Quotes about quality
page 10

“Undoubtedly the best language for the expression of this ‘unfathomable’ quality was music. The infinity of musical spheres of expression, independent of rationality, is often perceived as ‘unfathomable’ by listeners too. The formal principles of order seem to lie hidden deeper in this art than in others. In the twentieth century the great creative minds, when faced with Romantic artistic urges running riot which they believe must be overcome, or feel they have succeeded in overcoming, have stressed the importance of existing rules; they have followed traditional forms, or else, in their search for new ways to connect, have found and set up new formula-tions and principles. The young Schumann’s creative path led in the opposite direction, from classical forms, however deeply revered, to the freedom of subjective self-expression.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Lie, Art, Music, Way

“The key issue is whether Jesus really did return from the dead and thus authenticate his claim to being the unique Son of God. As a skeptic, I was shocked to find that the historical evidence for the resurrection is so solid. We have, for instance, a report of the resurrection that goes back to within months of the death of Jesus, which is like a news flash in ancient history. This is historical gold! Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That’s an avalanche of data. I was thoroughly stunned by the quantity and quality of the evidence for Christ.”

Lee Strobel (1952) American writer

The Case for Christ: An Interview with Lee Strobel https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2016/09/the-case-for-christ-an-interview-with-lee-strobel/ (September 7, 2016)

Death, God, History, Christ

“Is it not conceivable, that each tone is the fusion of a sum of still more primitive elements with the Gestalt qualities bound up therewith?… No conclusive argument can be brought forward even against the possibility that we may not, penetrating ever more deeply in this manner, finally arrive at a single proto-quality, or at least at a single quality-continuum, from out of which distinct contents (colours, tones, Y) are generated by the fusion of distinct combinations with the Gestalt qualities bound up therewith, [so that] one can no longer shrink from the idea that tones and colours might be exhibited as the products of a much higher degree of complication of proto-elements as yet unknown.”

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) Austrian philosopher

Source: "On Gestalt Qualities," 1890, p. 16

Idea

“But American nationalism has been conditioned, to a large extent, by the "indoctrination" of the children of immigrants, inevitably coupled with a certain denigration of the Old World. Any German, or Italian, or American gentleman will naturally defend his country against patently unjust accusations—loyalty demands this; but he will not try to convince others that his nation has the highest qualities in the world, the most gifted inventors, the most profound philosophers, the best writers, the finest painters, the fastest trains, the most beautiful women. (This uncouth boasting is reserved for the traveling salesman after a third drink, or the likes of a National Socialist or a Russian Communist.)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 199

Women, Children, World, Beauty

“Thus to say that God is ineffable is to say that no concepts apply to Him, and that He is without qualities.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 33.

God

“As a companion, King's charm was great, but this was not the quality that so much attracted Adams, nor could he affect even distant rivalry on this ground. Adams could never tell a story, chiefly because he always forgot it.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Distant

“Calcutta, for me, was a particular idea of the modern city, and I found it in many forms, works, and genres. … by ‘modernity’ I have in mind something that was never new. True modernity was born with the aura of inherited decay and life. … if you look at paintings and photographs, and see old films of the city, you notice that these walls and buildings were never new – that Calcutta was born to look more or less as I saw it as a child. I’m not referring here to an air of timelessness; the patina that gave to Calcutta’s alleys, doorways, and houses their continuity and disposition is very different from the eternity that defines mausoleums and monuments. It’s this quality I’m trying to get at when I speak of modernity. … modernity in the nineteenth century is indistinguishable from nature; perhaps it is nature – in some ways, the culvert, which has emerged from the rock, seems more of its place than the mountain itself.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

citation needed
On Modernity

Life, Way, Mountain, Idea

“Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

World, Fraud, Universe, Housing

“Literary criticism should arise out of a debt of love. In a manner evident and yet mysterious, the poem or the drama or the novel seizes upon our imaginings. We are not the same when we put down the work as we were when we took it up. To borrow an image from another domain: he who has truly apprehended a painting by Cézanne will thereafter see an apple or a chair as he had not seen them before. Great works of art pass through us like storm-winds, flinging open the doors of perception, pressing upon the architecture of our beliefs with their transforming powers. We seek to record their impact, to put our shaken house in its new order. Through some primary instinct of communion we seek to convey to others the quality and force of our experience. We would persuade them to lay themselves open to it. In this attempt at persuasion originate the truest insights criticism can afford.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (1960), Ch. 1.

Love, Art, Imagination, Painting

“The quality of our life
depends on the quality
of the seeds
that lie deep in our consciousness.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Understanding Our Mind (2006) Parallax Press ISBN 978-81-7223-796-7

Life, Lie, Dependency

“But yet another thing is necessary, Purity of spirit; for an intelligence in repose without images, an intuition in the light of God, and a spirit elevated in Purity to the Face of God, these three qualities united constitute the true contemplative life, where none can err; for the pure spirit expands ceaselessly and follows rapidly in purified love, the enlightened intelligence towards its Cause.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 150

Love, Life, God, Intelligence

“The renaissance of New York City has been built on a foundation of crime reduction, and for the last four years, Howard Safir has worked tirelessly to increase safety and the quality of life for all New Yorkers. The extent to which he's succeeded—on his watch, crime is down by 38%, and homicide by 44%—is not only remarkable, it's a testament to his skill and dedication. During Howard's tenure, the Department reduced crime by more than it has under any other Police Commissioner. Howard has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in law enforcement. I wish him the best as he begins this new chapter in his life.”

