Quotes about quit
page 22

“SPAN ID=In_the_case> In the case of drama (stage, movies, television ), there appear to be people in almost every audience who never quite fully realize that a play is a set of fictional, symbolic representations. An actor is one who symbolizes other people, real or imagined. […] Also some years ago it was reported that when Edward G. Robinson, who used to play gangster roles with extraordinary vividness, visited Chicago, local hoodlums would telephone him at his hotel to pay their professional respects.

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Pitfalls of Drama, pp. 27-28

People, Imagination, Appearance

“There was a story that some EMI execs had come down to see you and you'd said something like: "Here's what I've been working on," and then produced some cakes from your oven. True?
"No! I don't know where that came from. I thought that was quite funny actually. It presents me as this homely creature, which is all right, isn't it?"”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

MOJO interview (2005)

Home

“Of course, it is quite possible to be in the dark in the dark, but there are so many secrets in the world that it is likely that you are always in the dark about one thing or another, whether you are in the dark in the dark or in the dark not in the dark, although the sun can go down so quickly that you may be in the in the dark about being in the dark, only to look around and find yourself no longer in the dark about being in the dark, but in the dark in the dark nontheless, not only because of the dark, but because of the ballerinas in the dark, who are not in the dark about the dark, but also not in the dark about the locked cabinet, and you may be in the dark about the ballerinas digging up the locked cabinet in the dark, even though you are no longer in the dark about being in the dark, and so you are in fact in the dark about being in the dark, even though you are not in the dark about being in the dark, and so you may fall into the hole that the ballerinas have dug, which is dark, in the dark, and in the park.”

Daniel Handler book The End

Source: The End (2006), Chapter 9

Secret, World, Sun

“I was asked by thousands of people if I was going to write a book. A lot of them had shared in my story, and in ways I don't quite understand, they had found it helpful.”

Lauren Manning (1961) American banker

Survivor Lauren Manning finds 'new normal' after 9/11 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2011-08-29/Survivor-Lauren-Manning-finds-new-normal-after-911/50182388/1, USA Today, 29 August 2011

People, Books, Way, Understanding

“[Regarding Flashdance-related fame] It was very clear to me that it’s not real. It’s not real…I was never the little girl who thought I wanted to be famous. My first real quest that I can recall…other than wanting to be a jockey…was trying to figure out who or what God was. That really drove me for quite some time…I had a notion that there was this mystery that I didn’t really know anything about, and I wanted to try to figure it out…. so fame was not my driving force.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview with Jian Gomeshi, CBC Radio Q (16 February 2011) http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/QTV_on_bol...2/ID=1886977325/

God, Girl, Time

“One restless dawn, unable to suppress the itch
of wanderlust, with a heavy door left ajar
semi-deliberately, and a new light teasing in Some piece of immobility will finally quit
suddenly nimble on wooden limbs
as fast as a horse, fleeing the stable.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

"Dawning" online at Poet's Encyclopedia http://www.poetsencyclopedia.com/lababidi.shtml

Light, Horse

“… essentially, NASA was quite colorblind. If you could do the job, that was what mattered.”

John Hirasaki (1941) NASA engineer

[NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Edited Oral History Transcript:John K. Hirasaki, https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/HirasakiJK/HirasakiJK_3-6-09.htm, June 2, 2018, March 6, 2009, nasa.gov]

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch.7

Life, Happiness, Children, Home

“Despite the fact that it is quite obvious, EU leaders do not want to admit that they will lose to America and China, superpowers with strong economies in the West and the East, if they do not come together with, or, at least, improve relations with Russia.”

Hannu Salama (1936) Finnish writer

Strong

“When people say it's a funny thing about them, you will probably be able to control your hysterics. They are only getting ready to announce the shattering fact that they don't like something. And it's not going to be something that's really quite awful, like suttee or apartheid; it's going to be something small.”

Peg Bracken (1918–2007) American writer

I Didn't Come Here to Argue (1969), "It's a Funny Thing About Me, but Not Very," page 51.

People

“I hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Interview (April 1935) in The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, No. 8 (1936), as quoted at "A Shavian and a Theologian" at World Islamic Mission http://www.wimnet.org/articles/shaviantheo.htm Disputed

People, Hell, Understanding

“I don't want to change my music, but I like to play around with my style of music. I've always been a big fan of guitars. The beats are still quite hard and the riffs are still Basshunter, but I wanted to do something special. The lyrics are from a true story as well. It's based on me dating a girl who I thought was the one, but it didn't work out. I woke up one morning and she was doing something in the kitchen and then came through with a cup of coffee for me. I just went, 'Wow! I have to write a song now!”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

Bass Generation

Music, Girl, Coffee, Change

“The future, wave or no wave, seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.”

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

A review of The Wave of the Future by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Harpers Magazine (December 1940)
One Man's Meat (1942)

Dreams, Future

“The craving for office with which statesmen are so often reproached is, perhaps, in the more active of them, quite as much a craving for business as for emolument or power; and their unseasonable love of business grows out of their forfeiture of the love of leisure. Rarely as well as fortunately endowed by nature is that man who can love one or the other according to his occasions.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 33. p. 254

Love, Business, Nature

“Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle-cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy. Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.
We should not, therefore, confuse India's Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.
Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?
One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

Books, School, Family, Faith

“The familiar and always popular warnings against the dangers of a growth of militarism among our people are raised anew by leaders who never having served in their country's uniform, are loath to recognize that those who do so may have a devotion to the nation's welfare and a love of its free institutions quite equal to their own.”

