Quotes about reach
page 3

“It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter.
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"The Stranger Song" (1966)
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Men, Time

“And that impulse to make the world better, to push back on those who try to make it worse, that’s something that your generation has to hold on to. And you have to remember, it’s never easy; there are no days off. But if there’s one thing that I know from my own life, it’s that with hard work and with hope, change is always within our reach.”

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

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

Life, World, Hope, Change

“Ethics could teach us only those purposes and ideals. If the teachers seeks insight into the means by which the aim can be reached, into the facts by which the child can be molded, his way must lead from ethics to psychology. (…) Water flows downhill, anyhow, but to bring the water uphill hydraulic forces are indeed necessary. To overcome nature and instead to prepare for a life of ideals, to inhibit personal desires and instead to learn to serve the higher purposes indeed demands most serious and most systematic efforts. It is the teachers' task to make these efforts with all his best knowledge of mind and body, of social and of cultural values.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909 (new edition, 2006), pp. 64-65.

Life, Way, Nature, Knowledge

“The average American citizen should have presented to him in a simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor, as voter. […] There are concrete instances of unfair competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation, and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts. But the laws should be such that normally, and save in extraordinary, circumstances, there should be no need of recourse to the courts. What is needed is administrative supervision and control. This should be so exercised that the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own superiority and efficiency, controlled by moral purpose. […] Not only as a matter of justice and honesty, but as a matter of prime popular interest, we should see that this control is so exercised as to favor a proper return to the upright business manager and honest investor.”

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

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Life, Truth, Justice, Law

“To hope, Hope in what, Hope, just hope, one reaches a point where there is nothing but hope, and that is when we discover that hope is everything.”

José Saramago book The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 108

Hope

“Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between flesh and what's fantasy and the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.
And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Jungleland"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Death, Night, Dead

“I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

(2005) The Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/14/japan.awardsandprizes

Happiness, Children, World, Feeling

“Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
at the end of the path which I've only just begun.
So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp,
at such great distance, so fully manifest—and it changes us, even when we do not reach it,
into something that, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a sign appears, echoing our own sign…
But what we sense is the falling winds.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Schon ist mein Blick am Hügel, dem besonnten,
dem Wege, den ich kaum begann, voran.
So fasst uns das, was wir nicht fassen konnten,
voller Erscheinung, aus der Ferne an—und wandelt uns, auch wenn wirs nicht erreichen,
in jenes, das wir, kaum es ahnend, sind;
ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen...
Wir aber spüren nur den Gegenwind.
Spaziergang (A Walk) (March 1924)
Alternate translation:
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave . . .
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke as translated by Robert Bly (1981)

Sense, Appearance, Change

“Our nation's memory is long and our reach is far.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Public statement in response to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In: Schweid, Barry (August 10, 1998) " Albright Offers $2M Bombings Reward http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1998/Albright-Offers-$2M-Bombings-Reward/id-199d52a55e4601c022b587363eefe099". 1990s

Memory

“Of the truths within our reach… the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but… few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

Truth, Soul, Heart

“I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way to a more comprehensive and lasting existence elsewhere; that somehow or other we belong to a larger scene than our earthly life provides, and to a wider reach of time than our earthly allotment of three score years and ten…It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us. This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, who have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me to be untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.”

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

Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim (1988)

Life, Truth, Fools, Way

“I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did, march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Letter to Ulysses S. Grant http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/grant.htm (13 July 1863), Washington, D.C. 1860s

Fear, Faith, Hope, Personality

“I know I've reached the stage where other artists would bleach their hair or buy a fancy costume, but, inexcusably, I can only be me, which is a full-time occupation and causes terrible backaches.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "I’ll astonish you", interview by Len Brown, Details (March 1991).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Time

“And that’s why we support societies that empower women -- because no country will reach its potential unless it draws on the talents of our wives and our mothers, and our sisters and our daughters.”

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

2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)

Women, Support, Sister, Drawing

“I regard [the many worlds interpretation] as self-evidently correct. [T. F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves. ] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering—is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.”