Howard Safir (1941)

Rudolph Giuliani, then-Mayor of New York City, announcing the resignation of Howard Safir as New York City Police Commissioner.
[Archives of the Mayor's Press Office, http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2000b/pr307-00.html, Release #307-00 - MAYOR GIULIANI AND POLICE COMMISSIONER SAFIR ANNOUNCE THAT SAFIR IS LEAVING THE NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, The City of New York, 2000-08-09, 2007-12-20]
About

Life, Law

“The disproportion between our capabilities and our shared situations would be merely ironic or tragic if we were unable to diminish it. By doing so, we change, to our benefit, the quality of our relation to our cognitive and social assumptions. As a result, we also alter, to our advantage, the quality of our relations to one another. We put more of the infinite us into the finite worlds in which we live.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), p. 97

World, Change

“If the project was lucky enough to have a writer or two well-informed about some specialized subject, and if their work was not degraded in quality by the majority of people, whose knowledge of the subject is based on paragraphs in books and mere mentions in college classes, then there might be a good, credible article on that specialized subject. Otherwise, there will be no article at all, a very amateurish-sounding article, or an article that looks like it might once have been pretty good, but which has been hacked to bits by hoi polloi.”

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).

People, Books, Knowledge

“It was the college conservatives who had almost succeeded in electing John Smith to the Presidency of the United States during the last election. The fact that Smith had been dead for twenty years had not dampened their ardor; quite the contrary, many considered this the candidate’s best quality.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 8 “How Joenes Taught, and What He Learned” (pp. 70-71)

Dead

“It is noticeable that rejection and selection no longer operate in terms of merely quality but on kind. This is exactly the situation confronting the Impressionists who attempted to show their works in the salon of 1865.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

“So-called immobile objects exist only in movement. Immobile, certain, and permanent things, ideas, works and beliefs change, transform, and disintegrate. Immobile objects are snapshots of a movement whose existence we refuse to accept, because we ourselves are only an instant in the great movement. Movement is the only static, final, permanent, and certain thing. Static means transformation. Let us be static together with movement. Move statically! Be static! Be movement! Believe in movement's static quality. Believe in change. Do not hold onto anything. Change! Do not pinpoint anything! Everything about us is movement. Everything around us is change. Believe in movement's static quality. Be static.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

reprinted in 'Zero', ed. Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, Cambridge, Mass; MIT Press 1973, p. 119
Quotes, 1960's, untitled statements in 'Zero 3', (1961)

Idea, Change

“In the intellectual market the quantity of the demand rises in proportion to that of the supply, but its quality does not keep pace with this increase. For example, the Old Testament of pianoforte players, Bach’s “Wohltenoerurtes Klavier” is perhaps in almost as many hands as the New Testament, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, but in few more heads than it was in former years, when it could only be had for six times the present price. Doubtless, its leaves are somewhat oftener turned over, but now, as then, about the sixth part, likely enough just the first sixth, is all that is studies in the real meaning of the word. Here truly is little more gained than a merely superficial acquaintance with the great father of German music.”

Hans von Bülow (1830–1894) German musician

Preface to Instructive ausgabe. Klavier-Etuden von Fr. Chopin, 1880.

Music, Study, Time, Parting

“No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own. This is not only conspicuous in children, who implicitly embrace every opinion propos’d to them; but also in men of the greatest judgment and understanding, who find it very difficult to follow their own reason or inclination, in opposition to that of their friends and daily companions. To this principle we ought to ascribe the great uniformity we may observe in the humours and turn of thinking of those of the same nation; and ’tis much more probable, that this resemblance arises from sympathy, than from any influence of the soil and climate, which, tho’ they continue invariably the same, are not able to preserve the character of a nation the same for a century together. A good-natur’d man finds himself in an instant of the same humour with his company; and even the proudest and most surly take a tincture from their countrymen and acquaintance. A chearful countenance infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind; as an angry or sorrowful one throws a sudden dump upon me. Hatred, resentment, esteem, love, courage, mirth and melancholy; all these passions I feel more from communication than from my own natural temper and disposition. So remarkable a phaenomenon merits our attention, and must be trac’d up to its first principles.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 11
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Love, Men, Children, Feeling

“TQM is focused on everyone's satisfaction. TQM is an unyielding, continuing, improving effort by everyone in the company to understand, meet, and exceed the expectations of customers. TQM is not just a quality control program.”

Shoji Shiba (1930) Japanese academic

Alex d'Arbeloff cited in: Shōji Shiba, New American TQM. Productivity press, 1993. p. 315

Understanding, Effort

“The dichotomies which are the signature of their work – the esoteric and the exoteric, the civil and the managerial, the friend and the foe, the lawful and the legislative – are so many cordons. Their function is to hold popular sovereignty at bay. The different gifts displayed in this enterprise, whatever view is taken of it, were remarkable. For all his later tendency to textual dressage, Strauss's range and subtlety as a master of the canon of political philosophy had no equal in his generation. Schmitt's moral instability never impaired an extraordinary capacity to fuse conceptual insight and metaphoric imagination in lightning flashes of illumination around the state. Hayek could seem tactically ingenuous, but he fashioned a theoretical synthesis out of his epistemology and economics whose scope and strength has yet to be supplanted. Oakeshott was the literary artist in this gallery. His writing varies considerably in quality, and can be whimsically arch at one moment and curiously crude at another, disconcertingly close to Punch or Cross-Bencher. But at its best, when it moves into high register, it can rise to a lyrical beauty.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 1. "The Intransigent Right, Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Friedrich von Hayek" (1992), p. 27

Law, Beauty, Imagination, Fashion

“The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

My First Play; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Home, Imagination, Appearance

“Mr. Sandburg possesses a powerful imagination, which plays over and about his realistic themes and constantly ennobles them. …strikes, and factories, and slaughter-houses, and railroad trains, all take on a lyric quality under his touch. …When Carl Sandburg left college, he was no longer an unskilled labourer, working with his hands. He was a thinking man, with a brain charged with ideas and emotions, determined to do his part in bringing about the millennium. For Carl Sandburg… is a revolutionary; he must push the world to where he is convinced it ought to be. …again and again, he deserts the seer's mountain peak for the demagogue's soap-box. …Mr. Sandburg is like a man striving to batter down a jail with balls of brightly coloured glass. …Whether constant preoccupation with disease is a healthy form of literature, whether it acts as a curative, is open to question. But we can surely say that to be curative the disease must be treated unsentimentally and truly. Mr. Sandburg has aimed at doing this, has striven hard to do it. For this, one honours him above his fellows. For this, and the spirit of beauty which pervades his work.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

"Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg," Tendencies in Modern American Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=UgZaAAAAMAAJ (1917).