S.L.A. Marshall (1900–1977) United States Army general and Military historian

The Aggressive Will. p. 167.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)

Love, People, Country

“Well, it's always very difficult to say what prompts anybody to do anything, let alone getting underwater and teaching ravens to fly. But I think it probably all dates back to a very early age, when I was quite a young fellow. My mother, Lady Beryl Streeb-Greebling, you know, the wonderful dancer — 107 tomorrow and still dancing — she came up to me in the conservatory — I was pruning some walnuts — and she said "Arthur" — I wasn't Sir Arthur in those days — she said "Arthur, if you don't get underwater and start teaching ravens to fly, I'll smash your stupid face off," and I think it was this that sort of first started my interest in the whole business of getting them underwater.”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

"Ravens" (1965)
Not Only... But Also (1965 - 1970)

Age, Stupidity, Business, Thinking

“Life’s been quite a journey. My career has been slow, yet steady. I like it that way. I never wished for overnight success. Neither did I want to rush through my career and suffer a burn-out.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Life, Way, Suffering, Success

“You recently mentioned a speech of [Chancellor] Hertling to the students. Quite nice, but the one in the Herrenhaus [House of Lords] is very, very bad. This is the worst we have ever heard. So the dynasty is in danger if we do not introduce the idiotic equal franchise, against better conviction? And no Prussian gives him a reply? That is worse than the whole Bethmann and much worse than anything that happens or can happen at the front.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to Mrs Seeckt (9 September 1918), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 105-106.

Housing

“We have been in a process of attaining a great degree of luxury, degrees of luxury which distract us… and we are consumed with such matters as wrap-around octophonic sound in our automobiles and so forth, we are becoming quite sophisticated with respect to non-necessities. This has happened to nations in the past, and it is my belief that man can cope with adversity, and that his most difficult problem, is coping with prosperity.”

Jeremiah Denton (1924–2014) American Vietnam War POW and politician

Jeremiah http://www.pbs.org/video/alabama-public-television-documentaries-jeremiah/ (2015) 44:22.

Problem, Past

“Roark, … like Socrates before him, appears quite willing to martyr himself. … The leading characters in Atlas Shrugged, however, have chosen voluntary exile—reminiscent of Aristotle’s response to Athens when he was charged with the same “crimes” as Socrates.”

Douglas Den Uyl (1950) American philosopher

Douglas J. Den Uyl, The Fountainhead: An American Novel (New York: 1999), p. 106

Appearance

“Wagner wrote an opera titled Tristan and Yseult and in it there is a theme called Love Death theme. It is so sensual, so sexual that he was criticized for having introduced sex into music. And that was quite a few years before the appearance of Elvis Presley!”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Love, Death, Music, Sex

“I'm drinking Jack and I started blacking out. You ever black out? Or as I call it, time travel? You ever do that? Oh yeah! You know how it is -- you're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're in another bar. You're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're playing that knife game with a half-Indian somewhere in North Dakota, "Yeah! Yeah! Winner fixes the tranny! Yeah". You're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're in White Castle -- working there 3 years, STILL not assistant manager. Your buddies tell you to quit, but you can't 'cause you're banging the slow girl on the fry-o-later. They say she's a little retarded, but those titties ain't retarded!”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Travel, Girl, Game, Drink

““And do not think,” Manisfree said, “that we absolve ourselves from blame in this situation. Although we teachers purport to know more than other men, we have usually chosen to remain aloof from public life. Practical, hardheaded men of the world have always frightened us; and those men, in their hardheaded way, have brought us to this.”
“Nor is aloofness our only failure,” said Hanley of Anthropology. “Let me point out that we have taught—badly! Our few promising students became teachers, thus insulating themselves as we had. The rest of our students sat through the sleep-provoking drone of our lectures, eager only to depart and take their places in a mad world. We did not touch them, Joenes, we did not move them, and we did not teach them to think.”
“In fact,” said Blake of Physics, “we did quite the contrary. We managed to equip most of our students with a definite hatred of thinking. They learned to view culture with the greatest suspicion, to ignore ethics, and to consider the sciences solely as a means of making money. This was our responsibility and our failure. The outcome of that failure is the world.””

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 9 “The Need for the Utopia” (p. 74)

Life, Men, Money, World

“The superiority of the woman was not a fancy but a fact. Man's business was to fight, or hunt, or feast or make love. The man was also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy; supplied the intelligence and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy was secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her most intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the woman was robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatly resent being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her, dragged her about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but he was quite conscious that she always got even with him in the end. As a matter of fact, probably she got more than even. On this point, history, legend, poetry, romance, and especially the popular Fabliaux,— invented to amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class,— are all agreed, and one could give scores of volumes illustrating it.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, Men, Children, Making love

“I paused, watching the swallows; for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure curvetting, all daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate poise and motion of Art, that visits no two men alike, in a world where no two things of all the things there be, are quite the same.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

Men, World, Art

“The meat industry doesn’t want you to think about all the animals they are torturing and killing. And they definitely don’t want you to think about all the diseases related to eating meat. Their only concern is making a profit. A long time ago I made a decision to quit eating meat and dairy products. Animals are not ours to torture and dominate. If I was to eat factory farm meat or dairy products I would be taking part in the torturing and killing of animals. There’s just no way! Animals are my friends, so why would I want to hurt them?”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Daniela Sea Vegan PSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc5mEqa6ar0", video for PETA (3 February 2009).

