Quotes about rate (975 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“If you have ever seen the play Peter Pan you will remember how the pirate chief was always making his dying speech because he was afraid that possibly when the time came for him to die he might not have time to get it off his chest. It is much the same with me, and so, although I am not at this moment dying, I shall be doing so one of these days and I want to send you a parting word of goodbye.

Remember, it is the last you will ever hear from me, so think it over.

I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have as happy a life too.

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness doesn't come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so can enjoy life when you are a man.

Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one.

But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn come to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. "Be Prepared" in this way, to live happy and to die happy - stick to your Scout promise always - even after you have ceased to be a boy - and God help you do it.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

Life , God , People , World

“In a world that changes at an exponential rate, members of such world community have to be very proficient in finding reasonable solutions to the problems that they face by themselves.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

citizenship in the changing world of tomorrow.

World , Problem , Change , Communication

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”

Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States

As quoted in Business Etiquette for the Nineties : Your Ticket to Career Success (1992) by Lou Kennedy, p. 8
Variant: Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.

Motivational , For women , Positive , Back To Work

“When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Variant: If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

Change

“What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922]”

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

“Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves — it is something we do also for others… for all others, and for the Earth. Because when we open up and let our body and mind feel our ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops — a leap of consciousness takes place. All the great prophets and sages of history knew this, Jesus as well as the Buddha, Mohammed as well as Zoroaster — and more recently Bahá'u'lláh the same as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and the Dalai Lama.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: You Can Change the World (2003), p. 86.

People , Feeling , History , Nature

“The central idea is that government fiscal policy, its spending and taxing, its borrowing and repayment of loans, its issue of new money and withdrawal of money, shall be undertaken with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy and not to any established traditional doctrine what is sound and what is unsound …Government should adjust its rates of expenditure and taxation such that total spending is neither more or less than that which is sufficient to purchase the full employment level of output at current prices. If this means there is deficit, greater borrowing, "printing money," etc., then these things in themselves are neither good or bad, they are simply the means to the desired ends of full employment and price stability.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

On Functional Finance: (1943, pg.354) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

Money , Idea

“Materially: The political drain, up to this time, from India to England, of above, 500,000,000, at the lowest computation, in principal alone…The further continuation of this drain at the rate, at present, of above, 12,000,000 per annum, with a tendency to increase.”

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician

Above two quoted by Dadabhai Naoroji as the estimated the economic costs and drain of resources from India, is an extract from one of his essays, “The Benefits of British Rule, 1871” in Drain of Wealth during British Raj, B Shantanu, 6 February 2006, 4 December 2013, Ivarta.com http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_060206.htm#_edn5,
Drain Theory

Time

“You will have seen that my brother died suddenly in Marseilles. I inherit from him a title, but not a penny of money, as he was bankrupt. A title is a great nuisance to me, and I am at a loss what to do, but at any rate I do not wish it employed in connection with any of my literary work. There is, so far as I know, only one method of getting rid of it, which is to be attainted of high treason, and this would involve my head being cut off on Tower Hill. This method seems to me perhaps somewhat extreme…”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to W. W. Norton, 11 March, 1931
1930s

Money , Loss

“Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

“Those who try to make room for sex as mere casual enjoyment pay the penalty: they become shallow. At any rate the talk that reflects and commends this attitude is always shallow. They dishonour their own bodies; holding cheap what is naturally connected with the origination of human life.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life , Penalty , Sex , Nature

“The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 6, p. 81

“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

People , World , Feeling , Light

“Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of CHRIST as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savour of death. Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison! Do you think he is so unskilful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Tract 83 http://anglicanhistory.org/tracts/tract83.html (29 June 1838).

Death , God , Truth , World

“The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

§ 6
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain. After the summer of 1937 those with eyes in their heads realized that the Government could not win the war unless there were some profound change in the international set-up, and in deciding to fight on Negrin and the others may have been partly influenced by the expectation that the world war which actually broke out in 1939 was coming in 1938. The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that.
The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds’ worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.