World, Disease, Beauty, Imagination

“When we speak of quality and desirability it is not the question of one unit, but of the whole system.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 4, Definition of Entopia, p. 49

Question

“One must not just have great qualities, but also economize them”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Ce n'est pas assez d'avoir de grandes qualités, il en faut avoir l'économie.
Variant translation: It is not enough to have great qualities; one must also make use of them sparingly.
Maxim 159.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“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

“[Bryce] expressed his cordial agreement with what Mr. Washington had said as to the importance of basing the progress of the coloured people of the South upon industrial training. Having made two or three visits to the South he had got an impression of the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem which Mr. Washington was so nobly striving to solve. It was no wonder that it should be difficult seeing that the whites had such a long start of the coloured people in civilization. He believed that the general sentiment of white people was one of friendliness and a desire to help the negroes. The exercise of political rights and the attainment to equal citizenship must depend upon the quality of the people who exercised those rights, and the best thing the coloured people could do, therefore, was to endeavour to attain material prosperity by making themselves capable of prosecuting these trades and occupations which they began to learn in the days of slavery, and which now, after waiting for 20 years, they had begun to see were necessary to their well-being.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech at the reception for Booker T. Washington held in Essex Hall, Strand, London (3 July 1899), quoted in The Times (4 July 1899), p. 13.
1890s

People, Exercises, Problem, Learning

“Modernity is the most transient of qualities.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

The aesthetics of the A55: Theodore Dalrymple finds that everything built along the A55 since the First World War has been a scar on the landscape and explores why our architecture has been so bad http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000937.php (May 22, 2006). The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

“"Most so-called liberated people that I know are full of it," remarked a caustic, albeit articulate, businessman attending a seminar I gave on emerging male/female relationships. "The feminist leadership is a good example. They have the worst qualities of both men and women. They have all the answers and nothing you can say ever changes their mind. Then, from what I read, one turns on and attacks the other—supposedly for ideological reasons, but it's just a variation on the old-fashioned male ritual of ego-tripping—'I'm for real, you're not—I'm the greatest, you're nothing.'"It's a real cast of characters, these feminist leaders," he continued. "There's the glamor queen one who's trying to be a movie star without copping to what she's doing. It's obvious, though. She's always being seen with celebrities and she's always dating the richest, most successful guys. Then there's the other one who's like a Jewish mother—complaining and telling everybody how to change, and how to live. I'm surprised she doesn't try and tell us what to eat."I looked through their magazine recently. It's full of the same kind of ads as the other women's magazines that Ms. supposedly abhors. You know, jewelry, deodorants, perfumes—and the articles are mainly old-fashioned victim variety stuff, an updated variation on the old "poor downtrodden women" theme."The 'liberated' guys they hold up as shining examples of what men should behave like are just as phony as the feminist women pretending to be so pure. They're workaholics, and they're the worst kind of arrogant—because God is on their side and unless you imitate them, you're a misguided pig. It feels like being at a church social when you watch them—at least as hypocritical, if not more so—because at least church types don't pretend to be open to discussing their beliefs. They're out front in thinking that they have all the answers."When what's-her-name ran for vice-president and lost, what did she do—she blamed the male establishment. God save us from female leadership! They can't stop blaming—even at that level. I thought of reminding her that this country has at least ten million more women than men and the odds were totally on her side and it was women who rejected her, and saw through her act; but I know better than to argue against that stuff with facts."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Earth Mothers in Disguise, p. 149
The Inner Male (1987)

Women, Men, God, People

“One doesn't look at the quality of work, they see how much it fetches, how it earns. That's a sad thing. Money is not the criteria of art. Art or love is not a question of money. One should percieve these things at a different level.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Indian contemporary artists have not reached my standard: SH Raza

Love, Money, Sadness, Art

“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

“That [watercolor] with the Cows has been partially washed out [reducing colors] and that ugly hedge of willow trees has been taken out, and is already doing better, but the paper is not a good quality. I don't know I'll finish it or make a new one.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Die [aquarel] met de Koeijen is gedeeltelijk uitgewassen [kleuren vermindert] en die leelijke heg van wilgeboomen er uit [gehaald] en doet reeds beter, maar het papier is niet heel goed. Ik weet niet of ik die af zal maken of een nieuwe [maken].
In a letter to Pieter verLoren van Themaat, 30 March 1867; in Haagsch Gemeentearchief / Municipal Archive of The Hague
1860's

Color, Tree

“One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 162
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“The whole subject of the liquidity trap has a sort of Alice-through-the-looking glass quality. Virtues like saving, or a central bank known to be strongly committed to price stability, become vices; to get out of the trap a country must loosen its belt, persuade its citizens to forget about the future, and convince the private sector that the government and central bank aren’t as serious and austere as they seem.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Thinking About the Liquidity Trap", Journal of the Japanese and International Economies (2000)

