Quotes about quit
page 35

“The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil. The "reasonable" people's failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naive lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has got out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world's unreasonableness, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party.
Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. Fanatics think that their single-minded principles qualify them to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull they rush at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; they exhaust themselves and are beaten. They get entangled in non-essentials and fall into the trap set by cleverer people.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Who Stands Fast?, p. 4

Life, People, World, Justice

“I've always been quite fair in complexion. If I wear green, it does not suit me. It's one of these things in life that I cannot explain. It just is.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: Brunello Cucinelli Says You Only Need One Item in Your Wardrobe to Be Stylish https://www.gq.com/story/brunello-cucinelli-pitti-uomo-interview-2016/amp JAKE WOOLF, GQ magazine, 18 January 2016

Life

“The Prescription: We must face our pain and conflict. Until we quit denying our failures and muffling our uneasiness, until we confess our bewilderment and alienation, we can't take the next and necessary steps. The political system needs to be transformed, not reformed.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

Pain, Failure

“The various branches of geometry are all interrelated closely and quite often unexpectedly. This shows up in many places in the book. Even so... it was necessary to make each chapter...self-contained... We hope that... we have rendered each chapter taken by itself... understandable and interesting. We want to take the reader on a leisurely walk... in the big garden that is geometry, so that each may pick for himself a bouquet to his liking.”

David Hilbert Geometry and the Imagination

Preface
Geometry and the Imagination (1952)

Books, Making love, Hope, Understanding

“In the Spring of 1926 I made some toy animals of curtain rods, broom handles, etc., and wire. Later, a few dolls, which I animated.... In the Winter of 1927–1928 I made some more toys for a friend to take home as gifts, and having shown them to De Creeft a Spanish sculptor with a very acute sense of humor, I was urged by him to make some more toys and to expose them at the Salon des Humoristes. I did this and then began to make more elaborate toys, with articulation, in which the movements got more and more realistic, always adhering to the same basic materials. In this way I have developed quite an elaborate circus of which animation is one of the chief characteristics....”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1920s, Excerpt, Statement on Wire Sculpture (1929)

Making love, Way, Home, Spring

“This is material that is quite formidable, that is infecting people with inhalation anthrax, infecting them in the absence of direct contact. You can call it whatever you want to call it with regard to grade and size or weaponized or not weaponized. The fact is, it is acting like a highly efficient bioterrorist agent.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Response to a 2001 anthrax attack, reported in Denise Grady, "Not his first epidemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci sticks to the facts", The New York Times (March 15, 2020).

People

“It was an unusually hot afternoon. One of those days all slowly ambling bumblebees and honeysuckle and so forth, at which the English countryside, when it puts its mind to it, excels, and quite unlike any summer day anywhere else. Calm and still and lovely, but never without a sense of something impending. The sort of day one misses even as one experiences it.”

China Miéville book The Design

The Design (p. 377)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Love, Making love, Sense, Summer

“We try to portray ourselves as a very egalitarian society, the land of the fair go…But I think that we are quite segregated. And class exists in Australia – it’s much more slippery and hard to get your hands on than in other places where it’s more structured and stratified. But it’s there.”

Omar Musa (1984) Australian singer

On Australian society in “Omar Musa, Australia's star slam poet, brings 'in-betweener' perspective to US” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/17/omar-musa-australia-malaysia-poet-here-come-the-dogs in The Guardian (2016 Feb 17)

Thinking

“It is quite clear that we cannot fix a terminum a quo, whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years BC, no power on earth will ever determine.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Max Muller (Collected Works, Vol.II, p.91). Quoted in https://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european_27.html

“It’s quite clear that when you impose sanctions on a country that the population is going to suffer. It’s ridiculous to pretend that the sanctions are only going to affect the government elite. In fact, the government elite usually continues living rather well. It’s the most vulnerable – women, children – who have to pay for the consequences of these illegal sanctions.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2020

Women, Children, Suffering, Country

“[W]e took this on... with the idea of pioneering not only interest in science, but also a new business model, and the business model part, we haven't quite figured out yet, because we're trying to make... vaccines for diseases no one else will make.”

