Quotes about project
page 9

Herman Kahn photo
Larry Sanger photo

“A few of the project's participants can be, not to put a nice word on it, pretty nasty. And this is tolerated.”

Larry Sanger (1968) American former professor, co-founder of Wikipedia, founder of Citizendium and other projects

"Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism" at kuro5hin (31 December 2004).

Edward St. Aubyn photo
Gerald Ford photo

“I am a little late getting around to it, but confession is good for the soul. I have sometimes voted to spend more taxpayer's money for worthy Federal projects in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while I vigorously opposed wasteful spending boondoggles in Oklahoma.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Address to Congress (12 August 1974)
Context: I am a little late getting around to it, but confession is good for the soul. I have sometimes voted to spend more taxpayer's money for worthy Federal projects in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while I vigorously opposed wasteful spending boondoggles in Oklahoma. [Laughter]
Be that as it may, Mr. Speaker, you and I have always stood together against unwarranted cuts in national defense. This is no time to change that nonpartisan policy.

Alice Cooper photo

“If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

Poppin (1969)
Context: We can only take it so far, because man can only take it so far, lower self can only take it so far, and you have to realize that the public is only at a certain place. We won't see the day when the public accepts what we wanna project, even though they are accepting a lot now. By the time they're accepting it, maybe they'll be too old.... If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play. A total silence trip is the ultimate.... We do antagonize them psychologically. People look at us and react. They either go "Wow! Hey-hey-hey, baby!" and we say that's great. They're reacting and that's wonderful. It's better than them sitting there doing nothing. I say make them react — do whatever's in your power to move the audience, and if that's where it is, and there where it is with America, sex and violence, then I say project it.

Ursula Goodenough photo

“I am convinced that the project can be undertaken only if we all experience a solemn gratitude that we exist at all, share a reverence for how life works, and acknowledge a deep and complex imperative that life continue.”

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. xvi
Context: Any global tradition needs to begin with a shared worldview — a culture-independent, globally accepted consensus as to how things are. From my perspective, this part is easy. How things are is, well, how things are; our scientific account of Nature, an account that can be called the Epic of Evolution… This is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true.
If religious emotions can be elicited by natural reality — and I believe that they can — then the story of Nature has the potential to serve as the cosmos for the global ethos that we need to articulate. I will not presume to suggest what this ethos might look like. Its articulation must be a global project. But I am convinced that the project can be undertaken only if we all experience a solemn gratitude that we exist at all, share a reverence for how life works, and acknowledge a deep and complex imperative that life continue.

Ellen Willis photo

“The terms of the dialectic have reversed: now the subversive task is to affirm an authentic post-modernist optimism that gives full weight to existent horror and possible (or probable) apocalyptic disaster, yet insists — credibly — that we can, well, overcome. The catch is that you have to be an optimist (an American?) in the first place not to dismiss such a project as insane.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism" (1977), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)
Context: My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries. I learned that lesson well (though it came too late to wholly supplant certain critical opposing influences, like comic books and rock-and-roll). Yet the modernists’ once-subversive refusal to be gulled or lulled has long since degenerated into a ritual despair at least as corrupt, soft-minded, and cowardly — not to say smug — as the false cheer it replaced. The terms of the dialectic have reversed: now the subversive task is to affirm an authentic post-modernist optimism that gives full weight to existent horror and possible (or probable) apocalyptic disaster, yet insists — credibly — that we can, well, overcome. The catch is that you have to be an optimist (an American?) in the first place not to dismiss such a project as insane.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)
Context: Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind.

"'A Conversation With Lois McMaster Bujold", an interview with Lillian Stewart Carl, p. 52

Jimmy Wales photo

“Hayek's work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project. … [O]ne can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Jimmy Wales, cited by Katherine Mangu-Ward, " Wikipedia and Beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/30/wikipedia-and-beyond," Reason (June 2007).
Also cited by Morton Winston and Ralph Edelbach, Society, Ethics, and Technology 4th ed. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012), p. 200.