Future, Country, Forgetting

“Arabic writing at the beginning of Islam was, therefore, not of the best quality nor of the greatest accuracy and excellence. It was not (even) of medium quality, because the Arabs possessed the savage desert attitude and were not familiar with crafts. One may compare what happened to the orthography of the Qur’an on account of this situation. The men around Muhammad wrote the Qur’an in their own script which, was not of a firmly established, good quality. Most of the letters were in contradiction to the orthography required by persons versed in the craft of writing…. Consequently, (the Qur’anic orthography of the men around Muhammad was followed and became established, and the scholars acquainted with it have called attention to passages where (this is noticeable). No attention should be paid in this connection with those incompetent (scholars) that (the men around Muhammad) knew well the art of writing and that the alleged discrepancies between their writing and the principles of orthography are not discrepancies, as has been alleged, but have a reason. For instance, they explain the addition of the alif in la ‘adhbahannahU "I shall indeed slaughter him" as indication that the slaughtering did not take place ( lA ‘adhbahannahU ). The addition of the ya in bi-ayydin "with hands (power)," they explain as an indication that the divine power is perfect. There are similar things based on nothing but purely arbitrary assumptions. The only reason that caused them to (assume such things) is their belief that (their explanations) would free the men around Muhammad from the suspicion of deficiency, in the sense that they were not able to write well. They think that good writing is perfection. Thus, they do not admit the fact that the men around Muhammad were deficient in writing.”

Ibn Khaldun book Muqaddimah

Muqqadimah, ibn Khaldun, vol. 2, p. 382
Muqaddimah (1377)

Men, Art, Thinking, Sense

“Ours is a new land. It has had an almost unbelievable task to perform, and has performed it well. We have been called to fit the institutions of ancient civilization to the conditions of a new country. In that task the leaders of the Nation have been supported by a deep devotion to the essentials of freedom. At the bottom of the national character has been a strain of religious earnestness and moral determination which has never failed to give color and quality to our institutions. Because our history shows us these things, we dare make honest appraisal of our shortcomings. We have not failed. We have succeeded. Because we have been privileged to rely upon generations of men and women ready to serve and to sacrifice, we have magnificently succeeded.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Women, Men, Color, History

“They abandon themselves credulously to every fanatic scoundrel who speaks to their baser qualities, confirms them in their vices, teaches them nationality means barbarism and isolation.”

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

Attributed to Goethe by German novelist Thomas Mann in his novel The Beloved Returns. The line was Mann's invention, though it was later quoted during the Nuremburg trials by prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross, who quoted the passage as if it truly had been written by Goethe. Misattributed Source: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0051.419 Thomas Mann in America

“Man's preeminent advantage is his organism. …Only through nature do we have any good qualities; to her we owe all that we are.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

Man a Machine (1747)

Nature

“Without exception, the dominance and coherence of culture proved to be an essential quality of the excellent companies.”

Tom Peters book In Search of Excellence

Source: In Search of Excellence (1982), p. 75.

“The instructor-Na has observed in the Na 14 tendencies toward an archaic and dangerous quality to which the ancients gave the name personal ambition.”

Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 2 (p. 30)

Personality

“God is all love, and the more we are like Him the more we shall love; the trouble is not in the quantity but the quality of our love. If it were wholly pure, wholly unselfish, it could not be too deep or intense; for all true loving lifts us to a higher plane, bringing us nearer to God and the eternal goodness.”

Arthur Kenney (1776–1855) Irish dean

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 395.

Love, God

“One who has not found peace within himself will forever be giving speeches about peace. This world is a pulpit upon which man preaches, and there is no end to this talk! For millions of years man has been speaking this way, but he has not come forward to first find peace within himself. There is no use in making speeches. Man must acquire the qualities of God and live in that state. Only then can he speak of peace, only then can he speak the speech of God and dispense the justice of God's kingdom.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

God, World, Peace, Justice

“In Kleist’s essay humans are caught between the graceful automatism of the puppet and the conscious freedom of a god. The jerky, stuttering quality of their actions comes from their feeling that they must determine the course of their lives. Other animals live without having to choose their path through life. Whatever uncertainty they may feel sniffing their way through the world is not a permanent condition; once they reach a place of safety, they are at rest. In contrast, human life is spent anxiously deciding how to live.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.25-6)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Life, God, World, Way

“I found the king extremely attractive, naturally endowed as he was with all the intellectual qualities a woman could wish for in the man close to her heart. His gentle, serious look, which could still be indulgent and warm, and his lovely smile touched me deeply. And there were other details I liked: the way he held his head, his long eyelashes, which I found unutterably romantic, his hands. Yes, I was secretly won over, charmed by him.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Page 76
Publications, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (2004)

Love, Smile, Way, Nature

“There is a certain dignity of manner independent of fortune, a certain distinctive air which seems to mark us out for great things. It is a value we set upon ourselves without realizing it, and by means of this quality we claim other men’s deference as our due. This does more to set us above them than birth, honors, and merit itself.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il y a une élévation qui ne dépend point de la fortune: c’est un certain air qui nous distingue et qui semble nous destiner aux grandes choses; c’est un prix que nous nous donnons imperceptiblement à nous-mêmes; c’est par cette qualité que nous usurpons les déférences des autres hommes, et c’est elle d’ordinaire qui nous met plus au-dessus d’eux que la naissance, les dignités, et le mérite même.
Maxim 399.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Men, Birth

“We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Goethe.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

“So-called racial differences in IQ scores are more a consequence of disparities in socioeconomic status and the quality of education than of any genetic differences between ethnic groups. Efforts to improve educational quality and opportunity can increase the economic benefits associated with increased educational achievement.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 154–155.