Disease, Way, Thinking, Decision

“On land, companionship is thrust upon us, forcing us to be social long after we have had our fill of society. It is little wonder that we become cynics and come to hate our neighbors. And that is too bad, for beyond the companionship of our neighbors, and for some lucky few, the companionship of their God, we are quite alone in the universe. Only by seeking separation from the human herd can you become lovingly close to it. Just one more gift of paradox of which the sea is blessedly rich.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

“Unlikely Passages” 1984

God, Hate, Universe, Sea

“I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

Pain, Feeling, Idea

“The determination of strategy also requires consideration of what alternative is preferred by the chief executive and perhaps by his immediate associates as well, quite apart from economic considerations. Personal values, aspirations, and ideals do, and in our judgement quite properly should, influence the final choice of purposes. Thus, what the executives of the company want to do must be brought into the strategic decision.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Source: Quote, The Concept of Strategy, 1971, p. 30

Decision, Personality

“Shouldness is being flouted here,” said Launcelot. “Shouldness is perhaps self-explanatory, but I have never seen it adequately dealt with, either in print or in the lecture hall. When that huntress got me in the bum with an arrow, it was an offense to shouldness. It shouldn’t have gone that way. I told the story to Sir Roger, and now he never tires of telling it, tells it to everyone who comes down the pike. That a knight of the Round Table could be pierced in that way by a female has a significance quite apart from the ludicrous. It’s in the realm of those things which should not happen—a category which holds much philosophical interest, as anyone who has ever looked into anomaletics will recognize. The insult to my dignity was not nearly so grave as the insult to shouldness.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

Source: The King (1990), p. 106.

Way

“Progress is a possibility for the animal: it can be broken in, tamed and trained; but it is not a possibility for the fool, because the fool thinks he has nothing to learn. It is his place to dictate to others and put them right, and so it is impossible to reason with him. He will laugh you to scorn in saying that what he does not understand is not a meaningful proposition. 'Why don't I understand it, then?', he asks you, with marvellous impudence. To tell him it is because he is a fool would only be taken as an insult, so there is nothing you can say in reply. Everybody else sees it quite clearly, but he will never realize it.

Here then, at the outset, is a potent secret which is inaccessible to the majority of people; a secret which they will never guess and which it would be useless to tell them: the secret of their own stupidity.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter XII: The Terrible Secret
The Great Secret: or Occultism Unveiled

People, Secret, Stupidity, Fools

“Interviewer: You and Australia have had quite a relationship over the years. This will be your first trip there in eight years.
Singh: There are lots of memories, and they are all quite fresh. Good and bad. I will start with the good. Winning the Perth Test was probably the key point of my Test career, even though I didn’t play that match. But in the context of the series, we fought really hard and won a match in which Australia were favourites. And of course winning the CB series by beating Australia was very satisfying. It is like winning a mini World Cup. The bad memories include the Sydney spat, of course. It should have been handled better. It should have been stopped. Whatever happened there didn’t help anyone, neither Australian cricket nor us. We (Andrew Symonds & I) should have just sat like two mature people and spoken about it and sorted it.
Interviewer: This realisation that you should stop rushing through things has come about recently?
Singh: It’s not that I have just started doing this now. I have been told by a lot of my senior bowlers, “Take your time. Don’t rush.” Maybe I was not getting the idea sometimes. That was missing in between. Sometimes I was heeding to that advice, sometimes I was not. Then you make mistakes. Then you come back to the same thing, “Ok, take your time, boss. Relax.” It’s been there, but lately it’s come to the fore more because I have become calmer.
Interviewer: When you see guys like Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan, who came into international cricket after you, retire, what kind of effect does it have on you?
Singh: That was up to them. They know what’s going on with their body and mind. They need to plan their lives. Their decision should not put anyone else under pressure. Till I’m playing with my full energy, I will continue to play. Aisa toh nahi ho sakta bhai ki ek ka raasta doosre ke liye theek hai. I am enjoying what I’m doing.”

Harbhajan Singh (1980) Indian cricketer

Interview with Indian Express http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/i-always-say-i-am-the-best-harbhajan-singh/, January 25, 2016.

People, World, Guy, Idea

“Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the “content,” which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming.”

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

Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 267

Books

“There is nothing quite so terrifying as a mad sheep.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Page 62
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

Madness

“That strategic rivalry in a long-term relationship may differ from that of a one-shot game is by now quite a familiar idea. Repeated play allows players to respond to each other’s actions, and so each player must consider the reactions of his opponents in making his decision. The fear of retaliation may thus lead to outcomes that otherwise would not occur. The most dramatic expression of this phenomenon is the celebrated "Folk Theorem." An outcome that Pareto dominates the minimax point is called individually rational. The Folk Theorem asserts that any individually rational outcome can arise as a in infinitely repeated games with sufficiently little discounting.”

Eric Maskin (1950) American Nobel laureate in economics

and Eric Maskin. " The folk theorem in repeated games with discounting or with incomplete information http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~parkes/cs286r/spring06/papers/fudmaskin_folk86.pdf." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1986): p. 533; Lead paragraph.

Fear, Game, Idea, Decision

“Aristotle’s view that philosophy begins with wonder, not as in our day with doubt, is a positive point of departure for philosophy. Indeed, the world will no doubt learn that it does not do to begin with the negative, and the reason for success up to the present is that philosophers have never quite surrendered to the negative and thus have never earnestly done what they have said. They merely flirt with doubt.”

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

Journals and Papers III 3284 (1841)
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

World, Departure, Learning, Success

“It’s quite simple, all who have worked with known predators should do 3 simple things. 1) Believe survivors 2) Apologize for putting your careers and wallets before what was right. 3) Grab a spine and denounce. If you do not do these things you are still moral cowards.”

