World , Way , Training

“Some have argued that lesbian sexuality-meaning here simply women having sex with women not men-solves the problem of gender by eliminating men from women's voluntary sexual encounters. Yet women's sexuality remains constructed under conditions of male supremacy; women remain socially defined as women in relation to men; the definition of women as men's inferiors remains sexual even if not heterosexual, whether men are present at the time or not.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: "Pleasure under Patriarchy" (1989) Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 2 pp. 314-346

Women , Men , Sex , Problem

“You cannot denounce violence in the present and encourage it in the past by glorifying violent historical figures.”

Yasser Harrak Canadian liberal writer, columnist and human rights activist

Yasser Harrak. 2015. "Understanding Why ISIS Burns People Alive". Youtube. Accessed December 24, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTc2KwANKX0

Past

“I think [one eco tip is] just giving a little present to someone who might be a little close-minded or stubborn about being green. Last year in all of my gifts I gave an environmentally-friendly light bulb. I thought that was such a great little gift to ease certain people into it. You know there are certain people, maybe family members, who are a little old fashion, or certain people that you work with that don’t really think about things like that. So you have to put it in front of them. And everyone needs a light bulb eventually. So the next time their light bulb goes out they’re gonna reach for it and they’ll see how great it is.”

Alison Becker (1977) American actress and comedian

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Alison Becker Heads To LA With Dreams Of Electric Cars http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/10/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-alison-becker-heads-to-la-with-dreams-of-electric-cars/", interview with Ecorazzi (10 December 2008).

People , Family , Fashion , Thinking

“It will first of all be clear that not only incompatible but also compatible characters can be thought in emptily intended combinations. This indeed takes place very often, as a result of that parsimony which nature always brings to bear in the achievement of her aims. Unintuitive presentation demands much less expenditure of effort than the intuitive, and thereby goes proxy for the latter in very many cases. Thus anyone confronted with, say, a complicated description of a work of architecture will first of all form a merely indirect presentation of it, which will then be rounded out by gradual execution or fulfilment of the various merely intended components, to yield an intuitive total picture.”

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) Austrian philosopher

Source: "On Gestalt Qualities," 1890, p. 104

Nature , Effort

“Our nation should always derive its character directly from the people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented to the world — the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our common dedication to democracy is much more important than that which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred years America still remains confident and youthful in its commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pre-Presidency, First Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech (1976)

People , Youth , World , Fear

“I have already spoken in Hereditary Genius of the large effects of religious persecution in comparatively recent years, on the natural character of races, and shall not say more about it here; but it must not be omitted from the list of steady influences continuing through ancient historical times down, in some degree, to the present day, in destroying the self-reliant, and therefore the nobler races of men.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883), p. 80
Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883)

Men , Nature , Time

“I can suggest no remedy, but would prefer present evils to those resulting from the creation of too centralized a power; and the answer, to my mind, is obvious. The true remedy must be found, not in placing our dependence upon the discretion of any one, but of every one,—that is, again, upon liberty, rather than upon power and restraint.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

Speaking out against a central bank after the Panic of 1907. From "A Central Bank as a Menace to Liberty," by George H. Earle, Jr. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. XXXI No. 2: Lessons of the Financial Crisis, March 1908.

Evil , Dependency

“Symptoms are meaningless traces, their meaning is not discovered, excavated from the hidden depth of the past, but constructed retroactively - the analysis produces the truth; that is, the signifying frame which gives their symptoms their symbolic place and meaning. As soon as we enter the symbolic order, the past is always present in the form of historical tradition and the meaning of these traces is not given; it changes continually with the transformations of the signifier's network. Every historical rupture, every advent of a new master-signifier, changers retroactively the meaning of all tradition, restructures the narration of the past, and makes it readable in another, new way.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

58
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Truth , Way , Change , Past

“Everyone lets the present moment slip by, and then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this. But while grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. Once a man has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear his truth in mind.”

Rati Tsiteladze (1987) Georgian Filmmaker

As Quoted in The Gerorgian Times in 2008 http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=12354.eng

Truth , Understanding , Personality

“The dispatch of a naval force and the peremptory outcome that Great Britain tried to impose are clear demonstrations that that country persists in addressing the question with arguments based on force, and that the solution is sought through the simple refusal to recognize Argentinian rights. In view of that unacceptable intention, the Argentine Government could have no other response than the one it has just made by taking action. The Argentinian position can in no way be considered a form of aggression against the present inhabitants of the islands. Their rights and ways of life will be respected with the same generosity with which we respected those peoples we liberated during our independence movement. Yet we will not yield to the intimidatory deployment of the British forces; far from using peaceful diplomatic channels, they have threatened the indiscriminate use of those forces. Our forces will act only to the extent strictly necessary. They will in no way disrupt the life of the islanders. On the contrary, they will protect those institutions and persons who agree to coexist with us, but they will not tolerate any excesses either in the islands or on the mainland. We have a clear appreciation of the stance adopted and it is in defence of this stance that the Argentine nation has risen, the whole nation, spiritually and materially.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

President Galtieri’s address to the nation https://teachwar.wordpress.com/resources/war-justifications-archive/falklandsmalvinas-war-1982/#arg1, 2 April 1982

Life , People , Peace , Way

“Nothing but Christian faith gives to the furthest future the solidity and definiteness which it must have if it is to be a breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and thoughts.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 235.