War

“Is that all, really? I thought there might have been more. We need to celebrate women physicists, because we’re out there. Hopefully, in time, it will start to move forward at a faster rate. I’m honoured to be one of those women.”

Donna Strickland (1959) Canadian physicist, 2018 Nobel prize winner

In a press conference, commenting on her becoming only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, in [Koren, Marina, One Wikipedia Page Is a Metaphor for the Nobel Prize’s Record With Women, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/nobel-prize-physics-donna-strickland-gerard-mourou-arthur-ashkin/571909/, 5 October 2018, The Atlantic, October 2, 2018] and [Sample, Ian, Davis, Nicola, Physics Nobel prize won by Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/02/arthur-ashkin-gerard-mourou-and-donna-strickland-win-nobel-physics-prize, 5 October 2018, The Guardian, October 2, 2018]

Time , Women

“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extend, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. As people live under, and looking at them merely from a liberal, negative standpoint, the British ruling class had their points.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § IV
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Peace , Secret , People , Men

“Lazines is just like a bed if you lay on it, you would think you have everything at your disposal.But you are building poverty at a fastest rate”

Manuel Archives

Thinking

“Depression is often a misunderstood and misdiagnosed concept. Given how debilitating and life-choking depression can be, it's really essential that we truly appreciate the complexity of this condition. A one size fits all label that obscures each individual's unique circumstances is terribly short-sighted and perhaps inhumane.

Often, depression is what I call situational. In other words, outside stressors and the culture that we live may cause, contribute to or exacerbate this disorder. When dysfunction appears at epidemic rates, we need to take a deeper look at what's going on.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Life , Appearance

“What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 2"
Source: The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing — I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Love

“To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Life , Family

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?

Sense , Rage , Passion , Happiness

“at any rate, there's no harm in trying.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

“Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity

Nature , Selfishness

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Learning

“The universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. As any economist could have predicted, the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

The Beginning of Time (1996)

Way , Universe

“We live in a troubled, but wonderful time. It is our good fortune to witness and benefit from scientific advances that would have been literally unimaginable to our grandparents. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rate of growth of scientific knowledge has been so great as to outstrip the ability of our society to assimilate it, the capacity of the educational system to teach it properly and the wisdom of government adequately to sustain and apply it. There is growing indifference to science among the young. Even medical science, which touches the lives of us all, is generally left to the practitioners. Whatever the reason for this disparity between the importance of science and the lack of general public understanding, it is important to address it.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

E. J. Corey, ‎Barbara Czakó, ‎László Kürti, Molecules and Medicine (2007). Introduction

Wisdom , Education , Understanding , Knowledge

“The rate of investment – the speed at which investors wish to increase the capital stock – should be related, if to anything, to q, the value of capital relative to its replacement cost.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

Source: "A general equilibrium approach to monetary theory" (1969), p. 21 as cited in: Sılvio Rendon, "Non-Tobin’s q in Tests for Financial Constraints," 2009

Speed

“There is no reason to think that the impact [of monetary policy] will be captured in any single [variable]…, whether it is a monetary stock or a market interest rate.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

Source: "A general equilibrium approach to monetary theory" (1969), p. 29 as cited in: Andrés, Javier, J. David López-Salido, and Edward Nelson. " Tobin's imperfect asset substitution in optimizing general equilibrium http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2004/2004-003.pdf." Journal of Money, Credit and Banking (2004): 665-690.

Thinking

“I'll cut out government spending that's not working, that we can't afford, but I'm also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and everybody did well. Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign speech http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/24/remarks-president-campaign-event, Oakland, California, , quoted in
Partially quoted as "We tried our plan and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term." in Mitt Romney " It Worked http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0etEmiCL8M" campaign ad ()
2012

History

“Liza Minelli said she can't sing well enough those "special songs" of her late mother, Judy Garland, so she doesn't sing them at all. The award-winning entertainer said she'd "rather present a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of Mama."”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

As paraphrased and quoted in "News Spotlight," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=S8cxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PIYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6062%2C6382171 The Kingsport Daily News (December 11, 1974), p. 9

Singing

“I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002) http://action.barackobama.com/page/share/2002iraqfull; referencing the positions of former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and chief Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
2000-03

War , Passion

“I say, of the Congress, then, this — that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; — in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.”