Rose McGowan (1973) American actress

16 November 2017 https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/931338274542460928

“Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal.”

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

1890s

Religion, Way, Thinking, Horse

“And for us in this country to think of having, for example, a dictatorship—a popular form of government in many countries to-day—would, on our part, be an act of consummate cowardice, an act of surrender, of throwing in our hands, a confession that we were unable to govern ourselves…In this country we do not want what I call the "get-rich-quick" mind. Speed and efficiency are very good things, and they are, perhaps, the idols of this generation. But they do not necessarily go together. Acceleration, as I have often said, is not a synonym for civilisation. It is quite true the State coach of this country may be going through heavy ground, the wheels may be creaking; but are you quite sure that the wheels of the State coach are not creaking to-day in Moscow, in Berlin, in Vienna? Are you quite certain that they are not creaking even in the United States of America?”

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

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 21.
1934

Thinking, Parting, Speed, Country

“Avoid stories, unless short, pointed, and quite apropos. “He who deals in them,” says Swift, “must either have a very large stock, or a good memory, or must often change his company.” Some have a set of them hung together like onions: they take possession of the conversation by an early introduction of one; and then you must have the whole rope, and there is an end of everything else, perhaps, for that meeting, though you may have heard all twenty times before.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, 1880

Memory, Change, Time

“Ralph Wood argues quite persuasively that the Christian vision of the world is fundamentally comic. Drawing on the insights of Karl Löwith, Wood observes that because Christians do not, as the ancients did, regard the universe as eternal or divine but as created, comedy is made possible by the acknowledgment of the sheer contingency of all that is.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

Source: The Work of Theology (2015), p. 217 http://books.google.com/books?id=lY1yCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT217

World, Universe, Drawing

“Young girls sometimes make use of the expression: “Reading books to read one’s self.” They prefer a book that presents some resemblance to their own circumstances and experiences. It is true that we can never understand except through ourselves. Yet, when we want to understand a book, it should not be our aim to discover ourselves in that book, but to grasp clearly the meaning which its author has sought to convey through the characters presented in it. We reach through the book to the soul that created it. And when we have learned as much as this of the author, we often wish to read more of his works. We suspect that there is some connection running through the different things he has written and by reading his works consecutively we arrive at a better understanding of him and them. Take, for instance, Henrik Ibsen’s tragedy, “Ghosts.” This earnest and profound play was at first almost unanimously denounced as an immoral publication. Ibsen’s next work, “An Enemy of the People,” describes, as is well known the ill-treatment received by a doctor in a little seaside town when he points out the fact that the baths for which the town is noted are contaminated. The town does not want such a report spread; it is not willing to incur the necessary expensive reparation, but elects instead to abuse the doctor, treating him as if he and not the water were the contaminating element. The play was an answer to the reception given to “Ghosts,” and when we perceive this fact we read it in a new light. We ought, then, preferably to read so as to comprehend the connection between and author’s books. We ought to read, too, so as to grasp the connection between an author’s own books and those of other writers who have influenced him, or on whom he himself exerts an influence. Pause a moment over “An Enemy of the People,” and recollect the stress laid in that play upon the majority who as the majority are almost always in the wrong, against the emancipated individual, in the right; recollect the concluding reply about that strength that comes from standing alone. If the reader, struck by the force and singularity of these thoughts, were to trace whether they had previously been enunciated in Scandinavian books, he would find them expressed with quite fundamental energy throughout the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, and he would discern a connection between Norwegian and Danish literature, and observe how an influence from one country was asserting itself in the other. Thus, by careful reading, we reach through a book to the man behind it, to the great intellectual cohesion in which he stands, and to the influence which he in his turn exerts.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: On Reading: An Essay (1906), pp. 40-43

People, Books, Soul, Girl

“Shaw presumes that his friend Stalin has everything under control. Well, Stalin may have made special arrangements to see that Shaw comes to no harm, but the rest of us in Western Europe do not feel quite so sure of our fate, especially those of us who do not share Shaw's curious admiration for dictators.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

J. B. Priestley, "The War - And After", in Horizon magazine (January 1940), reprinted in War Decade : An Anthology of the 1940s (1989) by Andrew Sinclair

Fate, Feeling

“But I wasn’t quite sure how to spell ‘ Cartaud, and I found listings for Cartau, Cartaud, Cartault, Cartaux, Carteau, Carteaud, Carteaux”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

34
Out Of The Dark (1995)

“It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he saw the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Love, Men, Soul

“The confusion of spirit and body is quite understandable in a culture where spirit is concretized in magnificent skyscrapers, where cathedrals have become museums for tourists, where woman-flesh-devil are associated, and nature is raped for any deplorable excuse. […] Dieting with fierce will-power is the masculine route; dieting with love of her own nature is the feminine. Her only real hope is to care for her own body and experience it as the vessel through which her Self may be born.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980), p. 100

Love, Hope, Understanding, Nature

“The point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness. I am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he is constant in his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The fact is it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face, and it would be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal with a second. He stands in far too much dread of the whole female sex to want to go gadding about with many of them. One is quite enough for him.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Faith, Sex, Courage

“Slavery exists in full vigor, but we do not perceive it, just as in Europe at the end of the Eighteenth Century the slavery of serfdom was not perceived.

People of that day thought that the position of men obliged to till the land for their lords, and to obey them, was a natural, inevitable, economic condition of life, and they did not call it slavery.

