Quotes about quit
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“My dear mother was really narrow-minded! I remember when we first got to Miami & I was only six years old: It didn't seem to matter, after years & years of telling me not to, I was still doing it!--In fact, I'm still doing it now! So she came in & caught me playing with it again!I suppose she thought she was going to make me so ashamed I was going to do it anymore. So she brought in the whole family, if you can imagine!--And my governess whom I didn't even like anyhow, & my brother & sister, scolding me before all!She brought a washbasin, a little bowl & a know & and told me she was going to cut it off! Oh I was terrified! I was absolutely petrified! I almost never forgave my mother for that, threatening to cut it off & embarrassing me in front of the family! But that didn't stop me. It felt too good to quit! I just kept it up in secret, my terrible secret sin!”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

My Childhood Sex!—Doin' What Comes Naturally

Secret, Family, Imagination, Sister

“General systems theory deals with the most fundamental concepts and aspects of systems. Many theories dealing with more specific types of systems (e. g., dynamical systems, automata, control systems, game-theoretic systems, among many others) have been under development for quite some time. General systems theory is concerned with the basic issues common to all these specialized treatments. Also, for truly complex phenomena, such as those found predominantly in the social and biological sciences, the specialized descriptions used in classical theories (which are based on special mathematical structures such as differential or difference equations, numerical or abstract algebras, etc.) do not adequately and properly represent the actual events. Either because of this inadequate match between the events and types of descriptions available or because of the pure lack of knowledge, for many truly complex problems one can give only the most general statements, which are qualitative and too often even only verbal. General systems theory is aimed at providing a description and explanation for such complex phenomena.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic and Y. Takahare (1975) General Systems Theory, Mathematical foundations. Academic Press. Cited in: Franz Pichler, Roberto Moreno Diaz (1993. Computer Aided Systems Theory. p. 134

Game, Mathematics, Knowledge, Problem

“Despite these shortcomings, the insights into the organization of grammar that were achieved in Cartesian linguistics remain quite impressive, and a careful study of this work can hardly fail to prove rewarding to a linguist who approaches it without prejudice or preconceptions as to the a priori limitations on permitted linguistic investigation.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"Description and explanation in linguistics"
Quotes 2000s, 2007-09, (3rd ed., 2009)

Study

“Due to the nature of my profession, I’ve been around death quite a lot, and while I’m not exactly on a first-name basis with the Reaper, we’ve exchanged business cards enough times to give each other a friendly nod when we pass by on the job.”

Eric Garcia (1972) An amazing author who has written several wonderful books!

Source: The Repossession Mambo (2009), Chapter 5 (p. 80)

Death, Business, Nature, Time

“Nothing is so difficult to change as the traditional habits of a free people in regard to such things. Such changes may be easily made in despotic countries like Russia, or in countries where notwithstanding theoretical freedom the government and the police are all powerful as in France… Can you expect that the people of the United Kingdom will cast aside all the names of space and weight and capacity which they learnt from their infancy and all of a sudden adopt an unmeaning jargon of barbarous words representing ideas and things new to their minds. It seems to me to be a dream of pedantic theorists… I see no use however in attempting to Frenchify the English nation, and you may be quite sure that the English nation will not consent to be Frenchified. There are many conceited men who think that they have given an unanswerable argument in favour of any measure they may propose by merely saying that it has been adopted by the French. I own that I am not of that school, and I think the French have much to gain by imitating us than we have to gain by imitating them. The fact is there are a certain set of very vain men like Ewart and Cobden who not finding in things as they are here, the prominence of position to which they aspire, think that they gain a step by oversetting any of our arrangements great or small and by holding up some foreign country as an object of imitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Thomas Milner Gibson (5 May 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 507.
1860s

Men, People, School, Dreams

“I wonder [interviewer: I hear him saying quite soon] or that line [in the picture he is just working on] doesn't repeat itself. It's more or less the same, isn't it? on both sides, don't you think so? [(interviewer) 'Maybe it is!' - I dare to say; there is no escape; I have to give advice] (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

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

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Ik vraag me [af] - klinkt het al gauw, of die lijn zich niet wat repeteert [in het schilderij waaraan hij werkt].. .Het is zoo'n beetje hetzelfde, hè? aan alle bei de kanten, vindt-je niet? [interviewer: 'Misschien wel! ' waag ik te zeggen. Er is geen ontkomen aan; ik moet advies geven] Quote of W. Roelofs, 1880's; recorded by an unknown interviewer, published in Elsevier's geïllustreerd maandschrift: verzameling van.., Oct. Nov. 1891; as cited in an excerpt in the RKD Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/220, The Hague 1880's

Thinking

“Quite all right, sir. Plenty of time. You have a sleep, sir.’
Hood turned over with his fat bottom towards Nabby Adams. Thank God. Nabby Adams tiptoed over again to the serving-hatch, ordered another, downed it. He began to feel a great deal better. After yet another he felt better still. Poor old Robin Hood wasn’t such a bad type. Stupid, didn’t know a gear-box from a spare tyre, but he meant well. The world generally looked better. The sun shone, the palms shook in the faint breeze, a really lovely Malay girl passed by the window. Proud of carriage, in tight baju and rich sarong, she balanced voluptuous haunches. Her blue-black hair had some sort of a flower in it; how delicate the warm brown of her flat flower-like face.
‘What time is it, Nabby?’….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Love, God, Stupidity, World

“A certain ounce of arrogance is not essential in carrying forward an idea. In talking about the device with others, surprising now number of people who either were quite negative and had reasons to suggest it would not function as described or claimed that it would be of little interest and no better than some already existing device.”