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

Heard in person by this contributor when Hawking showed-up in a Caltech physics class taught by Robert Christy in 1980 or '81; when asked about collapse of the state-vector he whispered to his assistant Chris (surname unknown) something at which point Chris stood up and said 'Stephen is paraphrasing Herman Göring by saying "When I hear the words 'Schrödinger's Cat' I reach for my gun."'. Source: In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345 http://books.google.com/books?id=qjYbQ7EBAKwC&lpg=PA345&ots=F6VWymjiPx&dq=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&pg=PA345#v=onepage&q=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&f=false

People, World, Cats, Time

“The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts — so many millions of miles further off are we!”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Travel, Star, Light, Heart

“The war was a “tragic error,” but not “fundamentally wrong or immoral” (as the overwhelming majority of the American people continue to believe), and surely not criminal aggression - the judgment that would be reached at once on similar evidence if the responsible agent were not the USA, or an ally or client. Our point is not that the retrospectives fail to draw what seem to us, as to much of the population, the obvious conclusions; the more significant and instructive point is that principled objection to the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” or as an outright criminal aggression - a war crime - is inexpressible. It is not part of the spectrum of discussion. The background for such a principled critique cannot be developed in the media, and the conclusions cannot be drawn. It is not present even to be refuted. Rather, the idea is unthinkable. All of this reveals with great clarity how foreign to the mobilized media is a conception of the media as a free system of information and discussion, independent of state authority and elite interests.”

Noam Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Herman and Chomsky (1988), Manufacturing Consent, p. 252.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s

War, People, Error, Idea

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

Life, Men, Happiness, Lie

“That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 6

Age, Problem

“Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( — I do not say by what sort of feet — ) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin — because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust — a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile." […] Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…. “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 60
The Antichrist (1888)

Life, Friendship, War, Peace

“As historical and social beings we find ourselves always already in a linguistically structured lifeworld. In the forms of communication through which we reach an understanding with one another about something in the world and about ourselves, we encounter a transcending power. Language is not a kind of private property. No one possesses exclusive rights over the common medium of the communicative practices we must intersubjectively share. No single participant can control the structure, or even the course, of processes of reaching understanding and self-understanding. How speakers and hearers make use of their communicative freedom to take yes- or no-positions is not a matter of their subjective discretion. For they are free only in virtue of the binding force of the justifiable claims they raise towards one another. The logos of language embodies the power of the intersubjective, which precedes and grounds the subjectivity of speakers.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Habermas (2003) The Future of Human Nature. p. 10

World, Communication, Understanding, Freedom

“The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort of hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Remarks on Poetry in The Art of Poetry (1958)

Art, Nature, Effort

“The mind that puts everything in question, reaches, after a thousand interrogations, an almost total inertia, a situation which the inert, in fact, knows from the start, by instinct. For what is inertia but a congenital perplexity?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Question

“And then, on September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow — the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.”

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

Preface to the 2004 edition of Dreams from My Father, p. x
2004

World, Fear, Understanding, Heart

“Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument.
"Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 80

“Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.”

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

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)

World, Sex, Behavior, Understanding

“On the receipt of this letter, Hijaj obtained the consent of Wuleed, the son of Abdool Mullik, to invade India, for the purpose of propagating the faith and at the same time deputed a chief of the name of Budmeen, with three hundred cavalry, to join Haroon in Mikran, who was directed to reinforce the party with one thousand good soldiers more to attack Deebul. Budmeen failed in his expedition, and lost his life in the first action. Hijaj, not deterred by this defeat, resolved to follow up the enterprise by another. In consequence, in the year AH 93 (AD 711) he deputed his cousin and son-in-law, Imad-ood-Deen Mahomed Kasim, the son of Akil Shukhfy, then only seventeen years of age, with six thousand soldiers, chiefly Assyrians, with the necessary implements for taking forts, to attack Deebul'… 'On reaching this place, he made preparations to besiege it, but the approach was covered by a fortified temple, surrounded by strong wall, built of hewn stone and mortar, one hundred and twenty feet in height. After some time a bramin, belonging to the temple, being taken, and brought before Kasim, stated, that four thousand Rajpoots defended the place, in which were from two to three thousand bramins, with shorn heads, and that all his efforts would be vain; for the standard of the temple was sacred; and while it remained entire no profane foot dared to step beyond the threshold of the holy edifice. Mahomed Kasim having caused the catapults to be directed against the magic flag-staff, succeeded, on the third discharge, in striking the standard, and broke it down… Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose… On reaching Mooltan, Mahomed Kasim also subdued that province; and himself occupying the city, he erected mosques on the site of the Hindoo temples.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 234-238

Life, Death, Women, Children

“My last wish is that Germany realize its entity and that an understanding be reached between East and West. I wish peace to the world.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Last words, 10/16/46. Quoted in "The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II" - Page 562 - by Jon E. Lewis - History - 2002

World, Peace, Understanding

“I [[love the mystics…The mystic manages to strip himself of action, of facts, objectives and even the pastoral mission and rises until he reaches communion with the Beatitudes. Brief moments but which fill an entire life. ]] [Mystics] have been fundamental [to the church]. A religion without mystics is a philosophy.”