Faith , Future , Sea

“There are no excuses for my extremist past, for the suffering I caused to loved ones, to family, to friends, to those many more, those far more, 'unknown others' who were or who became the 'enemies' posited by some extremist ideology. No excuses because the extremism, the intolerance, the hatred, the violence, the inhumanity, the prejudice were mine; my responsibility, born from and expressive of my character; and because the discovery of, the learning of, the need to live, to regain, my humanity arose because of and from others and not because of me. Thus what exposed my hubris - what for me broke down that certitude-of-knowing which extremism breeds and re-presents - was not something I did; not something I achieved; not something related to my character, my nature, at all. Instead, it was a gift offered to me by two others - the legacy left by their tragic early dying. That it took not one but two personal tragedies - some thirteen years apart - for me to accept and appreciate the gift of their love, their living, most surely reveals my failure, the hubris that for so long suffused me, and the strength and depth of my so lamentable extremism.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Pathei-Mathos – Genesis of My Unknowing (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/genesis-of-my-unknowing.html

Love , Family , Failure , Nature

“The Soviet leaders accused Comrade Stalin of allegedly interfering in other parties, of imposing the views of the Bolshevik Party upon others. We can bear witness to the fact that at no time did comrade Stalin do such a thing towards us, towards the Albanian people and the Party of Labor of Albania, he always behaved as a great Marxist, as an outstanding internationalist, as a comrade, brother and sincere friend of the Albanian people. In 1945, when our people were threatened with starvation, comrade Stalin ordered the ships loaded with grain destined for the Soviet people, who also were in dire need of food at that time, and sent the grain at once to the Albanian people. Whereas, the present Soviet leaders permit themselves these ugly deeds.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People , Food , Time , Sincerity

“Love masters agony; the soul that seemed
Forsaken feels her present God again
And in her Father's arms
Contented dies away.”

John Keble (1792–1866) English churchman and poet, a leader of the Oxford Movement

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 182.

Love , God , Feeling , Soul

“C-10 is such a nightmare, because we’re going to have a ton of amendments,” she says. “And I can’t present them unless I’m physically there.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

The Walrus interview (2012)

“While economic theory in general may be defined as the theory of how an economic condition or an economic development is determined within an institutional framework, the welfare theory deals with how to judge whether one condition can be said to be better in some way than another and whether it is possible, by altering the institutional framework, to achieve a better condition than the present one.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Arrow and Hicks (1972) From Nobel Lectures, Economics 1969-1980, Editor Assar Lindbeck, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992 ( online http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1972/presentation-speech.html)
1970s-1980s

Way

“The dictator Powers of Europe are striding on from strength to strength and from stroke to stroke, and the parliamentary democracies are retreating abashed and confused. … Austria has been laid in thrall, and we do not know whether Czechoslovakia will not suffer a similar attack. … It is because we have lost these opportunities of standing firm, of having strong united forces and a good heart, and a resolute desire to defend the right and afterwards to do generously as the result of strength; it is because we have lost these successive opportunities which have presented themselves, that, when our resources are less and the dangers greater, we have been brought to this pass. I predict that the day will come when at some point or other on some issue or other you will have to make a stand, and I pray God that when that day comes we may not find that through an unwise policy we are left to make that stand alone.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/feb/22/foreign-affairs#S5CV0332P0_19380222_HOC_332 in the House of Commons (22 February 1938) after the resignation of the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
The 1930s

God , Democracy , Strong , Suffering

“It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a 'thinking center' that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval.
The picture readily enlarges itself into a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by leased-wire services. In such a system, the speed of the computers would be balanced, and the cost of the gigantic memories and the sophisticated programs would be divided by the number of users.”

J. C. R. Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis

Cited in: Jacques Berleur, Markku I. Nurminen, John Impagliazzo (2006) Social Informatics: An Information Society for All? p. 436.
Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960

Communication , Thinking , Memory , Time

“I have chosen my boat, and laid in my scant stores. I have selected a few books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare — But the libraries of the world are thrown open to me — and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my pilots — restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task, however slight or voluntary, for each day's fulfilment. I shall witness all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume — I shall read fair augury in the rainbow — menace in the cloud — some lesson or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney — the LAST MAN.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley The Last Man

The Last Man (1826)

Books , World , Fear , Hope

“To fortify London by works is impossible—London must be defended by an army in the Field, and by one or more Battles,—one I trust would be sufficient; but for this Purpose we must be able to concentrate in the Field the largest possible Military Force. In order to do so we must have the means of defending our Naval arsenals with the smallest possible Military Force, and this can be accomplished only by Fortifications which enable a small Force to resist a larger one. Thence it is demonstrable that to fortify our Dockyards is to assist the Defence of London. As to Time we have no time to lose. I deeply regret that various circumstances have so long delayed proposing the Measure to Parliament, but it would be a Breach of our public Duty to put it off to another year. There may be some Persons in the House of Commons with peculiar notions on things in General and with very imperfect notions as to our National Interest who will object to the proposed Measures, but I cannot bring myself to believe that the Majority of the present House of Commons, or the House of Commons that would be elected on an appeal on this Question to the People of the Country would refuse to sanction Measures so indispensably necessary.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Gladstone (16 July 1860), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 142-143.
1860s

People , Question , Time , Housing

“The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical".””

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

History , Study , Past

“Of Henryson as of Chaucer it can be said that the picturesque detail owes its effectiveness to the solidity and seriousness of what it grows from. Henryson's Fables (like La Fontaine’s – they deserve the comparison) do more than present types of human beings in animal guises and animals comically behaving like human beings; they build up a total and consistent society, both rendered and criticized.”

