Quotes about produce (2819 quotes, page 14)

“The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Le législateur commande à l’avenir; il ne lui sert de rien d’être faible: c’est à lui de vouloir le bien et de le perpétuer; c’est à lui de rendre les hommes ce qu’il veut qu’ils soient: selon que les lois animent le corps social, inerte par lui-même, il en résulte les vertus ou les crimes, les bonnes mœurs ou la férocité.
Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_constitution_24_04_93.htm, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).

Law , Future

“I don't take drugs. I never did. All the feelings that drugs are supposed to produce in you - confidence or energy - I can produce naturally. The only problem is going to sleep. But I never take pills… I drink herbal teas.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Rocks the Land, Time, 1985-05-27 http://time.com/3724297/madonna-rocks-the-land/,

Feeling , Confidence , Drink , Nature

“Owing to the incapacity of the higher price-rate to appeal to the "acquisitive sense," it would appear altogether plausible to attempt to do so by utilizing the opposite strategy: by decreasing piece-rates, to force workers to produce more in order to maintain their accustomed earnings. Moreover, two simple observations seem to have held true in the past, as they do today: a lower wage and higher profit are directly related, and all that is paid out in higher wages must imply a corresponding reduction of profits.
Capitalism has been guided by this axiom repeatedly, and even from its beginning, and it has been an article of faith for centuries that lower wages are "productive."”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In other words, lower wages were believed to enhance worker productivity.
Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Faith , Sense , Appearance , Past

“The man who goes by the stage name Pricasso whips out his member. He dips it in paint and produces an extraordinary resemblance of his bemused subjects.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Jani Meyer, Pricasso's creative party trick, Sunday Tribune, South Africa, 10 February 2008, 3, Independent Online]
About

Painting

“The nature of this trade, certainly not the most honourable in the world, affords room for much investigation and remark in a moral or humane point of view: in a political or commercial light it is perhaps less conspicuously an object of attention. It consists chiefly of commodities that are considered as holding a first rate place in the animal and the mineral world, for which in return the Africans receive the most rascally articles that the ingenuity of Europeans has found means to produce. In return to our fellow creatures, for gold, and for ivory, we exchange the basest of those articles that are suited to the taste or the fancy of a despicable set of barbarians. Whether the spirituous liquirs or the fire-arms that are sent there are most calculated for the destruction of the purchasers, might become a question not very easy to determine. The noxious quality of the one is at least equalled by the danger of attending the use of the other. There does not seem to be that regard to honour in this trade, which ought to make part of the nice character of the English merchant, unimpeachable, unimpeached, upon the 'Change of London or of Amsterdam. It seems as if we kept our honour for ourselves, and that with those barbarians (who are more our inferiors in address and cunning, than perhaps in any thing else) no honour, humanity, or equity, were at all necessary.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Trade to Africa, Chart XVI, page 65.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

World , Question , Nature , Light

“Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VII

Fashion

“"Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground—So is the race of man." Leaves, also, are thy children; and leaves, too, are they who cry out so if they are worthy of credit, or bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer; and leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man's fame to after-times. For all such things as these "are produced in the season of spring," as the poet says; then the wind casts them down; then the forest produces other leaves in their places. But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet thou avoidest and pursuest all things as if they would be eternal.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

X, 34
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X

Children , Spring , Time , Cry

“The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time… As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion…. Harmony… can be considered a special kind of rhythm…. pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are… periodic or… repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion. Kepler… in the third book of Harmonice mundi… attempted to make other… related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Books , Music , Mathematics , Time

“Now, I always think that one of the most curious contradictions about the English stock is this: that while the criticism that is often made of us is not without an element of truth, and that is that as a nation we are less open to the intellectual sense than the Latin races, yet through that may be a fact, there is no nation on earth that has had the same knack of producing geniuses. It is almost a characteristic of the English race; there is hardly any line in which the nation has not produced geniuses, and in a nation which may people might think restrained, unable to express itself, in this same nation you have a literature second to none that has ever existed in the world, and certainly in poetry supreme.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 2-3.
1924

People , Truth , World , Literature

“The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity – the political allocation of wealth and opportunity – is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.””

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, May 14, 2009, "Tincture of Lawlessness" http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/14/tincture_of_lawlessness_96482.html at realclearpolitics.com.
2000s

Justice , Freedom , Dependency , Wealth

“[I]n the male sexual lexicon, which is the vocabulary of power, erotica is simply high-class pornography: better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer. As with the call girl and the streetwalker, one is turned out better but both are produced by the same system of sexual values and both perform the same sexual service.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

p 10.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Girl

“No Mr Huckabee, history –and criminal statistics- have both shown that tragedies will only increase, the more religious any society becomes. The more influence religion has over law, the lower our quality of life, and the more human rights are violated. It is true that any population of hundreds of millions will produce a proportionate percentage of sociopaths. But what we need there is more efficient provisions of mental health care –so that those suffering dementia and other disorders will be identified, treated, or isolated as need be –BEFORE they go berserk. Religion doesn’t want that either –as a matter of self-preservation. Because a fair amount of divine revelation can be cured with the same medications that treats schizophrenia. Where would the churches be if that many of their clergymen were clothed in straight-jackets?”

