Quotes about reach
page 18

“On Kant’s view it can never follow from the fact that God commands is to do such-and-such that we ought to do such-and-such. In order for us to reach such a conclusion we would also have to know that we always ought to do what God commands. But this last we could not know unless we ourselves possessed a standard of moral judgment independent of God’s commandments by means of which we could judge God’s deeds and words and so find the latter morally worthy of obedience. But clearly if we possess such a standard, the commandments of God will be redundant.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 45.

God

“I understand the most profound and simplest Truth of all: Any time any of us reaches out, any time we pour even a drop of love, compassion, simple human decency (no matter how small; how seemingly insignificant) into the sea of earthly existence — we are, each and every one of us — the being called Mercy.”

J.M. DeMatteis book Mercy

Mercy (1993)

Love, Truth, Understanding, Time

“There is a boundary to the understanding, and when it is reached, faith is the continuation of reason.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 219.

Faith, Understanding

“The stand of the "realist" school, and its objections to further or faster involvement in the Libya crisis, can be fairly summarized…The actual evidence, however, is that Qaddafi senior has reached his Ceausescu moment: a full-dress (in the literal sense) meltdown into paranoia, megalomania, and delusion. His recent speeches and appearances have shown him stinking with madness and hysteria. His age and condition, at any rate, set a very sharp limit to the duration of his regime. If that regime implodes while he is still "in place," then all the grim consequences foreseen by the realists will be incurred in any case. Weapons will get into the wrong hands; divide-and-rule tactics (already a stock in trade) will intensify; religious and tribal passions will be deliberately inflamed. The main difference will be that we merely watched this happen.”

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

2010s, 2011

Age, School, Sense, Appearance

“We were walking
Just the other day.
It was so hot outside,
You could fry an egg.
Remember you were talking,
I watched as sweat ran down your face.
Reached up and I caught it at your chin,
Licked my fingertips.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Stay
Before These Crowded Streets (1998)

“Why in this world of ours there should be so much suffering no one knows. But this we know; that, evil existing, the world being such as it is, we can win from evil, if we choose, an inestimable good, namely — the conviction that there is in us a power not of the senses, the conviction that spirit exists, and exists in us.
A sceptic may say that in a world ideally conceivable we might have secured this precious conviction without the necessity of undergoing the ordeal of pain. To which the reply is: that in a world ideally conceivable what he says may be true; but in the world as it is, with which alone we are concerned, we have ample cause for gratitude that we can turn suffering to such far-reaching account, that we can distil from the bitter root this divine elixir; that by manfully bearing the pains of the senses, inexplicable though they be, we are able to gain the certainty that a power not born of the senses exists in us, operates in us. It is this effect of pain that accounts for the serenity and peace of many patient sufferers, a peace and a serenity which surround their bed of misery with a kind of halo.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Pain, World, Peace, Sense

“There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002), The Man Comes Around

“The news about Ghazwah-tal Hind taking place in the sub-continent has been given by the Holy Prophet‑saws and has reached his Ummah through his blessed statements. I had starting speaking, during the decade of the 90’s, about its taking place in the sub-continent. At that time people were sceptical about it happening and felt strange even talking about it. However, now the situation is becoming clearer by the day and even the common man has started to understand that this conflict is bound to take place. Its time is known only to Allah‑swt, but its occurrence is most certain, because it is a Divine Decision, about which we have been informed by the Holy Prophet‑saws. He is the most Truthful of the truthful, and it is our trust in him that is known as Iman”

Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan (1934–2017) Pakistani Sufi leader

Faith

People, Truth, Faith, Understanding

“Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (October 22, 1847), Delivered at Market Hall, New York City, New York.
1840s, Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (1847)

Love, God, Truth, Evil

“After a simple dinner I go out on the porch and gaze up at the stars twinkling above, the random scattering of millions of stars. Even in a planetarium you wouldn't find this many. Some of them look really big and distinct, like if you reached your hand out intently you could touch them. The whole thing is breathtaking. Not just beautiful, though -the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 15

Beauty, Star, Tree

“We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads,
Hear sounds far off,—and dream, with quivering breath,
Our curious separate ways through life and death.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Life, Death, Dreams, Way

“Political repression in the United States has reached monstrous proportions. Black and Brown peoples especially, victims of the most vicious and calculated forms of class, national and racial oppression, bear the brunt of this repression. Literally tens of thousands of innocent men and women, the overwhelming majority of them poor, fill the jails and prisons; hundreds of thousands more, including the most presumably respectable groups and individuals, are subject to police, FBI and military intelligence surveillance. The Nixon administration most recently responded to the massive protests against the war in Indochina by arresting more than 13,000 people and placing them in stadiums converted into detention centers.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Women, Men, War, People

“Men left their strange hobbies on Earth and Venus and projected themselves into the pattern. Their entire personalities were merged with the texture of space itself. Through science, they reached immortality.
It was a one-way passage.
They did not return. Each Involute carried thousands or even millions of people. There they were, not dead, not living. How they exulted or wept in their transubstantiation, no one left could say. Only this could be said: man had gone, and a great emptiness was fallen over Earth.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Old Hundredth” p. 162
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Men, People, Way, Science