Thomas Tredgold photo

“One of the steam vessels being filled with steam, condensation was produced by projecting cold water”

Thomas Tredgold (1788–1829) engineer

The Steam Engine: Comprising an Account of Its Invention and Progressive Improvement, 1827
Context: In June, 1699, Captain Savery exhibited a model of his engine before the Royal Society, and the experiments he made with it succeeded to their satisfaction. It consisted of a furnace and boiler B: from the latter, two pipes, provided with cocks C, proceeded to two steam vessels S, which had branch pipes from a descending main D, and also to a rising main pipe A: each pair of branch pipes had [check] valves a, b to prevent the descent of the water raised by the condensation or by the force of steam. Only one vessel, S, is shown, the other being immediately behind it. One of the steam vessels being filled with steam, condensation was produced by projecting cold water, from a small cistern E, against the vessel; and into the partial vacuum made by that means, the water, by the pressure of the atmosphere, was forced up the descending main D, from a depth of about twenty feet; and on the steam being let into the vessels again, the valve b closed, and prevented the descent of the water, while the steam having acquired force in the boiler, its pressure caused the water to raise the valve a, and ascend to a height proportional to the excess of the elastic force of the steam above the pressure of the air.

Regina E. Dugan photo

“Over the past 50 years, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced an unparalleled number of breakthroughs. Arguably, it has the longest-standing, most consistent track record of radical invention in history.”

Regina E. Dugan (1963) American businesswoman, inventor, and technology developer

“Special Forces” Innovation: How DARPA Attacks Problems (2013)
Context: Over the past 50 years, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced an unparalleled number of breakthroughs. Arguably, it has the longest-standing, most consistent track record of radical invention in history. Its innovations include the internet; RISC computing; global positioning satellites; stealth technology; unmanned aerial vehicles, or “drones”; and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), which are now used in everything from air bags to ink-jet printers to video games like the Wii. Though the U. S. military was the original customer for DARPA’s applications, the agency’s advances have played a central role in creating a host of multibillion-dollar industries.
What makes DARPA’s long list of accomplishments even more impressive is the agency’s swiftness, relatively tiny organization, and comparatively modest budget. Its programs last, on average, only three to five years.

Shakira photo

“Before this school, there was no paved roads, or potable water, or electricity. And now all of this has changed, because of this alliance that we have created between our foundation, the private sector, and the [national] and local governments. And you know, it was recently reported that the gangs that used to hang in this area have dissolved completely since the school was built. So that is the kind of social impact that these kind of projects have. And that is why I vehemently and passionately advocate for education and for the construction of schools that are state-of-the-art – and that are open to the community”