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

Patheos, Fukkenuckabee http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2012/12/21/fukkenuckabee/ (December 21, 2012)

Life , Health , Religion , Law

“Smoking stupefies a man, and makes him incapable of thinking or writing. It is only fit for idlers, people who are always bored, who sleep for a third of their lifetime, fritter away another third in eating, drinking, and other necessary or unnecessary affairs, and don’t know—though they are always complaining that life is so short—what to do with the rest of their time. Such lazy Turks find mental solace in handling a pipe and gazing at the clouds of smoke that they puff into the air; it helps them to kill time. Smoking induces drinking beer, for hot mouths need to be cooled down. Beer thickens the blood, and adds to the intoxication produced by the narcotic smoke. The nerves are dulled and the blood clotted. If they go on as they seem to be doing now, in two or three generations we shall see what these beer-swillers and smoke-puffers have made of Germany. You will notice the effect on our literature—mindless, formless, and hopeless; and those very people will wonder how it has come about. And think of the cost of it all! Fully 25,000,000 thalers a year end in smoke all over Germany, and the sum may rise to forty, fifty, or sixty millions. The hungry are still unfed, and the naked unclad. What can become of all the money? Smoking, too, is gross rudeness and unsociability. Smokers poison the air far and wide and choke every decent man, unless he takes to smoking in self-defence. Who can enter a smoker’s room without feeling ill? Who can stay there without perishing?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Heinrich Luden, Rueckblicke in mein Leben, Jena 1847
Attributed

Life , Money , People , Feeling

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

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

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

Pain , Animals , Dependency , Country

“Treating a person as though he were generally rather than specifically deviant produces a self-fulfilling prophecy. It sets in motion several mechanisms which conspire to shape the person in the image people have of him. It the first place, one tends to be cut off, after being identified as deviant, from participation in more conventional groups, even though the specific consequences of the particular deviant activity might never of themselves have caused the isolation had there not also been the public knowledge and reaction to it. For example, being a homosexual may not affect one’s ability to do office work, but to be known as a homosexual in an office may make it impossible to continue working there. Similarly, though the effects of opiate drugs may not impair one’s working ability, to be known as an addict will probably lead to losing one’s job… The homosexual who is deprived of a “respectable” job by the discovery of his deviance may drift into unconventional, marginal occupations where it does not make so much difference. The drug addict finds himself forced into other illegitimate kinds of activity, such as robbery and theft, by the refusal of respectable employers to have him around.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), p. 34.

People , Knowledge , Personality

“A number of little birds, to the amount, I believe, of twelve or fourteen, being taken from different cages, were placed upon a table in the presence of the spectators; and there they formed themselves into ranks like a company of soldiers: small cones of paper bearing some resemblance to grenadiers caps were put upon their heads, and diminutive imitations of muskets made with wood, secured under their left wings. Thus equipped, they marched to and fro several times; when a single bird was brought forward, supposed to be a deserter, and set between six of the musketeers, three in a row, who conducted him from the top to the bottom of the table, on the middle of which a small brass cannon charged with a little gunpowder had been previously placed, and the deserter was situated in the front part of the cannon; his guards then divided, three retiring on one side, and three on the other, and he was left standing by himself. Another bird was immediately produced; and, a lighted match being put into one of his claws, he hopped boldly on the other to the tail of the cannon, and, applying the match to the priming, discharged the piece without the least appearance of fear or agitation. The moment the explosion took place, the deserter fell down, and lay, apparently motionless, like a dead bird; but, at the command of his tutor he rose again; and the cages being brought, the feathered soldiers were stripped of their ornaments, and returned into them in perfect order.”

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

pg. 250
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Fear , Bird , Light , Appearance

“People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 4, What Is A Good Sentence?, p. 37

People , Success

“It can hardly be argued that the ubiquity of the Playboy Bunny logo or its popularity with young girls are positive developments, but it must be understood that what is being objected to here, as elsewhere, is not sex, but symbol: the black-and-white, liplesss, featureless symbol of a perky, prosthetic sexuality whose alienation from the flesh and intimacy of real sex can be mass-produced.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Source: Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010), Chapter One, Bunny and Brand

Sex , Girl

“Getting to near zero marginal cost and nearly free goods and services is a function of advances in productivity. Productivity is “a measure of productive efficiency calculated as the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it.” If the cost of producing an additional good or service is nearly zero, that would be the optimum level of productivity.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.”

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

ME 13:423
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

War , Truth

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

War , Children , Age , Peace

“There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in ‘Sir Paul has just written manure for years’ http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/sir-paul-has-just-written-manure-for-years-1-611044 at scotsman.com, originally published 2 July 2002 (see here http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/sir-paul-has-just-written-manure-for-years-1-611044)
Controversy with other artists

Time , Past

“Instead of enabling humans to improve their lot, science degrades the natural environment in which humans must live. Instead of enabling death to be overcome, it produces ever more powerful technologies of mass destruction. None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 235)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Death , Nature , Knowledge , Science

“The concept of the « struggle for existence » has been applied to microbial interrelationships in nature in a manner comparable to the effects assigned by Darwin to higher forms of life. It has also been suggested that the ability of a microbe to produce an antibiotic substance enables it to survive Giom. in competition for space and for nutrients with other microbes. Such assumptions ppear to be totally unjustified on the basis of existing knowledge. Before we proceed with a discussion of the formation and activities of antibiotics under natural conditions, we must consider certain fundamental aspects of the problem of antibiotic production under controlled laboratory or factory conditions… All the discussion of a "struggle for existence" in which antibiotics are supposed to play a part, is merely a figment of the imagination, and an appeal to the melodramatic rather than the factual.”