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

28 August 1893
New Lamps for Old (1893)

Men , Sincerity

“All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.”

Mark Twain book Roughing It

On the Book of Mormon, Roughing It (published 1872), pp. 58-59
Roughing It (1872)

Men , Books , Way , Reading

“I am presently at work on a dissertation dealing with the theory of international trade and foreign exchange rates. In dealing with this, studies of the intervention of recent years in the area of trade and exchange rates of different countries is of the greatest importance. I therefore hope to be able to begin a six month study tour to Switzerland, France and England at the end of May this year. After having collected the necessary material I intend — if the economic side can be arranged — during a stay of 6–12 months in England (probably Cambridge) or possibly the United States (in that case probably Harvard University) — to work out the above mentioned dissertation as a specimen for the doctoral degree in philosophy and pursue studies in general. I have not yet any detailed study plan. That should appropriately be set up after the arrival.”

Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Swedish economist and politician

Ohlin’s application to the Royal Academy of Sciences, January 30, 1922; Translation by Rolf G. H. Henriksson in "Eureka unter den Linden" in: Bertil Ohlin: A Centennial Celebration, 1899-1999, p. 129.
1920s

Hope , Study , Universe , Country

“Q: “Professor Sargent, can you tell me what CD rates will be in two years?””

Thomas J. Sargent (1943) American economist

Sargent: “No.”
Thomas J. Sargent in: Ally Bank TV Spot, 'Predictions' Featuring Thomas Sargent http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Lj9/ally-bank-predictions-featuring-thomas-sargent.

“America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology - appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality. The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude. In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle. Public relations and the official secret, the trivializing campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

The Power Elite (1956)

Men , Secret , World , Idea

“One needs a complex package of policies and, as we always stress, structural reforms come first, because many of the problems of the euro area are structural. And I'm sure that's also the biggest fear for the Governing Council as a whole. We discussed the possibility of negative deposit rates, but our objective is maintaining price stability.”

Mario Draghi (1947) Italian banker and economist

indiainfoline.com http://www.indiainfoline.com/article/research-leader-speak/mario-draghi-president-european-central-bank-50146096_1.html.

Fear , Problem

“Now, when suffering is always the first of the arguments marshalled against life, as its most questionable feature, it is salutary to remember the times when people made the opposite assessment, because they could not do without making people suffer and saw first-rate magic in it, a veritable seductive lure to life. Perhaps pain - I say this to comfort the squeamish - did not hurt as much then as it does now; at least, a doctor would be justified in assuming this, if he had treated a Negro (taken as a representative for primeval man) for serious internal inflammations which would drive the European with the stoutest constitution to distraction; - they do not do that to Negroes. (The curve of human capacity for pain actually does seem to sink dramatically and almost precipitously beyond the first ten thousand or ten million of the cultural elite; and for myself, I do not doubt that in comparison with one night of pain endured by a single, hysterical blue stocking, the total suffering of all the animals who have been interrogated by the knife in scientific research is as nothing.)”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Life , Pain , People , Question

“The demographics of the country are going to change. It's inevitable. The Latino community in America is going to grow. If you stopped all immigration today, just by virtue of birth rates, this is going to be a browner country.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

NPR's Exit Interview With President Obama http://www.npr.org/2016/12/19/504998487/transcript-and-video-nprs-exit-interview-with-president-obama (19 December 2016)
2016

Communication , Birth , Change , Country

“For one who is having no personal experience, the passionate disquiet of others is at any rate a titillation of the nerves, like seeing a play or listening to music.”

Stefan Zweig book Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

Music , Passion , Personality

“With luck we will be able to repulse the invaders before they land. At any rate, I can say that we will be able to destroy the major part of an invading force. That is, we will be able to inflict extremely heavy damage on the enemy.”

Yoshijirō Umezu (1882–1949) Japanese general

Quoted in "The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire" - by John Toland - History - 2003.