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

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

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

People, Books, Soul, Girl

“By the structure of society, I mean the institutional and ideological presuppositions that shape the routine practices, conflicts, and transactions in that society, and that are largely taken for granted, even to the point of being invisible, as if they were part of the nature of things. In a free society, this institutional and ideological framework does not present itself as an alien fate beyond the reach of the transformative will and imagination.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 295

Fate, Imagination, Nature, Parting

“Trained in a less severe school than that of geometry and physics, his reasonings are almost always loose and inconclusive. His generalizations seem to have been reached before he had obtained the materials upon which he rests them: His facts, though frequently new and interesting, are often little more than conjectures; and the grand phenomena of the world of life, and instinct, and reason, which other minds have woven into noble and elevating truths, have thus become in Mr. Darwin's hands the basis of a dangerous and degrading speculation.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Referring to Charles Darwin
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)

Life, Truth, World, School

“It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Speech to the NAACP http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/gardner.html (29 June 1947).

Effort, Freedom, Country

“Many magnify in words the importance of public duties, but few appreciate them in feeling; and that, not so much for want of feeling, as for want of carrying it out to whatever results the understanding reaches.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 9. p. 64

Feeling, Understanding

“There is one thing beyond the reach of perversity. The inevitable failure of history, she will judge us”

Benito Juárez (1806–1872) President of Mexico during XIX century

From the letter to Maximiliano de Habsburgo http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/05/28/sem-carta.html in 1864

History, Failure

“The experiences are so innumerable and varied, that the journey appears to be interminable and the Destination is ever out of sight. But the wonder of it is, when at last you reach your Destination you find that you had never travelled at all! It was a journey from here to Here.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Everything and the Nothing (1963)

Travel, Appearance

“They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

21 September 1854 (p. 256)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Knowledge, Perfection

“some evidence is available to indicate that, in India, an increase in the income of the poorer people leads to an increase in the size of the family; and also that this tapers off after a certain critical level of income is attained, and is followed by a reduction in the size of the family at higher levels of living When a sufﬁcient number of people reach the critical income, there would be a gradual decrease in the average birth rate with further increase in income.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

People, Family, Birth

“The sense of shame that the Chancellor should have felt is far more personal. It is a sense of shame for having taken over an economy with a £1,000 million surplus and running it to a £2,000 million deficit. It is a sense of shame for having conducted our internal financial affairs with such profligacy that our public accounts are out of balance as never before. It is a sense of shame for having presided over the greatest depreciation of the currency, both at home and abroad, in our history. It is a sense of shame for having left us at a moment of test far weaker than most of our neighbours…There is, I believe, a greater threat to the effective working of our democratic institutions than most of us have seen in our adult lifetimes. I do not believe that it springs primarily from the machinations of subversively-minded men, although no doubt they are there and are anxious to exploit exploitable situations. It comes much more dangerously from a widespread cynicism with the processes of our political system. I believe that the Chancellor contributed to that on Monday. I believe that it poses a serious challenge to us all…None of us should seek salvation through chaos. There is a duty too to recognise that we could slip into a still worse rate of inflation and a world spiral-ling downwards towards slump, unemployment and falling standards, with our selves, temporarily at least, well in the vanguard. What is required is neither an imposed solution nor an open hand at the till. The alternative to reaching a settlement with the miners is paralysis…The task of statesmanship is to reach a settlement but to do it in a way which opens no floodgates for if they were opened, it would not only damage everyone but it would undermine the differential which the miners deserve and which the nation now needs them to have.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/dec/19/economic-and-energy-situation in the House of Commons (19 December 1973) 1970s

Men, World, Way, Home

“Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Address to the Raising the Bar symposium (2001)

Life, Justice, Hope, Universe

“Breathe out, so that your breath travels infinitely to the ends of the universe: breathe in, so that your breath reaches your one point and continues infinitely there. The ki breathing methods are an important way of unifying mind and body. At night when all is quiet and calm, do this alone, and you will feel that you are the universe and that the universe is you. It will lead you to supreme ecstasy of being one with the universe. At this moment the life power that is rightfully yours is fully activated.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

15 : Ki breathing exercises
Ki Sayings (2003)

Life, Way, Travel, Feeling

“The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Reading

“Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds – and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Merav Yudilovitch in Yedioth Ahronoth, August 4, 2006 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3286204,00.html. Quotes 2000s, 2006

World, Anger

“The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago…had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Source: The Dance of Life http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300671.txt (1923), Ch. 7

Star, Sun

“In the process of decision those alternatives are chosen which are considered to be appropriate means of reaching desired ends. Ends themselves, however, are often merely instrumental to more final objectives. We are thus led to the conception of a series, or hierarchy, of ends. Rationality has to do with the construction of means-ends chains of this kind.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 62.