Selman Waksman (1888–1973) American scientist, biochemist, microbiologist who discovered Streptomycin and many antibiotics

As quoted by the Instituto di Microbiologia, (1956). Giornale Di Microbiologia. Volume 2; in proceedings of the First European Symposium on the Biochemistry of Antibiotics

Life , Imagination , Nature , Knowledge

“In all cases, not only in the two which we have analyzed, recovery came of itself. There is certainly this much of truth in the talk about the recuperative powers of our industrial system. But this is not all: our analysis leads us to believe that recovery is sound only if it does come of itself. For any revival which is merely due to artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depressions undone and adds, to an undigested remnant of maladjustment, new maladjustment of its own which has to be liquidated in turn, thus threatening business with another crisis ahead. Particularly, our story provides a presumption against remedial measures which work through money and credit. For the trouble is fundamentally not with money and credit, and policies of this class are particularly apt to keep up, and add to, maladjustment, and to produce additional trouble in the future.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950) Austrian economist

"Depressions: Can we learn from past experience?" in Schumpeter, Joseph A.; Chamberlin, Edward; Leontief, Wassily W.; Brown, Douglass V.; Harris, Seymour E.; Mason, Edward S.; Taylor, Overton H., The economics of the recovery program (1934)

Money , Truth , Business , Future

“Good sociology is sociological work that produces meaningful descriptions of organizations and events, valid explanations of how they come about and persist, and realistic proposals for their improvement or removal.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Becker (1972) "'Radical politics and sociological research" cited in: John Peter Sugden, Alan Tomlinson (2002) Power Games: A Critical Sociology of Sport. p. 108.

“The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism (initiated by Seurat and Paul Signac, ed., where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cézanne's letter to Émile Bernard, 23 October 1905; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 180
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Error , Nature , Thinking , Light

“Mr. Richard Arkwright, after many years study, brought his spinning machinery to bear about 1768: he was a native of Lancashire; but fearing the same fate as Hargrave, went to Nottingham, and obtained a patent, dated 3 July 1769, for a machinery for making web or yarn of cotton, flax, or wool. He afterwards found it necessary to apply the same principles to the preparation, and took another patent, dated 16 December 1775, for certain machines for preparing silk, cotton, flax and wool for spinning. During five years after the date of his first patent, Mr. Arkwright and his partners expended 12,000 l in machinery and buildings before any profit was made. The last invention was a very important addition to the first; and by combining them, excellent yarn, or twist, was at last produced; but there was still much difficulty in establishing a trade; for the cotton manufacturers would not have the new yarn at any price, and the proprietors were obliged to weave the yarn, into stockings, and into calicoes; but the latter was restricted by the Excise, which rendered relief by an Act of Parliament necessary.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

The case, 1782

Fate , Fear , Study

“PK and other movies, they were cleared by a UPA government’s nominee. They have started creating the problem. Producers should not make controversial movies. Then, there will be no controversy in clearing the movie also.”

Pahlaj Nihalani

On controversial films like PK, as quoted in " Producers Should Not Make Controversial Movies http://www.boomlive.in/producers-make-controversial-movies/" Boom Live (23 January 2015)

Problem

“Only the dialectical conception of … reality as a social process … dissolves the fetishistic forms necessarily produced by the capitalist mode of production and enables us to see them as mere illusions which are not less illusory for being seen to be necessary.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 13

Reality

“Worship thou God in such wise that if thy worship lead thee to the fire, no alteration in thine adoration would be produced, and so likewise if thy recompense should be paradise. Thus and thus alone should be the worship which befitteth the one True God. Shouldst thou worship Him because of fear, this would be unseemly in the sanctified Court of His presence, and could not be regarded as an act by thee dedicated to the Oneness of His Being. Or if thy gaze should be on paradise, and thou shouldst worship Him while cherishing such a hope, thou wouldst make God’s creation a partner with Him, notwithstanding the fact that paradise is desired by men.
Fire and paradise both bow down and prostrate themselves before God. That which is worthy of His Essence is to worship Him for His sake, without fear of fire, or hope of paradise.”

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

VII, 19
The Persian Bayán

Men , God , Fear , Hope

“What is called "sponge stone" or "Pompeian pumice" appears to have been reduced by burning from another kind of stone to the condition of the kind which we see. The kind of sponge-stone taken from this region is not produced everywhere else, but only about Aetna and among the hills of Mysia which the Greeks call the "Burnt District," and in other places of the same peculiar nature. …it seems to be certain that moisture has been extracted from the tufa and earth, by the force of fire, just as it is from limestone in kilns.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VI, Sec. 2-3

Nature , Appearance

“It is the residue of animal and vegetable putrefaction, and is a black body; when dry it is pulverulent, and when wet has a soft, greasy feel… It is the produce of organic power—a compound of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, such as cannot be chemically composed.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

p. 336 http://books.google.com/books?id=zAhJAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA336; Cited in: Edmund Ruffin An Essay on Calcareous Manures, Volume 1. J.W. Randolph, 1852. p. 85.
Ruffin summarizes:
"Humus" is the term used by this author for the decomposed vegetable and other organic matter which is more or less mixed with all surface soil, and which gives to soil all its fertility, and furnishes all the food of plants.
The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section III: Agronomy

Feeling , Animals

“The parties, Fascist, or other, which bring about dictatorship want dictatorship. But John Smith who insists on certain policies which produce war does not want war. The first is the result of conscious intention duly carried into effect. The second is the result of an intention which miscarries, miscarries because of certain current errors and fallacies.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

War , Error

“He produced a work of art which by its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the romantic movement in European, and especially in German, literature.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910-11) vol. 17, p. 268.
Criticism

Beauty , Art , Literature , Nature

“Menahem Golan, the Israeli king of the ninja flick, announced he was producing the remake.”