Shakira (1977) Colombian singer

Speaking of her her educational foundation, Pias Descalzos (Barefoot), which was named after her third album and has just opened its sixth school in Cartagena, Colombia.
Context: It’s in an area where there’s a huge population of displaced people – refugees in their own country. It’s a very impoverished area, where kids have no access to a high-quality education programme. So we just inaugurated this school for 1,700 students. And it’s already showing the kind of transformational power that education has. It’s already having an enormous social impact on this area. Before this school, there was no paved roads, or potable water, or electricity. And now all of this has changed, because of this alliance that we have created between our foundation, the private sector, and the [national] and local governments. And you know, it was recently reported that the gangs that used to hang in this area have dissolved completely since the school was built. So that is the kind of social impact that these kind of projects have. And that is why I vehemently and passionately advocate for education and for the construction of schools that are state-of-the-art – and that are open to the community … Thatis the whole philosophy that we have in our foundation.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“When the mind seeks truth, the truth it has read about in books, that "truth" is self-projected, for then the mind is merely in pursuit of the known, a more satisfactory known than the previous one. When the mind seeks truth, it is seeking its own self-projection, not truth.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. VI, p 5, "First Talk in Rajahmundry (20 November 1949) http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=335&chid=4655&w=%22You+cannot+find+truth+through+anybody+else%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 491120
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: You cannot find truth through anybody else. How can you? Surely, truth is not something static; it has no fixed abode; it is not an end, a goal. On the contrary, it is living, dynamic, alert, alive. How can it be an end? If truth is a fixed point, it is no longer truth; it is then a mere opinion. Sir, truth is the unknown, and a mind that is seeking truth will never find it. For mind is made up of the known; it is the result of the past, the outcome of time — which you can observe for yourself. Mind is the instrument of the known; hence it cannot find the unknown; it can only move from the known to the known. When the mind seeks truth, the truth it has read about in books, that "truth" is self-projected, for then the mind is merely in pursuit of the known, a more satisfactory known than the previous one. When the mind seeks truth, it is seeking its own self-projection, not truth. After all, an ideal is self-projected; it is fictitious, unreal. What is real is what is, not the opposite. But a mind that is seeking reality, seeking God, is seeking the known. When you think of God, your God is the projection of your own thought, the result of social influences. You can think only of the known; you cannot think of the unknown, you cannot concentrate on truth. The moment you think of the unknown, it is merely the self-projected known. So, God or truth cannot be thought about. If you think about it, it is not truth. Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself. Truth is in every leaf, every tear; it is to be known from moment to moment. No one can lead you to truth; and if anyone leads you, it can only be to the known.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell photo

“One of the things women bring to a research project, or indeed any project, is they come from a different place, they've got a different background.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) British scientist

Beautiful Minds (2010)
Context: One of the things women bring to a research project, or indeed any project, is they come from a different place, they've got a different background. Science has been named, developed, interpreted by white males for decades and women view the conventional wisdom from a slightly different angle — and that sometimes means they can clearly point to flaws in the logic, gaps in the argument, they can give a different perspective of what science is.

Jimmy Carter photo

“Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me.”

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

Living Faith (2001), p. 222
Post-Presidency
Context: Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.

Wilhelm Reich photo

“No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Response to FDA complaint (1954)
Context: No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. This is valid, no matter whether we speak in terms such as "God," "Natural Law," "Cosmic Primordial Force," "Ether" or "Cosmic Orgone Energy."

Martin Sheen photo

“You can't project something on someone else that is damaging that person and not become that yourself, it seems to me.”

Martin Sheen (1940) American actor

2000s, Progressive magazine interview (2003)
Context: This supposed idyllic society we have is the most confused, warped, addicted society in the history of the world. We are addicted to power, we're addicted to our own image of ourselves, to violence, divorce, abortion, and sex. Any whim of the human character is deeded in us 100-fold. We're number one in child abuse, pornography, divorce, all of these categories; that's how we get paid back. You can't project something on someone else that is damaging that person and not become that yourself, it seems to me.

“At the end of the lesson, I presented The Crown of Thorns Project.”

Kip McKean (1954) minister

http://www.kipmckean.com/2012/09/kip-mckean-biography/,City of Angels Church Bulletin of August 16, 2009
International Christian Church (2006-present)
Context: At the end of the lesson, I presented The Crown of Thorns Project. Remember that Jesus said to the faithful Eleven, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Spirit has made Los Angeles the “Jerusalem” of God’s new movement. So to evangelize the world, we must evangelize “our Judea and Samaria,” the United States. In just three years of existence, the SoldOut Movement has planted dynamic discipling churches in the four most influential cities of America – New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC – as well as in Portland, Honolulu, Hilo, Syracuse, Eugene, and Phoenix. These churches do not include several heroic remnant churches. The US congregations [alongside our future first world congregations such as London and Paris] will provide the needed resources – disciples and finances – to go “to the ends of the earth.” Therefore… we must plan to encircle the globe with unified discipling churches on the other five populated continents. Listed are the 12 targeted international cities that when a line is drawn connecting them forms a jagged circle – a redemptive “crown of thorns” – around the world: Santiago, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, Cairo, Johannesburg, Moscow, Chennai, Hong Kong, Manila and Sydney. It was so exciting that during the conference Sasha and Louisa Kostenko of Moscow, Russia and Joe and Kerry Willis of Brisbane, Australia solidified plans to move to LA for strengthening and further training. Of note, Sasha and Louisa were the number three and four baptisms when Elena and I planted the original Moscow Church in 1991. (The Moscow Church saw 850 baptisms in its first year!) In time, Sasha and Louisa married, went into the ministry, and by the year 2001, they led the 11,500 disciples of the 15 nations of the former Soviet Union! As He promised, our God is gathering a remnant from “the farthest horizons.” (Nehemiah 1:8-9) It’s happening!