Willard Boyle (1924–2011) Canadian physicist and inventor

Willard S. Boyle and George Elwood Smith describing The Inception of Charge-Coupled Devices, edited by [Frederick Su, Technology of our times: people and innovation in optics and optoelectronics, SPIE Press, 1990, 0819404721, 91]

People, Idea

“We need a barrier behind which, in the years to come, our people can work in security to rebuild its ruins. That barrier is the Rhine. I must take national feelings into account. That does not mean that I am afraid of losing office. I am quite indifferent on that point. But I will not, by giving up the occupation, do something which will break the willpower of our people.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Speech at the Paris Peace Conference (June 1919), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 352.
Prime Minister

People, Feeling, Indifference

“But if the same tests, the same foods are examined by an independent scientist, then it turns out that in almost every case there are quite serious harms done to the rats, the mice or the other poor unfortunate animals, particularly internal organs like liver and kidneys and things of that sort.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Jane Goodall Godall Says Animals Suffer From Genetically Modified Foods http://www.marketwatch.com/story/goodall-says-animals-suffer-from-genetically-modified-foods-2015-04-28?siteid=yhoof2 (2015-04-28)

Food, Animals

“I find it quite difficult to watch the film once it is done, because in your head or imagination it is totally different. In the beginning it is quite hard, and I don't mean hard as in a negative or a positive. It is difficult to see the film being edited and see the real images for the first time coming out of your head and onto the screen. Sometimes you are surprised that he left something in and he took something out. The director is the creator; he's the captain of the ship when it comes to the creative journey of the film, along of course with the producer. So when you start out acting you have to find a way to understand and to deal with that. But as I say I don't mean it as a negative or a positive.”

Marwan Kenzari (1983) Dutch Tunesian actor

Fight Cub: Marwan Kenzari and Nasrdin Dchar Talk Wolf http://thequietus.com/articles/16646-wolf-kenzari-dchar-interview (November 8th, 2014)

Way, Imagination, Understanding, Time

“For different reasons, and also out of apprehension, people visit in large numbers (the mazars or shrines) of Shah Madar, Khwaja Muin-ud-din, Salar, Sarur Sultan and Pir Ganun (Pir Pabu?) etc. They go for ziyarat (visit to sacred tombs) and perform tawaf (circumbulation) which are bid‘at. Orders were issued to stop these practices…Also, the Hindus, and quite often the Musalmans also, flock at (the shrines of) Devi for worship and that of Pir Pabu. The Emperor ordered that this should be stopped. It was also ordered that the Hindus must not crowd at these places, and worship of Shitla wherever it is performed, should be held at a distance (from the habitation).”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Siyaha Waqai Darbar, Julus (R.Yr.) 10, Rabi II, 17 / 26th September 1667.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1660s

People

“I find it insufferable too the way people spread word about the latest novelties and make a fuss over them. I am charmed by the man who remains unaware of such fashions until they have become quite an old story to everyone else.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

78
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

People, Way, Fashion

“We must first of all, however, definitely understand, in reference to the end we have in view, that it is not the concern of philosophy to produce religion in any individual. Its existence is, on the contrary, presupposed as forming what is fundamental in every one. So far as man s essential nature is concerned, nothing new is to be introduced into him. To try to do this would be as absurd as to give a dog printed writings to chew, under the idea that in this way you could put mind into it. It may happen that religion is awakened in the heart by means of philosophical knowledge, but it is not necessarily so. It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify, and quite as little is it necessary for it to make good its claims by showing in any particular case that it must produce religious feeling in the individual.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Translated from the 2d German ed. by E.B. Speirs, and J. Burdon Sanderson: the translation edited by E.B. Speirs. Published 1895 p. 4
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1 (1827)

Religion, Dogs, Way, Feeling

“I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:
"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!
Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Darkwater http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm (1920), Ch. II: The Souls of White Folk

Religion, Way, Understanding, Passion

“Lor bless ye, yes! These critters ain't like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right. Now, they say," said Haley, assuming a candid and confidential air, "that this kind o' trade is hardening to the feelings; but I never found it so. Fact is, I never could do things up the way some fellers manage the business. I've seen 'em as would pull a woman's child out of her arms, and set him up to sell, and she screechin' like mad all the time; — very bad policy — damages the article — makes 'em quite unfit for service sometimes. I knew a real handsome gal once, in Orleans, as was entirely ruined by this sort o' handling. The fellow that was trading for her didn't want her baby; and she was one of your real high sort, when her blood was up. I tell you, she squeezed up her child in her arms, and talked, and went on real awful. It kinder makes my blood run cold to think of 't; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up, she jest went ravin' mad, and died in a week. Clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, just for want of management, — there's where 't is. It's always best to do the humane thing, sir; that's been my experience.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his arm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a second Wilberforce.
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1 In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

Way, Feeling, Business, Thinking

“The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people … have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

“The Last Ten Years,” Political Register (4 January 1812).