Education, Effort

“Like fish who do not know they swim in water, we are seldom aware of the atmosphere of the times through which we move, how strange and singular they are. But when we approach another age, its alienness stands out before us, almost as if that were its most obvious quality…”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Introduction
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003)

Age, Fish, Water, Time

“Second, in the presence of this continuity of feeling, nominalistic maxims appear futile. There is no doubt about one idea affecting another, when we can directly perceive the one generally modified and shaping itself into the other. Nor can there any longer be any difficulty about one idea resembling another, when we can pass along the continuous field of quality from one to the other and back again to the point which we had marked.”

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

The Law of Mind (1892)

Feeling, Idea, Appearance

“As absurd as it might sound, there's a strange synergy between very bad movies and very good ones. That's because films on either extreme of the quality scale have the ability to burrow deep into the subconscious, with unpredictable and occasionally remarkable results. Great works of art can cause euphoria, touch a deep emotional chord, or, in rare cases, affect fundamental changes in a person's outlook on life. Conversely, viewing unwatchable tripe can be damaging, possibly resulting in psychotic episodes, an appreciation of '70s fashion, or leaping to the defense of Pauly Shore. There's something almost profound about enduring a horrifically inept piece of cinema, and Coyote Ugly, living up to every letter in its name, offers the opportunity for such an experience.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1611 of Coyote Ugly (2000). One-star reviews

Life, Art, Fashion, Change

“Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Nature

“Success can come to you by courageous Devotion to the task lying in front of you I can assert with out fear of contradiction that quality of the Indian mind is equal to the quality of any Teutonic, Nordic, or Anglo-Saxon mind. What we lack is perhaps courage, what we lack is driving force which takes one any where. We have I think, developed an inferiority complex. I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

This is from his address to the young graduates in 1969 quoted in [Kalam, A P J Abdul, Ignited Minds: Unleashing The Power Within India, http://books.google.com/books?id=_PdboDsin90C&pg=PA28, 1 September 2010, Pearson Education India, 978-81-317-2960-1, 28–29]

Fear, Lying, Courage, Thinking

“Writing fiction is … an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Old Home Town (1935), Ch. 1.

Life, Effort

“The knowable is of the nature of etc. The quality of essentiality (Sattva) is of the nature of illumination. Energy (Rajas) is of the nature of activity. Inertia is of the nature of inactivity. These ‘qualities’ are capable of being coloured more or less by proximity to one another. They are ever evolving. They have the characteristics of conjunction and separation. They manifest support by each lending support to the other by proximity…”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 129.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Support, Nature

“a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his qualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of time. He understands them, sees what they are; but that they should understand him, and see with rounded outline what his limits are,—this, which would mean that they are bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyally say, "We do not quite understand thee; we perceive thee to be nobler and wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Understanding, Sense, Time

“A second part of criticisms [of our concept, Multitude], which relate closely to the first, focus on the economic conception of the multitude. … "You are really against the workers!" … Industrial labor has been displaced from its hegemonic position over other forms of labor by immaterial labor, which now tends to transform all sectors of production and society itself in line with its qualities. Industrial workers remain important, then, but within the context of this new paradigm. Here arises, then, but within the second criticism of this pair, that our argument of hegemony of immaterial labor replaces the old vanguard of industrial workers with a new vanguard of immaterial workers - Microsoft programmers leading us on the shining path. "You are just postmodern Leninist in sheep's clothing!" they cry. No, the hegemonic position of a form of production in the economy should not imply any political hegemony. Our argument about the hegemony of immaterial labor and the becoming common of all forms of labor is aimed instead at establishing that contemporary conditions tending to form a general communication and collaboration of labor that can be the basis of the multitude.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

(223)
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Communication, Parting, Cry, Clothes

“Considering how readily musicologists criticize one another – witness the merciless footnotes (and reviews) of so many books and articles – the innocent bystander must find it strange that they remain unwilling to venture judgments about the quality of the music around which they work…But it is hard to see what can be the purpose of musicology if not to advise people on what to hear and how to hear it. Separating out the good, the bad and the indifferent, and helping listeners enjoy the best, is surely the least we can offer society in return for our keep.”

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson British musicoloigst

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997), "The good, the bad and the boring", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165404.

People, Books, Music, Help

“The mouth is not satisfied by speaking, and the ears are not satisfied by hearing. The eyes are not satisfied by seeing-each organ seeks out one sensory quality. The hunger of the hungry is not appeased; by mere words, hunger is not relieved. O Nanak, hunger is relieved only when one utters the Glorious Praises of the Praiseworthy Lord.”

Guru Angad Dev (1504–1552) The second Guru of Sikhism

Guru Granth Sahib p. 147

Hunger

“It may be remarked incidentally that the recognition of the relational character of scientific objects completely eliminates an old metaphysical issue. One of the outstanding problems created by the rise of modern science was due to the fact that scientific definitions and descriptions are framed in terms of which qualities play no part. Qualities were wholly superfluous. As long as the idea persisted (an inheritance from Greek metaphysical science) that the business of knowledge is to penetrate into the inner being of objects, the existence of qualities like colors, sounds, etc., was embarrassing. The usual way of dealing with them is to declare that they are merely subjective, existing only in the consciousness of individual knowers. Given the old idea that the purpose of knowledge (represented at its best in science) is to penetrate into the heart of reality and reveal its "true" nature, the conclusion was a logical one. …The discovery of the nonscientific because of the empirically unverifiable and unnecessary character of absolute space, absolute motion, and absolute time gave the final coup de grâce to the traditional idea that solidity, mass, size, etc., are inherent possessions of ultimate individuals.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Color, Way, Idea, Business