Richard Wilbur photo

“Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

"Walking to Sleep" (1969)
Context: Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection
Will serve you best — unless you overdo it,
Watching your step too narrowly, refusing
To specify a world, shrinking your purview
To a tight vision of your inching shoes,
Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing
An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.

Henry Adams photo

“With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his lines forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from any one who should know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

On the genesis of two of his historical and autobiographical works.
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by suggesting a unit — the point of history when man held the highest idea of himself as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity." From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: "The Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity." With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his lines forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from any one who should know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home.

Epictetus photo

“Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

As quoted in "The Vindication of Edwin Land" in Forbes magazine, Vol. 139 (4 May 1987) p. 83; this was later humorously altered:
Context: My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

Mohamed ElBaradei photo

“These projects, and a thousand others, exemplify the IAEA ideal: Atoms for Peace.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)
Context: I have talked about our efforts to combat the misuse of nuclear energy. Let me now tell you how this very same energy is used for the benefit of humankind.
At the IAEA, we work daily on every continent to put nuclear and radiation techniques in the service of humankind. In Vietnam, farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance. Throughout Latin America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. In Ghana, a new radiotherapy machine is offering cancer treatment to thousands of patients. In the South Pacific, Japanese scientists are using nuclear techniques to study climate change. In India, eight new nuclear plants are under construction, to provide clean electricity for a growing nation — a case in point of the rising expectation for a surge in the use of nuclear energy worldwide.
These projects, and a thousand others, exemplify the IAEA ideal: Atoms for Peace.
But the expanding use of nuclear energy and technology also makes it crucial that nuclear safety and security are maintained at the highest level.

Emma Goldman photo

“We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

What is Patriotism? (1908)
Context: We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism.

Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)
Context: Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent. And all the time the desire grows for a system which will lift them from the position of 'rice-eating robots' to the status of human beings who can think and speak freely and hold their heads high in the security of their rights.

Miranda July photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was
A name for something that never could be named.
There was a project for the sun and is.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was
A name for something that never could be named.
There was a project for the sun and is.There is a project for the sun. The sun
Must bear no name, gold flourisher, but be
In the difficulty of what it is to be.</p

Karen Armstrong photo

“A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule…”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

"Karen Armstrong Joins Pangea Day!" (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ5ZmB2kdo0
Context: A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... going into one's own experience, and going into other's experience, and seeing the world from another perspective — that's what we desperately need in our dangerously polarized world.

Frans de Waal photo

“We would not be where we are today had our ancestors been socially aloof. What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. Like magicians, they first throw their ideological prejudices into the hat of nature, then pull them out by their very ears to show how much nature agrees with them. It’s a trick for which we have fallen for too long. Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but humans can’t live by competition alone.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

The Age of Empathy (2009), p. 6
Context: Don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also our closest relatives, the primates. In a study in Taï National Park, in Ivory Coast, chimpanzees took care of group mates wounded by leopards, licking their blood, carefully removing dirt, and waving away flies that came near the wounds. They protected injured companions, and slowed down during travel in order to accommodate them. All of this makes perfect sense given that chimpanzees live in groups for a reason, the same way wolves and humans are group animals for a reason. If man is wolf to man, he is so in every sense, not just the negative one. We would not be where we are today had our ancestors been socially aloof. What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. Like magicians, they first throw their ideological prejudices into the hat of nature, then pull them out by their very ears to show how much nature agrees with them. It’s a trick for which we have fallen for too long. Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but humans can’t live by competition alone.