Robert Henryson (1425–1506) Scottish makar (poet)

Patrick Cruttwell, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 326.
Criticism

Animals

“We are mainly interested in the processes… not… in presenting mathematics in its most abstract form. …we will often begin with concrete forms and then exhibit the process of abstraction.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Mathematics

“The past is pervasive; it seeps into everything;… And yet because the past is irreplaceable and cannot be done again, it was that very past, not the present or the future, that was so delicate, so vulnerable, so dreadfully easy to erase.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Past , Future

“Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Cambridge"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“Protocols:
Number 3, para. 16
It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless toward weakness, unsparing to faults, and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism. It is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the premier-dictators of the present day the goyim peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuse as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings.
Graves: An obvious ineptitude!…Notice “humanity” in the “dialogue” becomes “goyim” in the “protocols,” a Yiddish word taken from the Hebrew that Jews use for gentiles. Could anyone believe that the elders would be so naïve and careless as to employ a common ethnic word in such a formal tract as the Protocols?””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.78

People , Suffering

“All sultans were keen on making slaves, but Muhammad Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving people. He appears to have outstripped even Alauddin Khalji and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas writes about him thus:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon infidels… Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners”. Muhammad Tughlaq did not only enslave people during campaigns, he was also very fond of purchasing and collecting foreign and Indian slaves. According to Ibn Battuta one of the reasons of estrangement between Muhammad Tughlaq and his father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, when Muhammad was still a prince, was his extravagance in purchasing slaves. Even as Sultan, he made extensive conquests. He subjugated the country as far as Dwarsamudra, Malabar, Kampil, Warangal, Lakhnauti, Satgaon, Sonargaon, Nagarkot and Sambhal to give only few prominent place-names. There were sixteen major rebellions in his reign which were ruthlessly suppressed. In all these conquests and rebellions, slaves were taken with great gusto. For example, in the year 1342 Halajun rose in rebellion in Lahore. He was aided by the Khokhar chief Kulchand. They were defeated. “About three hundred women of the rebels were taken captive, and sent to the fort of Gwalior where they were seen by Ibn Battutah.” Such was their influx that Ibn Battutah writes: “At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Vazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.” Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India….. Ibn Battutah’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s gifting captured slave girls to nobles or arranging their marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, corroborates the statement of Abbas. Ibn Battutah writes that during the celebrations in connection with the two Ids in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, daughters of Hindu Rajas and those of commoners, captured during the course of the year were distributed among nobles, officers and important foreign slaves. “On the fourth day men slaves are married and on the fifth slave-girls. On the sixth day men and women slaves are married off.” This was all in accordance with the Islamic law. According to it, slaves cannot many on their own without the consent of their proprietors. The marriage of an infidel couple is not dissolved by their jointly embracing the faith. In the present case the slaves were probably already converted and their marriages performed with the initiative and permission the Sultan himself were valid. Thousands of non-Muslim women were captured by the Muslims in the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq, and under him the id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor. In short, under the Tughlaqs the inflow of women captives never ceased.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580., Battutah)

Women , Men , Marriage , War

“We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation"…In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003…the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once.That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible…Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer…In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally…Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country…And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war.”

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

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore
2000s, 2004

Life , War , Children , Secret

“It is fashionable to present hate and contempt for humanity as the exasperation and despair of compassion, but in that case rebellion should be against existence itself. When a man who is horrified by the basic evil of the world and his own existence, and who sees no God to rebel against, takes revenge on his fellow beings, he is a coward and a hypocrite. Perhaps the ugly, sordid, and horrifying things of which there is no end have always been produced by hypocritical and cowardly rebellion against existence, but that is not the rebellion of the social anarchist.”

Giovanni Baldelli (1914–1986) Anarchist theorist

Source: Social Anarchism (1971), p. 7

God , Hate , World , Fashion

“The most promising lines of development of theory in the sociological and most immediately related fields, particularly the psychological and cultural, therefore, seem to be two-fold. One major direction is the theoretical elaboration and refinement of structural-functional analysis of social systems, including the relevant problems of motivation and their relation to cultural patterns. In this process, the structure of social action provides a basic frame of reference, and aspects of it become of direct substantive importance at many specific points. The main theoretical task, however, is more than a refinement of the conceptual scheme of the presently reprinted book — it involves transition and translation to a different level and focus of theoretical systematization.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Preface second edition, 1949
The structure of social action (1937)

Books , Motivation , Problem

“I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish “development priorities” — which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 27, 1968, page 212.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Men , Knowledge , Past , Future

“The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepreneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations that all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research—or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)

Appearance , Science

“The basic idea of karma is not punishment. Karma presents the opportunity for development; to make use of opportunities that were not taken advantage of, to fill in gaps of ignorance, to enlarge understanding through experience, to do what should be done.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 388, Page 158
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 8

Idea , Understanding

“Von Bertalanffy also studied the works of, a pre-Socratic philosopher. Anaxogoras said that 'everything was everything else.' Therefore all categories of thinking were relative and all contradictions only apparent. According to Cusanus the knowledge of infinite God cannot be grasped by human mind it can only be approached from different directions. The idea of God has many aspects which appear to be contradictory. It is similar to a human face which may present different appearances when perceived from different perspectives.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 4

God , Idea , Knowledge , Thinking

“It’s not a matter of imaging, despite what a lot of people would feel that it is. I’ve never presented myself in a way that I don’t feel comfortable with; I’ve never presented myself in a way to appeal to anybody. For the most part the way I’ve always looked to not appeal to most people. Really, my aesthetic was really more of a terrorism or violence than it was something to attract; more of a representation of my detachment than anything else — though it’s not always a very conscious thing.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Skinnie magazine, March 2010, p. 29

People , Way , Feeling , Parting

“Every day I talk with the enemy. But I do not see an embodiment of "him who opposes goodness." If we approach the war on terrorism with the fervor of a Christian jihad against Islam, our battle is already lost, for we have become what we opposed and we are now the fundamentalists. Our battle is not one of flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers and principalities which rule this present darkness. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in "war mode" against a fleshly enemy, or the true enemy is already within us, and we have failed to believe in the power of a redemption which (we say) we believe has saved us. … My comfort and liberty must not be won by the sacrifices of a new and foreign poor now paying the price for our moral failings of diplomacy,. economy and statesmanship, turning our Republic into an Empire.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), pp. 71-72.