People

“They call me mellow yellow
(Quite rightly)
They call me mellow yellow…”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Mellow Yellow (1966)

“When I was a student in the 1950s, I read Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty. When you feel an overwhelming influence, you try to open a window. Paradoxically enough, Heidegger is not very difficult for a Frenchman to understand. When every word is an enigma, you are in a not-too-bad position to understand Heidegger. Being and Time is difficult, but the more recent works are clearer. Nietzsche was a revelation to me. I felt that there was someone quite different from what I had been taught. I read him with a great passion and broke with my life, left my job in the asylum, left France: I had the feeling I had been trapped. Through Nietzsche, I had become a stranger to all that.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (25 October 1982)

Life, Feeling, Understanding, Passion

“Quite in vain did several lawyers point out to him that, if justice really existed, there would be no need for law and lawmakers, and thus one of mankind’s noblest conceptions would be obliterated, and an entire occupational group would be thrown out of work. For it is the essence of the law, they told him, that abuses and outrages should exist, since these discrepancies served as proof and validation of the necessity of law, and of justice itself.”

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 6 (pp. 28-29)

Justice, Law

“It is quite likely that the modern contrivances for making Sunday-schools amusing have given them a distaste for the more solemn services of the sanctuary. If so, the amusement is a sin. The schools should feed the church. Children ought to be led by one into the other, exposed to the preaching of the gospel, taught the ways of God's house, and brought up under its influence, with all its hallowed and elevating influences.”

Samuel I. Prime (1812–1885) American clergyman, traveler, and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 572.

God, Children, School, Way

“At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Quoted in Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food (New York: Norton & Company, 2009, ISBN 978-0-393-06595-4), p. 137 https://books.google.it/books?id=vqucAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137 Attributed

Pain, World, Way, Support

“The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favour.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Spirit of Obligations"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Pleasure, Personality

“Quite possibly this aesthetic contemplation coincides with religious feeling or with the uplift of the religious spirit, since in a work of art it is the deepest inwardness that expresses itself. It is necessary however, to bear in mind the essential distinction that the contemplation or uplift in art – i. e., the experience of pure art – contains nothing dreamy or vague. It is exactly the contrary; true artistic experience is altogether real and conscious”

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

Quote from 'Grundbegriffe der neuen Gestaltenden Kunst', essay by Van Doesburg (published between 1921-23 in De Stijl) - last Chapter; as quoted in 'Fifty Years of Accomplishment, From Kandinsky to Jackson Pollock', by Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co. 1964, p. 86
1920 – 1926

Art, Feeling

“The chief characteristic of the pin-hole photograph is that we get a general suppression of focus in all parts the picture is nowhere quite sharp.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 60

Parting

“I’m quite certain that we’ll have such [lunar] bases in our lifetime, somewhat like the Antarctic stations and similar scientific outposts, continually manned.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

BBC interview (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtdcdxvNI1o

“Once is the kind of film I've been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn't quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/once-2007 of Once (24 December 2007) Reviews, Four star reviews

People

“We’re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody’s afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Way

“From early on, my father talked to me like an adult. One of the earliest things he did was teach me the Latin names of the parts of the body. He was very analytic. We had no money, but intellectual curiosity was encouraged, and my parents constantly talked with each other. This develops the brain. I remember listening and thinking, listening to voices talking, talking, talking. … My father died of cancer but lived long enough to see me famous, though not long enough to read my book fully. If he were alive I wouldn't be quite so outrageous, speaking about my sex life, for instance. I don't believe in embarrassing my family.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Life, Money, Books, Family

“Naturally, grown-up citizens are concerned about the beatniks and delinquents. … The question is why the grownups do not, more soberly, draw the same conclusions as the youth. Or, since no doubt many people are quite clear about the connection that the structure of society that has becoming increasingly dominant in our country is disastrous to the growth of excellence and manliness, why don’t more people speak up and say so?”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. x.

People, Youth, Question, Nature

“Finally we should note the basic assumption of the classical laboratory-namely, that nature is neither capricious nor secretive. If nature were capricious, she would tell one observer one thing and another observer a quite different thing… Also nature is not secretive, in the sense that she will not forever hide certain aspects of her being…”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 57; as cited in: Carolyn Merchant (1982) "Isis' Consciousness Raised", in: Isis, Vol. 73, No. 3. (1982), pp. 398-409

Secret, Nature, Sense

“My mother cannot learn to have any reliance upon my financial judgment or promises. It's partly, I suppose, because she still thinks of me as a child…She even hesitates to let me have the responsibility of bringing up butter from the spring(house), for fear I won't do it quite right!…This unaccountable daughter who roams the world, borrowing money here and getting shot at there…is a pride, in a way, but a ceaseless apprehension, too.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Letter to Guy Moyston, (July 18, 1925).