Decision

“Not it is different with type 14 vehicles. They move through their world with consistent determination, always clearly after something that very often we cannot guess at the outset - something that may not even be there when the vehicle reaches the place it wants to get to. But it seems to be a good strategy, this running after a dream. Most of the time the chain of optimistic predicitions that seems to guide the vehicles's behaviour proves to be correct, and Vehicle 14 achieves goals that Vehicle 13 and its predecessors "couldn't not even dream of." The point is that while the vehicle goes through its optimistic predicitions, the succession of internal states implies movements and actions of the vehicle itself. While dreaming and sleepwalking, the vehicle transforms the world (and its own position in the world) in such a way that ultimately the state of the world is a more favorable one.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

As cited in: [ http://transit-port.net/Citations/index.html Citations] at transit-port.net, 2013
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984)

World, Dreams, Way, Time

“When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 169)

Waiting

“The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character. We have already indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens. Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between the orders. The formation of these new parties began in the fifth century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand. The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall, along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family, in the funeral procession.. the honouring of images was regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden amulet-case of the boys--trifling matters, but still important in a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so strictly adhered to, and where, even during the second Punic war, a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland of roses upon his head.(6) These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only acquired political importance in consequence of the change of constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first, a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Death, Men, War, Youth

“I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values. … As soon as I said publicly that I was trying this experiment, so many vegans out there, hundreds and hundreds of people, have been reaching out to me with incredible support and encouragement as well as practical tips of how to do this without having to sacrifice that much in terms of the food and what I like. I've discovered some really delicious things—recipes, stores, and restaurants—that have made this transition far easier. … There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

" Talking Tofurky With Newly Vegan Cory Booker http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/26/talking-tofurky-with-newly-vegan-cory-booker.html", interview with Vlad Chituc, in The Daily Beast (26 November 2014) 2014

People, Food, Way, Support

“From a high tower I have looked to the four points of the horizon.
I will go and lift up the dead on the battlefield.
I will stretch out their contorted arms and legs.
I will close their cold eyelids on their fixed pupils.
I cannot bear to see eyes if I do not receive any words.
Invisible life entrusts us with sad tasks,
I look back to my years, and the pains I have suffered
are not enough.
Soon there will be clashings of men and horrible clanging sounds.
And people hunted, pushed, wrenched.
Also I will find myself in the midst of the madness of war.
I will open pure words, orders of thought, fraternal acts.
In the meantime they will bring forward the man
condemned to death and they will tell him to dig his own grave.
He will look up at the still hills and the sky.
Some distant sounds of life will still reach him.
He will not have time to think back to his many days –
to the voices of his dear people, and the close relationships.
Not even will he be able to look ahead,
to come to terms with what is happening now.
And when the shots will be fired, with the flash a cry will go up
The human cry which is too late, and it’s lost.
To free, to free as soon as possible.
They will ask me: why don’t you come to fight with us?
They will not understand, they will carry on with the war.
I loved to be with other people, as the light of the day.
It is so good to work together, in trust, in mutual help.
To lose myself in the crowd in modest clothes.
In a circle of equals to listen and to speak.
And now nobody wants to listen, and yet they are all people.
I have become a stranger, the others do not know that I am there.
The abrupt reply, the friend who looks the other way.
It would be easy to join them in earnest action.
Forgetting the deeper unity, beyond the war?
I remain here, isolated from everybody,
working for a deeper togetherness.
Everything was only a trial, reality must yet begin.
Every being was partaking of another reality yet he did not know.
But now this reality is becoming clear,
and it matters only what opens us to it.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, "whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone;" but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IV Section I - Speculation on the Doctrine of the Depravity of Human Reason

“Sultãn Muzaffar… started for Îdar. When he arrived in the town of Mahrãsã, he sent armies for destroying Îdar. The Rãjã of Îdar evacuated the fort and took refuge in the mountain of Bîjãnagar. The Sultãn, when he reached Îdar, found there ten Rajpûts ready to lay down their lives. He heaped barbarities on them and killed them. He did not leave even a trace of palaces, temples, gardens and trees…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Muzaffar Shãh II of Gujarat (AD 1511-1526) Idar (Gujarat)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Mountain, Tree

“I take great satisfaction in seeing people and organizations achieve goals they might have originally believed to be beyond their reach.”