Peter Hotez (1958) American academic

House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Hearing on Coronavirus (March 5, 2020)

Making love, Disease, Idea, Business

“Nature made women mature early and had them demand gentle and polite treatment from men, so that they would find themselves imperceptibly fettered by a child due to their own magnanimity; and they would find themselves brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which cloaks it, moral behavior, which is the preparation and introduction to morality.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 219-220
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Women, Men, Behavior, Nature

“I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents. And this subjection of children being the fountain of all regal authority, by the ordination of God himself. From whence it follows, that civil power, not only in general is by Divine institution, but even the assigning of it specifically to the eldest parent. Which quite takes away that new and common distinction which refers only power universal and absolute to God, but power respective in regard of the special form of government to the choice of the people. Nor leaves it any place for such imaginary pactions between Kings and their people as many dream of. This lordship which Adam by creation had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the Patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation.”

Robert Filmer book Patriarcha

Source: Patriarcha, pp. 57–58

God, Children, People, World

“I am no citizen of the world. It is quite enough for me to think about what is best for England, Ireland and Scotland. I do not like those whose philanthropy is so enlarged as to look, as Rousseau said, to Tartary for objects of affection and commiseration, while their own countrymen are starving, or existing on sea-weed and nettles. I do not approve of any efforts to urge our Government to interfere at all in the affairs even of Poland: it is too distant, too out of the way of our affairs, that we should take one single meal from a weaver or a ploughman for the sake of doing good to the Poles.”

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

‘Belgium and Poland’, Political Register (20 August 1831), p. 496
1830s

World, Way, Thinking, Effort

“…Ever since my first novel, people have had quite a snippy vibe about YA, and it’s almost like: ‘Do you think one day you’ll write a real book?’…”

Juno Dawson (1981) British youth fiction author

On how young adult fiction is viewed in “Juno Dawson on the darker side of fashion in Meat Market and why 'people have a snippy vibe about Young Adult fiction'” https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/juno-dawson-meat-market-interview-new-book-release-635361 in i Newsletter (2019 Aug 3)

People, Books, Thinking

“The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

The Child from the Sea (1970), Book 2, Chapter 1.5

Truth, Sincerity

“Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application of what has been called the 'Golden Rule' from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom. Possibly Darwin himself did not quite perceive it. While man was deemed to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the 'inferior' races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the trying conclusion that this is not maintainable. And though we may not at present see how the principle of equal justice all round is to be carried out in it entirety, I recognize that the League is grappling with the question.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Letter to the Humanitarian League (1910)

People, Justice, Question, Animals

“She tried, sometimes, to remember how it had been to be young. Or ever, not quite so old.”

Stephen Baxter book Ring

Source: Ring (1994), Chapter 13 (p. 704)

“My plans aren't quite solid. I'm hugely disorganized, you see, so once I sort it out you'll probably find out.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

Associated Press interview during his gap year (29 September 2000)

“Few subsequent gurus seem to have matched the simplicity and directness of Jesus′s message; but it must be remembered that we have very little information. If the world had possessed a detailed biographical account of Jesus, an authentic picture of what he was like as a man, it is quite possible that Christianity would not have been estabished as a world religion.”

Anthony Storr (1920–2001) English psychiatrist

Source: Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996, 1997), Chapter 7 "The Jesuit and Jesus" (p. 147)

World, Religion

“I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On her novel Mum & Dad in “Joanna Trollope on families, fiction and feminism: ‘Society still expects women to do all the caring’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/02/joanna-trollope-on-families-fiction-and-feminism-society-still-expects-women-to-do-all-the-caring in The Guardian (2020 Mar 2)

Life, Women, Children, Fashion

“But it is quite plain that the sum the weaver will be disposed to give for the thread will depend on his view of its utility.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825), p. 84

Dependency

“I’ve tried hard…I don’t know … my experience of my own dad and my own ex-husband possibly has some effect. I will remedy this. It is very unfair. I have tried harder, but I just can’t quite get there yet.”

Jacqueline Wilson (1945) novelist

On why the lack of positive father figures in her novels in “Jacqueline Wilson: 'I've never really been in any kind of closet'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/04/jacqueline-wilson-ive-never-really-been-in-any-kind-of-closet in The Guardian (2020 Apr 4)

“Ohh I guess I gotta quit because I said nigger”

Michael Richards (1949) American actor

Laugh Factory incident (2006)

“It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.”

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

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Men, Feeling, Change

“..Painting never means just never picturing the material things, but it is a psychological function, an expression of how his mind [of the artist] responds to things. So that is quite a difference with: painting is showing the beauty of things.”