Money, World, Fear, Way

“The biological organism and the social persona are profoundly different social constructions. The different systems of social practices, including discourse practices, through which these two notions are constituted, have their meanings, and are made use of, are radically incommensurable. The biological notion of a human organism as an identifiable individual unit of analysis depends on the specific scientific practices we use to construct the identity, the boundedness, the integrity, and the continuity across interactions of this unit. The criteria we use to do so: DNA signatures, neural micro-anatomy, organism-environment boundaries, internal physiological interdependence of subsystems, external physical probes of identification at distinct moments of physical time -- all depend on social practices and discourses profoundly different from those in terms of which we define the social person.
The social-biographical person is also an individual insofar as we construct its identity, boundedness, integrity, and continuity. But the social practices and discourses we deploy in these constructions are quite different. We define the social person in terms of social interactions, social roles, socially and culturally meaningful behavior patterns. We construct from these notions of the personal identity of an individual the separateness and independence of that individual from the social environment with which it transacts, the internal unity or integrity of the individual as a consistent persona, and the continuity of that persona across social interactions.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 68

Behavior, Time, Dependency, Personality

“After a death, you eat and drink and remember the good things and try to laugh again. Grief profits no one, least of all the departed, who are quit of it for ever.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Niccoló Tolentino in Ch. 1
Masterclass (1988)

Death, Drink

“It would have amused you to see our progress. We went up by Sion Hill, and returned across the fields. In climbing a hill Mrs. Chamberlayne is very capital; I could with difficulty keep pace with her, yet would not flinch for the world. On plain ground I was quite her equal. And so we posted away under a fine hot sun, she without any parasol or any shade to her hat, stopping for nothing, and crossing the churchyard at Weston with as much expedition as if we were afraid of being buried alive.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1801-05-21) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

World, Sun

“The scientists and technologists must keep in mind social welfare. Education thus should develop the totality of the child. Indian education is lacking in the following major drawbacks.
(1) Indian education has been like stagnant water for quite some time.
(2)Indian education ignores new ideas and fresh thinking in educational matters.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Philosophy of Education, p. 86.

Education, Idea, Thinking, Water

“I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never [p. 65] speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never to speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary. I mean the evacuation out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program - elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be [p. 66] written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if - with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

The Posen speech to SS officers (4 October 1943), original translation from "International Military Trials - Nurnberg Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV", US Govt Printing Offc 1946 pp. 563-4.

War, Secret, Way, History

“The proletariat must seize state power in order to destroy the existing bourgeois state apparatus and, in a first phase, replace it with a quite different, proletarian, state apparatus, then in later phases set in motion a radical process, that of the destruction of the state.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 95

“I was very much aware that we still had to get safely back down the mountain again and that was quite an important factor. I really felt the most excitement when we finally got to the bottom of the mountain again and it was all behind us.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

Sir Edmund Hillary : King Of The World

Mountain

“I, for instance, am a jackass, and this anguishes me quite a bit, or at least it would if I were not so fond of being a jackass, which has long been a hobby of mine.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

True/Slant, "The Weekly Standard, Ethan Epstein, and Jesus" http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/07/18/the-weekly-standard-ethan-epstein-and-jesus/, 18 July 2010.

“I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock.”

Dee Dee Ramone (1951–2002) German-American songwriter and musician

QuoteHD, Rap Quotes (2001) http://www.quotehd.com/quotes/words/Rap

Time

“Oh, it was a real shock when we saw the Creature. And you can see from the pictures in the book that I look a little awestruck, kind of taken aback when I saw it at first. I thought it was quite wonderful, extraordinary, and a little scary which of course is exactly what is was supposed to be.”

Julie Adams (1926–2019) American actress

WAMG Interview: Julie Adams – Star of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON https://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2012/03/wamg-interview-julie-adams-star-of-creature-from-the-black-lagoon/ (March 19, 2012)

Books

“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against the Protestant ascendancy […] articles attacking birth control, divorce, mixed marriages, Darwin and secular education were her favourite reading. The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others […] The extermination of Protestantism, rather than spiritual perfection, was the boon she prayed for.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

Source: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), Ch. 1

Marriage, War, Education, Feeling

“…we were brainwashed into believing… that the only important thing was individualism. They called it freedom. There is no such thing as freedom. There is something called liberty; it's quite different. …read [Guido de] Ruggiero's History of European Liberalism… Freedom is freedom from restraints. We're always under restraints.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

History, Freedom, Reading

“Charles coloured, from “a complication of disorders.” First he was quite shy enough to be annoyed at its being supposed that he cared whether there were any young ladies in the world or not; and, secondly, he was quite romantic enough to be shocked at the idea of money supplying the want of a pretty face.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Money, World, Idea

““Any chance you own a hijab?”
The answer was no, but Malika could borrow one. Come to that, she could steal one freshly washed off the wall behind her house and claim a sudden, God-inspired attack of modesty if she got caught. The old crows were quite stupid enough to believe that.”

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (1953) British writer

Source: Stamping Butterflies (2004), Chapter 53 (p. 323)

God, Stupidity, Chance, Housing

“Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown
An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The Courtin' .
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

“That [her lessons with Kandinsky] was a new artistic experience; Kandinsky was quite unlike the other teachers, and explained things thoroughly and penetratingly and regarded me as a human being with conscious aspirations, capable of setting myself targets to aim for. It was new to me and impressed me.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 121
undated quotes

Teachers

“I do not care a button about having my name in any blessed place. I was never ardent about fame even in my political days; I preferred to remain behind the curtain, push people without their knowing it and get things done. It was the confounded British Government that spoiled my game by prosecuting me and forcing me to be publicly known and a 'leader'. Then, again, I don't believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom' and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere… or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the 'religions' and is the reason of their failure. If I tolerate a little writing about myself, it is only to have a sufficient counter-weight in that amorphous chaos, the public mind, to balance the hostility that is always aroused by the presence of a new dynamic Truth in this world of ignorance. But the utility ends there and too much advertisement would defeat that object. I am perfectly 'rational', I assure you, in my methods and I do not proceed merely on any personal dislike of fame. If and so far as publicity serves the Truth, I am quite ready to tolerate it; but I do not find publicity for its own sake desirable.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