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

2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

Love, Life, Religion

“The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

"August 1968"

“These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quintessentials of good citizenship.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Life, Family

“When the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his knife—or at least he makes sure it is within reach. The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him.”

Frantz Fanon book The Wretched of the Earth

Source: The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p. 43.

Life, Way, Revenge, Victory

“Time then has come into being along with the universe, that being generated together, together they may be dissolved, should a dissolution of them ever come to pass; and it was made after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might be as like to it as was possible. For the pattern is existent for all eternity; but the copy has been and is and shall be throughout all time continually. So then this was the plan and intent of God for the generation of time; the sun and the moon and five other stars which have the name of planets have been created for defining and preserving the numbers of time. …and a month is fulfilled when the moon, after completing her own orbit, overtakes the sun; a year, when the sun has completed his own course. But the courses of the others men have not taken into account, save a few out of many… they do not know that time arises from the wanderings of these, which are incalculable in multitude and marvellously intricate. None the less however can we observe that the perfect number of time fulfils the perfect year at the moment when the relative swiftnesses of all the eight revolutions accomplish their course together and reach their starting-point, being measured by the circle of the same and uniformly moving. In this way then and for these causes were created all such of the stars as wander through the heavens and turn about therein, in order that this universe may be most like to the perfect and ideal animal by its assimilation to the eternal being.”

Plato book Timaeus

38d–40a, as quoted by R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato https://books.google.com/books?id=q2YMAAAAIAAJ (1888) Timaeus

Men, God, Way, Star

“You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I’m not so sure, You’ll have to read differently then, How, The same method doesn’t work for everyone, each person has to invent his or her own, whichever suits them best, some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don’t understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they’re there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it’s the other side that matters, Unless, Unless what, Unless those river don’t just have two shores but many, unless each reader is his or own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 60 (Vintage 2003)

People, Understanding, Learning, Reading

“But what we’ve also said is in order to defeat these extremist ideologies, it can’t just be military, police and security. It has to be reaching into communities that feel marginalized and making sure that they feel that they’re heard; making sure that the young people in those communities have opportunity. […] And that’s why, when I was in Kenya, for example, and I did a town hall meeting there, I emphasized what I had said to President Kenyata -- be a partner with the civil society groups. Because too often, there’s a tendency -- because what the extremist groups want to do is they want to divide. That’s what terrorism is all about. The notion is that you scare societies, further polarizes them. The government reacts by further discriminating against a particular group. That group then feels it has no political outlet peacefully to deal with their grievances. And that then -- that suppression can oftentimes accelerate even more extremism. And that’s why reaching out to civil society groups, clergy, and listening and asking, okay, what is it that we need to do in order to make sure that young people feel that they can succeed? What is it that we need to do to make sure that they feel that they’re fully a part of this country and are full citizens, and have full rights? How do we do that? Bringing them into plan and design messages and campaigns that embrace the diversity of these countries -- those are the things that are so important to do.”

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

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)

People, Feeling, Communication, Parting

“Sir, very few people reach posterity. Who amongst us may arrive at that destination I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/jan/22/address-in-answer-to-the-speech in the House of Commons (22 January 1846). 1840s

People

“I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.”

Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) American political economist

Hardin (1968) "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science.