Jan Mankes (1889–1920) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek (original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Schilderen is.. ..nooit een afbeelding geven der stoffelijke zaken, maar een psychische functie, een uiten hoe zijn geest [van de kunstenaar] reageert ten opzichte der dingen. Dat is dus een heel verschil met: schilderen is de schoonheid der dingen laten zien. Quote of Jan Mankes in a letter to his maceneas A.A.M. Pauwels in The Hague; as cited by J.R. de Groot in 'De bekoring van het gewone - Het werk van Jan Mankes https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_ons003199001_01/_ons003199001_01_0014.php', p. 102 undated quotes

Beauty, Painting

“It seems that white people on average are quite silly, for most of us have lapped up the version of Indian history propagated by India's "eminent historians" whose eminence results from their toeing the hegemonic party-line rather than from a respect for the data in the primary sources.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

305
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

People, History

“Women had internalized their subjugation of men as the latter were the breadwinners. Since then women have become quite conscious of their new status.”

Asghar Ali Engineer (1939–2013) Indian activist

Engineer, Asghar Ali. The rights of Women in Islam. 2nd ed. Elgin, IL: New Dawn Press Group, 2004, 190.

Women, Men

“I’m proposing to pay you five thousand dollars to do something you’ll find quite enjoyable.”

Robert Sheckley book Victim Prime

“Make it ten,” Foote said, “and I’ll enjoy it even more.”

Chapter 37 (pp. 151-152)
Victim Prime (1987)

“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle, because the actual mortality in hospitals, especially in those of large crowded cities, is very much higher than any calculation founded on the mortality of the same class of diseases among patients treated out of hospital would lead us to expect. The knowledge of this fact first induced me to examine into the influence exercised by hospital construction on the duration and death-rate of cases received into the wards; and it led me to lay before the Social Science Association a paper reprinted with the present title. Since the publication of the first edition of that paper, great advances have been made in the adoption of sound principles of hospital construction; and there are already a number of examples of new hospitals realizing all, or nearly all, the conditions required for the successful treatment of the sick and maimed poor.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Notes on Hospitals 3rd Edition (1863), Preface

Death, Disease, Exercises, Knowledge

“The truth of a story is what the novelist strives for, and quite often the writer is taken down strange and unexpected paths on this search.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Rock that Is Higher (1993)

Truth, Search

“Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Stanza 1
Source: The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Pain, Hope, Flying

“I can sing in my brain…I sing in my brain all the time. It’s not quite the same as doing it physically. There’s a physical feeling in singing that’s just like skiing down a hill. Except better, because I’m not a very good skier.”

Linda Ronstadt (1946) American pop singer

On how she still sings in her head since retiring from music due to having Parkinson’s disease in “Linda Ronstadt Talks Illness, ‘Trio’ Album in Candid ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Interview” https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/linda-ronstadt-cbs-sunday-morning-interview-789524/ in Rolling Stone (2019 Feb 4)

Feeling, Singing, Time

“Those whose minds are merged in Samadhi, are not deluded by the external jugglery. They are quite fearless. Siddhas (God realized souls) are not afraid of the world. A tiger or a cobra, when they see such a person, become calm, forgetting their ferocity. Similarly, all animals become calm at their sight. Even enemies forget their enmity and become friendly. As soon as they see a sadhu, they become stone-still. What is the cause of this? It is because of their doubting nature. At the sight of a sadhu, there is no darkness. Mind gets purified, realizing the Satwa quality.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

280
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

God, World, Soul, Nature

“I learned, after my mother's death, that she could read, and that she was the only one of all the slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I can, therefore, fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge. That a "field hand" should learn to read, in any slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement of my mother, considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in view of that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of prejudices—only too much credit, not to my admitted Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt.”

Frederick Douglass book My Bondage and My Freedom

Source: 1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Chapter 3: Parentage.

Love, Death, Happiness, People

“Somehow, acting brings out parts of your personality that maybe you didn’t know were there, or the character brings out some little part of you that has been dormant for your whole life, you know? And then when you get the chance to play these characters, some-times things come out of you that are quite surprising and that you don’t even know are inside of you. It’s an amazing thing to experience that.”