George Soros photo

“Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)
Context: Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Iran and North Korea are moving ahead with their nuclear programs at full speed and our hand in dealing with them has been greatly weakened.

Carl Sagan photo

“The history of science—especially physics—has in part been the tension between the natural tendency to project our everyday experience on the universe and the universe's noncompliance…”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Colum McCann photo

“Hours and hours of insanity and escape. The projects were a victim of theft and wind. The downdrafts made their own weather.”

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here
Context: Hours and hours of insanity and escape. The projects were a victim of theft and wind. The downdrafts made their own weather. Plastic bags caught on the gusts of summer wind. Old domino players sat in the courtyard, playing underneath the flying litter. The sound of the plastic bags was like rifle fire. If you watched the rubbish for a while you could tell the exact shape of the wind. Perhaps in a way it was alluring, like little else around it: whole, bright, slapping curlicues and large figure eights, helixes and whorls and corkscrews. Sometimes a bit of plastic caught against a pipe or touched the top of the chain-link fence and backed away gracelessly, like it had been warned. The handles came together and the bag collapsed. There were no tree branches to be caught on. One boy from a neighboring flat stuck a lineless fishing pole out the window but he didn't catch any. The bags often stayed up in one place, as if they were contemplating the whole gray scene, and then would take a sudden dip, a polite curtsy, and away.

Sadhguru photo

“This project is not just aimed at improving the economic conditions of people”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
Sourced from newspapers and magazines
Context: This project is not just aimed at improving the economic conditions of people... It is a way of inspiring a human being to stand up for himself, to raise the human spirit. -Sadhguru (on Action for Rural Rejuvenation rural relief program)

Immanuel Kant photo

“Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
Context: Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another. Therefore a single man would have to live excessively long in order to learn to make full use of all his natural capacities. Since Nature has set only a short period for his life, she needs a perhaps unreckonable series of generations, each of which passes its own enlightenment to its successor in order finally to bring the seeds of enlightenment to that degree of development in our race which is completely suitable to Nature’s purpose. This point of time must be, at least as an ideal, the goal of man’s efforts, for otherwise his natural capacities would have to be counted as for the most part vain and aimless. This would destroy all practical principles, and Nature, whose wisdom must serve as the fundamental principle in judging all her other offspring, would thereby make man alone a contemptible plaything.

Second Thesis
Paraphrased variant: Reason does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order to gradually progress from one level of insight to another.

Daniel Abraham photo

“I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

On his blog, talking about genre http://www.danielabraham.com/?p=160
Context: I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed.
And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)

Umberto Eco photo

“Scholem … says that Jewish mystics have always tried to project their own thought into the biblical texts; as a matter of fact, every unexpressible reading of a symbolic machinery depends on such a projective attitude.”

[4] Symbol, 4.4 : The symbolic mode, 4.4.4 : The Kabalistic drift
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: Scholem … says that Jewish mystics have always tried to project their own thought into the biblical texts; as a matter of fact, every unexpressible reading of a symbolic machinery depends on such a projective attitude. In the reading of the Holy Text according to the symbolic mode, "letters and names are not conventional means of communication. They are far more. Each one of them represents a concentration of energy and expresses a wealth of meaning which cannot be translated, or not fully at least, into human language" [On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960); Eng. tr., p. 36]. For the Kabalist, the fact that God expresses Himself, even though His utterances are beyond any human insight, is more important than any specific and coded meaning His words can convey.
The Zohar says that "in any word shine a thousand lights" (3.202a). The unlimitedness of the sense of a text is due to the free combinations of its signifiers, which in that text are linked together as they are only accidentally but which could be combined differently.