Don W. Wilson (1942) Archivist of the United States

As quoted in e-Study Guide for: American Government and Politics Today Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=suExAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT51&dq=%22I+take+great+satisfaction+in+seeing+people+and+organizations+achieve+goals+they+might+have+originally+believed+to+be+beyond+their+reach%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=i0iDU8G8BMix0AW17IDgDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20take%20great%20satisfaction%20in%20seeing%20people%20and%20organizations%20achieve%20goals%20they%20might%20have%20originally%20believed%20to%20be%20beyond%20their%20reach%22&f=false

People

“Adams proclaimed that in the last synthesis, order and anarchy were one, but that the unity was chaos. As anarchist, conservative and Christian, he had no motive or duty but to attain the end; and, to hasten it, he was bound to accelerate progress; to concentrate energy; to accumulate power; to multiply and intensify forces; to reduce friction, increase velocity and magnify momentum, partly because this was the mechanical law of the universe as science explained it; but partly also in order to get done with the present which artists and some others complained of; and finally — and chiefly — because a rigorous philosophy required it, in order to penetrate the beyond, and satisfy man's destiny by reaching the largest synthesis in its ultimate contradiction. Of course the untaught critic instantly objected that this scheme was neither conservative, Christian, nor anarchic, but such objection meant only that the critic should begin his education in any infant school in order to learn that anarchy which should be logical would cease to be anarchic. To the conservative Christian anarchist, the amiable doctrines of Kropotkin were sentimental ideas of Russian mental inertia covered with the name of anarchy merely to disguise their innocence.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, School, Law, Motivation

“The trouble with you John, is that your spine does not reach your brain.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On Conservative backbencher John Whittingdale after being summoned to her room to urge MPs to vote against the Maastricht Treaty. Whittingdale was reported to have emerged from the room in tears. (The Times 26 November 1992)
Post-Prime Ministerial

“Pity the Party without enough woman power - there will always be dreamers and leaders, but the dreams won't come true, nor will the leaders reach their goal, without the ready doers.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 3, The truth squad, p. 36

Dreams

“It is impossible to concede that, by the words "freedom of the press," the framers of the amendment intended to adopt merely the narrow view then reflected by the law of England that such freedom consisted only in immunity from previous censorship, for this abuse had then permanently disappeared from English practice. It is equally impossible to believe that it was not intended to bring within the reach of these words such modes of restraint as were embodied in the two forms of taxation already described.”

George Sutherland (1862–1942) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, United States Senator, member of the United States House of Re…

Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936)

Law, Freedom

“The light would reach us more quickly in the morning and fade more slowly at night if the whole earth were divided into vast flower beds that called forth the light at dawn and clutched it longer at nightfall. Nature instituted summer for flowers long before man took summer over for his own uses.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Flowers, Nature, Light, Summer

“When credit is expanding, the rising price level and high profits bring about a high rate of interest. When the expansion has reached, the limit permitted by the stock of gold, the rate of interest is put still higher in order to bring about a fall in the price level. When the fall in prices takes effect, a low rate of interest becomes appropriate, and when credit contraction has proceeded so far that a redundant supply of gold has accumulated, the rate of interest is depressed still lower in order to bring about a renewed rise in the price level. Thus a high rate of interest corresponds first with rising, then with falling, prices, and so synchronizes with high prices. A low rate of interest corresponds first with falling, and then with rising, prices, and so synchronizes with low prices.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Ralph George Hawtrey, quoted in Irving Fisher, The Theory of Interest (1930), Chapter 19. The Relation of Interest to Money and Prices

“Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Lecture VI: Formation of Opinions
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)

Law, Learning

“They were brought out of Africa and into chains in America. Or they were born into slavery here. Yes, I am talking about the first African-Americans to reach these shores, but I am also describing the animals now enslaved in circuses. The species and continents are different, but the stories are tragically similar. The animals in circuses are held against their will by chains and domination. They are forced to perform a series of acts by coercion and violence because they would never normally do these things on their own. They can never choose their own partners, their own homes, their own food or have control over any aspect of their lives. I don't care how this is dressed up by promoters with music and lights, it is still slavery.”

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC

Wrote in November 2005, criticizing a black-owned circus; as quoted in "Pryor Fought Animal Abuse" by Lisa Lange, in Albuquerque Journal (15 December 2005) https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/206590625/

Food, Music, Home, Light

“After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: "Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." In fact, I said to them, confidently: "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Hunger, God, Faith, Food

“She had little doubt that whatever happened to her on this drifting ship was of scant interest to a God who could allow her to reach this sorry state in the first place.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 6, “The Sea-Grave” (p. 185).

God

“Behold therefore, this England of the Year 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or dreamland, peopled with mere vaporous Fantasms, Rymer's Foedera, and Doctrines of the Constitution, but a green solid place, that grew corn and several other things. The Sun shone on it; the vicissitude of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn; ditches were dug, furrowfields ploughed, and houses built. Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by night returned home weary to their several lairs. In wondrous Dualism, then as now, lived nations of breathing men; alternating, in all ways, between Light and Dark; between joy and sorrow, between rest and toil, between hope, hope reaching high as Heaven, and fear deep as very Hell. Not vapour Fantasms, Rymer's Foedera at all!”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men, People, Fear, Hope

“Do women avoid fields like engineering because of the tendency of male-dominated fields to discriminate against women? Probably not. Prior to the women's movement, engineering was no more male-dominated than medicine and law. And women have entered medicine and law by the droves. When women enter male-dominated fields, they tend to enter the more glamorous occupations. And the media reinforces this. There was L. A. Law, but no L. A. Engineering. ER doesn't mean Engineering Room. Women receive six layers of encouragement to enter fields involving engineering, computers, and math and science: first, better starting salaries than men's; second, special programs for girls in high school; third, female-only government scholarships; fourth, female-only corporate grants and scholarships; fifth, the advertising that reaches out to women to create a more female-supportive atmosphere; and sixth, special grants for science programs at leading women's colleges.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 25.