Liv Tyler (1977) American actress, producer and former model

Life, Chance, Time, Parting

“In France the height of the structures is limited to five or six storeys: in America stores frequently tower up fifteen storeys or more, and with rapid smooth-running lifts one floor is as good as another. These buildings measure their floor area by the acre, and twenty, thirty, or even forty acres of floor space—or even two million square feet—are not extraordinary, while it is quite likely that before the ink on these pages has become dry some great merchant with imagination, courage and ambition will announce his purpose of erecting a structure perhaps twice as large as any now in existence. If he does so it will not be for the sake of having the biggest thing on earth but because more space will allow him to set the word "perfection" further out in the hitherto unexplored fields of endeavour.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Imagination, Courage, Perfection

“[T]he artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.
The doctor... too is a merchant. His stock-in-trade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. ...The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.
The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant... and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employé, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Men, Books, Law, Idea

“Even when the floods rush round to drown me
I just hold my breath and pray
Let me live my dreams
Every single one of my
I ain't quitting none of my dreams”

Aloe Blacc (1979) American soul singer, rapper and musician

Source: Song My Way

Dreams

“We tend quite rightly to associate an age with its newest and most original ideas, and there is no harm in this as long as we remember that only a few men, at that time, may have actually held those ideas, and that many decades, often amounting to centuries, may pass before those ideas have seeped down to wider and commoner levels of belief, thought, and feeling.”

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

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 6, p. 140

Men, Age, Feeling, Idea

“To demonize all Soviet "leaders" at all levels, to portray them as unqualified villains and evildoers, unprincipled self-seeking scoundrels who were indifferent to the interests and needs of the people — that is a shallow and frivolous approach. Of course there were villains, quite a few of them. But most of those who came to power had the intention of serving the "toiling masses" from which they themselves had come. That the system rendered their aspirations useless, reduced their efforts to nothing, and ultimately snuffed out their finer impulses — that is a separate question.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

People, Question, Effort, Self-confidence

“The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 42
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

People, School, Travel, Communication

“He brings man's freedom in his hands,
Not as a coin that may be spent or lost
But as a living fire within the heart,
Never quite quenched — because he brings to all,
The thought, the wish, the dream of brotherhood,
Never and never to be wholly lost,
The water and the bread of the oppressed,
The stay and succor of the resolute,
The harness of the valiant and the brave,
The new word that has changed the shaken world.
And, though he die, his word shall grow like wheat
And every time a child is born,
In pain and love and freedom hardly won,
Born and gone forth to help and aid mankind,
There will be women with a right to say
"Gloria, gloria in excelsis deo!
A child is born!"”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Love, Women, Pain, World

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.
Source: The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 36-37

People, Nature, Dependency, Perfection

“It is quite enough to pay taxes when you are not represented, let alone pay a fine if you object to this arrangement.”

Mary Winsor (1869–1956) American suffragist

Quoted in of the month, Turning Point Suffragist Memorial https://suffragistmemorial.org/mary-winsor/Suffragist

“Well, the purpose of reform really is directed to the encouraging of growth and employment. I quite agree that to launch into a full scale battle on general reform for academic reasons would be unwise. The central purpose behind the reform must therefore be to encourage those changes in our tax laws which will encourage economic growth for that purpose, and not merely because it might have some longer range interest or significance. The primary job will be to encourage the flow of capital into those areas which stimulate the national growth and not diminish it. But it is going to be a tough fight, because once you spell out, as I said before, reform, it's bound to affect adversely the interests of some, while favoring the interests of others. Therefore reform may be a longer task, and we are anxious that in the effort to get reform, that we do not lose the very important matter of tax reduction for the sake of the economy.”

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

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Law, Effort, Change, Fight

“Ichthyology, the study of fishes. It looks like a big, boring word, but it's actually quite exciting, because ichthyology is the only "ology" with "YOLO" in it. Now, to the cool kids in the audience, you already know, YOLO stands for "you only live once," and because I only have one life, I'm going to spend it doing what I always dreamt of doing: seeing the hidden wonders of the world and discovering new species. And that's what I get to do.”

Prosanta Chakrabarty (1978) American ichthyologist

Source: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cavefish https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_clues_to_prehistoric_times_found_in_blind_cavefish (February 2016)

Life, World, Fish, Study

“Never quit. You can’t wait for yourself to happen, you have to go out there and make it happen. If you truly believe in something you can make it happen. Get a good agent. They cost money, but that’s your first step. Your first film opportunities will most likely not be big, but that’s how you’re discovered by others. Eventually a director or a casting director will see you in a minor film/commercial/broadway, etc. and you’ll get your big break. Always be polite and professional. There are often many, many other people auditioning for the same part as you. If you’re not polite or professional they won’t even waste their time with you.”