Joe Bob Briggs (1953) American film critic, writer, and actor; alter ego of John Bloom

Night of the Living Dead (1990 remake) review http://www.joebobbriggs.com/drivein/1990/nightofthelivingdead1990.htm

“It must always be borne in mind that each and every individual is not only a producer but a consumer. In the final analysis of our conditions, we have to admit that it is not lack of consumption, but lack of production which is our present economic danger. The immigrant is needed, provided this fact is overcome, provided supply—whether in schools, in homes, or in shoes—does not fall behind demand. The public could today consume much more of the necessities of food, shelter and clothing than they are able to procure or have ever been able to procure in a country where the standard of living is so high. If, through cheap labor, and an increased willingness on the part of alien labor to live on the edge of existence, these standards are threatened, then is the time to bring legislative action to bear on the situation.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

School , Food , Shoe , Home

“What I am trying to do is to present a unified scientific view of life; that is, a view integrating life's biological, cognitive, and social dimensions. I have had many discussions with social scientists, cognitive scientists, physicists and biologist who question that task, who said that this would not be possible. They ask, why do I believe that I can do that? My belief is based largely on our knowledge of evolution. When you study evolution, you see that there was, first of all, evolution before the appearance of life, there was a molecular type of evolution where structures of greater and greater complexity evolved out of simple molecules. Biochemist who study that have made tremendous progress in understanding that process of molecular evolution. Then we had the appearance of the first cell which was a bacterium. Bacteria evolved for about 2 billion years and in doing so invented, if you want to use the term, or created most of the life processes that we know today. Biochemical processes like fermentation, oxygen breathing, photosynthesis, also rapid motion, were developed by bacteria in evolution. And what happened then was that bacteria combined with one another to produce larger cells — the so-called eukaryotic cells, which have a nucleus, chromosomes, organelles, and so on. This symbiosis that led to new forms is called symbiogenesis.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Capra (2007) in: Francis Pisani " An Interview with Fritjof Capra http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/69/25" in: International Journal of Communication Vol 1 (2007).

Life , Understanding , Question , Knowledge

“It has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope. lf we are united, we may be able to produce a world in which our children and other people's children will be safe.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Margaret Mead (1978) cited in: United States. National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year The spirit of Houston: the First National Women's Conference. Vol. 84, Nr 1978, p. 153
1970s

Life , Children , People , World

“It is this diffused spirit of Christianity rather than the conscious purpose of organized Christianity which has been the chief moral force in social changes. It has often taken its finest form in heretics and free-thinkers, and in non-Christian movements. The Church has often been indifferent or hostile to the effects which it had itself produced. The mother has refused to acknowledge her own children.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Hostility , Children , Change , Indifference

“The free enterprise policies that produce solely for waste and for profit and that promote a consumerist mentality rather than one of need are damaging to the environment. I am in no sense defending the centralised economies of eastern Europe. They have polluted the north sea and rivers just as industries in Britain and North America have destroyed rivers, wasted natural resources and ruined people's lives by their form of pollution. It is not good enough to promote an economic system that produces for waste and to promote environmental controls in western Europe and North America to look after our environment if at the same time we transfer that destruction of the environment to poorer Third-world countries, either by exporting toxic waste and letting those countries get rid of it by whatever means they can, because they are desperate for foreign currency, or by promoting the destruction of the rain forests, through raping those countries to collect debt payments, when they can make them only by destroying all their natural resources. We live in an age when we have an opportunity to improve our environment and save ourselves from mass destruction through climatic change and environmental disasters.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/15/environmental-protection-bill in the House of Commons (15 January 1990).
1990s

People , Age , World , Nature

“Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times — Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.”

Honoré de Balzac book Une fille d'Ève

La tyrannie produit deux effets contraires dont les symboles existent dans deux grandes figures de l'esclavage antique: Epictète et Spartacus, la haine et ses sentiments mauvais, la résignation et ses tendresses chrétiennes.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman.

Evil , Time , Training

“Whatever God desires to do is necessarily done; there is nothing that could prevent the realisation of His will. The object of His will is only that which is possible, and of the things possible only such as His wisdom decrees upon. When God desires to produce the best work, no obstacle or hindrance intervenes between Him and that work. This is the opinion held by all religious people, also by the philosophers; it is also our opinion. For although we believe that God created the Universe from nothing, most of our wise and learned men believe that the Creation was not the exclusive result of His will; but His wisdom, which we are unable to comprehend, made the actual existence of the Universe necessary. The same unchangeable wisdom found it as necessary that non-existence should precede the existence of the Universe. Our Sages frequently express this idea in the explanation of the words, "He hath made everything beautiful in his time" (Eccl. iii. 11)… This is the belief of most of our Theologians; and in a similar manner have the Prophets expressed the idea that all parts of natural products are well arranged, in good order, connected with each other, and stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect; nothing of them is purposeless, trivial, or vain; they are all the result of great wisdom. …This idea occurs frequently; there is no necessity to believe otherwise; philosophic speculation leads to the same result; viz., that in the whole of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary, especially in the nature of the spheres, which are in the best condition and order, in accordance with their superior substance.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.25

Wisdom , Men , God , People

“The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure.”

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) British economist

Source: Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 35.

Wisdom , Disease

“But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Men , Secret , World

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there, communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Elton John, blaming the internet for destroying good music http://www.gigwise.com/news/35721/elton-john-wants-to-tear-down-the-internet (2 August 2007)

People , World , Art , Music

“Most often it is the case that people know that something big can be manipulated with it [i. e., the screw], but not how and in what way it is connected to time, and that untold time, and finally such force of machines, wheels, and shafts is necessary as cannot be produced nor be had.”