Women, Men, School, Law

“They reach the realms of tranquil bliss.
Green spaces folded in with trees,
A paradise of pleasances.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 215

Tree

“As for the number of people reluctant to me, I guess I fall in the national average. Maybe it's about talking openly what I think? For example, in 1980 an interview with several professors – including myself – was ran by the newspaper Dziennik Polski, very much against the then authorities. We've all been in favor of far-reaching changes, but each of us saw these changes differently. I am a nonbeliever. And there comes the „Solidarity” with holy masses and sprinkling corpses with holy water. I thought that policy of the University, beneficial to the „Solidarity”, was not always beneficial for the University itself. From time to time, friendly people try to affront me, even though I did not belong neither to the youth communist organization neither to the party, neither had I contacts with the communist Security Service. And generally I didn't have herd instincts.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

People, Youth, Thinking, Universe

“The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

“I do have utopian fantasies. A lot of them are more - I wouldn't say spiritual, but they relate more to the imagination and the individual. But for me socialism is a way of trying to put far-fetched ideas into everyday use, trying to find a way to bridge the gap between that fantasy and reality, and reaching out across that gap to the people who can actually do something to make the change.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Definitions and objects

People, Way, Imagination, Idea

“As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

People, Strong

“After being the CM for two consecutive terms, I had two desires. One was to unearth my childhood friends with whom I had completely lost touch. One day, I sat up and listed all the names I could remember. I remembered them all but had lost track of their whereabouts. Some 35 names popped up. I wanted to invite them to the Chief Minister's residence and share my childhood with them and also because I wanted to remind myself about the real Modi lest I lose sight of him. So, I spent time with my friends getting down-to-earth. They too felt that if I remembered and spent time with them after having reached where I have then I must be fine. So, that was my test. The other desire was to get together all the teachers in my lifetime and honour them. One of them was 93-years-old. I invited them here and organised a big function to honour them. It gave me immense happiness that I was able to honour and say thanks to those who have contributed their might in shaping me. So, I fulfilled both my desires and I am happy about it.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2011, Interview with C. S. S. Latha, 2011

Happiness, Teachers, Time, Childhood

“If Ganges water will reach your ancestors in heaven, why should the water I throw up not reach my fields in the Punjab, which are far less distant?”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak Dev ji (1469 - 1539)

Water, Distant

“The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Quoted in The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (1930), by Florence Emily Hardy, ch. 17, p. 212

Men, Age, Dependency, Personality

“In the post-Vietnam War era the need for Communist abuses has been no less pressing than before. More facts have come to light on the scope of U. S. violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the extent of which U. S. officials lied to the public with regard to their programs and methods, and the brazenness with which these officials defied treaty obligations and international law. Much as the government and the media tried to isolate the scoundrelism of Watergate from the much more profound immorality of the “secret” devastation of Cambodia, the linkage between the two could not be entirely concealed and therefore tended to discredit still further the campaign to bring “freedom” to South Vietnam. Counterrevolution, torture and official murder in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, and other U. S. satellites was also reaching new peaks. Thus, if Cambodian terror did not exist, the Western propaganda systems would have had to invent it, and in certain respects it did […].”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 19.

War, Secret, Law, Freedom

“If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 12, Writing About Yourself: The Memoir, p. 98.

People

“Great acts I reach to, to small things I bow.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

L'alte non temo, e l'umili non sdegno. Canto II, stanza 46 (tr. Fairfax) Variant translation https://archive.org/stream/dictionaryofquot00harbuoft#page/331/mode/1up: The proud I fear not, nor the meek disdain. Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“When we encounter a face, we view it as a whole, by a process of integration of the parts, which takes place, as some scientists and physicians understand it, in the optic nerves long before any transmission reaches the brain. The otherwise dizzying abundance of information that hits the retina is distilled in this tract of fibers behind the eye into a sign that our intelligence can absorb. When we see a strip of letters, a billboard slogan, for example, we cannot help but read the word; we do not see each letter separately, but rather, instantly, we grasp the whole word and, moreover, its meaning.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

Intelligence, Understanding, Reading, Help

“When people on both sides of the Strait reach a consensus on their political system, unification will come to fruition naturally.”