Parting

“My mother once told me never be a second-rate version of somebody else when you can be a first-rate version of yourself.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

"[G]racefully handl[ing] audience demands for 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,'" as quoted in "Coy Minnelli wows spirited audience; UM announces MCA construction" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LQY1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=QE8KAAAAIBAJ&pg=3215%2C676019 by Alicia Amstead, in The Bangor Daily News (September 18, 2006), p. A10

“It is also our hope that the interpretation of the socio-economic optimum as a set of institutions may help to get under way a discussion of a more scientific character than was usual so far about the relative merits of various existing socio-economic orders, especially those of Eastern and Western Europe, including such interesting cases as Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. A considerable amount of better information about various types of external effects will be one of the necessary ingredients if we want to give concrete content to such merit rating of various systems.”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

"The Use of Models: Experience," 1969

Hope , Way , Help

“Brother Nabi - to a philosophical letter [he received from Denis ] a philosophical answer... [but] first of all, forgive the incoherence of my last letter. I am feeling remorsed about what I told you about Gauguin. There is no humbug about him, not, at any rate, with respect to those he knows are capable of understanding him. I have lived with him for the past fifteen days in the closest association [in Pont-Aven]. We share a room. I have told him what I dislike about his work; what I said can be regarded as a sally against the ingrained habits of contemporary painting. But let's go back to our philosophy....(a:) Immutable principles exist in art. There is a science, namely aesthetics, that teaches them. Today this science is dead. It was alive in the days of the beatific primitives…”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Source: from: 'A letter to Maurice Denis, p. 237

Art , Feeling , Forgiveness , Understanding

“If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

The New York Times (30 June 1985)

“It's no more of that 12 bar ditty wavy hair in the breeze platform boots flap your flare nonsense. It's not a packaged image of third-rate idiots. It's not a pose. We just do our stuff. Hate it as it usually is, you know I was very shocked by the reviews of the last album. I believe none of them. They liked us for the wrong reasons, trendy reasons.”

John Lydon (1956) English singer, songwriter, and musician

The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder (27th June 1980)

Hate

“… there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.”

G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's Apology

A Mathematician's Apology (1941)

Men

“For example, a man who had seen a great many white swans might argue, by our principle, that on the data it was probable that all swans were white, and this might be a perfectly sound argument. The argument is not disproved by the fact that some swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error. But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability relatively to our previous data had been wrongly estimated. The fact, therefore, that things often fail to fulfill our expectations is no evidence that our expectations will not probably be fulfilled in a given case or a given class of cases. Thus our inductive principle is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an appeal to experience. The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"On Induction"
1910s, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Error , Knowledge , Animals

“We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form : The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.”

Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

Defining the fundamental theorem of natural selection, Ch. 2, p. 35.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Nature , Time

“We will continue to pursue the strategy of boosting domestic demand and ensure fast and balanced economic and social development in China. This will create more opportunities for China-U. S. economic cooperation and trade. We will continue to advance the reform of the RMB exchange rate regime, take positive steps in such areas as expanding market access, increasing imports, and strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights, and further expand China-U. S. economic cooperation and trade.”

Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

2000s, White House speech (2006)

“They have nothing on me, those guys. They can't even touch me. Some people rate them better than me. That really bugs me. They think that no Americans play chess. When I meet those Russian patzers I'll put them in their place.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

People , Guy , Thinking

“It is not true that men never change; they change for the worse, as well as for the better. It is not true they are ungrateful; more often the benefactor rates his favors higher than their worth; and often too he does not allow for circumstances. If few men have the moral force to resist impulses, most men do carry within themselves the germs of virtues as well as of vices, of heroism as well as of cowardice. Such is human nature — education and circumstances do the rest.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Men , Education , Nature , Change

“I'm growing older but not up.
My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck.
Let those winds of time blow over my head.
I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Growing Older But Not Up
Song lyrics, Coconut Telegraph (1981)

Time , Dead

“The need, therefore, was for the Communist Parties to be ever-vigilant against opportunism and to weed it out by welding themselves ever more closely with the working class, by enlisting the support of the working class in thoroughly smashing all that remained of the old bourgeois state structure. This could only have been done by getting rid of bourgeois parliamentarism and putting into effect the principles of the Paris Commune; all officials to be fully elected and subject to recall; public service to be discharged at the wage rate of the working class uniting within its hands the legaslative and executive arms of the state; and breaking up the instrument of spiritual oppression, the power of the priests.”