World, Way, Idea, Nature

“[Nasreddin had to don his finest clothes in order to be admitted to a fancy dinner party. ]
He reached over, took a piece of meat and stuffed it in his shirt. He poked the next piece into his cummerbund. Then he jammed one into each pocket of his pants. All eyes were on Nasreddin as he gathered the long sleeves of his cloak and soaked them in the bowl of hot gravy. A stunned guest jumped to his feet and demanded, Effendi! [Sir! ] What is the meaning of your outrageous behavior?" "Well," said Nasreddin Odjah, "when you find yourself in a place where clothes are more welcome than the person wearing them, you must feed the clothes first and the person afterward!"”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Flora Joy, Treasures from Europe: stories and classroom activities (2003), "Nasreddin Odjah's Clothes (Macedonia)", , p. 104

Behavior, Personality, Clothes

“We too must suffer all the suffering around us. We all have not one body, but we have one way of growing, and this leads us through all anguish, whether in this or in that form. Just as the child develops through all the stages of life right into old age and to death (and fundamentally to the earlier stage the later one seems out of reach, in relation both to desire and to fear), so also do we develop (no less deeply bound up with mankind than with ourselves) through all the sufferings of this world. There is no room for justice in this context, but neither is there any room either for fear of suffering or for the interpretation of suffering as a merit.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

103
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Life, Death, Age, World

“This most modern art discipline - Social Sculpture / Social Architecture - will only reach fruition when every living person becomes a creator, a sculptor, or architect of the social organism.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

1970's, I Am Searching For Field Character,' 1973/74

Art, Personality

“About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of the truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons gave credence while others denied them. A few days later a report was confirmed to me in a letter from a noble Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to inquire into means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did shortly afterwards, my basis being the theory of refraction. First I prepared a tube of lead, at the ends I fitted two glass lenses, both plane on one side while on the other side one was spherically convex and the other concave. Then placing my eye near the concave lens I perceived objects satisfactorily large and near, for they appeared three times closer and nine times larger than when seen with the naked eye alone. Next I constructed another one, more accurate, which represented objects as enlarged more than sixty times. Finally, sparing neither labor nor expense, I succeeded in constructing for myself so excellent an instrument that objects seen by means of it appeared nearly one thousand times larger and over thirty times closer than when regarded with our natural vision.”

Galileo Galilei book Sidereus Nuncius

Translation by Stillman Drake in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957)
Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1609)

Nature, Distant, Appearance, Time

“Furthermore, thanks to the Marxist religion, they (the Russians) have everything required to make them patient. They have been promised happiness on earth (a feature which distinguishes Marxism from the Christian religion)— but in the future. The Jew, Mardochee Marx, like the good Jew that he was, was awaiting the coming of the Messiah. He has placed the Messiah conception in a setting of historic materialism by asserting that terrestrial happiness is a factor in an almost endless process of evolution. "Happiness is within your reach," he says, "that I promise you. But you must let evolution take its course and not try to hurry matters." Mankind always falls for a specious trick of that sort… Lenin did not have the time, but Stalin will carry on the good work, and so on and so on… Marxism is a very powerful force. But how shall we assess Christianity, that other child of Judaism, which will not commit itself further than to promise the faithful happiness in another world? Believe me, it is incomparably stronger!”

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

25 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Happiness, World, Faith, Religion

“On reaching Athens he fell in with Antisthenes. Being repulsed by him, because he never welcomed pupils, by sheer persistence Diogenes wore him out. Once when he stretched out his staff against him, the pupil offered his head with the words, “Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you've something to say."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 21,
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Thinking

“The boat dipped and swayed and sometimes took on water, but it did not sink; the two brothers had waterproofed it well. I do not know where it finally fetched up, if it ever did; perhaps it reached the sea and sails there forever like a magic boat in a fairytale. All I know is that it was still afloat and still running on the breast of the flood when it passed the incorporated town limits of Derry, Maine, and there it passes out of this tale forever.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Fairytale, Water, Sea

“Islam is not a ‘religion’ in the sense this term is commonly understood. It is a system encompassing all fields of living. Islam means politics, economics, legislation, science, humanism, health, psychology and sociology. It is a system which makes no discrimination on the basis of race, color, language or other external categories. Its appeal is to all mankind. It wants to reach the heart of every human being.”

Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) Indian theologian, politician and philosopher

1978, Towards Understanding Islam, Chapter 7, Lahore, Pakistan.
1970s

Health, Religion, Color, Sense

“The National Government belongs to the whole American people; and where the whole American people are interested that interest can be effectively guarded only by the National Government. We ought to use the National Government as an agency, a tool, wherever it is necessary, in order that we may organize our entire political, economical, and social life in accordance with a far-reaching democratic purpose. We should make the National governmental machinery an adequate and constructive instrument for constructive work in the realization of a National democratic ideal.”

