Quotes about quit
page 22

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Kate Bush photo
Daniel Handler photo

“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

Jennifer Beals photo
John Hirasaki photo

“… 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]

Sylvia Plath photo
Hannu Salama photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Basshunter photo
E. B. White photo

“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)

Henry Taylor photo

“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)

S.L.A. Marshall photo
Peter Cook photo
Yuvan Shankar Raja photo
Hans von Seeckt photo
Jeremiah Denton photo
Douglas Den Uyl photo
Henry Miller photo
Dave Attell photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Henry Adams photo
John Galsworthy photo
Daniela Sea photo
Reese Palley photo
Vincent Gallo photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Eliphas Levi photo
Harbhajan Singh photo

“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.

Marshall McLuhan photo

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

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Page 62
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

Eric Maskin photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Rose McGowan photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
George Horne photo
Stanley Hauerwas photo
Georg Brandes photo

“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

J.B. Priestley photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
David Oistrakh photo
Noel Gallagher photo
William James photo
Franz Kafka photo
Edmund Burke photo

“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

Elaine Paige photo
Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“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

Bill Bryson photo
Kalle Päätalo photo
Peter Kropotkin photo
Jello Biafra photo
Gustave Courbet photo

“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

Edward St. Aubyn photo
Thich Nhat Tu photo
José Guilherme Merquior photo
Joyce Carol Oates photo
Louis van Gaal photo

“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

Edvard Munch photo
Dylan Moran photo
Václav Havel photo
Anthony Daniels photo
Morrissey photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“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>

Norbert Wiener photo
Mark Heard photo

“"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."”

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

Peter Matthiessen photo
Jane Roberts photo
Lal Bahadur Shastri photo
Alan Guth photo
William Morris photo
Bill Clinton photo
David Lloyd George photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
John Donne photo
George Trumbull Ladd photo

“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

Tony Benn photo

“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

Ron White photo

“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

Tigran Petrosian photo

“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

John Holloway photo
Jimmy Wales photo

“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,