Mackenzie Rosman (1989) American actress

Source: Mack’s Fan’s Questions & Answers http://mackrosman.net/press-release (March 19, 2008)

Money, People, Making love, Time

“[I]n dealing with such money as you possess, I have no doubt that here in Brighton you will not differ from me that the first claim is the naval defence of England. (Loud and continued cheers.) ... It is our business to be quite sure in respect to this island-home of ours, whose inaccessibility is the source of our greatness, that no improvement of foreign fleets and no combination of foreign alliances should be able for a moment to threaten its safety.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Brighton (19 November 1895), quoted in The Times (20 November 1895), p. 7

Money, Home, Business

“I have been in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1207420638748725250, (30 December 2019)

Life, Freedom, Fight

“When a man has sufficiently distinguished himself by service, and by acquiring and accepting the theoretical views that were glanced at in 'Seeking the Master' then he finds his Master — or rather his Master finds him. During all the time of his struggle those gracious eyes have been upon him watching him progress; in many lives in the past he has come under the same influence which now is to become the dominant influence in his life. He has reached a point where the Master can reveal Himself, can place him definitely on probation, can help to prepare him for Initiation. That is the first stage: a particular Master chooses a particular aspirant and takes charge of him, in order to prepare him for Initiation; for you must remember that Initiation is a quite definite thing, that only Those who have already attained can enable others to enter on the Path which They Themselves have trodden.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 61

Life, Time, Past, Help

“I had always said that when I could see the holes in the hands and feet of Jesus myself then I would consider believing. It was very much a standard line – I wouldn’t take anything on belief, I wanted to see the evidence. On that hillside I looked up at the crucifix and Our Lord was there with the holes in his hands and his feet and in that instant – I wouldn’t say I believed, I wouldn’t say I decided to start believing – in that instant, I knew. I knew that I had been looking all these years without seeing Christ crucified. There he was in front of me and I then knew that God and Jesus Christ were true. My life has been upside down ever since. All my original views were turned upside down. It has cost me quite a few friendships and has probably cost me a political career but I cannot un-know what I now know.”

Rob Flello (1966) British politician (born 1966)

Source: The day my atheist convictions were shattered https://catholicherald.co.uk/rob-flello-the-day-my-atheist-convictions-were-shattered/ (October 16, 2020)

Life, God, Friendship, Christ

“Addicted to war? Not us. Still, all in all, it’s quite a record and let’s not forget that looming on the horizon is another possible war, this time with Iran, a country that the men overseeing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (including present National Security Advisor John Bolton) were eager to go after even then. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad,” so the saying reputedly went in Washington at the time. “Real men want to go to Tehran.””

Tom Engelhardt (1944) American writer

And it’s just possible that, in 2019, Bolton and crew will be able to act on that much delayed urge. Considering the history of American wars in these years, what could possibly go wrong? We’re Not the Good Guys, CounterPunch https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/04/were-not-the-good-guys/ (4 July 2019)

Men, War, Time, Country

“Women’s studies has long constructed black feminism as a form of discipline inflicted on the field and has imagined black feminists as a set of disciplinarians who quite literally whip the field into shape with their demands for a feminism that accounts for race generally, and for black women specifically.”

Jennifer Christine Nash Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Source: Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (2018), p. 12

Women, Imagination, Study

“But, so far as we can see, so long as the present laws and constitution of nature continue there must still remain a vast amount of really inevitable suffering for mankind, without reckoning beastkind, birdkind, fishkind, insectkind, reptilekind, plant- kind, and leaving quite out of discussion stonekind.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part V, p. 83
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Law, Nature, Suffering

“The animals [nature] brings forth (not to speak of the plants and the minerals) are in many cases ugly, unamiable, ferocious, and tormented with monstrous appetites, which can only be satisfied by devouring their fellow-creatures; nearly all of them are quite selfish and immoral; and the few of them that are philanthropic (such as surly old lions, tigers, wolves, sharks, vultures and other sweet carrion fowl; all genuine lovers of man) are almost as disagreeably so as our human philanthropists themselves.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 60
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Lovers, Nature, Animals, Selfishness

“If it doesn’t change, we quit. Why do we have to stay? It’s possibly dangerous for our sovereignty. Many are out, they didn’t sign it. Why would Brazil have to stay? To be politically correct? [...] We won’t be able to reforest an area the size of Rio de Janeiro.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

About the Paris Agreement, during a broadcast on social media on 12 December 2018. Bolsonaro says Brazil may “quit” Paris Agreement http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/politica/noticia/2018-12/bolsonaro-says-brazil-may-quit-paris-agreement. Agência Brasil (13 December 2019). 2018

Change

“If the soul, through attentiveness, reduces the blindness caused by the love of this world, it will consider its slightest faults to be very grave and will continually shed tears. ... But if the soul persists in its worldly disposition, even though it commits a murder or some other act deserving severe punishment, it takes little notice; and it is quite unable to discern its other faults, often considering them to be signs of progress, and in its wretchedness it is not ashamed to defend them heatedly.”