October 2, 1934
India's Rebirth

Hostility, People, Truth, Books

“The study of such words as work, labour, trade, employ, occupy, play, leisure, time, hours, means, self-respect, in all their derivatives and compounds in sociologically significant contexts during the last twenty years would be quite enlightening. So would the study of words particularly associated with the dress, occupations, and ambitions of women, or the language of advertising, especially of quackery, entertainments, food, drink, or of political movements and propaganda.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

1957, p. 13
"The Technique of Semantics." 1935

Women, Food, Drink, Study

“If I were to be asked what two of the root principles are which we should always keep in view in trying to decide on a political issue, in judging of legislation, in judging of political action, I think I should say common sense and the preservation of what always has been the most precious thing in this country—individual freedom. If you apply these tests, you will seldom go far wrong. There are many people to-day who think you can cure the ills of the world by legislation: but you must examine the legislation they propose to see whether it is adapted to the practical experience of daily life, whether the freedom of the individual is affected by it. And if you cannot be satisfied on those points, you may be quite sure that that legislation in the long run will do more harm than it will do good.”

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

Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 18-19.
1926

Life, People, World, Thinking

“Only a few years ago one could observe, at least among German psychologists, a quite pessimistic mood. After the initial successes of experimental psychology in its early stages, it seemed to become clearer and clearer that it would remain impossible for experimental method to press on beyond the psychology of perception and memory to such vital problems as those with which psychoanalysis was concerned. Weighty 'philosophical' and 'methodological' considerations seemed to make such an undertaking a priori impossible.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. v.

Mood, Problem, Memory, Success

“There is a programming smell here… which is kind of like the smell in your refrigerator, you know. There's a sign that there's something wrong, but you can't quite put your finger on it. But you know if you leave it there, its only going to get worse.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

Geek Noise (2004)

“The Churches as Churches—as institutions affirming their own infallibility—are anti-Christian institutions. Between the Churches as such and Christianity, not only is there nothing in common except the name, but they are two quite opposite and opposing principles. The one represents pride, violence, self-assertion, immobility and death: the other humility, penitence, meekness, progress, and life.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

Life, Death

“It is only in one respect that the Quran revealed by Tengiri might have differed from the Quran revealed by Allah. It seems that, quite unlike Allah, Tengiri was not intolerant towards revelations other than his own.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

“Our car was an Oldsmobile, delivered to our home by Mr. Olds himself. I recall how our family went out to the street curb to look at it. Mr. Olds worked quite a while cranking it, muttering something about each car having an individuality of its own. But after we began to make motors for him, father took the individuality out of them. After our own little Oldsmobile was properly equipped, it acted in quite an exemplary fashion.”

Henry M. Leland (1843–1932) American businessman

Source: Master of Precision: Henry M. Leland, 1966, p. 65. About the Leland family buying their first automobile around 1901

Family, Cars, Home, Fashion

“Yet the powers that be haven't quite considered the strength of our sheer numbers.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

“(Eating meat) is really on the same moral level as child abuse. It’s the same thing. Animals are like children, they look to us for protection. We should protect them. I really feel quite smug about mad cow disease and foot and mouth and so forth, and I just think ‘Well, what do you expect? People have been saying it for years.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2003)
In interviews etc., About vegetarianism and animals

Children, People, Disease, Feeling

“The outstanding feature of behavior is that it is often quite easy to recognize but extremely difficult or impossible to describe with precision.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, "An Essay on Mind". Reprinted in Toward Definition of Mind (Jordan Ma Scher, editor). Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1962. p. 92
1960s

Behavior

“I did, and still do, think that New Classical Economics has quite a bit in common with the Austrians (so did Robert Lucas, and I am surprised to find that I did not refer to this in the early 1980s, so I was either careless or did not know about it until a bit later).”

David Laidler (1938) Canadian economist

"The 1974 Hayek–Myrdal Nobel Prize", in Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part 1 Influences from Mises to Bartley edited by Robert Leeson (2013)

Thinking

“I myself have travelled west as far as K'ung-t'ung, north past Cho-lu, east to the sea, and in the south I have sailed the Yellow and Huai Rivers. The elders and old men of these various lands frequently pointed out to me the places where the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun had lived, and in these places the manners and customs seemed quite different. In general those of their accounts which do not differ from the ancient texts seem to be near to the truth.”