Harpal Brar (1939) British politician

Harpal Brar, Perestroika - The complete collapse of revisionism, pg. 274-75.

Communication , Support

“To take charge of the most important work under my administration, the building of the Panama Canal, I chose General Goethals. Both of his parents were born in Holland. But he was just plain United States. He wasn't a Dutch-American; if he had been I wouldn't have appointed him. So it was with such men, among those who served under me, as Admiral Osterhaus and General Barry. The father of one was born in Germany, the father of the other in Ireland. But they were both Americans, pure and simple, and first-rate fighting men in addition.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

Men , Parent , Fight

“Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.”

Jonathan Swift book A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

Knowledge

“Thus, not merely what it can do, but the rate at which it can do it, has to be considered in estimating the value of photography as an ally in astronomy.”

Agnes Mary Clerke book The System of the Stars

Source: The System of the Stars (1890), p. 33.

“Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second rate Freudian evaluation on my lyrics when 90% of the time they've transcribed the lyrics incorrectly?”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals (2002), p. 190

Hell , Time

“Part of the charm of synthetic organic chemistry derives from the vastness of the intellectual landscape along several dimensions. First, there is the almost infinite variety and number of possible target structures that lurk in the darkness waiting to be made. Then, there is the vast body of organic reactions that serve to transform one substance into another, now so large in number as to be beyond credibility to a non-chemist. There is the staggering range of reagents, reaction conditions, catalysts, elements, and techniques that must be mobilized in order to tame these reactions for synthetic purposes. Finally, it seems that new information is being added to that landscape at a rate that exceeds the ability of a normal person to keep up with it. In such a troubled setting any author, or group of authors, must be regarded as heroic if through their efforts, the task of the synthetic chemist is eased.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

Foreword of Name Reactions in Heterocyclic Chemistry (2004) by Jie Jack Li

Effort , Waiting , Parting , Personality

“Christianity is not satisfied with producing merely the specious guise of virtue. She requires the substantial reality, which may stand the scrutinizing eye of that Being “who searches the heart.” Meaning therefore that the Christian should live and breathe; in an atmosphere, as it were, of benevolence, she forbids whatever can tend to obstruct its diffusion or vitiate its purity. It is on this principle that Emulation is forbidden: for, besides that this passion almost insensibly degenerates into envy, and that it derives its origin chiefly from pride and a desire of self-exaltation; how can we easily love our neighbour as ourselves, if we consider him at the same time our rival, and are intent upon surpassing him in the pursuit of whatever is the subject of our competition?
Christianity, again, teaches us not to set our hearts on earthly possessions and earthly honours; and thereby provides for our really loving, or even cordially forgiving, those who have been more successful than ourselves in the attainment of them, or who have even designedly thwarted us in the pursuit. “Let the rich,” says the Apostle, “rejoice in that he is brought low.” How can he who means to attempt, in any degree, to obey this precept, be irreconcilably hostile towards any one who may have been instrumental in his depression?
Christianity also teaches us not to prize human estimation at a very high rate; and thereby provides for the practice of her injunction, to love from the heart those who, justly or unjustly, may have attacked our reputation, and wounded our character. She commands not the shew, but the reality of meekness and gentleness; and by thus taking away the aliment of anger and the fomenters of discord, she provides for the maintenance of peace, and the restoration of good temper among men, when it may have sustained a temporary interruption.
It is another capital excellence of Christianity, that she values moral attainments at a far higher rate than intellectual acquisitions, and proposes to conduct her followers to the heights of virtue rather than of knowledge. On the contrary, most of the false religious systems which have prevailed in the world, have proposed to reward the labour of their votary, by drawing aside the veil which concealed from the vulgar eye their hidden mysteries, and by introducing him to the knowledge of their deeper and more sacred doctrines.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 257.