Jacob Leupold (1674–1727) German multidisciplinary scientist

Jacob Leupold (1724); as cited in: Helmut Müller-Sievers (2012) The Cylinder: Kinematics of the Nineteenth Century. p. 146

People , Way , Time

“This shitty world sometimes produces a rose
The scent of it lingers and then it just goes”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Cedars Of Lebanon
Lyrics, No Line On The Horizon (2009)

World

“It's sad and frustrating that we are surrounded by products that seem to testify to a complete lack of care. That's an interesting thing about an object. One object speaks volumes about the company that produced it and its values and priorities.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

In an interview in The Daily Telegraph newspaper (November 2005)

Sadness

“How you produce volume after volume the way you do is more than I can conceive. …But you haven't to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts as I do. It is like walking through the densest brush wood.”

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

Letter to Henry James (ca. 1890) as quoted by Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (2007) p. 297. Also as quoted partially by Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925) p. 2.
1890s

Way

“Humans brain function and it s learning capacity can reform from the simplest abacus and calculators to super and gigantic computers. Based on such example, the brains functionality and ability of most humans has stalled at the level of abacus. This condition has made the brain to stay in that level like a rusted metal. Start improving your brain ability based on what I have taught you about “Thinking”, then the rustiness of your brain will begin to reduce and your brain functionality will increase so it can reach higher levels. You can plough your land, plant wheat and wait for months, then you take care of it and harvest your land and then using mill to produce flour and by that you make bread. With so much effort you can end up in making bread but with so much easier paths without spending energy, you can get the bread or any other food. Unfortunately most of humans are like those who spend their life time to make bread in worst ways possible, the longest and hardest. Don’t be one of them, and if you are try to leave them. Use the best and easiest methods for solving your issues.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

The Great Master of Thought (Amen- Vol.3), Observing management

Life , Food , Way , Thinking

“"Thinking is easy," said Goethe, "acting is difficult, and to put one's thought into action is the most difficult thing in the world." And Tolstoy: "It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writing than to put one principle into practice."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Thinking

World , Thinking

“I don't want to become a kind of Hirohito who produces cameras, or an Elizabeth of England who cares only for horses. Even less do I want to turn out like Juan Carlos, who's just a ghost of Franco. I have no personal ambitions.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 103.
Interviews

Horse , Personality

“In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

"The Role of Law in Progressive Politics" in Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (1993)

People

“For a writer, talent is everything. Lots of people make a career out of writing, producing many works and knowing exactly what it takes to become a great writer. But they never break into the big time, because they lack one thing: talent, or a sufficient amount of it.”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter Four, Section 3

People , Time

“You see fourteen kinds of birds, and you conclude that birds and bananas are related? That's stupid! You should conclude that those fourteen kinds of birds had a common ancestor, but that's as far it ever goes, okay? I don't know a kinder way to say it, Charley, but that's stupid. We don't ever see a bird produce a non-bird.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

100 Reasons Evolution is So Stupid! (2001)

Stupidity , Way , Bird

“My dear fellow citizens,
For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations on the same theme: how our country was flourishing, how many million tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us.
I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you.”

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

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

Lie , Country , Happiness

“There is a new awakening in India that is challenging the ongoing westernization of the discourse about India and the intellectual machinery that produces it.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

“Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Development Hypothesis (1852)

Change

“The belief that the body of the Virgin was not interred on earth, but was taken to heaven, has deprived them of all pretext for manufacturing any relics of her remains, which otherwise might have been sufficiently abundant to fill a whole churchyard; yet in order to have at least something belonging to her, they sought to indemnify themselves for the absence of other relics with the possession of her hair and her milk. The hair is shown in several churches in Rome, and at Salvatierra in Spain, at Macon, St Flour, Cluny, Nevers, and in many other towns. With regard to the milk, there is not perhaps a town, a convent, or nunnery, where it is now shown in large or small quantites. Indeed, had the Virgin been a wet-nurse her whole life, or a dairy, she could not have produced more than is shown as hers in various parts.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Johnstone and Hunter edition (1854), p. 248
A Treatise of Relics (1543)

Life , Parting

“An old paleontological in joke proclaims that mammalian evolution is a tale told by teeth mating to produce slightly altered descendant teeth.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life

Source: Wonderful Life (1989), p. 60

“…when you get a good night's sleep and wake up ready to produce throughout the day.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (1989), p. 59

Sleep , Night

“Science may fall back on its stupid excuse that science works for science, and that when it has been developed by the scientists it will become accessible to the people also; but art, if it be art, should be accessible to all, and particularly to those for whom it is produced. And the position of our art strikingly arraigns the producers of art for not wishing, not knowing how, and being unable, to serve the people.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People , Stupidity , Art , Science

“I will not be proposing a course which has been under some public discussion recently — deficit financing. It is wholly inappropriate to our economic situation. In its least extreme form it is based on the theory that additional money generated by a Government deficit (and given currency, as necessary, by use of the printing press) will stimulate consumption and thereby production, in time to match the excess money with goods before real inflationary harm is done. Unfortunately we don't, and can't, produce more than a small fraction of what we consume, and increased consumption would merely mean increased imports without matching exports; and a severe balance of payment crisis, which would destroy Hong Kong's credit and confidence in the Hong Kong dollar; and which we could not cure without coming close to ruining ourselves. Keynes was not writing with our situation in mind. In this hard world we have to earn before we spend.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 27, 1963, page 50.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Money , World , Confidence , Time

“[W]e live in a popular-front moment, where no one on “our side” is worth criticizing too much, if at all, and everyone on “their side” is evil. This has as much to do with ratings and page views as it does with ideology. Moths chase light, but the incentive for politicians, producers, and pundits is to follow the heat. I’m still torn over how people such as Mark Zuckerberg should deal with slanderous carnival barkers like Alex Jones. But I’m convinced a lot of people are to blame for the problem reaching Zuckerberg’s desk in the first place.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Are We to Blame for the Alex Jones Problem? (2018)