War

“The Web provided me with a much needed realization that information cannot be fully separated from its presentation, and showed me something I knew without verbalizing explicitly, that the presentation form we choose communicates real information.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/9a30c508201627ee (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Communication

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1960s, Farewell address (1961)

Money , Idea , Fashion , Universe

“Let us not despair; it is a blessed cause, and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory; we have obtained, for these poor creatures, the recognition of their human nature, which, for a while was most shamefully denied. This is the first fruits of our efforts; let us persevere and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Speech before the House of Commons (18 April 1791).

History , Nature , Effort , Suffering

“Doubt about the fact that insight wholesomeness consists of simply observing the presently arising mental and physical phenomena is also skeptical doubt. This doubt is so subtle that it is rarely detected but is instead mistaken for investigation. This doubt masquerades as analytical knowledge. The commentary on Netti Yuttihāra explains as follows: "Doubt appears in the guise of investigation."”

Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–1982) Burmese Buddhist philosopher

Source: Manual of Insight (1945), p. 64

Knowledge , Appearance

“The art of wrestling, which in the present day is chiefly confined to the lower classes of the people, was, however, highly esteemed by the ancients, and made a very considerable figure among the Olympic games. In the ages of chivalry, to wrestle well was accounted one of the accomplishments which a hero ought to possess. Wrestling is a kind of exercise that, from its nature, is likely to have been practiced by every nation, and especially by those the least civilised. It was probably well known in this country long before the introduction of foreign manners.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 80
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Wrestling

People , Age , Art , Exercises

“[Television, radio, and magazines] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.”

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 4

Way , Thinking , Effort , Appearance

“Our present control of the sea is so absolute that it is sometimes taken for granted.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

Employment of Naval Forces (1948)

Sea

“There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound trite… but it's the truth… As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the human mind. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it. Fleeing it. Overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Death and the Present Moment", speech at the Global Atheist Convention (April 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums&t=21m21s
2010s

Life , Truth , World , Hope

“The present moment is ever the critical time. The future is merely for intelligent forethought.”

Robert Barr (writer) (1849–1912) Scottish-Canadian novelist

"The Siamese Twin of a Bomb Thrower" from The Triumphs of Euguene Valmont (1906)

Intelligence , Time , Future

“One should view the present situation – the status quo – as being maintained by certain conditions or forces. A culture – for instance, the food habits of a certain group at a given time – is not a static affair but a live process like a river which moves but still keeps to a recognizable form…Food habits do not occur in empty space. They are part and parcel of the daily rhythm of being awake and asleep; of being alone and in a group; of earning a living and playing; of being a member of a town, a family, a social class, a religious group... in a district with good groceries and restaurants or in an area of poor and irregular food supply. Somehow all these factors affect food habits at any given time. They determine the food habits of a group every day anew just as the amount of water supply and the nature of the river bed determine the ﬂow of the river, its constancy or change.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1943) "Psychological ecology". In: D. Cartwright (Ed.) Field Theory in Social Science. London: Social Science Paperbacks. As cited in: Bernard Burnes (2004) " Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal https://blackboard.le.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/institution/College%20of%20Social%20Science/School%20of%20Management/DL%20Materials/MBA/2.%20Organizational%20Behaviour/Section%208/Burnes.pdf" in: Journal of Management Studies. Vol 41. Nr 6. p. 977-1002.
1940s

Family , Food , Nature , Water

“The future announces itself from afar. But most people are not listening. The noisy clatter of the present drowns out the tentative sound of things to come. The sound of the new does not fit old perceptual patterns and goes unnoticed by most people. And of the few who do perceive something coming, most lack the energy, initiative, courage or will to do anything about it. Leaders who have the wit to perceive and the courage to act will be credited with a gift of prophecy that they do not necessarily have.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

On Leadership (1981) p. 131

People , Courage , Future

“Mark: Lucky last. We haven't given you an easy time, have we? We haven't actually affirmed you… I know Marcia has. Marcia's really been your supporter, hasn't she. I know Dicko and I have really given you a kinda tough time. But you're still here. You're definitely growing on me. I'm still a bit concerned about the sort of cabaret aspects of the way you present yourself, but gee, the way you're singing is really, really, really, really fine.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, First Round

Way , Support , Singing , Time

“Many of the Greek journalists and TV presenters also seem to share this "progressive intellectualism" which leads Greeks to having to apologize for being Orthodox- What a load of rubbish! Prof Yiannaras with whom I have corresponded then continues with the frightening story about 'the predicted and inevitable and desirable Latinization of our Greek alphabet" quoted by an anonymous source in a periodical Samizdat. Let's get this straight both Greece as well as the Balkan countries that have Kyrilic alphabets should fiercely resist Latinization.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

Objection to Latinization
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Quotes , Country

“All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive — you are leaking.”