Diadochos of Photiki (400–486) Byzantine saint

§ 27
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)

Love, World, Making love, Soul

“Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer,
I was taken by a photograph of you.
There were one or two I know
That you would have liked a little more,
But they didn't show your spirit quite as true.
You were turning round to see who was behind you
And I took your childish laughter by surprise,
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

"Fountain of Sorrow" ("Fountain of Sorrow" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaoHbNNK58k Late for the Sky (1974)

Laughter

“And my intention is to try to form a collection of many such things, which would not be quite unworthy of the title 'heads of the people.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

By working hard, boy, I hope to succeed in making something good. It isn't there yet, but I aim at it, and struggle for it. I want something serious, - some thing fresh - something with soul in it! Forward - forward - quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands, 3 Jan. 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 257), pp. 20-21 1880s, 1883

People

“I have no right to risk. No, that's not quite correct. I have no right to failure.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

And I don't trust myself anymore. I don't know what's happened to my edge. Lost it in a strange land.
Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

Failure

“I was quite happy standing there thundering about, playing whatever I could - that's "fun.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

And I see young bands occasionally now doing the same thing. I think it's called "thrash" now. It's the same thing: It's just kids who can't play, pissing about. It's terrific. That's all we were doing. I mean, Dave could play a little bit, but none of the rest of us could."
Musician, December 1992
Music

Happiness

“The strange thing is that what makes a wonderful story for some could be quite boring for others. It’s quite rare to find a story that everyone loves. But I think the best stories are those where the underdog somehow finds a way to succeed, hopefully with friends helping along the way.”

Debbie Dadey (1959) American children's writer

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR DEBBIE DADEY https://rhyskeller.com/debbie-dadey-author-interview/ (February 13, 2018)

Love, Making love, Way, Thinking

“The national character of the three kingdoms was strongly marked in my army. I found the English regiments always in the best humour when we were well supplied with beef; the Irish when we were in the wine countries, and the Scotch when the dollars for pay came up. This looks like an epigram, but I assure you it was a fact, and quite perceptible; but we managed to reconcile all their tempers, and I will venture to say that in our later campaigns, and especially when we crossed the Pyrenees, there never was an army in the world in better spirits, better order, or better discipline. We had mended in discipline every campaign, until at last (smiling) I hope we were pretty near perfect.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

Remarks to John Wilson Croker (20 October 1825), quoted in L. J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers: The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830, Vol. I (1884), p. 353

World, Smile, Hope, Wine

“By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.”

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

Hate, Home, Nature, Change

“Indifference served him quite as well as integrity.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Hallowed Hunt

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Hallowed Hunt (2005), Chapter 3 (p. 50)

Indifference

“Earth had always operated on a continuous-growth model that requires a poverty class. Sustainable models require productive work by all members and are quite different.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Margarets (2007), Chapter 32, “I Am Gretamara/On Mars” (p. 272)

“When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point.
Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Thinking

“It speaks to our feelings and imaginations, as it were by suggestion; reaching for this very reason depths of our being quite beyond the power of mere words.”

Walter Raymond Spalding (1865–1962) American music pedagogue and author

On instrumental music, page 2 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA2. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

Feeling, Imagination

“I got to be quite the fish, I must say.”

Ann Blyth (1928) American actress

Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-sep-29-he-37343-story.html (September 29, 1997)

Fish

“I think it’s incredible and I think I had a breakthrough in my acting career. I did something that I had never done before and to me, at least, it was quite successful.”

Tony Leung (1962) Hong Kong actor

"Lust, Caution – Tony Leung interview" (2007) https://tonyleung.info/tony/?p=237

Thinking, Success

“We don't need to remake our health-care system or rebuild it from the ground up. We don't need to do very much. It's pretty simple, quite attainable. Just an added perspective and a change of pace.”

Victoria Sweet Physician

Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing (2017)

Health, Change

“Reason quite properly rejects contradiction, but rationalism abhors mystery, which every heresy attempts in its own way to resolve.”