People , Problem , Light , Evil

“I have a notion that a prolonged period of solitude & fasting would produce hallucinations, & that these would be mandalas and such: they would be the essential forms in which "outer" perceptions are organized.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

18.23
"Quotes", Notebooks

Solitude

“Has, then, the influence of the crown increased since the Revolution? Down to the period of 1782 I believe the fact will not be much disputed. It was upon the notoriety of the fact, and the bad consequences it had produced, that the motions of the right hon. gentleman in favour of reform were founded. That it has increased, I think every impartial man must be compelled to admit…If, then, while the influence of the crown has so manifestly advanced, while the cause of liberty has remained the same, or has sustained a diminution of its strength, can it be said that we are standing upon the establishment of the Revolution, and adhering to the principles which it ascertained? It is, then, upon this ground of experience and the evidence of facts, upon proof of positive inconvenience and real declination from its original purity, that I should propose to recall our constitution to its true principles and to amend the system of our representation.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (25 April 1800), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXV (London: 1819), pp. 91-93.
1800s

Thinking

“Mark: I have to acknowledge the fact that the Australian Public loves you, they admire your tenacity and they know that you're a great girl. I'm not going to say what I think… What I am going to say is that it's been 3 weeks since we had our producer meeting where you said that you didn't know what type of cd that you wanted to perform…. What kind of record are you going to make?”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 6

Love , Girl , Thinking

“How do I produce the effects which I obtain from the piano? … In answer I would say I produce them by listening, criticizing, judging—working over the point, until I get it as I want it. Then I can reproduce it at will, if I want to make just the same effect; but sometimes I want to change and try another.”

Wilhelm Backhaus (1884–1969) German pianist, Knight Commander of Merit

Quoted in Piano Mastery: Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers (1915) by Haeriette Brower

Change

“People marvel at … things only because they rarely happen; but the causes for these are as apparent as for others … For example, at night a fearful man who sees a wolf in the fields, or a cat in his room, will immediately assert and judge that it is an enemy or a devil … because he fixes his imagination on these and fears them. And a person devout and rapt [in ecstasy] will judge that it is an angel … A vigorous imagining of a retained species, then, together with a small external appearance or with an imbalance of some internal disposition … produces marvelous appearances in healthy as well as in sick people.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Nicole Oresme and The Marvels of Nature, Bert Hansen's translation (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), p. 73.
De causis mirabilium (c. 1370)

People , Fear , Angels , Imagination

“All things… appear to be made up and produced by the coming together of these elements, so that they have been distributed by nature among an infinite number of kinds of things. Hence I believed it right to treat of the diversity and practical peculiarities of these things as well as of the qualities which they exhibit in buildings, so that persons who are intending to build may understand them and so make no mistake, but may gather materials which are suitable to use in their buildings.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter II, Sec. 2

Understanding , Nature , Appearance , Personality

“One would almost think that they [straight white males] felt empowered to take anything the society produced, no matter how marginal, and utilize it for their own ends — dare we say "exploit it"? — certainly to take advantage of it as long as it's around. And could this possibly be an effect of discourse? Perhaps it might even be one we on the margins might reasonably appropriate to our profit… or perhaps some of us already have.”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

The Rhetoric of Sex, The Discourse of Desire

Thinking

“Aims, principles, &c., have a place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only; but not yet in the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only, is a possibility, a potentiality; but has not yet emerged into Existence. A second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality — viz. actuation, realization; and whose motive power is the Will — the activity of man in the widest sense.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

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

Motivation , Reality , Sense

“It has often been said that a reformation should begin with each man reforming himself. That, however, is not what actually happened, for the reformation produced a hero who paid God dearly enough for his position as hero. By joining up with him directly people buy cheap, indeed at bargain prices, what he had paid for so dearly; but they do not buy the highest of all things.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age, by Søren Kierkegaard, 1846, Dru translation 1962, p. 56-57
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

God , People

“Government is essentially a big computer that elicits from citizens their preferences and uses this information to produce social decisions.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 6, Political Economy, p. 117

Decision

“I got a job at Metro and went in to see Louis Mayer, who told me he wanted me to be a producer. I said I wanted to write and direct. He said, "No, you have to produce first, you have to crawl before you can walk." Which is as good a definition of producing as I ever heard.”

Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies, 15th edition (Harper Collins, 2003, , p. 312

“The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just that; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafer-cakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either —
# That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
# That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here or hereafter.
It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The final sentence here is an expression of what became known as the Pragmatic maxim, first published in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12 (January 1878), p. 286

Soul , Motivation , Idea , Question

“Many people fail to grasp this point, apparently because they think of "scientific" evidence as only that produced in laboratories by controlled experiments. This leads them to treat field studies, however careful, thorough and well-documented, as "anecdotal"--mere preparation for the real thing, therefore properly ignored till it bears fruit entitled to be considered by learned persons. This attitude was much like that of cavalry generals in the First World War, waiting patiently for the infantry to clear the ground so that they could make the dashing charges that alone they thought entitled the name of warfare. Because these creatures are complex, only a tiny fraction of important truths about them can ever be seen in laboratories of expressed in control experiments. The same, of course, is true of the human race.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 224.