Sima Qian book Records of the Grand Historian

translation by Burton Watson I once traveled west to Mount K’ung-t'ung and passed Cho-lu [Mountain] in the north; to the east I drifted along the coast, and to the south I floated over the Huai River and the Chiang. Wherever I went, all of the village elders would point out for me sites of The Huang-ti, Yao and Shun. The traditions were certainly very different from each other. In sum, [those accounts of the elders] which were not far from the ancient-text versions [of the classics], tend to be plausible. translated by Tsai-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and Robert Reynolds, in The Grand Scribe’s Records, edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr. 五帝本紀 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7001 Records of the Grand Historian

Men, Truth, Travel, Past

“I am not going to enter into this chapter, but you all know that this which is called—I do not much like the name, but I confess I have not a better name—"State Socialism" is what has protected us from revolutionary socialism, which is much a worse thing. Probably a considerable portion of this audience consists of men who live on weekly wages; but I ask you not to rush at the first thing that is offered you, not to believe that because a thing sounds very pleasant—like compulsory reduction, for example, of the hours of labour—do not be quite sure until you have looked round it that it may not end in leaving your condition worse than it found it. I should deplore the advance of State Socialism, though I believe much may be hoped from it. I should regard it as a great disaster, the greatest disaster that could befall this great population, if it did anything to take away your self-reliance, the control of the individual over his own appetites and passions, his own idleness and self-indulgence, and make you look to anything but self-reliance. This, in the long run, would do more harm than good.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech at Rochdale town hall (23 April 1890), quoted in 'Mr. Morley At Rochdale', The Times (24 April 1890), p. 6.

Men, Hope, Passion

“It is impossible to look into the Bible with the most ordinary attention without feeling that we have got into a moral atmosphere quite different from that which we breathe in the world, and in the world's literature.”

Thomas Erskine (1788–1870) Scottish theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 32.

World, Feeling, Literature

“I felt within me a boundless wealth of this almost mystic love, and a belief that this earthly chrysalis would come forth in another world a butterfly, which, detached from all earthly conditions would soar from planet to planet, till it became united to the spirit of All-Life. For the first time the thought crossed my mind that Aniela and I may pass away as bodies, but our love will survive and even be our immortality. "Who knows," I thought, "whether this be not the only existing form of immortality?" — because I felt distinctly that there is something everlasting in my feeling, quite distinct from the ever changing phenomena of life.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

15 July
Without Dogma (1891)

Love, Life, World, Feeling

“The Samaritans (whose beginnings were pre-Josianic) have a Pentateuch quite similar to the familiar Jewish Pentateuch. …our Pentateuchal text was fairly well established before the rift between the Samaritans and Judeans.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible

“The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. IV, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

Star, Light, Appearance, Change

“If for example I had some idea, which as it turned out would be quite wrong, was going off of the tangent, Watson would tell me in no uncertain terms this was nonsense, and vice-versa. If he would have some idea I didn't like, and I would say so, this would shake his thinking about, and draw him back again. And in fact it is one of the requirements for collaborations of this sort, is you must be perfectly candid, one might almost say rude, to the person you're working with. It's useless working with somebody who is either much too junior than yourself or much too senior because then politeness creeps in. And this is the end of all real collaboration in science”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

giggles
The Prizewinners (11 December 1962, BBC)

Idea, Thinking, Science, Drawing

“The understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations of the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young, middle class, white women. When I entered my first women's studies class at Stanford University in the early 1970s, white women were revelling in the joy of being together-to them it was an important, momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not been together, where women had not helped, protected, and loved one another deeply. I had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness (Southern white women often have a more realistic perspective on racism and classism than white women in other areas of the United States.) I did not feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experiences of black women. Despite my background (living in racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives of white women, and certainly no white women lived in our neighborhood, attended our schools, or worked in our homes When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude towards me and other non-white participants. The condescension they directed at black women was one of the means they employed to remind us that the women's movement was "theirs"-that we were able to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it; after all, we were needed to legitimate the process. They did not see us as equals. And though they expected us to provide first hand accounts of black experience, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences were authentic. Frequently, college-educated black women (even those from poor and working class backgrounds) were dismissed as mere imitators. Our presence in movement activities did not count, as white women were convinced that "real" blackness meant speaking the patois of poor black people, being uneducated, streetwise, and a variety of other stereotypes. If we dared to criticize the movement or to assume responsibility for reshaping feminist ideas and introducing new ideas, our voices were tuned out, dismissed, silenced. We could be heard only if our statements echoed the sentiments of the dominant discourse.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, pp. 11-12.

Love, Life, Women, People

““So as we’ve seen, not one faith has ever lived up to its promises. The world has never become a paradise, quite the opposite, in fact: think of the millions upon millions slaughtered, tortured, imprisoned for this great idea, this good news, this revolution. The visionary who works against human nature to impose his—or her—sweeping vision on the world is inevitably its worst enemy.
Now, who isn’t? Consider the work of certain individual mortals who set themselves simple tasks. They saw no need to raise armies; they saw no need for revolution or bloodshed; they worked instead for realistic goals with the tools they had. And they succeeded, and their works have been of lasting benefit to humanity.” He erased the board with relish and chalked a new set of names:.
“People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will.””

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 47)

People, World, Faith, Idea

“Weisinger, a couple of years ago, made up the following story: "Isaac Asimov was asked how Superman could fly faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be an absolute limit. To this Asimov replied, 'That the speed of light is a limit is a theory; that Superman can travel faster than light is a fact.'"
I assure you it never happened and I never said it, but it will be repeated, I am quite certain, indefinitely, and it will probably be found in Bartlett's quotations a century from now, attributed to me, after all my writings have been forgotten.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Science Fiction, 1938" Nebula Winners 14 (1980) edited by Frederick J. Pohl, p. 97
General sources

Travel, Light, Speed, Flying

“John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre – a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.”