Fran Lebowitz book Metropolitan Life

"Manners" (p. 6).
Metropolitan Life (1978)

God , Children , Beauty , Error

“That the Babri Masjid replaced a pre-existent centre of worship, is also indicated by the fact that Hindus kept returning to the place, where more indulgent Muslim rulers allowed them to worship on a platform just outside the mosque. This is attested by a number of different pieces of testimony by Western travelers and by local Muslims, all of the pre-British period, as well as from shortly after the 1856 British take-over but explicitly referring to older local Muslim sources. A number of these documents have been presented by Harsh Narain and A. K. Chatterjee. That they are authentic and have a real proof value, is indirectly corroborated by the attempts made to make two of them disappear, which Harsh Narain and Arun Shourie independently discovered.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Travel

“It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret.”

Jacques de Molay (1243–1314) Grand Master of the Knights Templar

One of the foremost Templar scholars records of Jacques DeMolay's dying words.

Life , Pain , Truth , Lie

“George Bernard Shaw is said to have told W. S. C.:
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.
W. S. C. to G. B. S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”

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

Version given in Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit by Kay Halle, 1966
Apocryphal, originally featured Noël Coward and Randolph Churchill (Winston’s son); attested 1946 (columnist Walter Winchell, attributed to anonymous United Press journalist in London). Originally only featured first half about lack of friend; second half (retort about lack of second performance) attested 1948, as was replacement of personages by George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Specific plays added in later variants, ranging from Man and Superman (1903) to Saint Joan (1923), and appeared in biographies and quote collections from the 1960s.
The quote is presumably apocryphal due to earliest attestations being too different, less famous personages (easily replaced by more famous ones), the quotation becoming more elaborate in later versions, the 20+ year gap between putative utterance and first attestation, and the approximately 50 year gap between putative utterance and appearance in reference works, all as undocumented hearsay.
Detailed discussion at “ Here are Two Tickets for the Opening of My Play. Bring a Friend—If You Have One http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/25/two-tickets-shaw/”, Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/, March 25, 2012.
Misattributed

“At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Preface to God and the Bible (1875)

Men , Religion

“Most studies employing three-dimensional objects as stimuli have used simultaneous presentation whereas most studies employing two-dimensional objects have used comparison of a single visual stimulus with a memory presentation. We suspect that it is this procedural difference rather than the difference in dimensionality that is the principal determiner of rate of mental rotation.”

Roger Shepard (1929) American psychologist

Source: Mental images and their transformations. 1982, p. 178; as cited in Niall (1997)

Study , Memory

“The Man of "Radical" Understanding is not "entranced". He is not "elsewhere". He is not having an experience. He is not passionless and inoffensive. He is awake. He is present. He knows no obstruction in the form of mind, identity, differentiation and desire. He uses mind, identity, differentiation and desire. He is passionate. His quality is an offense to those who are entranced, elsewhere, contained in the mechanics of experience, asleep, living as various forms of identity, separation and dependence. He is acceptable only to those who understand."”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Page 421, 2004 Standard Edition.
The Knee of Listening

Understanding , Passion , Dependency

“William too closed his eyes and prayed, but his world had lost its anchor. The Calvinist code which had dominated and supported him throughout his life seemed unequal to his present confusion. It was now apparent that predestination was a meaningless concept—certainly to one who had been told that his actions would directly affect the outcome of history for all time. But did that necessarily negate his faith entirely? Copernicus established that the earth orbited around the sun. Did God die in that moment?
Or did man merely understand a little better?”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 5 (p. 69)

Life , God , World , Faith

“Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Speech on Islam and the West http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_titled_islam_and_the_wes_425873846.html to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 27 October 1993.
1990s

Religion , Thinking , Time , Past

“For the first time a subject is present, not by virtue of its absence, but actually present, though its appearance is torn away, and only the structure bared. The Modern City! Precise, rectangular, squared, whether seen from above, below, or on the side; bright lights and sterilized life; Broadway, whites and blacks; and boogie-woogie; the underground music of the at once resigned and rebellious... Mondrian has left his white paradise, and entered the world.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

1942, on the late painting 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' of Piet Mondrian
Quote of Rothko, in Painters Objects, Robert Motherwell, pp. 95, 96; as cited in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, pp. 128-129
1940's

Life , World , Music , Light

“Plausible as the idea of the United States of Europe as a peace arrangement may seem to some at first glance, it has on closer examination not the least thing in common with the method of thought and the standpoint of social democracy... At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. Europe no more forms a special unit within world economy than does Asia or America.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Peace Utopias (1911)

World , Peace , Democracy , Idea

“The vast array of methods and techniques which comprise Buddhism, particularly the Tibetan tradition, are all to help us come to know simply what we are, buddha, awake and aware. Time and time again, we are told that we are buddha, that the buddha qualities are present now, but that we just don’t know it. The problem, for many of us, is that this knowing is not a form of knowing that we are used to. We need tools and methods to dismantle the emotional blocks, the habitual patterns, the worries, concerns, expectations, and hopes that keep us from trusting and knowing what we are.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Buddha Nature http://www.unfetteredmind.org/buddha-nature. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (Topic: Practice)

Hope , Problem , Time , Help

“There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, — the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

The Will to Believe http://infomotions.com/etexts/philosophy/1800-1899/james-will-751.htm (1897)
1890s

Truth

“There is nothing compulsory. One is not asked to violate cherished beliefs or accept any of the ideas presented. Rather, a healthy skepticism is encouraged.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

Robert Fripp, a student of Gurdjieff's philosophy, in An Introduction to Guitar Craft (1988). This has sometimes been quoted as a remark by Gurdjieff on the Fourth Way.
Misattributed

Idea

“In every moment the past is born and the present flows into the future, taking the moment that already passed.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Creator