Octavio Paz photo

“It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 2
Context: It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life? To learn the art of remaining motionless amid the agitation of the whirlwind, to learn to remain still and to be as transparent as this fixed light amid the frantic branches — this may be a program for life. <!-- But the bright spot is no longer an oval pool but an incandescent triangle, traversed by very fine flutings of shadow. The triangle stirs almost imperceptibly, until little by little a luminous boiling takes place, at the outer edges first, and then, with increasing fury, in its fiery center, as if all this liquid light were a seething substance gradually becoming yellower and yellower. Will it explode? The bubbles continually flare up and die away, in a rhythm resembling that of panting breath. As the sky grows darker, the bright patch of light dims and begins to flicker; it might almost be a lamp about to go out amid turbulent shadows. The trees remain exactly where they were, although they are now clad in another light.

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“God, the projection of my I to the infinite — or rather I, the projection of God to the finite — must also be a multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God — that is to say, in order to save the living God — faith's need — the need of the feeling and the imagination — of conceiving Him and feeling Him as possessed of a certain internal multiplicity.”

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

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: Not only are we unable to conceive of the full and living God as masculine simply, but we are unable to conceive of Him as individual simply, as the projection of a solitary I, an unsocial I, an I that is in reality an abstract I. My living I is an I that is really a We; my living personal I lives only in other, of other, and by other I's; I am sprung from a multitude of ancestors. I carry them within me in extract, and at the same time I carry within me, potentially, a multitude of descendants, and God, the projection of my I to the infinite — or rather I, the projection of God to the finite — must also be a multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God — that is to say, in order to save the living God — faith's need — the need of the feeling and the imagination — of conceiving Him and feeling Him as possessed of a certain internal multiplicity.

Andrew Solomon photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress
Context: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations — explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon — if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“Science and art both project the world along certain coordinates. Differences in form are due only to differences in the coordinates.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

Zamyatin here references a statement in Latin created by the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov: a realibus ad realiora ["from the real to the more real" or “from reality toward a higher reality"]
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: Science and art both project the world along certain coordinates. Differences in form are due only to differences in the coordinates. All realistic forms are projections along the fixed, plane coordinates of Euclid's world. These coordinates do not exist in nature. Nor does the finite, fixed world; this world is a convention, an abstraction, an unreality. And therefore Realism — be it "socialist" or "bourgeois" — is unreal. Far closer to reality is projection along speeding, curved surfaces — as in the new mathematics and the new art. Realism that is not primitive, not realia but realiora, consists in displacement, distortion, curvature, non-objectivity. Only the camera lens is objective.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“One of the ways to rise above this self-centeredness is to move away from self and objectify yourself in something outside of yourself. Find some great cause and some great purpose, some loyalty to which you can give yourself and become so absorbed in that something that you give your life to it. Men and women have done this throughout all of the generations. And they have found that necessary ego satisfaction that life presents and that one desires through projecting self in something outside of self. As I said, you don’t solve the problem by trying to trample over the ego altogether. That doesn’t solve the problem. For you will always have the ego and the ego has certain desires, certain desires for significance.”