“Some fundamental unity was surely to be discerned either in the matter or the structure of things. The Ionic philosophers chose the former field: Pythagoras took the latter. …The geometry which he had learnt in Egypt was merely practical. …It was natural to nascent philosophy to draw, by false analogies, and the use of a brief and deceptive vocabulary, enormous conclusions from a very few observed facts: and it is not surprising if Pythagoras, having learnt in Egypt that number was essential to the exact description of forms and of the relations of forms, concluded that number was the cause of form and so of every other quality. Number, he inferred, is quantity and quantity is form and form is quality.
Footnote2 Primitive men, on seeing a new thing, look out especially for some resemblance in it to a known thing, so that they may call both by the same name. This developes a habit of pressing small and partial analogies. It also causes many meanings to be at attached to the same word. Hasty and confused theories are the inevitable result.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

Men, Nature, Drawing, Falseness

“There must be no premature renunciation, physical or emotional. The heart, like the body, needs exercise. Naturally there can be no deliberate stirring up of emotion, but why, merely for reasons of age, should one deny oneself those that can be genuinely experienced? Because old men in love are ridiculous? They are ridiculous only if they forget that they are old men. There is nothing ridiculous about two old people really in love. Each still finds in the other those qualities which were admired in youth. Tender consideration, affection, and admiration have no age. In fact, it often happens that, when youth and its passions have vanished, love takes on an asceticism which is delightful. Sensual misunderstandings disappear with physical desire and jealousy with youth; impetuosity wanes with the body's strength. From the remnants of a stormy youth may be created an agreeable old age. Thus the existence of a couple resembles a river which leaps dangerously over jagged rocks near its source, but whose clear waters flow more slowly as it approaches the sea, its broad surface reflecting the poplars along its banks and the stars at night.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Men, People, Youth

“First, how do you prove that mankind is invested with the right of killing them, and that brutes have been created for the purpose you assert them to be? Secondly, it is to be observed that the flesh of man himself possesses the same nourishing and palatable qualities? And are we then to become cannibals for that reason?”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, edited by Peter Singer (Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1992), p. 84.

“As you open up spiritually, your subtle body has a particular effulgence which attracts entities from both the divine and negative natures. You become more sensitive and aware of everything. You become more intuitive and have more experiences in the dream state. If there are messages you should receive, the impressions will always be there, even when you are asleep, and you will act on them without consciously being aware of it. If a communication is really meant for your growth, even though you may forget it or may not be able to understand its significance, it will still have an effect on your consciousness. Ultimately, both the positive and negative experiences are “quality tests” to assess your level of sincerity.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 21

Dreams, Communication, Understanding, Nature

“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

“When I lived in Cookham I was disturbed by a feeling of everything being meaningless. But quite suddenly I became aware that everything was full of special meaning and this made everything holy… I observed this sacred quality in most unexpected quarters.”

Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) English painter

As quoted in Sermon by Artists (1934) Golden Cockerel Press

Feeling

“Nietzsche … explicates his preferred distinction between good and bad individuals as non-condemnatory of the latter. A ‘bad person’ is merely devoid of what Nietzsche personally considers to be noble or virtuous qualities; he is not morally evil. Nietzsche’s aim is … to defuse morality of reactive emotion. … It would be futile, tactless, and cruel, he suggests, to try to change a bad person, one with whom one does not empathize; his formula advises: ‘Where you cannot love, pass by’. No on should be blamed for what he is; there is no point in lamenting fate.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 91

Love, Fate, Evil, Change

“Since human beings are highly adaptable it may be possible for an individual with any sort of competence to learn, in the end, according to any teaching strategy. But the experiments show, very clearly indeed, that the rate, quality and durability of learning is crucially dependent upon whether or not the teaching strategy is of a sort that suits the individual”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 221 as cited in: Nigel Ford (2000) " Cognitive Styles and Virtual Environments http://docis.info/docis/lib/tian/rclis/dbl/jamsis/(2000)51%253A6%253C543%253ACSAVE%253E/advertising.utexas.edu%252Fvcbg%252Fhome%252FFord00.pdf" in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Vol 51, Is. 6, p. 543–557.

Learning, Dependency

“There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring. Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense, may be safely attributed.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", pages 403-404 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=420&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Men, Religion, Law, Nature

“Knowing that training is little more than breaking down muscle, I figured that what rebuilds that same muscle must be a major factor for recovery and therefore quicker improvement. If I was able to recover from each workout faster, I would be able to schedule them closer together and therefore train more than my competition. I would improve faster. As I suspected, food was the answer—high-quality, nutrient-dense, alkaline-forming, easily digestible food in proper proportions … Nutrition has a dramatic effect on recovery—that was unmistakable. … The result was astounding. Not only did my recovery time plummet but my energy level, strength-to-weight ratio, and endurance shot up. … On the cellular level, this diet was able to speed the renewal of muscle tissue. That meant that following this diet would actually help the body regenerate more frequently, suggesting that it could help reduce biological age.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Introduction
The Thrive Diet

Age, Food, Time, Help

“I am attracted to a thug. I like that quality, but I like the other side of it, too. Because all guys who go around behaving in macho ways are really scared little girls. So you have to look beneath the surface. There's a difference between my ideal man and a man that I'm sexually attracted to, believe me. Therein lies the rub.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Aperture Magazine 1999 http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-interviews-articles/aperture-magazine-summer-1999

Way, Guy, Girl

“There is more to do. We need to prepare our children to read and succeed in school with improved Head Start and early childhood development programs. We must upgrade our teacher colleges and teacher training and launch a major recruiting drive with a great goal for America: a quality teacher in every classroom.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Children, School, Teachers, Reading

“Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither [to America], who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value; but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

March 1784 Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.
1780s

People, Birth, Personality

“The last decade has seen many of the gains of the early years of democracy reversed through state capture and corruption, a failure of collective leadership, policy uncertainty and a growing distance between the people and their movement and their government. We have had to come to terms with the erosion of the values of the ANC and confront difficult questions about the quality and integrity of our leadership as the ANC.”