Hau Pei-tsun (1919) Taiwanese politician

Hau Pei-tsun (2013) cited in " Ex-premier Hau calls for ‘Chinese-style’ democracy http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/07/23/2003567961" on Taipei Times, 23 July 2013

People, Nature

“In that privileged place, reality and the sublime dimension almost come together. My mystical paradise begins in the plains of the Empordà, is surrounded by the Alberes hills, and reaches plenitude in the bay of Cadaqués. This land is my permanent inspiration. The only place in the world, too, where I feel loved. When I painted that rock that I entitled 'The Great Masturbator', I did nothing more than render homage to one of the promontories of my kingdom, and my painting was a hymn to one of the jewels of my crown.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from Wikipedia: The Great Masturbator
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

Love, World, Feeling, Reality

“The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble. Let us keep our end in view, let us press forward to our goal. Let us not indulge in pride, nor give in to our sinful passions. Let us steadily exert ourselves to reach a higher degree of holiness till we shall finally arrive at a perfection of goodness which we seek and pursue as long as we live, but which we shall attain then only, when, freed from all earthly infirmity, we shall be admitted by God into his full communion.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 23.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

God, Passion, Perfection, Sincerity

“Currently, young Christians reach adulthood bored with church experience, and with little or no sense of their calling as missionaries.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 119

Sense, Adulthood

“All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Truth

“Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge
First Principles (1862)

Reality, Appearance

“As an actor I don't admit to any limitations. In rehearsal one comes up against apparently insuperable barriers, but if one can imaginatively get past them, overreach one's natural reach, it is astonishing how elastic one can become. I've got to go not so far as I can, but as far as is needed. It's up to somebody else to say if I've made a fool of myself.”

Paul Scofield (1922–2008) English actor

Quoted in Lyn Gardner, Obituary: Paul Scofield http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/obituary/0,,2266899,00.html, The Guardian (2008-03-20)

Fools, Imagination, Nature, Past

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Books, Feeling, Decision, Effort

“The prevailing mood in my country is one of optimism and opportunity. Scotland is restless for change and keen to expand its influence and to reach out beyond our shores.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland and Northern Ireland (June 18, 2007)

Mood, Optimism, Change, Country

“Louisiana rain now is falling just like tears.
Running down my face washing out the years.
Louisiana rain is soaking through my shoes.
I may never be the same when I reach Baton Rouge.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Louisiana Rain
Lyrics, Damn The Torpedoes (1979)

Shoe, Tear

“Engineering has long been conceded a place as one of the modern arts, and has become a well-defined science, with a large and growing literature of its own, and of late years has subdivided itself into numerous and distinct divisions, one of which is that of mechanical engineering. It will probably not be disputed that the matter of shop management is of equal importance with that of engineering, as affecting the successful conduct of most, if not all, of our great industrial establishments, and that the management of works has become a matter of such great and far-reaching importance as perhaps to justify its classification also as one of the modern arts.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Source: "The Engineer as an Economist," 1886, p. 428-9

Art, Literature, Science, Success

“A man will often believe himself a leader when he is led; while with his mind he endeavours to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him toward another.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

L'homme croit souvent se conduire lorsqu'il est conduit; et pendant que par son esprit il tend à un but, son coeur l'entraîne insensiblement à un autre.
Maxim 43.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Heart

“There is … no first person plural to the verb "cogito." Observation, verification, and inference are functions which are perfected only in their independent individual exercise. I am not unmindful of the importance of the corroboration of one mind by another; but such corroboration is valuable only in so far as both minds have reached their results alone. Corroboration implies the absence of collusion. The devotee of the intellect must, then, have the strength to work alone.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

Exercises, Personality, Perfection

“The Diary of Vaslav Nijinjsky reaches a limit of sincerity beyond any of the documents that we have referred to on this study. There are other modern works that express the same sense that civilized life is a form of living death; notably the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the novels of Franz Kafka; but there is an element of prophetic denunciation in both, the attitude of healthy men rebuking their sick neighbors. We possess no other record of the Outsider's problems that was written by a man about to be defeated and permanently smashed by those problems.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 115

Life, Death, Men, Problem

“But what started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos. …matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems. …The tie between information and action has been severed. …It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Problem, Personality

“On account of his extensive charities, scholars from Iraq, Khorasan and Mawaraun-Nahar started presenting themselves in his court and Islam was spread. He held in great regard Sayyid Muhammad who was a very great scholar of the time, and strived to destroy the idols and temples of the infidels. He got demolished the famous temple of Mahadeva at Bahrare. The temple was dug out from its foundations and the hole (that remained) reached the water level. Another temple at Jagdar was also demolished' Raja Alamadat had got a big temple constructed at Sinpur. He had come to know from astrologers that after 11 hundred years a king by the name of Sikandar would get the temple destroyed and the idol of Utarid, which was in it, broken. He got this [forecast] inscribed on a copper plate which was kept in a box and buried under the temple. The inscription came up when the temple was destroyed [by Sikandar]'….. The value of currency had come down, because Sultan Sikandar had got idols of gold, silver and copper broken and turned into coins.”