Michael Horton (theologian) (1964) American theologian

Source: Pilgrim Theology (2013), p. 177

Way

“Right now, the region is more interested in looking at options for rapid transit than they are for more lanes on those bridges, especially given that our local road networks can't quite handle more volume of traffic. People on the North Shore want choice.”

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

North Shore News https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/ironworkers-bridge-sees-start-of-two-year-maintenance-project-3462200, Ironworkers bridge sees start of two-year maintenance project, February 26, 2021

People

“The consistency of my body has changed and I quite like that. Everything has gone softer and gentler, and my ease with how I look is powerful—what I consider beautiful really helps me to grow old.”

Tan Kheng Hua (1963) Singaporean actress

"Tan Kheng Hua opens up about romance, sexuality and Asian representation in Hollywood" in Vogue (27 September 2020) https://vogue.sg/tan-kheng-hua-opens-up-about-romance-sexuality-and-asian-representation-in-hollywood/

Beauty, Change, Help

“Before falling in love
Your life is quite an simple.
After falling in love
Your life becomes complicated.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Love, Life

“People have this idea that I'm part of show business royalty. I cherish the relationship I had with my father, and I'd love to fulfill the fantasy. But when I was young, he was a working actor and hadn't quite made it yet.”

Michael Douglas (1944) American actor and producer

As quoted in "Michael Douglas Will Never Stop Working" in AARP (25 March 2021) https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/celebrities/info-2021/michael-douglas-interview.html

Love, People, Idea, Business

“I do not know where I am going. But I am quite weary enough of where I’ve been.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Hallowed Hunt

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Hallowed Hunt (2005), Chapter 9 (p. 157)

“I am an ambitious person and I consider myself as still quite young and I am convinced that I still have time to realize my ambitions.”

Petro Poroshenko (1965) Ukrainian businessman and politician

Interview to "Ukrains'ka Pravda" https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/01/26/3692330/ (26 January 2009)

Time, Personality

“Holiness isn’t something that just happens. It’s something that is nurtured, something that grows, something that is benefited by things like rhythm, stability — if you're always rushing and never quite can fit in your nightly prayers, well, then you wind up not praying a lot of times.”

Steven J. Lopes (1975) American Roman Catholic prelate (born 1975)

Bishop Steven Lopes on Ordinariate’s Missal and Gift of English Catholic Patrimony https://www.ncregister.com/news/bishop-steven-lopes-on-ordinariate-s-missal-and-gift-of-english-catholic-patrimony (December 7, 2016)

Time

“When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

"Why I Write" (1975)

“I certainly had the great bounty of drawing on my own experience, becoming a new biological parent, and that was quite natural.”

Penn Badgley (1986) American actor and musician

Source: "Penn Badgley Explores Joe Goldberg's 'Primal' Parenting In You Season 3" in ELLE https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a37886117/penn-badgley-you-season-3-interview/ (18 October 2021)

Nature, Parent, Drawing

“Just as no one is quite so stupid as to nullify biology completely, so too does no one deny some flexibility in the translation of genes into complex behaviors.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

Source: An Urchin in the Storm (1987) "Nurturing Nature", p. 152

Stupidity, Behavior

“Pure Christianity—the Christianity of the catacombs—is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: 14 December 1941, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944

Heart

“I don't like to second-guess, but I do believe we've lost something. I can't get my hand on it, but we're just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don't know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime.”

Bob Dole (1923) American politician

Source: In Susan Page, " At 98 and facing cancer, Bob Dole reckons with legacy of Trump and ponders future of GOP https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/22/98-bob-dole-reckons-legacy-trump-ponders-future-gop/7995412002/", USA Today (July 22, 2021).

World, Hope, Democracy, Change

“It is quite bizarre that scholars trying to prove a point discredit their own case by using a proven forgery without any comment.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Source: 2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

“Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Source: On War (1832), Book 6, Chapter 1.

War, Art

“I was studying tourism at college and wanted to travel the world as a tour guide – that was my dream! But actually sometimes modeling feels quite similar, because I travel so much – probably even more than tour guiding.”

Liu Wen (model) (1988) Chinese model

Source: "Liu Wen Talks Style, Diversity And What It Means To Be China’s First Supermodel" in Marie Claire https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/fashion-news/liu-wen-interview-china-s-first-supermodel-talks-style-diversity-and-her-mango-campaign-15375 (3 March 2016)

World, Dreams, Travel, Feeling

“In my house, I was surrounded by actors, by nothing but talk of plays and performances, so I felt it was more advantageous to go in that direction, now, I can’t quit.”