Cyril Ramaphosa (1952) 5th President of South Africa

At a memorial lecture for the late struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in Johannesburg, as quoted by Siviwe Feketha in Ramaphosa slams Zuma's tenure, calls on ANC to tackle divisions https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/politics/ramaphosa-slams-zumas-tenure-calls-on-anc-to-tackle-divisions/ar-BBNMdMN, IOL (30 September 2018)

People, Democracy, Failure, Question

“By making everything secure [governments] have degraded the quality of secrecy.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media Source: Financial Times http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9098a06a-9c1c-11df-a7a4-00144feab49a.html#axzz45lPGQfQg - "Online leaks: A digital deluge" by Richard Waters, 30 July 2010.

“The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Introduction
The Portable Matthew Arnold (Viking Press, 1949)

Men, Exercises, Intelligence, Courage

“Our sense of touch is a fundamental sensibility which comes into action at birth – our stereognostic sense – the ability to feel weight and form and assess its significance. The form which have had special meaning for me since childhood have been the standing form (which is the translation of my feelings towards the human being standing in the landscape) the two forms (which is the tender relation of one living thing besides another); and the closed form, such as the oval, spherical or pierced form (sometimes incorporating colour) which translates for me the association and meaning of gesture in landscape; in the repose of say a mother and child.... In all these shapes the translation of what one feels about man and nature must be conveyed by the sculptor in terms of mass, inner tension, and rhythm, scale in relation to our human size and the quality of surface which speaks through our hands and eyes.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 284

Feeling, Birth, Nature, Sense

“Improving quality requires a culture change, not just a new diet.”

Philip B. Crosby (1926–2001) Quality guru

Philip B. Crosby (1989), Let's Talk Quality: 96 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask Phil Crosby, p. 47

Change

“He was reminded of a Dutch book whose moral he often returned to: De Schoonheid van hoogspanningslijnen in het Hollandse landschap, written by a couple of academics in Rotterdam University, Anne Kieke Backer and Arij de Boode. The Beauty of Electricity Pylons in the Dutch Landscape was a defence of the contribution of transmission engineering to the visual appeal of Holland, referencing the often ignored grandeur of the towers on their march from power stations to cities. Its particular interest for Ian, however, lay in its thesis about the history of the Dutch relationship to windmills, for it emphasised that these early industrial objects had originally been felt to have all the pylons’ threateningly alien qualities, rather than the air of enchantment and playfulness now routinely associated with them. They had been denounced from pulpits and occasionally burnt to the ground by suspicious villagers. The re-evaluation of the windmills had in large part been the work of the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age, who, moved by their country’s dependence on the rotating utilitarian objects, gave them pride of place in their canvases, taking care to throw their finest aspect into relief, like their resilience during storms and the glint of their sails in the late afternoon sun. … It would perhaps be left to artists of our own day to teach us to discern the virtues of the furniture of contemporary technology.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 212.

Books, Age, Beauty, History

“Heaven says nothing, and the whole earth grows rich beneath its silent rule. Men, too, are touched by heaven's virtue; yet, in their greater part, they are creatures of deceit. They are born, it seems, with an emptiness of soul, and must take their qualities wholly from things without. To be born thus empty into this modern age, this mixture of good and ill, and yet steer through life on an honest course to the splendors of success — this is a feat reserved for paragons of our kind, a task beyond the nature of the normal man.”

Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) Japanese writer

Book I, ch. 1.
The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

Life, Men, Age, Soul

“We’re still growing — slowly — but we’ve got a better handle on it now. We could take on even more projects, but we want to remain very selective. Switzerland is still a country that has good conditions for architects compared to most other countries we’re involved with — both in quality and quantity. Here, architects are even closer to the client and realization.”

Jacques Herzog (1950) Swiss architect

places.designobserver.com http://places.designobserver.com/feature/an-interview-with-jacques-herzog/32118/.

Country

“I see the possibility of being 'made new' again and the gift of rebirth is all that lets anyone really live.... The great secret.... is never to get stuck, imprisoned in common social patterns. They always paralyse the real quality of life – the 'going onward' is all that matters, and the dead moments in one’s life through trying to be a unit in any society or social concept are terrifying really.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to Adelaide Kuntz, September 7, 1933; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 168
1931 - 1943

Life, Secret, Dead

“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

“Quality improves with effort according to an exponential curve.”

Robert W. Bly (1957) American writer

101 Ways to Make Every Second Count: Time Management Tips and Techniques for More Success With Less Stress (1999)

Effort

“Like all strong-willed and self-asserting men, Mr. Chase had the faults of his qualities. He was never easy to drive in harness, or light in hand. He saw vividly what was wrong, and did not always allow for what was relatively right.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, Light, Strong

“A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“…during a period in history psychology was still a branch of academic philosophy. The psychological concepts developed by philosophers of mind, such as “dominant ideas” (akin to the automatic thoughts of Beck’s cognitive therapy) “habit and association” (a subjective precursor of Pavlovian conditioning), and “imitation and sympathy” (which we now call “role-modelling” and “empathy”), are repeatedly mentioned by Braid as the theoretical framework upon which his science of hypnotism, “neuro-hypnology”, was built. Braid’s friend and collaborator, Prof. William B. Carpenter, discusses the theoretical principles of this in his Principles of Mental Physiology (1889), especially in the chapter ‘Of Common Sense’ which concludes by quoting an approving letter from the philosopher John Stuart Mill sent to Carpenter in 1872. Mill agrees with Carpenter’s contention that “common sense”, by which he means a kind of intellectual intuition analogous to the ancient Greek concept of nous, is a combination of innate and acquired judgements, which have a “reflexive” or “automatic” quality and appear to consciousness as “self-evident” truths.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

James Braid, in The Original Philosophy of Hypnotherapy (from The Discovery of Hypnosis) http://ukhypnosis.wordpress.com/category/james-braid-the-founder-of-hypnotherapy/page/2/.