Sikandar Butshikan

Tabqat-i-Akhari, (also known as Tabqat-i-Akbar Shahi, Tabqat-i-Akbari, Tarikh-i-Nizami) by Khwajah Nizamud-Din Ahmad bin Muhammad Muqim al-Harbi, Translated from the Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi included in Uttar Taimur Kalina Bharata, Aligarh 1959, Vol. II. p. 515-17, In Goel, S.R. Hindu Temples - What happened to them

Water, Time, Box

“In strategic thinking, one first seeks a clear understanding of the particular character of each element of a situation and then makes the fullest possible use of human brainpower to restructure the elements in the most advantageous way. Phenomena and events in the real word do not always fit a linear model. Hence the most reliable means of dissecting a situation into its constituent parts and reassembling then in the desired pattern is not a step-by-step methodology such as systems analysis. Rather, it is that ultimate nonlinear thinking tool, the human brain. True strategic thinking thus contrasts sharply with the conventional mechanical systems approach based on linear thinking. But it also contrasts with the approach that stakes everything on intuition, reaching conclusions without any real breakdown or analysis… No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield.”

Kenichi Ohmae (1943) Japanese academic

Source: The Mind Of The Strategist, 1982, p. 304

Way, Imagination, Understanding, Nature

“As in mysterious and transcendent union the Divine takes into itself the human in the person of Jesus, and eternity is blended with time; we, trusting Him, and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfying realities that abide forever mingle with and are reached through the shadows that pass away.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 610.

Soul, Reality, Time, Heart

“In the past scientists have repeatedly reached “intellectual closure” on inadequate pictures of the universe, and underestimated its scale.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

"Multiversality" (2013)

Universe, Past

“We have to recognise our cultural differences, but accept that they enrich our society. We also have to accept that all communities and citizens have contributed to the nation. We must understand that our homeland can only reach its full promise if we all continue to contribute, with fair and equitable benefits for all. Finally, we must recognize that for the accomplishment of full nationhood and unity, we have to give greater emphasis to our common interests.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Communication, Understanding

“She didn't want to touch the baby. Didn't want to know if she was dead. But still she reached down, her arms underneath that small body, and pulled it up against her. The body was burning with fever.
But alive. Alive!”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 131

Baby, Dead

“Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.”

Evelyn Waugh book A Little Learning

First lines
A Little Learning (1964)

Age, Future

“A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Letter to the editor of Solidarity (1914-11-29)

Sense, Learning, Reading, Heart

“Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the [Nore] lightship marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral (the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and the great breadth of the Thames Estuary. But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore. The famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a pond… [The inward-bound ships] all converge upon the Nore, the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of an enormous canal. The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts imitated in iron. Bordered by the black and shining mud-flats, the level marsh extends for miles. Away in the far background the land rises, closing the view with a continuous wooded slope, forming in the distance an interminable rampart overgrown with bushes.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

The Nore to Hope Point
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Men, War, Bird, Water

“The Athenian empire lasted for fifty years at the most, and the stupendous creation of Alexander the Great for less. What has been the fate of succeeding imperialisms? That of Spain endured on the grand scale for little more than a century; that of Napoleon for a decade; the British Empire is less than two centuries old, and in its present form is a thing of yesterday. In the brief span of recorded history empires have had a shorter life than many monarchies, theocracies, and even republics. The Augustan alone reached a venerable age. In the coming of Christianity it had to face the greatest of all historic convulsions, but such was its potency that it weathered the storm and influenced profoundly the organization of the Christian church.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

Life, Fate, Age, History

“It is worth recalling that during the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, Britain's growth rate was the lowest of all the major European economies. By contrast, during the 1980s, our growth rate has been the highest of all the major European economies. This greatly improved growth performance has been accompanied by falling inflation, which at 3½ per cent. in 1986 reached the lowest figure for almost 20 years.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/mar/17/the-economic-background in the House of Commons (17 March 1987)

“…we must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.”

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

"Address in Berkeley at the University of California (109)" (23 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx 1963

Thinking, Tree, Time

“The corner-gang structure arises out of the habitual association of the members over a long period of time. The nuclei of most gangs can be traced back to early boyhood, when living close together provided the first opportunities for social contacts… The gangs grew up on the corner and remained there with remarkable persistence from early boyhood until the members reached their late twenties or early thirties. In the course of years some groups were broken up by the movement of families away from Cornerville, and the remaining members merged with gangs on near-by corners; but frequently movement out of the district does not take the corner boy away from his corner. On any evening on almost any corner one finds corner boys who have come in from other parts of the city or from suburbs to be with their old friends…”

William Foote Whyte book Street Corner Society

Source: Street Corner Society, 1943, pp. 255-63, as cited in: Blaine E. Mercer (1958), Introduction to the study of society https://archive.org/stream/introductiontost00merc#page/35/mode/1up, p. 35-40.

Family, Boy, Time, Parting

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism…We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new…The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? We can all of us recall, at any rate, one very memorable admission that the great system of Gladstonian finance had not reached perfection. That admission was made by no other person than Mr. Gladstone himself in his famous manifesto of 1874, when he promised the most extraordinary reduction of which our taxation is capable. Surely there is as much room for improvement in taxation as in every other work of fallible man, provided that we always cherish the just and sacred principle of taxation that it is equality of private sacrifice for public good. Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. Are to we assume that it has all been wrong? Is my right hon. friend going to propose its repeal or the repeal of any of it; or has all past interference been wise, and we have now come to the exact point where not another step can be taken without mischief? …other countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them…In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

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

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10.