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

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Life, People

“Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something new, we don’t go from “wrong” to “right.” Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong. And when we learn something additional, we go from slightly less wrong to slightly less wrong than that, and then to even less wrong than that, and so on. We are always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without actually ever reaching truth and perfection.
We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 6, “You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)” (p. 117)

Truth, Way, Learning, Perfection

“The Declaration of Independence was formed by the representatives of American liberty from thirteen States of the confederacy; twelve of which were slaveholding communities. We need not discuss the way or the reason of their becoming slaveholding communities. It is sufficient for our purpose that all of them greatly deplored the evil and that they placed a provision in the Constitution which they supposed would gradually remove the disease by cutting off its source. This was the abolition of the slave trade. So general was conviction, the public determination, to abolish the African slave trade, that the provision which I have referred to as being placed in the Constitution, declared that it should not be abolished prior to the year 1808. A constitutional provision was necessary to prevent the people, through Congress, from putting a stop to the traffic immediately at the close of the war. Now, if slavery had been a good thing, would the Fathers of the Republic have taken a step calculated to diminish its beneficent influences among themselves, and snatch the boon wholly from their posterity? These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures… Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built…”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Lewistown, Illinois (1858)

Life, Men, War, Happiness

“Eventually, we reach the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows and search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.”

Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) American astronomer

The Realm of the Nebulae (1936)

Error, Search

“Solidarity is a beautiful word because it means that you reach out to those who are different from you and who have to cope with different circumstances because we recognize that we all share the same human needs and same values. It is the values that count most of all. The value of freedom of thought, the value of democratic practices, the value of respect for your fellow human beings.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Acceptance Speech (2013)

Beauty, Freedom

“Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Attributed in Fun Fitness for Families (2005) by James Steffen, p. 24 and later publications; also attributed to Helmut Schmidt, in The 7 Ultimate Secrets to Weight Loss (2011) by Natasa Denman, p. 31 and later publications.
Disputed

Distant, Cute

“The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e

Truth, Home

“If the soul has not reached the state of unitive love, it is necessary for it to make acts of love, as well in the active as in the contemplative life. But when it has reached it, it is not requisite it should occupy itself in other and exterior duties — unless they be matters of obligation — which might hinder, were it but for a moment, the life of love in God, though they may minister greatly to His service; because an instant of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church, than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Note to Stanza 28 part 2
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas

Love, Life, God, Soul

“And immediately upon presenting himself to the soul, God likewise discloses himself and expands the soul and gives it gifts and consolations which the soul has never before experienced, and which are far more profound than earlier ones. In this state, the soul is drawn out of all darkness and granted a greater awareness of God than I would have thought possible. This awareness is of such clarity, certitude, and abysmal profundity that there is no heart in the world that can ever in any way understand it or even conceive it. Even my own heart cannot think about it by itself, or ever return to it to understand or even conceive anything about it. This state occurs only when God, as a gift, elevates the soul to himself, for no heart by itself can in any way expand itself to attain it. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing that can be said about this experience, for no words can be found or invented to express or explain it; no expansion of thought or mind can possibly reach to those things, they are so far beyond everything -- for there is nothing which can explain God. I repeat there is absolutely nothing which can explain God. Christ's faithful one affirmed with utmost certitude and wanted it understood that there is absolutely nothing which can explain God.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, p. 213

God, World, Faith, Way

“Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Great joys, why do they bring us sadness? Because there remains from these excesses only a feeling of irrevocable loss and desertion which reaches a high degree of negative intensity. At such moments, instead of a gain, one keenly feels loss. sadness accompanies all those events in which life expends itself. its intensity is equal to its loss. Thus death causes the greatest sadness.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Life, Death, Sadness, Feeling

“And I can tell you as a friend that sustainable prosperity in the 21st century depends upon education, health care, and environmental protection. But it also depends on the free and open exchange of ideas. If you can’t access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential. And over time, the youth will lose hope.”

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

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)

Health, Youth, Education, Hope

“Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Source: On the Pragmatics of Communication, 1998, p. 23

Understanding

“Half of what I say is meaningless
But I say it just to reach you
Julia.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"Julia" on The Beatles (1968); these lines were adapted from lines of Sand and Foam (1926) by Khalil Gibran: "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you".
Lyrics

“After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Online http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html The 7th Epistle

Men, Intelligence, Understanding, Question

“He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

Last words in Blostman [Blooms] (c. 895 AD) an anthology, based largely on the Soliloquies of Augustine of Hippo.