Truth, Quotes, History, Idea

“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

“The aim of the Nazis was to enslave all the peoples, who were to be the mere instruments of the Germans, the Herrenfolk, the master class. To that we opposed the democratic ideal, whereby we saw the world as a community of nations, differing in their qualities but united in a comity of nations, like the citizens of a town, but recognizing each other's rights and uniting for common purposes.”

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

Speech in Chesterfield (13 June 1941), quoted in The Times (14 June 1941), p. 2.
1940s

People, World, Communication

“The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism' our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", (1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“There is a sort of waking nightmare that sets in sometimes when one has missed a sleep or two, a feeling that comes with extreme fatigue and a new sun, that the quality of the life around has changed. It is a fully articulate conviction that somehow the existence one is then leading is a branch shoot of life and is related to life only as a moving picture or a mirror — that the people, and streets, and houses are only projections from a very dim and chaotic past.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Lees of Happiness"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Life, People, Feeling, Sleep

“To understand society deeply is always to see the settled from the angle of the unsettled. The settled is the region or the moment where relationships become fixed and, through their fixity, take on a specious aura of necessity. The unsettled is the experience that discloses the perilous, uncertain, malleable quality of society. By seeing the settled unsettled or by looking toward the disturbances that take place in its vicinity, we begin to understand how the settled really works and what it really is.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 65

Understanding

“The new architecture considers not only space, but also time to be an architectural value. The unity of space and time will give architecture a new form of appearance, which is more complete. This is what is meant by 'active space'.... the dissimilar space-cells develop eccentrically from the center to the borders of the cube, thereby granting a new plastic quality to the dimensions of height, width, depth, and time.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from his unpublished writing, 'Fundamental principles', 1930; as cited in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 203
1926 – 1931

Appearance, Time

“On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, … all the faults and follies peculiar to it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

From 'Parerga and Paralipomena', Vol. 1, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, 'What A Man Represents', pp. 360
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Life, Wisdom, World, Fools

“For the intimate fusion of touch, temperature and sometimes also taste and smell sensations into a single unified total impression raises the question of whether we do not have here Gestalt qualities which are built up upon a foundation belonging to several sensory regions. As can easily be recognized, it is just as possible that a complex of, say, touch and temperature sensations should provide the foundation for a Gestalt quality as should a complex of sound sensations. Indeed no a priori objection can be raised even against the idea that there should exist sound-colour-Gestalten spanning the data of the senses of sound and vision as something like a bridge - even though we do not believe that we can detect anything of this sort in sensation.”

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) Austrian philosopher

Source: "On Gestalt Qualities," 1890, p. 97

Idea, Question, Sense

“Psychologically speaking, what such findings seem to mean is that an achievement is not only more frequently present in stories from more rapidly developing countries but when it is present, it is more apt to be “means” oriented rather than goal oriented. The achievement sequence more often dwells on obstacles to success and specific means of overcoming them, rather than on the goal itself, the desire for it, and the emotions surrounding attaining or failing to attain it. The adaptive quality of such a concern with means is obvious: a people who think in terms of ways of overcoming obstacles would seem more likely to find ways of overcoming them in fact.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 104-5

People, Way, Thinking, Success

“Care for the race, even if the individual must suffer — this must be the keynote of our future. This was the guiding principle which underlay all the discussions of the Second International Congress of Eugenics in 1921. Not quantity but quality must be the aim in the development of each nation, to make men fit to maintain their places in the struggle for existence. We must be concerned above all with racial values; every race must seek out and develop and improve its own racial characteristics. Racial consciousness is not pride of race, but proper respect for the Purity of race is today found in but one nation — the Scandinavian.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist

As quoted in "The World's Work: A History of Our Time" (1924) by Walter Hines Page and Arthur Wilson Page, p. 253; also in "Man Rises to Parnassus" (1928), p. 220

Men, Suffering, Future

“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, Happiness, World, Beauty

“Education is the principal tool of socio-economic development and unless all societies are provided with right type of education, adequate in quality and quantity, it will not be possible to tackle satisfactorily the problem of ignorance of health and poverty which afflicts the majority of human beings in the world.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Gopal Bhargava in: Child Labour http://books.google.co.in/books?id=6iYmX2k6G-MC&pg=PA96, Gyan Publishing House, 1 January 2003, P.96

Health, World, Education, Problem

“Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured.Tone value is primarily Weight, but in its extent and its boundaries, it is also Measure.Line, however, is solely Measure.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote from Klee's lecture 'On Modern Art', Kunstverein, Jena (26 January 1924), trans. Paul Findlay in Paul Klee: On Modern Art (London, 1948)
1921 - 1930

Color

“There is a lot of piety among us, but not enough spirituality. Piety consists in the performance of external devotional practices and is measured by one’s fidelity to these practices. Whether or not the faithful performance of these exercises of piety improves the quality of one’s Christian life is a question that is seldom asked. One is at times surprised that priests, sisters and lay people who are obviously pious are manifestly unfair in their dealings with other people. Some of them show so little of the compassion of Christ and are quite unwilling to forgive others.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Life, People, Faith, Exercises

Quotes about quality page 10

Quotes about quality
page 10