Nakamura Kichiemon II (1944–2021) Japanese kabuki actor (1944-2021)

Source: His Grandfather’s Kabuki https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-09-15-ca-44008-story.html (September 15, 1996)

Housing

“Lately, I've become quite involved in psychic vibrations. I vibrate whenever I get the chance.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian

Chance

“My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.”

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

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 511, ISBN 1586489577

War, Peace

“Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of 'justice', but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial, and detergent effects of dissenters. If 'freedom' becomes 'privilege', the workings of political freedom are broken.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Die russische Revolution. Eine kritische Würdigung (1920) p. 109
This contains probably her most famous statement: Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden, translated as "Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters."
Literally: Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently.

Justice, Freedom, Dependency

“I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young woman I wasn’t very tender or nice to myself…Now I’m older, I’m much more able to be tender and kind to the younger me that I see in the book.”

Namwali Serpell (1980) Zambian feminist academic and writer

Source: On coming to terms with her mixed race identity in “Namwali Serpell: 'As a young woman I wasn’t very nice to myself'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/30/namwali-serpell-the-old-drift-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 30)

Books

“When (volcanic) ash falls into the ocean, it brings with it nutrients. For example, It can bring iron, which is usually quite low in the ocean. It can suddenly create a bloom of plankton, which then go through the food chain, creating a population boom later on the fish and other lives too.”

Shane J. Cronin researcher, ORCID id # 0000-0001-7499-603X

Source: Shane J. Cronin (2022) cited in: " Interview: Tonga volcanic eruption not likely to cause global climate change, says New Zealand volcanologist http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/asiapacific/20220118/dc046e9e38e343a381668086f1b71d0e/c.html" in Xinhua Net, 18 January 2022.

Food, Fish

“Who once has doubted never quite believes.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Prince Lucifer (1887), Eve in Act VI, sc. ii; p. 193.

“Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive order then these possibilities will have a chance and you will het Progress. One can define the classical quite clearly as the exact opposite to this. Man is an extraordinary fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organization that anything decent can be got out of him.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Source: Speculations (Essays, 1924)

Nature, Chance, Animals

“There is too much attention
paid to him who shot at he
and to how he got away
but didn't quite.
Yes there's too much attention
So much so that we'll believe
he's not guilty of the crime which he's being tried
So forgive me when I tell you
I ain't got no place to go
I ain't got no one to talk to
got no one left to say hello”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"Too Much Attention" (song) Song lyrics Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Too Much Attention" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR47R4uWdDo (song on YouTube)

Forgiveness

“How much grit do you think you've got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
You may talk of pluck; it's an easy word,
And where'er you go it is often heard;
But can you tell to a jot or guess
Just how much courage you now possess?You may stand to trouble and keep your grin,
But have you tackled self-discipline?
Have you ever issued commands to you
To quit the things that you like to do,
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed,
Those rigid orders have you obeyed?Don't boast of your grit till you've tried it out,
Nor prate to men of your courage stout,
For it's easy enough to retain a grin
In the face of a fight there's a chance to win,
But the sort of grit that is good to own
Is the stuff you need when you're all alone.How much grit do you think you've got?
Can you turn from joys that you like a lot?
Have you ever tested yourself to know
How far with yourself your will can go?
If you want to know if you have grit,
Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit.It's bully sport and it's open fight;
It will keep you busy both day and night;
For the toughest kind of a game you'll find
Is to make your body obey your mind.
And you never will know what is meant by grit
Unless there's something you've tried to quit.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: Just Folks (1917), On Quitting

Men, Game, Courage, Business

“I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think. I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: "I Quit, I Think" (1991)

World, School, Justice, Understanding

“Although it is not thought or some other form of knowledge, although it is not the truth of the world, that gives access to the Revelation of God, at least a single possibility persist, already mentioned as a simple matter of fact and now rendered unimpeachable. Access to God, understood as his self-revelation according to a phenomenality proper to Him, is not susceptible of being produced except where this self-revelation is produced and in the way self-revelation does so. There where God originally arrives in himself, in the phenomenalization of phenomenality that is his own and is thus like the self-phenomenalization of this phenomenality proper – there alone is access to God. It is not that thought is lacking and so we cannot accede to the Revelation of God. Quite the contrary, it is only when thought defaults, because the truth of the world is absent, that what is at stake be achieved: the self-revelation of God – the self-phenomenalization of pure phenomenality against the background of a phenomenality that is not that of the world.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 27

God, Truth, World, Way

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Quotes about quit
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