Life, World, Understanding

“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing, be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Last public address (1865)

Men, Pleasure, Peace, Hope

“If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism’s universal reach.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. (1996).

Life, Search, Literature, Question

“Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think of the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

God, Hope, Thinking

“Fumbling in total darkness, they reached out to each other, naked, he penetrated her with desire and she received him eagerly, and they exchanged eagerness and desire until their bodies were locked in embrace, their movements in harmony, her voice rising from the depth of her being, his totally submerged, the cry that is born, prolonged, truncated, that muffled sob, that unexpected tear, and the machine trembles and shudders, probably no longer even on the ground but, having rent the screen of brambles and undergrowth, is now hovering at dead of night amid the clouds, Blimunda, Baltasar, his body weighing on hers, and both weighing on the earth, for at last they are here, having gone and returned.”

José Saramago book Baltasar and Blimunda

Em profunda escuridão se procuraram, nus, sôfrego entrou nela, ela o recebeu ansiosa, depois a sofreguidão dela, a ânsia dele, enfim os corpos encontrados, os movimentos, a voz que vem do ser profundo, aquele que não tem voz, o grito nascido, prolongado, interrompido, o soluço seco, a lágrima inesperada, e a máquina a tremer, a vibrar, porventura não está já na terra, rasgou a cortina de silvas e enleios, pairou no alto da noite, entre as nuvens, pesa o corpo dele sobre o dela, e ambos pesam sobre a terra, afinal estão aqui, foram e voltaram.
Source: Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), pp. 255–256

Tear, Cry, Night, Dead

“America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

The Crisis No. I.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

War, Happiness, People, Revenge

“When you reach for the stars, you may not get one, but you won't get a handful of mud either.”

Leo Burnett (1891–1971) American advertising executive

As quoted in Readers Digest January 1985

Star

“I then reached for a time honored tactic used by mathematicians: if you can't solve the real problem, change it into one you can solve.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 6, Cornell II, p. 122.

Problem, Change, Time

“They who soar in the heaven of singleness and reach to the sea of the Absolute, reckon this city—which is the station of life in God—as the furthermost state of mystic knowers, and the farthest homeland of the lovers. But to this evanescent One of the mystic ocean, this station is the first gate of the heart’s citadel, that is, man’s first entrance to the city of the heart; and the heart is endowed with four stages, which would be recounted should a kindred soul be found”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

The Seven Valleys Of Bahá’u’lláh

Life, God, Soul, Lovers

“We got arms but wont reach for the skies”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"Be (Intro)" (Track 1)
Albums, Be (2005)

“The world that America seeks is not one we can build on our own. For human rights to reach those who suffer the boot of oppression, we need your voices to speak out. In particular, I appeal to those nations who emerged from tyranny and inspired the world in the second half of the last century, from South Africa to South Asia, from Eastern Europe to South America. Don't stand idly by, don't be silent when dissidents elsewhere are imprisoned and protesters are beaten. Recall your own history, because part of the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others.”

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

"Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City," September 23, 2010. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=88483&st=&st1= 2010

World, History, Freedom, Suffering

“DW is based on a slew of old myths, which reach their most 'refined' form in Hindu mythology, which in turn of course derived from the original Star Trek episode 'Planet of Wobbly Rocks where the Security Guard Got Shot.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

Star

“Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I'm still learning, for learning is boundless.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Learning

“When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Preface: The Theater and Culture
The Theatre and Its Double (1938, translated 1958)

Life

“And that’s what we celebrate today. The long arc of progress. Progress that is never assured, never guaranteed, but always possible, always there to be earned -– no matter how stuck we might seem sometimes. No matter how divided or despairing we may appear. No matter what ugliness may bubble up. Progress, so long as we’re willing to push for it; so long as we’re willing to reach for each other.”