It is the same among us: people of our day consider the position of the laborer to be a natural, inevitable economic condition, and they do not call it slavery. And as, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, the people of Europe began little by little to understand that what formerly seemed a natural and inevitable form of economic life-namely, the position of peasants who were completely in the power of their lords-was wrong, unjust and immoral, and demanded alteration, so now people today are beginning to understand that the position of hired workmen, and of the working classes in general, which formerly seemed quite right and quite normal, is not what it should be, and demands alteration.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Slavery of Our Times

Source: The Slavery of Our Times (1890), Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us

Life, Men, People, Understanding

“When I think of myself in those years, it seems to me that I was playing quite freely and fluently, tonally pure. But there is still have many years of hard work over the sound, rhythm and dynamics. Of course, most importantly, a deep comprehension of the inner content.”

David Oistrakh (1908–1974) Soviet violinist

oistrakh.ru Biography of David Oistrakh http://www.oistrakh.ru/en/david_oistrakh/biography/.

Thinking

“She's got a sister / God only knows how I missed her / And on the palm of her hand is a blister
She's got a brother / We don't get on with one another / But I quite fancy her mother / And I think that she likes me
She's got one in the oven / But it's nothing to do with me”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

She's Electric
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

God, Thinking, Sister

“One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”

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

Lectures XVI and XVII, "Mysticism"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life, Truth, Lie, Question

“This question of yours, Sir, about my being a house painter — or rather, not a question, you simply made a statement — is typical of the whole character of this trial that is being foisted on me. You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such. But for the moment I do recognize it, on grounds of compassion, as it were. One can't regard it except with compassion, if one is to regard it at all. I do not say that your procedure is contemptible, but I should like to present that epithet to you for your private consumption.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Josef K. in Ch. 2
Variant translation: Your question, Mr. Examining Magistrate, as to whether I am a house-painter — although you did not ask a question at all, you made a statement — typifies exactly the kind of proceedings that are being instituted against me.
The Trial (1920)

Question, Housing

“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election http://books.google.com/books?id=DAAUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA435&dq=%22we+are+generally+cold,+and+languid,+and+sluggish%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D4TSUuXqDYrekQe6uoH4Cw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22we%20are%20generally%20cold%2C%20and%20languid%2C%20and%20sluggish%22&f=false (6 September 1780) 1780s

Passion

“It was terribly difficult. It's not something I ever wanted in my life. Naively I just thought, 'oh I've got this great part'. I never thought about the reality of all the stuff that went with it. I'm actually quite a shy person when I'm not on stage.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

Regarding Paige's fame after Evita
Rock and pop (2006)

Life, Reality, Parting, Personality

“We are not so naive as some think of us; we do not believe that a neutral base will turn men into angels; we know quite well that the people who are evil will still be evil; but we believe that communication and relationships based on a neutral base will at least do away with the great mass of brutality and crimes which are caused not by ill will, but simply by mutual misunderstandings and impositions.”

Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof (1859–1917) Polish ophthalmologist and inventor of Esperanto

Address http://reto.cn/biblioteko/movado/zamenhof/paroladoj/uk2.htm to the Second World Congress of Esperanto, Geneve, Switzerland. 27 August 1906.

Men, People, Angels, Communication

“Breaking into a country signals quite reliably a willingness to break yet more of the invaded country’s laws.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Joe Horn: Wanted Man…And a Hero,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=237 WorldNetDaily.com, July 4, 2008. 2000s, 2008

Law, Country

“Use cases, scenarios or scripts are roughly synonymous terms for important ways to focus our design activities. I prefer the term use case (although quickly saying it three times can leave your tongue tied) because it emphasizes usage. A use case is a textual description of a sequence of interactions between an actor (roughly corresponding to an external agent or class of users) and the system we are designing. Use cases were first described by Ivar Jacobson in his book “Object Oriented Software Engineering A Use Case Driven Approach.”
Use cases have been around in various forms for quite some time. Jacobson, however, made the keen observation that use cases can be treated as refineable, extensible and even reusable specifications of system requirements. We’ve had these same goals for object designs. We know that it is harder to actually accomplish them than it is to talk about them.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

About What is a Use Case?
Designing scenarios: Making the case for a use case framework (1993)

Books, Way, Time

“It was impossible to determine what he was saying, but I imagined he was telling all those present that they were nongs and maggots. I decided I quite liked watching the news with the sound off.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

Imagination

“He pointed diagonally across the lake with a ski-pole, to where a broad slope of pine trees covered with frost shone golden in the sun.
"Do you know what those black lumps on the branches of that pine are?"
"Aren't they just heath-grouse? Kauko looked in the direction indicated by his brother's ski pole.
"Just heath-grouse!" Auku shouted. "Just heath-grouse! It's a wonder you didn't say just chickadees! You're some hunter, you are. Those are ptarmigan, genuine hook-beaked ptarmigan, and like damned blockheads, we have to be without a gun."
"You're starting to make a habit of cursing." Kauko was a little annoyed at the sharpness of his brother's eyes and was not quite willing to admit that he was right.
"The word 'damn' isn't cursing."
"What is it then? And there's no proof that those are ptarmigan." "Hmh!" Kauko heard a laugh behind him. "We'd be carrying a lot more rabbits and birds back to the house if I did the snaring. "You can't even get a permit to carry a gun yet," said Kauko.
"Who cares about permits? If I can't get a permit to carry a gun, then I'll drag it along behind me. Do you need a permit for that too?" "Don't be smart."”