“Passage,” p. 45
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “The Dream Chamber”

Past , Future

“In the present decade, the U. S. economy has undergone its first major depression since the 1930’s, to the accompaniment of inflation rates in excess of 10 percent per annum. These events have been transmitted […] to other advanced countries and in many cases have been amplified. These events did not arise from a reactionary reversion to outmoded, 'classical' principles of tight money and balanced budgets. On the contrary, they were accompanied by massive government budget deficits and high rates of monetary expansion, policies which, although bearing an admitted risk of inflation, promised according to modern Keynesian doctrine rapid real growth and low rates of unemployment. That these predictions were wildly incorrect and that the doctrine on which they were fundamentally flawed are now simple matters of fact, involving no novelties of economic theory. The task now […] is to sort through the wreckage, determining which features of that remarkable intellectual event called the Keynesian Revolution can be salvaged and put to use and which others must be discarded.”

Robert Lucas Jr. (1937) American economist

As contained in The Rational Expectations Revolution: Readings From the Front Line https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0262631555, Preston J. Miller, MIT Press (reprint 1994), pp. 5-6
"After Keynesian macroeconomics" 1978

Money , Country

“[looking back] I was unable to invent forms, and the sights of such forms always disgusts me. All the forms I ever used came of their own accord, they presented themselves to me already shaped, all I had to do was coy them, or else they took shape while I worked, often surprising me... I have trained myself not simply to let myself go, but to put reins on the power that works within me, and to guide it.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 109
undated quotes

Training

“At this time our nation is in a bad state in regards education and wealth, but God has given us the light of religion and the Quran is present for our guidance, which has ordained them and us to be friends. Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India, and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis… If we join the political movement of the Bengalis our nation will reap a loss, for we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the "people of the Book…”

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

KUMAR, S (2000). Educational Philosophy in Modern India. Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd. p. 60.

God , Friendship , People , Books

“The scientistic sociologist wishes people to feel that he is just as empirical and thoroughgoing as the natural scientist, and that his conclusions are based just as relentlessly on observed data. The desire to present this kind of façade accounts, one may suspect, for the many examples and the extensive use of statistical tables found in the works of some of them. It has been said of certain novelists that they create settings having such a wealth of realistic detail that the reader assumes that the plot which is to follow will be equally realistic, when this may be far from the case. What happens is that the novelist disarms the reader with the realism of his setting in order that he may “get away with murder” in his plot. The persuasiveness of the scene is thus counted on to spill over into the action of the story. In like manner, when a treatise on social science is filled with this kind of data, the realism of the latter can influence our acceptance of the thesis, which may, on scrutiny, rest on very dubious constructs, such as definitions of units. Along with this there is sometimes a great display of scientific preciseness in formulations. But my reading suggests that some of these writers are often very precise about matters which are not very important and rather imprecise about matters which are. Most likely this is an offsetting process. If there are subjects one cannot afford to be precise about because they are too little understood or because one’s views of them are too contrary to traditional beliefs about society, one may be able to maintain an appearance of scientific correctness by taking great pains in the expressing of matters of little consequence. These will afford scope for a display of scholarly meticulousness and of one’s command of the scientific terminology.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Concealed Rhetoric in Scientistic Sociology,” pp. 148-149.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

Pain , People , Feeling , Nature

“I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.”

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

I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)
1970s

Universe

“In classical Newtonian physics there was a clear understanding of 'what reality is'. Indeed in this classical view, reality at a certain time is the collection of all what is actual at this time, and this is contained in 'the present'. Often it is stated that three dimensional space and one dimensional time have been substituted by four dimensional space-time in relativity theory, and as a consequence the classical concept of reality, as that what is 'present', cannot be retained. Is reality then the four dimensional manifold of relativity theory? And if so, what is then the meaning of 'change in time?”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Aerts, D. (1996). " Relativity theory: what is reality? http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/aerts/publications/1996RelReal.pdf". Foundations of Physics, 26, pp. 1627-1644

Understanding , Reality , Change , Time

“In a general way, we can represent the present value of a future good as a function of the time separating the present from this future. In the classical conception, an exponential future discount is stipulated, which implies that the curves corresponding to two distinct future goods, one small and immediate, the other large and more remote, never intersect. According to more recent research, however, it seems that this discount typically takes a hyperbolic form.”

Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic

Reason and Rationality (2009)

Way , Time , Future

“The present condition of the farmers and labourers of this country is the severest condemnation of the Corn-laws that can possibly be produced…let the farmer perfectly understand that his prosperity depends upon that of his customers—that the insane policy of this House has been to ruin his customers, and that acts of Parliament to keep up prices are mere frauds to put rents into the landlords' pockets, and enable him to juggle his tenants.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1843/may/15/abolition-of-the-corn-laws-adjourned in the House of Commons (15 May 1843).
1840s

Law , Understanding , Fraud , Housing

“Siphonophores do not convey the message—a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism—that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts intimately connected and interacting in some higher, ineffable harmony. Nature revels in boundaries and distinctions; we inhabit a universe of structure. But since our universe of structure has evolved historically, it must present us with fuzzy boundaries, where one kind of thing grades into another.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile

"A Most Ingenious Paradox", p. 95
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

Nature , Universe , Parting

“What must be acknowledged, for example the prevalence of anxiety, is grafted onto man’s essence as if it grew there. Such is the tried and tested method of the apologist: what is social in origin is presented as natural.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 63