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

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
Context: I think one of the best ways to face this problem of self-centeredness is to discover some cause and some purpose, some loyalty outside of yourself and give yourself to that something. The best way to handle it is not to suppress the ego but to extend the ego into objectively meaningful channels. And so many people are unhappy because they aren’t doing anything. They’re self-centered because they aren’t doing anything. They haven’t given themselves to anything and they just move around in their little circles. One of the ways to rise above this self-centeredness is to move away from self and objectify yourself in something outside of yourself. Find some great cause and some great purpose, some loyalty to which you can give yourself and become so absorbed in that something that you give your life to it. Men and women have done this throughout all of the generations. And they have found that necessary ego satisfaction that life presents and that one desires through projecting self in something outside of self. As I said, you don’t solve the problem by trying to trample over the ego altogether. That doesn’t solve the problem. For you will always have the ego and the ego has certain desires, certain desires for significance. The three great psychoanalysts of this age, of this century, pointed out that there are certain basic desires that human beings have and that they long for and that they seek at any cost. And so for Freud the basic desire was to be loved. Jung would say that the basic desire is to be secure. But then Adler comes along and says the basic desire of human nature is to feel important and a sense of significance. And I think of all of those, probably- certainly all are significant but the one that Adler mentions is probably even more significant than any: that all human beings have a desire to belong and to feel significant and important. And the way to solve this problem is not to drown out the ego but to find your sense of importance in something outside of the self. And you are then able to live because you have given your life to something outside and something that is meaningful, objectified. You rise above this self-absorption to something outside. This is the way to go through life with a balance, with the proper perspective because you’ve given yourself to something greater than self. Sometimes it’s friends, sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s a great cause, it’s a great loyalty, but give yourself to that something and life becomes meaningful.

LeBron James photo
Caroline Pidgeon photo
Niall Ferguson photo
Jeff Flake photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
David Zayas photo
Ernest Becker photo
Jeanine Áñez photo

“On Monday, as looting and violence spread across several cities, Ms. Añez at first appeared rattled, sobbing as she called for calm. But by the evening, she was projecting strength, and demanding that the army accept the national police’s call to jointly patrol the streets of La Paz to restore order.”

Jeanine Áñez (1967) President of Bolivia

Clifford Krauss https://www.nytimes.com/by/clifford-krauss, in ‘I Assume the Presidency’: Bolivia Lawmaker Declares Herself Leader https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/world/americas/evo-morales-mexico-bolivia.html, The New York Times, (12 November 2019)
About

Alex Jones photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Our common flag, as Muslims and Jews, is to bar any form of violence, prejudice and any other element that supports the fascist project of that man and his followers.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Statement signed by Muslim and Jew communities from Brazil. Grupos de muçulmanos e judeus se unem em nota de repúdio a Bolsonaro. https://epoca.globo.com/grupos-de-muculmanos-judeus-se-unem-em-nota-de-repudio-bolsonaro-23130093 Época (5 October 2018).

Jair Bolsonaro photo
John Conyers photo
Boris Johnson photo
William Dalrymple photo
Chris Cornell photo
William Quan Judge photo
William Quan Judge photo
Barney Frank photo
Vikram Sarabhai photo

“He informed the whole of his team about any new project and started working on it only after having discussed with everyone.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

About, Pride Of The Nation: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Jonah Goldberg photo
Ayad Allawi photo
Vasyl Slipak photo
Vasyl Slipak photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
DJ Paul photo
Ibn Warraq photo
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo
V. P. Singh photo
N. T. Rama Rao photo

“He introduced educational reforms and laid the foundation for the Telugu Ganga project to provide drinking water to Madras city, apart from irrigating the dry lands of Rayalaseema.”

N. T. Rama Rao (1923–1996) Indian actor and Andhra Pradesh former chief minister

In “N.T. Rama Rao (1923 - 1995): A messiah of the masses”.
About NTR

Santiago Martínez Delgado photo

“Young Columbian Santiago Martinez argues a bit much about the the stroke of this project; nevertheless, Taliesin needs more like him, to make the debates stand the transient of the facts.”

Santiago Martínez Delgado (1906–1954) Colombian Muralist, Painter and Illstrator

Frank Lloyd Wright
Edgar Kaufmann conversation, letter to Edgar Kaufmann Jr, 1932, Wis.
About Martinez

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion.”

The Road to the Sea, p. 269
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo
Emmanuel Macron photo

“We will never abandon Ireland or the Irish people no matter what happens, because this solidarity is the very purpose of the European project.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Brexit: EU stands fully behind Ireland, says Barnier https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47847700 BBC News (8 April 2019)
2017, 2019

John D. Carmack photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“When I was starting in the game industry, it wasn't uncommon to be the only woman on the entire team...I always felt welcome and I never felt awkward. In my years at Nintendo, I have come to discover that when there are women in a variety of roles on the project, you get a wider [range] of ideas.”