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

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Appearance, Despair

“Mrs. Phillis: Your favour of the 26th of October did not reach my hands 'till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1770s, Letter to Phyllis Wheatley (1776)

Hope, Time

“It is by a blend of lively curiosity and intelligent selfishness that the artists who wish to mature late, who feel too old to die, the Goethes, Tolstoys, Voltaires, Titians and Verdis, reach a fruitful senescence. They cannot afford to associate with those who are burning themselves up or preparing for a tragedy or whom melancholy has marked for her own. Not for them the accident-prone, the friend in whom the desire for self-destruction keeps blistering out in broken legs or threatening them in anxiety-neuroses. Not for them the drumming finger, the close-cropt nail, the chewed glasses, the pause on the threshold, the wandering eye, or the repeated ‘um’ and ‘er.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 16: Outlook Unsettled (p. 137)

Feeling, Intelligence, Selfishness

“To swim in the open sky. To achieve the tenderness of clouds. To suspend these masses in the distance, very far away in the grey mist, make the blue explode. I feel all this coming, dawning in my intentions. What joy and what torment! If the bottom were still, perhaps I would never reach these depths. Did they do better in the past? Did the Dutch achieve the poetry of clouds I seek? That tenderness of the sky which even extends to admiration, to worship: it is no exaggeration.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Diary-note of Boudin, 3 December, 1856; as cited in the description of his painting 'Sky, Setting Sun, Bushes in Foreground' http://www.muma-lehavre.fr/en/collections/artworks-in-context/eugene-boudin/boudin-skies, by the Muma-museum, Le Havre A quote from Boudin's personal diary sheds remarkable light on a small group of his sky studies 1850s - 1870s

Feeling, Past, Joy

“Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate 'promises', they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

Suffering

““What were they saying?” Daly asked.
“They disapprove of your profession,” Doro told him.
“Heathen savages,” Daly muttered. “They’re like animals. They’re all cannibals.”
“These aren’t,” Doro said, “though some of the their neighbors are.”
“All of them,” Daly insisted. “Just give them the chance.”
Doro smiled. “Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.”
Daly jumped. He considered himself a pious man in spite of his work. “You shouldn’t say such things,” he whispered. “Not even you are beyond the reach of God.”
“Spare me your mythology,” Doro said, “and your righteous indignation.” Daly had been Doro’s man too long to be pampered in such matters. “At least we cannibals are honest about what we do,” Doro continued. “We don’t pretend as your slavers do to be acting for the benefit of our victims’ souls. We don’t tell ourselves we’ve caught them to teach them civilized religion.””

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 3 (p. 42)

God, Religion, Smile, Soul

“I come to make song, after the tears.
And even if a choir of men
sprayed my tongue with silence,
poetry will come, with liberating voice,
to make my song fall from the trees
and reach the most deeply buried abysses of those tears
that the child lent me when crying himself into life.Because my infant song
is stronger than man’s tears,
and it could even conquer me
robbing the need of tears from the sun and the wind.”

Juan Antonio Villacañas (1922–2001) Spanish poet, essayist and critic

"New Songs for After the Tears", from Revolt of a Newborn (1973)

Men, Tear, Tree, Silence

“When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.”

Chinua Achebe book No Longer at Ease

Source: No Longer at Ease (1960), Chapter 10 (p. 95)

Tree, Sun

“Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.”

David Hilbert (1862–1943) German prominent mathematician

"Axiomatic Thought" (1918), printed in From Kant to Hilbert, Vol. 2 by William Bragg Ewald

Mathematics, Science, Parting

“Spiritual power is the eternal guide, in this life and the life after, for man ranks supreme among all creatures. Led forward by spiritual power, man can reach the summit destined for him by the Great Creator.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

On the Nomination of Archbishop Basilios (19 January 1951)

Life

“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical, stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if that beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and that all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarled to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skien, or indeed, if we may be permitted on more stock phrase, in the skien of life. … These are the delusions of the pure and unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 54 (Vintage 2003)

Life, Wisdom, World, Way

“What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

World, Distant, Sea

“What a born melancholiac I am! The only way I keep afloat is by working. Directly I stop working I feel that I am sinking down, down. And as usual, I feel that if I sink further I shall reach the truth. That is the only mitigation; a kind of nobility. Solemnity. Work, reading, writing, are all disguising; and relations with other people. Yes, even having children wold be useless.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Sunday 23 June, 1929
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Children, People, Truth, Way

“In this book I have tried to achieve one purpose: to explain how war is waged on the field from the field command post. For it is there, midway between the conference table and the foxhole, that strategy is translated into battlefield tactics; there the field commander must calculated the cost of rivers, roads and hills in terms of guns, tanks, tonnage- and most importantly in terms of the lives and limbs of his soldiers. How, then, did we reach our critical decisions? Why and how did we go where we did? These are the critical questions I have been asked most often. And these are the questions that gave me justification for writing this book.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. ix.