Nature

“[Nature] only give it you, when you carefully consider its majesty and greatness. Does it not present beautiful scenes in front of your eyes that impossibly could be described to you by somebody else?…. [scenes], which you can try to realize afterwards in your room on the canvas or panel.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) [de natuur] alleen schenkt u die bij eene aandachtige beschouwing harer majesteit en grootheid.. .Spreidt zij geene prachttaferelen voor uw oog ten toon, die onmogelijk een ander u zou kunnen beschrijven?. ..die gij naderhand op uwe kamer op het doek of paneel kunt trachten te verwezenlijken.
Quote of Koekkoek, 1841: in: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van eenen Landschapschilder, as cited in 'Andreas Schelfhout Onsterfelijk schoon', p. 35 https://www.simonis-buunk.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/catalogus_schelfhout.pdf

Beauty , Nature

“The first remark we have to make, and which — though already presented more than once — cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, — is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle — Plan of Existence — Law — is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such — however true in itself — is not completely real.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

Law , Idea , Nature

“The search for the curvature K indicates that, after making all known corrections, the number N seems to increase faster with d than the third power, which would be expected in a Euclidean space, hence K is positive. The space implied thereby is therefore bounded, of finite total volume, and of a present "radius of curvature" R = \frac{1}{K^\frac{1}{2}} which is found to be of the order of 500 million light years. Other observations, on the "red shift" of light from these distant objects, enable us to conclude with perhaps more assurance that this radius is increasing…”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Search , Light , Distant

“Fascism rebelled against modernity inasmuch as modernity was identified with the rationalism, optimism, and humanism of the eighteenth century, but it was not a reactionary or an anti-revolutionary movement in the Maurrassian sense of the term. Fascism presented itself as a revolution of another kind, a revolution that sought to destroy the existing political order and to uproot its theoretical and moral foundations but that at the same time wished to preserve all the achievements of modern technology.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p. 7

Optimism , Sense , Time

“Life — a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

"Is Civilization Progress?" in Reader's Digest (July 1964)

Life , Knowledge , Past , Future

“While economic theory in general may be defined as the theory of how an economic condition or an economic development is determined within an institutional framework, the welfare theory deals with how to judge whether one condition can be said to be better in some way than another and whether it is possible, by altering the institutional framework, to achieve a better condition than the present one.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

Kenneth Arrow and John Hicks (1972) From Nobel Lectures, Economics 1969-1980, Editor Assar Lindbeck, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992 ( online http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1972/presentation-speech.html)

Way

“As a public teacher of mere striplings, I am often amazed by the facility and absence of resistance with which the principles of the infinitesimal calculus are accepted and assimilated by the present race of learners. When I was young, a boy of sixteen or seventeen who knew his infinitesimal calculus would have been almost pointed at in the streets as a prodigy, like Dante, as a man who had seen hell. Now-a-days, our Woolwich cadets at the same age, talk with glee of tangents and asymptotes and points of contrary flexure and discuss questions of double maxima and minima, or ballistic pendulums, or motion in a resisting medium, under the familiar and ignoble name of sums.”

James Joseph Sylvester (1814–1897) English mathematician

J. J. Sylvester. "Additional Notes to Prof. Sylvester's Exeter British Association Address", Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 2 (1908), pp. 717–718 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.aas8085.0002.001;view=1up;seq=732

Age , Boy , Hell , Question

“The oppressors develop a series of methods precluding any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it rather as a fixed entity, as something given--something to which people, as mere spectators, must adapt.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

People , World , Problem

“Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.”

David Brin book Earth

Part III (p. 143)
Earth (1990)

Stupidity , Fools , Sense , Future

“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”

Graham Greene book The Comedians

Pt. 1, ch. 4, sct. 1
The Comedians (1966)

Life , Fear , Law , Mathematics

“But my motivation was more a matter of wanting to create order – to keep track of things. All those boxes full of photographs and sketches weigh you down, because they have something unfinished, incomplete, about them. So it's better to present the usable material in an orderly fashion and throw the other stuff away. That's how the Atlas came to be, and I exhibited it a few times.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote of an interview with Stefan Koldehoff, 1999; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Atlas' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/atlas-4
1990's

Motivation , Fashion , Time , Box

“In the past—that is, for most people it is still the present-the individual is everything, everything is directed at maintaining his life and improving his existence, everything focuses on him. … In socialism of the future, on the other hand, what counts is the whole, the community of the Volk. The individual and his life play only a subsidiary role. He can be sacrificed—he is prepared to sacrifice himself should the whole demand it.”

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

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 16

Life , People , Communication , Past

“We believe that the most pressing political necessity is the consolidation of a United Front joining together all sections of the revolutionary, radical and democratic movements. Only a united front—led in the first place by the national liberation movements and the working people—can decisively counter, theoretically, ideologically and practically, the increasingly fascistic and genocidal posture of the present ruling clique”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

People , Decision

“Science in the past (and partly in the present), was dominated by one-sided empiricism. Only a collection of data and experiments were considered as being ‘scientific’ in biology (and psychology); forgetting that a mere accumulation of data, although steadily piling up, does not make a science.”