Kalle Päätalo (1919–2000) Finnish novelist

Kalle Päätalo (1960), Our Daily Bread: A Novel, p. 67

Bird, Tree, Sun, Housing

“Has not experience demonstrated quite recently that Jack the Ripper performed his exploits under the eye of the London police — a most active force — and that he only left off killing when the population of Whitechapel itself began to give chase to him?
And in our every-day relations with our fellow-citizens, do you think that it is really judges, gaolers, and police that hinder anti-social acts from multiplying? The judge, ever ferocious, because he is a maniac of law, the accuser, the informer, the police spy, all those interlopers that live from hand to mouth around the Law Courts, do they not scatter demoralization far and wide into society? Read the trials, glance behind the scenes, push your analysis further than the exterior facade of law courts, and you will come out sickened.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Law, Thinking, Reading

“I am Emperor Ronald Reagan
Born again with fascist cravings
Still, you made me president

Human rights will soon go 'way
I am now your Shah today
Now I command all of you
Now you're going to pray in school
I'll make sure they're Christian too
…
You'll go quitely to boot camp
They'll shoot you dead, make you a man
Don't you worry, it's for a cause
Feeding global corporations' claws

Die on our brand new poison gas
El Salvador or Afghanistan
Making money for President Reagan
And all the friends of President Reagan”

Jello Biafra (1958) singer and activist

We've Got a Bigger Problem Now, In God We Trust, Inc. (1981).

Money, School, Way, Dead

“To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a manner quite different from that of everyday life — this, we have said, is the meaning of "festival." But no more intense harmony with the world can be thought of than that of "Praise of God," the worship of the Creator of this world. Now, as I have often experienced, this statement is often received with a mixture of discomfort and various other feelings, but its truth cannot be denied. The most festive festival that can be celebrated is religious worship or "cult," and there is no festival that does not get its life from such worship or does not actually derive its origin from this. There is no worship "without the gods," whether it be mardi gras or a wedding.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 50–51

Life, God, Truth, World

“At the conscious approach of death, faith in the Biblical Religion, with its God and Christ and written Revelation, never weakens, but almost or quite always strengthens, and very often advances to a splendid assurance; while unbelief under the same circumstances never strengthens, but almost or quite always weakens and falters, and very often fails utterly.”

Enoch Fitch Burr (1818–1907) American astronomer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Death, God, Faith, Religion

“When I got back to Ornans, I spent a few days hunting. I quite like the subject of violent exercise... It makes the most surprising painting you can imagine. There are thirty life-size figures in it. It is the moral and physical history of my studio”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from a letter of Courbet to Bruyas, (December 1854); as cited in 'Courbet Speaks', 'Courbet-dossier', Musée-dOrsay http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/courbet-dossier/courbet-speaks.html 1840s - 1850s

Life, Exercises, Imagination, History

“Quite recently, to his horror, he had realized he would have to get a job. He was therefore studying to become a barrister, in the hope that he would find some pleasure in keeping as many criminals as possible at large.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Some Hope, Chapter 1

Pleasure, Hope, Study

“Success: Pessimism and giving up are greatest weaknesses. Our failures are essential stepping stones to success. Motivate yourself and develop the will to win. Never quit halfway. The only way to excellent achievement is to try again and again with hope and confidence.”

Thich Nhat Tu (1969) Vietnamese philosopher

Engaged Buddhism, Social Change and World Peace (2014)

Hope, Way, Confidence, Motivation

“So at bottom Foucault's enterprise seems stuck on the horns of a huge epistemological dilemma: if it tells the truth, then all knowledge is suspect in its pretense of objectivity; but in that case, how can the theory itself vouch for its truth? It's like the famous paradox about the Cretean Liar--and Foucault seemed quite unable to get out of it”

José Guilherme Merquior book Foucault

which explains why he didn't even try to face it
Source: Foucault (1985), p. 147

Truth, Knowledge

“The spectacle of human beings fighting each other for whatever reason, including, at certain well-publicized times, staggering sums of money, is enormously disturbing because it violates a taboo of our civilization. Many men and women, however they steel themselves, cannot watch a boxing match because they cannot allow themselves to see what it is they are seeing. One thinks helplessly, This can’t be happening, even as, and usually quite routinely, it is happening. In this way boxing as a public spectacle is akin to pornography: in each case the spectator is made a voyeur, distanced, yet presumably intimately involved, in an event that is not supposed to happening as it is happening. The pornographic "drama," though as fraudulent as professional wrestling, makes a claim for being about something absolutely serious, if not humanly profound: it is not so much about itself as about the violation of a taboo. That the taboo is spiritual rather than physical, or sexual — that our most valuable human experience, love, is being is being desecrated, parodied, mocked — is surely at the core of our culture’s fascination with pornography.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

On Boxing (1987)

Love, Women, Men, Money

“He can be a charming man, but he can be quite nasty too. Because this is what he does.”

Louis van Gaal (1951) Dutch footballer and manager

About Marco van Basten after the fall-out with Mark van Bommel

“Life here [in Paris, 1885] is quite different. You hardly ever see a dog on a lead; you come across little wagons being pulled by dogs that are often so small that you can't imagine how on earth they manage to shift such enormous weights. You see shepherdesses in the middle of the street herding goats and sometimes playing on their flutes. I think I'll go to the Louvre and the Salon today.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

1880 - 1895

Life, Dogs, Imagination, Thinking

“A couple of days ago I saw one of those signs outside of churches and it said "Jesus said: I am the light of the world". Which is a very male view, you know, if Jesus had been Jesusina it would've been more modest. You know because it's a women, she would've been traditionally more modest. Jesusina would've gone: "Well I'm quite bright".”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On religion.
What It Is (2009)

Women, World, Light

“In late 1989, the profound transformation that took place in this country brought me here to Prague Castle. It all happened so suddenly that I did not even have time to properly consider whether or not I was up to the task, and I was sincerely of the opinion that I would just take it on for a few months until the first free elections.
Clearly, things turned out quite differently: I have now been here for more than thirteen years, if we discount the short break in the latter half of 1992.”