Aya Kyogoku (1981) Video game director

March 19, 2014 Animal Crossing: New Leaf director says team diversity, communication core to its success https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526678/animal-crossing-new-leaf-diversity-aya-kyogoku

Neil Gaiman photo
Nigel Farage photo

“I hope this begins the end of this project. It is a bad project. It isn’t just undemocratic, it is antidemocratic. It puts in that front row, it gives people power without unaccountability. People who cannot be held to account by the electorate and that is an unacceptable structure.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

EU Farewell Speech, as quoted in Nigel Farage’s Final EU Speech: Mic Gets Cut as He Waves UK Flag in Victory, Breitbart news
2020

Lupe Ontiveros photo

“It's upsetting to any culture when that is the only projection you have of that culture…You're pigeon-holed, stereotyped. That means we don't like you. We forget that this country was founded by immigrants.”

Lupe Ontiveros (1942–2012) Mexican-American actress

On being repeatedly cast as a housekeeper (as quoted in “'Selena' co-star Lupe Ontiveros dies at 69” http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/27/selena-co-star-lupe-ontiveros-dies-at-69/ in CNN; 2012 Jul 27)

Jack Kirby photo

“I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

Source: "'I've Never Done Anything Halfheartedly'". The Comics Journal. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books (134). February 1990. Reprinted in George, Milo, ed. (2002). The Comics Journal Library, Volume One: Jack Kirby. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books. p. 22.

Enoch Powell photo

“So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

… The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment—it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability—I have not feared to give: it is—to use words I used two years and a half ago—that 'the people of England will not endure it'.
Source: Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 202-203

Lauren Jauregui photo

“Driving down child mortality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was in no way a single project, but it can be seen as a unified human accomplishment—maybe even our greatest human achievement, at least for pediatricians and parents.”

Perri Klass (1958) American pediatrician and writer

[Introduction, A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future, https://books.google.com/books?id=fNjVDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=unified&f=false, 13 October 2020, W. W. Norton, 978-0-393-61000-0] (ebook)

Michelle Obama photo

“I do eclectic projects. I went from Joan of Arc to Hitler to human trafficking, and they all had its own rewards.”

Christian Duguay (director) (1957) Canadian film director

Interview: The Star, and Director, of WWII Drama ‘A Bag of Marbles’ on the Importance of Keeping the Memory of the Holocaust Alive https://stagebuddy.com/film/a-bag-of-marbles-interview (March 23, 2018)

“I do not yet know God's plan, but I hope that his grace will accompany me to carry out the project for which God has chosen and called me.”

Khalid Rehmat (1968) Pakistani Catholic apostolic vicariate

The new Vicar Apostolic of Quetta places his office under the protection of Our Lady http://www.fides.org/en/news/69326-ASIA_PAKISTAN_The_new_Vicar_Apostolic_of_Quetta_places_his_office_under_the_protection_of_Our_Lady (4 January 2021)

Mark Eyskens photo

“Governments of developing countries sometimes proposed projects that did not directly benefit the population, but did benefit the government; the so-called 'white elephants.'”

Mark Eyskens (1933) Belgian politician

For example, they wanted to build highways and build large buildings, while we thought it was better to focus on good education.
Development cooperation not only helps others, but also ourselves http://www.wereldmissiehulp.be/eyskens/

“My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

As quoted in "The Vindication of Edwin Land" in Forbes magazine, Vol. 139 (4 May 1987) p. 83; this was later humorously altered:
Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Edwin Ladd, Department of Astronomy, Harvard University (August, 1990), as quoted by Lincoln J. Greenhill at Harvard University http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~lincoln/

Nithyananda photo