People, School, History, Thinking

“Once stock prices reach the point at which it is hard to value them by logical methodology, stocks will be bought as they were in the late 1920s not for investment but to be unloaded at a still higher price. The ensuing break could be disastrous because panic psychology cannot be summarily altered or reversed by easing money policies.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Greenspan in 1959. http://www.safehaven.com/article-171.htm. 1950–60s

Money

“In this allegory the seeker, trying to reach the One, is drawn by two horses, one white and noble and temperate, and the other surly, stubborn, passionate and black. The one is forever aiding him in his upward journey to the portals of heaven, the other is forever confounding him. The Chairman has not stated it yet, but he is at the point at which he must now announce that the white horse is temperate reason, the black horse is dark passion, emotion. He is at the point at which these must be described, but the false note suddenly becomes a chorus.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30

Passion, Horse, Falseness

“On young love* "Here is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings."”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), p.g. 8

Love, Victory

“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

That Summer (1996)

Grass, Change, Christmas, Summer

“There can be no doubt that the modem environment is changing faster than any environment ever previously changed; therefore, the social center of gravity constantly tends to shift more rapidly; and therefore modem civilization has unprecedented need of the administrative or generalizing mind. I take it to be an axiom, that perfection in administration must be commensurate to the bulk and momentum of the mass to be administered, otherwise the centrifugal will overcome the centripetal force, and the mass will disintegrate. In other words, civilization will dissolve. A moment arrives when the minds of any given dominant type fail to meet the demands made upon them, and are superseded by a younger type, which in tum is set aside by another still younger, until the limit of the administrative genius of that particular race has been reached. Then disintegration sets in, the social momentum is gradually relaxed, and society sinks back to a level at which it can cohere.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

Source: The Theory of Social Revolutions,, p. 204-5, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 9-10

Change, Perfection

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

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

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

War, Secret, Way, History

“Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

On Prohibition; sometimes misquoted as referring to Prohibition as "a noble experiment"; reported as such in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 47-48.
The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928)

Motivation, Country

“True, no man can be wholly apart from his fellows. But, if each of us is a promontory, yet the promontory reaches out beyond the social mainland to a point where others cannot intrude. Beyond that point lies an unexplorable lonesomeness, a unique privacy. It is a no-other-man's land, for others can't penetrate it, can't communicate with it.”

Jerome Frank (1889–1957) American jurist

Judge Learned Hand, reprinted in A Man's Reach: The Philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank (1965), page 49.

Communication

“I collaborated on a brain imaging study in 2010, and the overwhelming conclusion we reached is that the neural patterns were very similar for true and false memories. We are a long way away from being able to look at somebody's brain activity and reliably classify an authentic memory versus one that arose through some other process.”

Elizabeth Loftus (1944) American cognitive psychologist

I could have sworn...Why you can’t trust your memory https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929310-400-i-could-have-sworn-why-you-cant-trust-your-memory/ (8/21/2013)

Way, Study, Memory, Falseness

“I'm not going to vote. I won't vote for a Catholic and I won't vote for a damned Republican. Maybe I've said that before. My ancestors were all Catholic and not very far back. And I have reason to hate the church.
I feel a curious kinship, though, with the Middle Ages. I have been more successful in selling tales laid in that period of time, than in any other. Truth it was an epoch for strange writers. Witches and werewolves, alchemists and necromancers, haunted the brains of those strange savage people, barbaric children that they were, and the only thing which was never believed was the truth. Those sons of the old pagan tribes were wrought upon by priest and monk, and they brought all their demons from their mythology and accepted all the demons of the new creed also, turning their old gods into devils. The slight knowledge which filtered through the monastaries from the ancient sources of decayed Greece and fallen Rome, was so distorted and perverted that by the time it reached the people, it resembled some monstrous legend. And the vague minded savages further garbed it in heathen garments. Oh, a brave time, by Satan! Any smooth rogue could swindle his way through life, as he can today, but then there was pageantry and high illusion and vanity, and the beloved tinsel of glory without which life is not worth living.
I hate the devotees of great wealth but I enjoy seeing the splendor that wealth can buy. And if I were wealthy, I'd live in a place with marble walls and marble floors, lapis lazulis ceilings and cloth-of-gold and I would have silver fountains in the courts, flinging an everlasting sheen of sparkling water in the air. Soft low music should breathe forever through the rooms and slim tigerish girls should glide through on softly falling feet, serving all the wants of me and my guests; girls with white bare limbs like molten gold and soft dreamy eyes.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Harold Preece (received October 20, 1928)
Letters

Life, God, Hate, Children

Quotes about reach page 18

Quotes about reach
page 18