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

Farewell Address (2003)

Time, Sincerity, Country

“I’m actually quite tired because Threepio is an exhausting character — he’s always very tense, he’s always slightly on the edge of panic. That’s why he’s funny, because he’s always in the wrong place. I record each piece three times in a row, so the director can choose without interrupting too much.”

Anthony Daniels (1946) English actor

Anthony Daniels definitive 'Star Wars' interview http://ew.com/article/2014/09/16/star-wars-anthony-daniels-interview/ (September 16, 2014)

Time

“I was quite advanced when I was at school, and when I left school it seemed that all these really oafish clods from school were making tremendous progress and had wonderfully large cars and lots of money, and I seemed to be constantly waiting for a bus that never came.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "Oxford Road Show", BBC2 (March 1985)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Money, School, Cars, Waiting

“No one knows what eet is. They can't find anything. I run, I throw, I move eet hurts. Eet goes away and come back. Someday eet hurt... someday no. If eet doesn't cure, I quit baseball … No fool around.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente's Back May End Career" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/4648107/ by UPI, in The Gallup Independent (Friday, July 26, 1957), p. 5 Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>

Fools, Hurt

“Mathematics is too arduous and uninviting a field to appeal to those to whom it does not give great rewards. These rewards are of exactly the same character as those of the artist. To see a difficult uncompromising material take living shape and meaning is to be Pygmalion, whether the material is stone or hard, stonelike logic. To see meaning and understanding come where there has been no meaning and no understanding is to share the work of a demiurge. No amount of technical correctness and no amount of labour can replace this creative moment, whether in the life of a mathematician or of a painter or musician. Bound up with it is a judgement of values, quite parallel to the judgement of values that belongs to the painter or the musician. Neither the artist nor the mathematician may be able to tell you what constitutes the difference between a significant piece of work and an inflated trifle; but if he is not able to recognise this in his own heart, he is no artist and no mathematician.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1964)

Life, Mathematics, Understanding, Heart

“It is really a kind of a slap in [God's] face to refuse to use the abilities He gave us just because there is danger involved. Just because adultery exists is no reason to avoid marriage. Just because gluttony exists is no reason to quit eating. We shouldn't be anhedonics under the guise of spirituality. -Appalachian Melody.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

God, Marriage

“"General Meade has his son as adjutant." "That's different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield."”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Thomas Chamberlain and Joshua Chamberlain, Part I, CH 2: Chamberlain, p. 29
The Killer Angels (1974)

God

“When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions — such as merit, such as past, present, and future — our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment. We identify, label, and interpret our surroundings as abstract concepts, quite separate from another concept, which is our own separate identity and ego.”

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) American novelist

Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)

Life, Children, World, Beauty

“But I still couldn't quite believe in personal life after death. I preferred to think of our psychic experiences as emphasizing, instead, the unknown abilities of our present consciousness. "The Seth material could be coming from some deep inner source, an intuitive bank of inner knowledge available to everyone if they only look for it," I said.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 122

Life, Death, Knowledge, Thinking

“The emphasis on religion as a basis of defining majorities and minorities in a secular state is quite misplaced and contradiction in terms. You all understand, I am sure, that religion does not aim at dividing. On the other hand, all true religions have a basic unity.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

Religion, Understanding

“Inflation takes advantage of this possibility… to let gravity be the repulsive force that drove the universe into the period of expansion that we call the Big Bang. In fact, when one combines general relativity with conventional ideas, now, in particle physics there really is a pretty clear indication, I should say, not quite a prediction… that at very high energy densities one expects to find states of matter which literally turn gravity on its head and cause gravity to become repulsive.”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)

Idea, Universe

“The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let em sing of names rememberèd,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology

Memory, Singing, Time, Dead

“Nietzsche … did not settle for a demure civic conversation in the style of Richard Rorty's ironist, or saunter off with the smug nod that registers a deconstructive job neatly done. He was aware that his own criticisms and exposures owed both their motivation and their effect to the spirit of truthfulness. His aim was to see how far the values of truth could be revalued, how they might be understood in a perspective quite different from the Platonic and Christian metaphysics which had provided their principal source in the West up to now.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 18

Truth, Motivation

“There are clear, achievable, affordable responses to our challenges. But we won’t get to them if America makes the wrong choice in this election. That’s why you should elect her. And you should elect her because she’ll never quit when the going gets tough. She’ll never quit on you.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

“The currently (2010) widely accepted/believed description of the birth and evolution of the universe and of its contents is "Lambda Cold Dark Matter Concordance Cosmological Model" (LCDM CCM) … My own research was very much confined to the early version of the LCDM CCM (mid-1990's) when I began performing numerical experiments on the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. I was quite happy with the CCM, as everyone else, and did not bother with the fundamental issues raised by some. With time, however, it became apparent that the LCDM CCM accounts poorly for the properties of the satellite galaxies and their distribution about the Milky Way. Warm dark matter models fared no better.”