John Osborne (1929–1994) English playwright

Kenneth Tynan, Tynan Right and Left (1967) p. 13
Criticism

Confidence, Self-confidence, Anger

“They [Mondrian's friends in Paris, Tonia and Wim Stieltjes] are receptive to the new, although they do not know what it is. Thus I do occasionally feel that my effort has not been in vain. They find the idea of the N. B. [= Dutch: nl:Nieuwe Beelding / Neo Plasticism] sound and quite magnificent, but think that it will be quite a long time before people are ready for it.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In a letter to Theo van Doesburg, Paris 1920; as quoted in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 17
1920's

People, Feeling, Idea, Thinking

“Literary taste is often confounded with literary talent by others, quite as much as by ourselves.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

“…I don't feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all. There are many things to object to in any society. But take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable. […] There are even better examples than China. But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act? Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al. http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm" in New York, December 15, 1967; Republished at chomsky.info, accessed May 23, 2014. Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1960s

Feeling, Communication, Understanding, Thinking

“[Have you ever visited the factory farms? ] Well, I have seen them. I've seen the chicken ones, which are quite horrifying. And I have put my head in others. But the whole thing nauseates me more than I can tell you. To see meat produced in that way made it impossible for me to eat meat.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Interview with Rynn Berry

Way

“And when the devil hath seen that they have set so little by him, after certain essays, made in such times as he thought most fitting, he hath given that temptation quite over. And this he doth not only because the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked, but also lest, with much tempting the man to the sin to which he could not in conclusion bring him, he should much increase his merit.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation (1553), Book Two, Section XVI

Time

“The Roman came into the Promised Land that had become less and less as promised. The rich got along quite well with the foreign occupation; it provided protection from desperate peasants and patriotic resistance fighters. It provided protection from prophets who could be labeled "agitators" now, without any qualms.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 121

“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter IX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

Pleasure, Youth, Girl, Freedom

“Playing around is one thing; following an established regimen is quite another. It's true with exercise equipment and it is true with prayer.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Exercises

“I never feel quite complete unless I'm doing all the arts-visual, musical, literary.”

Dick Higgins (1938–1998) English composer and poet

The Ruud Jansson Mail Interview 1995

Art, Music, Feeling

“Look, I am Vice President of the United States of America. The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

In response to the question, "You're comfortable with same-sex marriage now?" Meet the Press (May 6, 2012)
2010s

Women, Men

“Today there really aren't that many Fundamentalists left; I don't know if you know that or not, but they are such a minority; there aren't that many Fundamentalists left in America. … Now the word "fundamentalist" actually comes from a document in the 1920s called the Five Fundamentals of the Faith. And it is a very legalistic, narrow view of Christianity, and when I say there are very few fundamentalists, I mean in the sense that they are all actually called fundamentalist churches, and those would be quite small. There are no large ones.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

As quoted in Myths of the Modern Megachurch at The Pew Forum on Religion (23 May 2005) http://pewforum.org/Christian/Evangelical-Protestant-Churches/Myths-of-the-Modern-Megachurch.aspx

Faith, Sense

“I read with great interest all that you have written me about what is called Colonialism, namely: bringing forward backward races and opening up the jungles. I was brought up to feel proud of much that we had done. Certainly in India, with all its history, religion and ancient forms of despotic rule, Britain has a story to tell which will look quite well against the background of the coming hundred years. … I am sceptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to President Eisenhower (8 August 1954), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 1040-1041. Cf. Lord Salisbury: "You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots".
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Religion, Feeling, Democracy, History

“The Wild Hunt is known in all Celtic countries; it is a huntsman with a pack of hounds who is seen or heard to rush through the country. Those who see him are doomed to die. The writer heard the Wild Hunt quite distinctly one night in Wales several years ago, but has not suffered any ill effects from it as yet.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Ghost Stories (1942).

Suffering, Night, Country

“The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state…The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"…take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive…The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"…Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea…I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech the Hampshire Monday Club in Southampton (9 April 1976), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 165-166
1970s

Lie, Disappointment, Democracy, Imagination

“Those responsible for marketing had to sell, not a product, but the idea that their firm was able to produce what the customer required. The product was developed after the order had been secured, the design being, in many cases, modified to suit the requirements of the customer. In mass production firms, the sequence is quite different: product development came first, then production, and finally marketing.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 23

Idea

“The Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and frankly, I would never want to see that repeated, maybe the IRS is not quite as bad — yet. … They're headed in that direction.”

Paul LePage (1948) American businessman, Republican Party politician, and the 74th Governor of Maine

As quoted by Seven Days. http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012/07/maine-gov-paul-lepage-doubles-down-on-gestapo-comment-after-brock-fundraiser.html (July 12, 2012)