Love , Men , Hostility , World

“An alternative “rational expectations” view denies that there is any inherent momentum in the present process of inflation. This view maintains that firms and workers have now come to expect high rates of inflation in the future and that they strike inflationary bargains in light of these expectations.”

Thomas J. Sargent (1943) American economist

Thomas J. Sargent, "The Ends of Four Big Inflations" (1981).

Light , Future

“The paper develops a simple macroeconomic framework for the study of exchange rate movements. The purpose is to develop a theory that is suggestive of the observed large fluctuations in exchange rates while at the same time establishing that such exchange rate movements are consistent with rational expectations formation. In developing a formal model we draw on the role of asset markets, capital mobility, and expectations that have been emphasized in recent literature.”

Rudiger Dornbusch (1942–2002) German economist

Rudiger Dornbusch, "Expectations and exchange rate dynamics." The journal of political economy (1976): 1161-1176. p. 1161

Literature , Study , Time , Drawing

“When a constant electric current flows along a cylindrical wire, its strength is the same at every part of the section of the wire. But if the current is variable, self-induction produces a deviation from this… induction opposes variations of the current in the centre of the wire more strongly than at the circumference, and consequently the current by preference flows along the outer portion of the wire. When the current changes its direction… this deviation increases rapidly with the rate of alternation; and when the current alternates many million times per second, almost the whole of the interior of the wire must, according to theory, appear free from current, and the flow must confine itself to the very skin of the wire. Now in such extreme cases… preference must be given to another conception of the matter which was first presented by Messrs. 0. Heaviside and J. H. Poynting, as the correct interpretation of Maxwell's equations as applied to this case. According to this view, the electric force which determines the current is not propagated in the wire itself, but under all circumstances penetrates from without into the wire, and spreads into the metal with comparative slowness and laws similar to those which govern changes of temperature in a conducting body.
…Inasmuch as I made use of electric waves in wires of exceedingly short period in my experiments on the propagation of electric force, it was natural to test by means of these the correctness of the conclusions deduced. As a matter of fact the theory was found to be confirmed by the experiments…”

Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) German physicist

"On the Propagation of Electric Waves by Means of Wires" (1889) Wiedemann's Annalen. 37 p. 395, & pp.160-161 of Electric Waves
Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity Through Space (1893)

Law , Nature , Appearance , Change

“The question is not put how far extends
His piety, but what he yearly spends;
Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
Our credit in the court by our estate.”

Juvenal book Satires

III, lines 234-242, John Dryden, trans.
Satires, Satire III

Question , Business

“The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show.
Their officials, international technocrats, rule our countries: they are neither presidents nor ministers, they have not been elected, but they decide the level of salaries and public expenditure, investments and divestments, prices, taxes, interest rates, subsidies, when the sun rises and how frequently it rains.
However, they don't concern themselves with the prisons or torture chambers or concentration camps or extermination centers, although these house the inevitable consequences of their acts.
The technocrats claim the privilege of irresponsibility: 'We're neutral' they say.”

Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) Uruguayan writer

Galeano (1991) Professional Life/3 p. 108; As cited in: Paul Farmer (2005) Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor.. p. 10

Money , World , Sun , Housing

“Gibson: And in each instance, when the [capital gains tax] rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
Obama: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Interview on ABC News (16 April 2008) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/Story?id=4670271&page=3
2008

Money , People , Country

“By that time a structure of property rights had developed in the Netherlands and England which provided the incentives necessary for sustained growth. These included the inducements required to encourage innovation and the consequent industrialization. The industrial revolution was not the source of modern economic growth. It was the outcome of raising the private rate of return on developing new techniques and applying them to the production process.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 157

Time

“It is true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate that they paid under Bill Clinton. John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn't in good conscience support tax cuts where the benefit went to the wealthy at the expense of middle class Americans who most need the tax relief. That's his quote. Well, he was right then, and I am right now.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Comments at a campaign rally in Tampa; Florida (20 October 2008) http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/10/20/394027.html
2008

Quotes , Support , Forgetting

“With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior…. It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 8
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Food , Art , Behavior , Question