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

Source: General System Theory (1968), 4. Advances in General Systems Theory, p. 100 cited in: Edward Goldsmith (1970-73/2013) Towards a Unified Science http://www.edwardgoldsmith.org/598/

Science , Past , Forgetting

“Historically, "public administration" has grown in large part out of the wider field of inquiry, "political science." The history of American political science during the past fifty years is a story much too lengthy to be told here, but some important general characteristics and tendencies it has communicated to or shared with public administration must be noted.
The Secular Spirit Despite: the fact that "political science" in such forms as moral philosophy and political economy had been taught in America long before the Civil War, the present curriculum, practically in its entirety, is the product of the secular, practical, empirical, and "scientific" tendencies of the past sixty or seventy years. American students dismayed at the inadequacies of the ethical approach in the Gilded Age, stimulated by their pilgrimage to German universities, and led by such figures as J. W. Burgess, E. J. James, A. B. Hart, A. L. Lowell, and F. J. Goodnow have sought to recreate political science as a true science. To this end they set about observing and analyzing "actual government." At various times and according to circumstances, they have turned to public law, foreign institutions, rural, municipal, state, and federal institutions, political parties, public opinion and pressures, and to the administrative process, in the search for the "stuff" of government. They have borrowed both ideas and examples from the natural sciences and the other social disciplines. Frequently they have been inspired by a belief that a Science of Politics will emerge when enough facts of the proper kinds are accumulated and put in the proper juxtaposition, a Science that will enable man to "predict and control" his political life. So far did they advance from the old belief that the problem of good government is the problem of moral men that they arrived at the opposite position: that morality is irrelevant, that proper institutions and expert personnel are determining.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 22-23

Life , Men , War , Age

“I can see no hope at present of such a vaccine being produced… I have adopted a frankly defeatist attitude towards the problem of poliomyelitis and I hope that future developments will prove me wrong… No means of controlling poliomyelitis is at present visible.”

Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899–1985) Australian virologist

Burnet, F.M. (1949) "Some aspects of the epidemiology of poliomyelitis". in: Proc. Royal Australasian College of Physicians. 4: 95-100.
Quote from 1949 on the development of a poliomyelitis vaccine, which was developed later that year.

Hope , Problem , Future

“Constantinople has no past; only a noisy present and a splendid future, if the auguries are to be believed.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 2

Past , Future

“Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch (1967), who coined the label “contingency theory,” argue that different environments place differing requirements on organizations: specifically, environments characterized by uncertainty and rapid rates of change in market conditions or technologies present different challenges—both constraints and opportunities—to organizations than do placid and stable environments”

W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist

Source: Institutions and Organizations., 1995, p. 89 (2001: 103)

Change

“Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

Voices in the Wilderness The Guardian (Saturday 28 September 2002).

Depressing , Life , World

“The Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the THIRD, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority, indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:–the state of completed sinfulness.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 16

Truth , Age , Indifference

“Europe is not really even a geographic entity; it is separated from Asia only at one point, the Bosphorus, by a small stretch of water. North of that there is continuity over the russians steppes, a complete terrestrial flow. I suggest that is also true of culture, and indeed of social organization. Indeed Europe has never been purely isolated, purely Christian. Instead of Christian Europe, one has to see the continent as penetrated by the three world religions that originated in the Near East and which indeed had a common mythology or sacred text; in order of arrival these were Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (…) All have equal entitlements to be present, and in this general ('objective') sense none can be considered only as the Other; they are part of Europe, part of our heritage.”

Jack Goody (1919–2015) British anthropologist

Jack Goody, Islam in Europe, Polity, 2004, p.14

World , Religion , Sense , Water

“A new development began for relativity theory after 1925 with its absorption into quantum physics. The first great success was scored by Dirac's quantum mechanical equations of the electron, which introduced a new sort of quantities, the spinors, besides the vectors and tensors into our physical theories. …But difficulties of the gravest kind turned up when one passed from one electron or photon to the interaction among an indeterminate number of such particles. In spite of several advances a final solution of this problem is not yet in sight and may well require a deep modification of the foundation of quantum mechanics, such as would account in the same basic manner for the elementary electric charge e as relativity theory and our present quantum mechanics account for c and h.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Preface to the First American Printing (1950) Note: see Paul Dirac, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1947)
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

Problem , Success

“The Hawthorne researchers became more and more interested in the informal employee groups which tend to form within the formal organisation of the Company, and which are not likely to be represented in the organisation chart. They became interested in the beliefs and creeds which have the effect of making each individual feel an integral part of the group and which make the group appear as a single unit, in the social codes and norms of behaviour by means of which employees automatically work together in a group without any conscious choice as to whether they will or will not co-operate. They studied the important social functions these groups perform for their members, the histories of these informal work groups, how they spontaneously appear, how they tend to perpetuate themselves, multiply, and disappear, how they are in constant jeopardy from technical change, and hence how they tend to resist innovation.
In particular, they became interested in those groups whose norms and codes of behaviour are at variance with the technical and economic objectives of the Company as a whole. They examined the social conditions under which it is more likely for the employee group to separate itself out in opposition to the remainder of the groups which make up the total organisation. In such phenomena they felt that they had at last arrived at the heart of the problem of effective collaboration, and obtained a new enlightenment of the present industrial scene.”

Fritz Roethlisberger (1898–1974) American business theorist

Cited in: Lyndall Fownes Urwick, ‎Edward Franz Leopold Brech (1961), The Making of Scientific Management: The Hawthorne investigations https://archive.org/stream/makingofscientif032926mbp#page/n191/mode/2up. p. 166-167
Management and the worker, 1939

Feeling , History , Problem , Study

“The subject matter of creation is chaos. The present feeling seems to be that the artist is concerned with form, color, and spatial arrangement. This objective approach to art reduces it to a kind of ornament. The whole attitude of abstract painting, for example, has been such that it has reduced painting to an ornamental art whereby the picture surface is broken up in geometrical fashion into a new kind of design-image. It is a decorative art built on a slogan of purism where the attempt is made for an unworldly statement…”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 1. 1943-1945, p. 139

Art , Color , Feeling , Fashion

Quotes about present page 36

Quotes about present
page 36