“I've come out here tonight to challenge you… challenge you, the WWE Universe, into seeing things my way and to learn how to just say "no." See, because the people who cheer for Jeff Hardy are just slaves to the vices associated with his (with quote fingers) "living in the moment." I feel bad for you, I really do. You walk around almost blind and you wear your prescriptions proudly on your sleeves like they were badges of honor. What was it the doctor told you? 'Just take one… every four hours,' right? Aside from myself, there's not a person in this arena who hasn't abused prescription medication or taken a recreational drug. And I know, trust me, it's hard being straight-edge, it's hard to live a straight-edge lifestyle. It's extremely difficult to be me, but what concerns me now is that none of you realize how much more difficult it is to live the life… that you all live. I'm positive nobody in here takes into account the long-term consequences of alcohol on your liver. (Smattering of cheers from audience) See, and you cheer that. That's nothing to cheer. You drink because it's fun, right? (Audience cheers a little louder) Eventually, it's not gonna be fun anymore when it spirals out of control and its no longer… it's no longer fun. Sooner or later, you're just drinking to feel normal. And then there's the smokers. You know, I don't know what's more disgusting–is watching a smoker pollute his/her lungs with over 4,000 foreign chemicals, or having to listen to the smoker convince themselves that they can quit whenever they want to. It's… it's hard to quit, I know, it takes a very strong person to quit, but an even stronger person never would've started smoking in the first place. (Audience boos and chants "Hardy") I didn't want to come out here and be the bearer of bad news, but let's face facts: chances are pretty slim that any of you here will ever get the monkey off your back. You'll never be able to pry the cigarette from your lips, or find the self-control to pour your drink from your glass, or the self-respect to take the pill out of your mouth. See, it starts, and it can't happen without learning how to say "no" to temptation, and that's why I'm out here. I'm out here to challenge you before it's too late. Please, learn how to say "no" to temptation, learn how to say "no" to your vices, learn how to control yourself.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

July 24, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, Way

“The new curate seemed quite a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed, tucked carelessly into his socks, when he sat down.”

Barbara Pym book Some Tame Gazelle

Some Tame Gazelle (1950), chapter 1, opening sentence

“I do not suggest to you, Comrades, that in staying you put up with the suffering and the situation that you're not satisfied with. Quite the contrary. You must change the situation together with all other progressive people here in Serbia and Yugoslavia.… We in Serbia and everybody else in Yugoslavia will strive to change the situation.”

Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006) Yugoslavian and Serbian politician

Kosovo Polje Speech (24 April 1987)

People, Suffering, Change

“I volunteered for a number of reasons. One of these, quite frankly, was that I thought this was a chance for immortality. Pioneering in space was something I would willingly give my life for.”

Scott Carpenter (1925–2013) American test pilot, astronaut and aquanaut

Statement in We Seven (1962)

Life, Chance

“The task of making more exact a vague or not quite exact concept used in everyday life or in an earlier stage of scientific or logical development, or rather of replacing it by a newly constructed, more exact concept, belongs among the most important tasks of logical analysis and logical construction. We call this the task of explicating, or of giving an explication for the earlier concept; this earlier concept, or sometimes the term used for it, is called the explicandum; and the new concept, or its term, is called an explicatum of the old one.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Meaning And Necessity (1947), p. 7-8 as cited in: Erich Reck (2011) " Carnapian Explication: A Case Study and Critique http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~reck/Reck-C'ian%20Explic.%20(3rd.%20rev.).pdf"

Life

“I don't really agree that most academics frown when they hear Wikipedia. Most academics I find quite passionate about the concept of Wikipedia and like it quite a bit. […] The number of academics who really really don't like Wikipedia is really quite small and we find that they get reported on in the media far out of proportion to the amount they actually exist.”

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

Wikimania 2008 Alexandria, press conference, 0'14 (August 2008)

Passion

“So with 'is 'ead down in a corner,
On 'is front paws 'e started to walk,
And 'e coughed and 'e sneezed and 'e gargled,
Till Albert shot out like a cork.

Old Wallace felt better direc'ly,
And 'is figure once more became lean,
But the only difference with Albert
Was 'is face and 'is 'ands were quite clean.”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"The Return of Albert", line 21.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

“Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it…
Ken Livingstone: Oh, how awful for you.
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
Livingstone: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
Finegold: No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal.
Livingstone: Ah … right.
Finegold: I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
Livingstone: Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?
Finegold: Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go?
Livingstone: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags.
Finegold: "How did tonight go?"
Livingstone: It's reactionary bigots…
Finegold: I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job.
Livingstone: … and who supported fascism.
Finegold: I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that isn't…
Finegold: I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: … that had a record of supporting fascism.
Finegold: You've accused me…”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Exchange with Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (8 February 2005). These remarks led to an official investigation into Livingstone's conduct. Transcript from Guardian Unlimited http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/story/0,,1717652,00.html

War, Support

“Critics frequently cry 'Dada' after attending one of my concerts or hearing one of my lectures. Others bemoan my interest in w:Zen. One of the liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and Dada. It is possible to make a connection between the two, but neither Dada nor Zen is a fixed tangible. They change; and in quite different ways in different places and times, they invigorate action. What was Dada in the 1920's is now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art. What I do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement with Zen... I doubt whether I would have done what I have done... I often point out that Dada nowadays has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formerly lacked. What nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote in 'Silence: lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, x/SILENCE
1960s

School, Art, Way, Change

“Quite often the young person is horrified at innocent animals being driven to the slaughterhouse to satisfy the appetites of the human species which could easily feed itself in other ways.”

Jean Mayer (1920–1993) French-American scientist, university administrator

"Introductory Remarks on Vegetarianism", in Vegetarianism and the Jewish Tradition by Louis A. Berman (KTAV Publishing House, 1982), p. xx https://books.google.it/books?id=AIvnwmu5DlUC&pg=PR20.

Way, Animals, Personality