War , People , Truth , World

“What happened in Brussels was a co-production by adepts of two sick ideologies. The first one is Islamism in its many versions, including Khomeinism in Iran, Talibanism in Afghanistan, Salafism in Arab countries, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and ISIS and its offshoots across the globe. It will remain firmly in place until it implodes under the weight of its savage contradictions, as did the old Soviet Union, or is defeated in a war, as was the case with Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan. The other co-producer, the mushy and politically correct “liberal” ideology that has seduced segments of opinion in Western democracies, can and must be combated by all those who wish to protect the democratic system in an increasingly dangerous world.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Brussels is what happens when liberals don’t push immigrants to integrate" http://nypost.com/2016/03/27/brussels-is-what-happens-when-liberals-dont-push-immigrants-to-integrate/ New York Post (March 27, 2016).
New York Post

War , World , Democracy , Country

“Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements, external or internal, which occurred during this period - neither the insurrection of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings of the pirates and the slaves - constituted of itself a mighty danger necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet the state had in all these struggles well-night fought for its very existence. The reason was that the tasks were left everywhere unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing of equality. The democracy and the servile insurrection were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them. It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief Sertorius and his Spanish guerrillas, and that it was only the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour[sic] of the legitimate government. As to the slaves, it was far less an honour[sic] to have confronted them in equal strive for years. Little more than a century had elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush to the cheek of the honourable[sic] Roman, when he reflected on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age. Then the (the Roman) Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success, but always with honour, not it was difficult to find among all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency. Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired, merely that they might be able to defend themselves against the insurgent slaves at home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian Straights, beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with a blockade; the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti. Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories over insurgents and robber-chiefs?”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Chapter 2. "Rule of the Sullan Restoration"
The Government of the Restoration as a Whole
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Life , War , Age , Democracy

“Let me frankly state that I see two great difficulties with this proposal. In view of your public position, such action on our part would inevitably produce worldwide speculation that discussions were under way and would impair the privacy and secrecy of those discussions. Secondly, there would inevitably be grave concern on our part whether your government would make use of such action by us to improve its military position.”

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

1960s, Letter to Ho Chi Minh (1967)

Way , Parting

“I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.

Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 484 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=505&itemID=F376&viewtype=side, in the second (1860) edition

Life , Secret , Law , Tree

“More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 226

Education , Learning

“Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

1970s, Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978)

Life , Hostility , Education , Exercises

“For every 16 pounds of grain and soy fed to beef cattle in the United States we only get 1 pound back in meat on our plates. The other 15 pounds are inaccessible to us, either used by the animal to produce energy or to make some part of its own body that we do not eat (like hair or bones) or excreted.”

Frances Moore Lappé book Diet for a Small Planet

Source: Diet for a Small Planet, p. 69

Animals , Parting

“If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another—then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 125

Family , Animals

“Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damn fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the …”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

Books , Fools

“It is at any rate evident, that a large and ample province remains for the exercise of Providence, without its being naturally perceptible by us; because obscurity, when applied to the interruption of laws, bears a necessary proportion to the imperfection of our knowledge when applied to the laws themselves, or rather to the effects which these laws, under their various and incalculable combinations, would of their own accord produce. And if it be said, that the doctrine of Divine Providence, by reason of the ambiguity under which its exertions present themselves, can be attended with no practical influenceupon our conduct; that, although we believe ever so firmly that there is a Providence, we must prepare, and provide, and act, as if there were none; I answer, that this is admitted: and that we further allege, that so to prepare, and so to provide, is consistent with the most perfect assurance of the reality of a Providence; and not only so, but that it is probably one advantage of the present state of our information, that our provisions and preparations are not disturbed by it. Or if it be still asked, Of what use at all then is the doctrine, if it neither alter our measures nor regulate our conduct? I answer again, that it is of the greatest use, but that it is a doctrine of sentiment and piety, not (immediately at least) of action or conduct; that it applies to the consolation of men's minds, to their devotions, to the excitement of gratitude, the support of patience, the keeping alive and the strengthening of every motive for endeavouring to please our Maker; and that these are great uses.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 26 : The Goodness of the Deity.

Men , Law , Exercises , Motivation

“Trump: I'm Donald Trump, and I'm running for president. Our country is in deep trouble because let's face it: politics are all talk and no action. My opponents have no experience in creating jobs or making deals. The fact is, I'm going to make the greatest trade deals we've ever made in our country. And I'm going to bring jobs and money back to the United States. I'll take care of our veterans and make our military so strong that nobody will ever mess with us. I'll secure our borders, and yes, we will have a wall. You can't have a country without borders. Obamacare is a total disaster. It will be repealed and replaced with something much better. If the people of Iowa vote for me, you'll never be disappointed. I don't disappoint people, I produce. Together, we're going to Make America Great Again. I'm Donald Trump, candidate for president, and I approve this message.
Female V/O: Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Radio ad aired in Iowa (5 November 2015)
2010s, 2015

Money , People , Disappointment , Strong

“In eight simple ways, my Bill seeks to provide a framework for giving pensioners a decent living standard. First, it would fix old-age pensions for couples at half average industrial earnings, and for single people it would be a third…Secondly, my Bill would require central Government to appoint a Minister responsible for the co-ordination of policy on pensioners. Thirdly, it would require local authorities to produce a comprehensive annual report about their policies on pensioners and on the conditions of pensioners in their communities. Fourthly, every health authority would also be asked to do that. Fifthly, the present anomalous system means that in some parts of the country where there are foresighted Labour local authorities there are concessionary transport schemes — free bus passes. They do not exist in some parts of Britain and the Bill would make them a national responsibility and they would be paid for nationally…My sixth point is one of the most important. It is about the introduction of a flat-rate winter heating allowance instead of the nonsensical system of waiting for the cold to run from Monday to Sunday, and then if it is sufficiently cold a rebate is paid in arrears. Last winter that resulted in many old people living in homes that were too cold because they could not afford to heat them. If they did get any aid, it was far too late. My seventh point concerns the abolition of standing charges on gas, electricity and telephones for elderly people. They are paying about £250 million a year towards the profits of the gas industry and those profits will be about £1.5 billion. Standing charges should be cancelled, unit prices maintained and the cost of the standing charge should be taken from the profits of the gas board or the electricity board — if it ends up being privatised. They could well afford to pay for that rather than forcing old people to live in cold and misery throughout the winter. Finally, the Bill would prohibit the cutting off of gas and electricity in any pensioner household.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/dec/01/elimination-of-poverty-in-old-age-etc in the House of Commons (1 December 1987).
1980s