“Death isn't online. If he was, there would be a sudden drop in the death rate. Although it'd be interesting to see if he'd post things like: DON'T YOU THINK I SOUND LIKE JAMES EARL JONES?”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

Death , Thinking

“Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. … To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

§ 50
2010s, 2015, Laudato si' : Care for Our Common Home

World , Way , Birth , Problem

“The white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence…. Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923)

War , World , Birth , Help

“You trust in your own doings to appease God for your sins, and to incline the heart of God to you. Though you are poor, worthless, vile, and polluted, yet you arrogantly take upon you that very work for which the Son of God became man; and in order to which God employed four thousand years in all the great dispensations of His providence, aiming chiefly to make way for Christ's coming to do this work. This is the work that you foolishly think yourselves sufficient for; as though your prayers and performances were excellent enough for this purpose. Consider how vain is the thought which you entertain of yourself. How must such arrogance appear in the sight of Christ, whom it cost so much? It was not to be obtained even by Him, so great and glorious a person, at a cheaper rate than His wading through a sea of blood, and passing through the midst of the furnace of God's wrath.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 541.

God , Way , Thinking , Appearance

“There are a number of purely theoretical questions, of perennial and passionate interest, which science is unable to answer, at any rate at present.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1940s, Philosophy for Laymen (1946)
Context: There are a number of purely theoretical questions, of perennial and passionate interest, which science is unable to answer, at any rate at present. Do we survive death in any sense, and if so, do we survive for a time or for ever? Can mind dominate matter, or does matter completely dominate mind, or has each, perhaps, a certain limited independence? Has the universe a purpose? Or is it driven by blind necessity? Or is it a mere chaos and jumble, in which the natural laws that we think we find are only a phantasy generated by our own love of order? If there is a cosmic scheme, has life more importance in it than astronomy would lead us to suppose, or is our emphasis upon life mere parochialism and self-importance? I do not know the answer to these questions, and I do not believe that anybody else does, but I think human life would be impoverished if they were forgotten, or if definite answers were accepted without adequate evidence. To keep alive the interest in such questions, and to scrutinize suggested answers, is one of the functions of philosophy.

Question , Passion , Science

“I'd rather be a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of anybody.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

Liza Minelli, interviewed by Gene Shalit in the September 1977 issue of The Ladies Home Journal, as quoted in "Women in the News," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yXMjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=a2cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5851%2C3647577 in The Sarasota Herald-Tribune (August 24, 1977), p. 6-D
Variant: But I'd rather be a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of somebody else.
Context: I don't sing them because I couldn't sing them as well as she did. I'd rather be a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of anybody.

“We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

Life , Women , Men , Hostility

“Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by Joan Riviere (1961)
Context: Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.

Love

“Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.42-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“You sing them better than anybody. I don't want to be a second-rate example of you. I want to be a first-rate example of myself.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

Liza Minelli, as quoted in "Liza Minelli 'Never Felt Better' Despite Tabloids' Whispers" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rmRGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6ugMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3577%2C2269544 by Douglas J. Rowe, in TV Plus: The Schenectady Sunday Gazette Supplement (June 9, 1996), p. 4
Context: It really scared me to do what Mom did because I never did anything that she did. I promised her that I would never sing her songs, and I kept my promise. "You sing them better than anybody. I don't want to be a second-rate example of you. I want to be a first-rate example of myself."

Singing

“I would rather present a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of Mama.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

Liza Minelli, as quoted in I Remember It Well (1975) by Vincente Minelli with Hector Arce, p. 395 https://books.google.com/books?id=D6jDtmiJCpkC&q=minelli+%22second-rate%22+%22first-rate+version%22&dq=minelli+%22second-rate%22+%22first-rate+version%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwBGoVChMI0on3sqjdxgIVxHg-Ch1NhwVD; reprinted in "Judy and Liza, Part 3" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CfpjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WuYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7188%2C5401411 by Vincente Minelli, in The Sydney Herald (August 15, 1975), p. 8
Context: I couldn't sing Mama's special songs. I couldn't do them as well. I would rather present a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of Mama.