Pavel Kroupa (1963) Australian astrophysicist

Pavel Kroupa: Dark Matter, Cosmology and Progress website, July 4, 2010 http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pavel/kroupa_cosmology.html,

Happiness, Way, Birth, Universe

“I shall make it quite plain that if there is to be an enquiry, it will have to begin with Lord Salisbury's administration, or at any rate with Arthur Balfour's. … I don't defend the system, but I have done merely what other Prime Ministers have done, and I am going to make it clear that if I am going down, I am going to bring the temple down with me. I am not going to be sacrificed by people and the descendants of people who have been engaged in carrying on precisely the same system.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On his sale of honours, quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (8 July 1922), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 371.
Prime Minister

People

“What is the shortest way to travel from Rotterdam to Groningen, in general: from given city to given city. It is the algorithm for the shortest path, which I designed in about twenty minutes. One morning I was shopping in Amsterdam with my young fiancée, and tired, we sat down on the café terrace to drink a cup of coffee and I was just thinking about whether I could do this, and I then designed the algorithm for the shortest path. As I said, it was a twenty-minute invention. In fact, it was published in ’59, three years late. The publication is still readable, it is, in fact, quite nice. One of the reasons that it is so nice was that I designed it without pencil and paper. I learned later that one of the advantages of designing without pencil and paper is that you are almost forced to avoid all avoidable complexities. Eventually that algorithm became, to my great amazement, one of the cornerstones of my fame.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (2001), in an interview with Philip L. Frana. (OH 330; Communications of the ACM 53(8):41–47)
2000s

Way, Travel, Coffee, Drink

“Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the Sea,
For lovely and bright and gay tinted are we,
And quite independent of sun's fire or showers-
Then call us not weeds! We are ocean's bright flowers,
Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,
Where gales are but sighs of an evening air,
Our exquisite, fragile and delicate forms
Are nursed by the Ocean and rocked by the Storms.”

Petar Beron

Historia naturalis bulgarica 4: 10 - 15.

Love, Flowers, Sun, Summer

“And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit,
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

An Anatomy of the World, The First Anniversary

Men, World, Sun

“The teacher's equipment gives him an everlasting job. His work is never done. His getting ready for this work is never quite complete.”

George Trumbull Ladd (1842–1921) American psychologist, educator and philosopher

The Teacher's Practical Philosophy (1911), page 18

Teachers

“I’ve learnt a lot. But it’s kind of like a starving child in Africa who has been hunted by wild animals daily. It’s quite miserable, but you sort of learn survival skills that you can’t learn anywhere else. But would I want to return to such a scenario? No.”

Amos Yee (1998) blogger

Tumblr postings

Learning, Animals

“When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

On Independent Radio News (12 November 1976), quoted in The Times (13 November 1976), p. 2
1970s

Thinking

“This added the element of mystery that made the comparison inevitable: life is a thing that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay. Anything goes. Strange and unique things are being washed up all the time. I’m one of them and so are you. We spend some time on the beach, maybe side by side, and then that slopping, smelling, chilly thing rakes it with the liquid fingers of a crumbling hand and some of the things are gone again.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 1 (p. 6)

Life, Time

“She got convinced in her crazy head that I had sex with this girl in Columbus, Ohio…and I did, and I'll tell you why. When you enter into a monogamous relationship with somebody, you usually do it at a point in the relationship when you're having a lot of sex. So you're willing to sign the papers. "I'll only have sex with you, ever-ever-ever…ever." Well, if that person stops having sex altogether… why, you find yourself in quite a pickle. I'm a pretty good dog, but if you don't pet me every once in awhile, it's hard to keep me under the porch. I'm not as flexible as real dog. And I'll tell you what happened, too. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I haven't been laid in three months. Three months! You can't go three months without having sex with me. I'll go have sex with somebody else. I know, I've seen me do it. I did a show one night. I came offstage, there's gorgeous woman, maybe 35, 40 years old, long black dress, slit up to her waist, GORGEOUS. Gimme a second. Just…And I walk off stage, she goes, "I thought you were hilarious. I wanna buy you a drink." I'm like, "I can't do that, I'm married." And she says, "I didn't ask if you wanna have sex, big boy. I asked if you wanna have a drink at my place."…Alright. Now, you know of that little guy that sits on your shoulder and reminds you of your prior commitments and your moral fortitude? I didn't hear a peep out of that guy. He hadn't been laid in 3 months either. He was speechless for like 20 minutes then he was like, "Suck her titty!"…"I was gonna!" I was having a 3-way with my conscience. Soon as the whole thing's over, he's back at his post, saying, "That was wrong, mister!" "Hey! 15 minutes ago, you were beating off on my shoulder, monkey boy!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

I hate him. He smokes pot. He burned a hole in my other jacket.
They Call Me Tater Salad

Hate, Dogs, Sex, Way

“Some consider that when I play I am excessively cautious, but it seems to me that the question may be a different one. I try to avoid chance. Those who rely on chance should play cards or roulette. Chess is something quite different.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Question, Chance

“Prentice: My nerves are on edge.
Rance: You should consult a qualified psychiatrist.
Prentice: I am a qualified psychiatrist.
Rance: You're a fool. That isn't quite the same thing. Though, in your case, the two may have much in common.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act II

Fools

“Capital acquires a dynamic of its own and the leading members of society are quite simply its most loyal servants, its most servile courtiers.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

“Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

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

Source: The Encyclopedist’s Lair, The New York Times, November 18, 2007, 2007-11-19 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-domains-t.html?ex=1196139600&en=25f7b166ceba3519&ei=5070&emc=eta1,

People, Communication, Knowledge, Thinking

Quotes about quit page 22

Quotes about quit
page 22