People , Health , Age , Way

“It is a nation of contradictions, sir. Consider this: Ireland is an island nation that has never developed a navy; a music-loving people who have produced only those harmless lilting ditties as their musical legacy; a bellicose people who have never known the sweet savor of victory in a single war; a Catholic country that has never produced a single doctor of the Church; a magnificently beautiful country, a country to inspire artists, but a country not yet immortalized in art; a philosophic people yet to produce a single philosopher of note; a sensual people who have never mastered the art of preparing food.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

p 274. Said by character Colonel Edward T. Reynolds.
The Lords of Discipline (1980)

Love , War , People , Food

“His Blinky Palermo constructive pictures have remained in my memory because they particularly appeal to me, because I can't produce such a thing. I always found it very good how he made it and that he made it – this astonished me. There was an aesthetic quality which I loved and which I couldn't produce, but I was happy that such a thing existed in the world. In comparison, my own things seemed to me somewhat destructive, without this beautiful clarity.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 96, note 30

Love , World , Beauty , Memory

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Compiled (1989)

Universe

“What he dreads is that, during a lull in the conversation, someone will come up with what he calls The Question—“What led you, Mrs. Costello, to become a vegetarian?”—and that she will then get on her high horse and produce what he and Norma call The Plutarch Response. … The response in question comes from Plutarch's moral essays. His mother has it by heart; he can reproduce it only imperfectly. “You ask me why I refuse to eat flesh. I, for my part, am astonished that you can put in your mouth the corpse of a dead animal, am astonished that you do not find it nasty to chew hacked flesh and swallow the juices of death-wounds.” Plutarch is a real conversation-stopper: it is the word juices that does it. Producing Plutarch is like throwing down a gauntlet; after that, there is no knowing what will happen.”

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 38

Death , Question , Heart , Animals

“What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. To be more than nominal, however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave's actions — a control which is habitually for the benefit of the controller. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of sundry gradations. Remembering that originally the slave is a prisoner whose life is at the mercy of his captor, it suffices here to note that there is a harsh form of slavery in which, treated as an animal, he has to expend his entire effort for his owner's advantage. Under a system less harsh, though occupied chiefly in working for his owner, he is allowed a short time in which to work for himself, and some ground on which to grow extra food. A further amelioration gives him power to sell the produce of his plot and keep the proceeds. Then we come to the still more moderated form which commonly arises where, having been a free man working on his own land, conquest turns him into what we distinguish as a serf; and he has to give to his owner each year a fixed amount of labour or produce, or both: retaining the rest himself. Finally, in some cases, as in Russia before serfdom was abolished, he is allowed to leave his owner's estate and work or trade for himself elsewhere, under the condition that he shall pay an annual sum. What is it which, in these cases, leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit. If all the slave's labour is for his owner the slavery is heavy, and if but little it is light. Take now a further step. Suppose an owner dies, and his estate with its slaves comes into the hands of trustees; or suppose the estate and everything on it to be bought by a company; is the condition of the slave any the better if the amount of his compulsory labour remains the same? Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before? The essential question is—How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Man versus the State (1884), The Coming Slavery

Life , Food , Communication , Idea

“Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change. The central committee of the Communist Party just could not deal with the rapidly changing world of the late twentieth century. When all data is accumulated in one secret bunker, and all important decisions are taken by a group of elderly apparatchiks, they can produce nuclear bombs by the cartload, but not an Apple or a Wikipedia.”

Yuval Noah Harari book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

God , War , Secret , World

“It is as the father of the Encyclopedia that Denis Diderot merits eternal recognition. Guilty as he was in almost every relation of life towards the individual, for mankind, in the teeth of danger and of infidelity, at the ill-paid sacrifice of the best years of his exuberant life, he produced that book which first levelled a free path to knowledge and enfranchised the soul of his generation.”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 2 : Diderot : The Talker, p. 61

Life , Books , Soul , Knowledge

“A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it as well - she did this and then she did that; there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote by Barbara Rose, in Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85
1970s - 1980s

Beauty , Art , Thinking , Effort

“It seems to me that today the Surrealist crisis is the central problem in French art. It is essential for future development that this crisis should be solved… The principal error in the aesthetic program of Surrealism is that it is too literary. Painters have experimented with visions, images, dreams, but not with painting, not with color... The unpainterliness of Surrealism has inevitably produced a reaction among younger painters. [Jorn is thinking here of French painters such as Bazaine, Esteve, Lapique, Singier, Le Moal, and he suggests there should be reciprocity]... These artists cannot get any further unless they absorb the lessons of Surrealism into their painting, just as Surrealists can only advance if they adopt the painterly methods of the other group.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Quote in a writing of Jorn on modern art in Paris, 1947; as cited on the website of the Jorn Museum. 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255,
1940 - 1948, Various sources

Dreams , Art , Color , Error

“When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Peter Plymley's Letters (1808), Letter IV

Law , Fools

Quotes about produce page 14

Quotes about produce
page 14