“As this conviction grew upon me, I was filled with a new excitement and my depression at the non-success of civil disobedience grew much less. Was not the world marching rapidly towards the desired consummation? There were grave dangers of wars and catastrophes, but at any rate we were moving. There was no stagnation. Our national struggle became a stage in the longer journey, and it was as well that repression and suffering were tempering our people for future struggles and forcing them to consider the new ideas that were stirring the world. We would be the stronger and the more disciplined and hardened by the elimination of the weaker elements. Time was in our favour.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

Time , Success , War , Future

“However extraordinary the results shown may appear, they are but trifling compared with those which are attainable by apparatus designed on these same principles. I have produced electrical discharges the actual path of which, from end to end, was probably more than one hundred feet long; but it would not be difficult to reach lengths one hundred times as great. I have produced electrical movements occurring at the rate of approximately one hundred thousand horse-power, but rates of one, five, or ten million horse-power are easily practicable. In these experiments effects were developed incomparably greater than any ever produced by human agencies, and yet these results are but an embryo of what is to be.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Horse , Appearance , Time

“Now, when suffering is always the first of the arguments marshalled against life, as its most questionable feature, it is salutary to remember the times when people made the opposite assessment, because they could not do without making people suffer and saw first-rate magic in it, a veritable seductive lure to life. Perhaps pain - I say this to comfort the squeamish - did not hurt as much then as it does now; at least, a doctor would be justified in assuming this, if he had treated a Negro (taken as a representative for primeval man) for serious internal inflammations which would drive the European with the stoutest constitution to distraction; - they do not do that to Negroes.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

The curve of human capacity for pain actually does seem to sink dramatically and almost precipitously beyond the first ten thousand or ten million of the cultural elite; and for myself, I do not doubt that in comparison with one night of pain endured by a single, hysterical blue stocking, the total suffering of all the animals who have been interrogated by the knife in scientific research is as nothing.
Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Hurt , Pain , Time , Question

“Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods? I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses. Today I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. We need to reconnect with our real surroundings.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

On the coronavirus and environmental crises. Cited in Pope salutes 'saints next door' in fight against coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/pope-salutes-saints-next-door-fight-against-coronavirus-hyprocrisy in the Guardian. (8 April 2020)
2010s, 2020

Understanding , Learning , Revenge , Nature

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Success , Failure , Success

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Source: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981), No. 52: To his son Christopher Tolkien (29 November, 1943)

Men

“Have you ever been really scared and then your muscles relaxed? Being scared is just one relaxation of muscles, an orgasm is the contraction and relaxation of muscles over and over. then afterward, you are really sensitive to touch. your toes are tingly, heart rate is really high, you're all hot, you cant focus on anything other than the feelings coursing through your body.
its all warm, wet, hot, a sensory overload really.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Heart , Feeling

“The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place, and continues to do so today.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

As quoted in The Guardian (1995), and in "Biting back at Microsoft" (5 June 2001) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/jun/05/guardianletters3

Idea , Appearance

“Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety.

At any rate that afforded me some comfort.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Silence

“It is easy to tell the toiler
How best he can carry his pack
But no one can rate a burden's weight
Until it has been on his back”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

“Our standard rate. A doubloon a day."
It was generous. More than generous--some families would put him up for a week for a single coin.
"Half a doubloon a day," she said.
"No, you see, the idea behind bargaining is that you ask for a larger amount.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Family , Idea

“You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: A Short Guide to a Happy Life

Success

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Books , Reading

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Time

“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Source: The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

Life , Truth

“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

On himself and his contemporaries.
Paris Review interview (1958)

Dreams , Failure , Perfection

“You might want to get up," he said. "Everyone will be here quite soon to rescue you, and you may prefer to have clothes on when they arrive." He shrugged. "I would, at any rate, but then, I am well known to be remarkably shy.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Clothes

“The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them (2003)

Money

“The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/he-knew-he-was-right-2 note: Our Short National Nightmare note: The New Yorker note: In The New Yorker, October 16, 2006 note: 2000s, 2006

Life , Sex