War, Books, Question, Decision

“Mussolini is a man no less extraordinary than Lenin. He, too, is a political genius, of a greater reach than all the statesmen of the day, with the only exception of Lenin…”

Georges Sorel (1847–1922) French philosopher and sociologist

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, Jacob L. Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 451. Sorel’s March 1921 conversations with Jean Variot, published in Variot’s Propos de Georges Sorel, (1935) Paris, pp. 53-57, 66-86 passim

“America has never come easy. Our freedom, our democracy, has never been easy. Sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes; we get frustrated or discouraged. But for more than two hundred years, we have put those things aside and placed our collective shoulder to the wheel of progress: to create and build and expand the possibilities of individual achievement; to free other nations from tyranny and fear; to promote justice and fairness and equality under the law, so that the words set to paper by our founders are made real for every citizen. The America we want for our kids -- a rising America where honest work is plentiful and communities are strong; where prosperity is widely shared and opportunity for all lets us go as far as our dreams and toil will take us -- none of it is easy. But if we work together; if we summon what is best in us […], with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow, I know it's within our reach. Believe it.”

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

2014, Sixth State of the Union Address (January 2014)

Fear, Justice, Law, Dreams

“Our social mission as a manufacturer is only realized when products reach, are used by, and satisfy the customer… We need to take the customer's skin temperature daily.”

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989) Japanese businessman

Kōnosuke Matsushita in: Nihon Seisansei Honbu (1984), Strategies for productivity: international perspectives, p. 124

“If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.”

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

"The Law of Civilization and Decay", The Forum (January 1897), reprinted in American Ideals (1926), vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., chapter 15, pp. 259–60
1890s

Life

“If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting (footnote #22), Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

Law, Personality

“It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.
But whatever the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will henceforward lie between nature and him. The white man may wash his hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real justification for the abolition policy.
The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton-shirts; but all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.”

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

"Emancipation — Black and White" (1865) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/B&W.html, later published in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1871) Comments accepting many racist and sexist assumptions made in the context of rejecting oppressions based on racist and sexist arguments. More information is available at the Talk Origins Archive http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA005_3.html 1860s

Men, Truth, Lie, Law

“Harry Dresden: There was a sound of impact, a raspy, dry scream, and the vampire went down hard. It lay on the ground like a butterfly pinned to a card, arms and legs thrashing uselessly. Its chest and collarbone had been crushed. By an entire frozen turkey. A twenty-pounder. The plucked bird must have fallen from an airplane overhead, doubtlessly manipulated by the curse. By the time it got to the ground, the turkey had already reached its terminal velocity, and was still hard as a brick. The drumsticks poked up above the vampire's crushed chest, their ends wrapped in red tinfoil. The vampire gasped and writhed a little more. The timer popped out of the turkey. Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

Bird, Silence, Time, Night

“Change is hard –- in our own lives, and in the lives of nations. And change is even harder when we carry the heavy weight of history on our shoulders. But today we are making these changes because it is the right thing to do. Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future –- for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world.”

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

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

People, World, History, Change

“There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Pain, Happiness, World, Fear

“Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Sometimes ascribed to Robert Browning, this is in fact a misquotation from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): "They [i.e. ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top".
Misattributed

Men, Dogs, Bird

“Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ;
How vast the mystery!
Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth
The unfathomed sea!”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Religious Poems‎ (1873), p. 41.

Life, Christ, Sea

“What makes me cautiously optimistic about my successor and the shift from campaign mode to governance is there’s something about the solemn responsibilities of that office, the extraordinary demands that are placed on the United States -- not just by its own people but by people around the world -- that forces you to focus, that demands seriousness. And if you’re not serious about the job, then you probably won’t be there very long because it will expose problems. Even when you’re doing a job, even when you are attentive, there are so many things that come across your desk that people are going to question you, and you’re going to have opponents and you’re going to have critics, and you figure that out pretty fast when you’re sitting there. And I think the President-elect is going to see fairly quickly that the demands and responsibilities of a U. S. President are not ones that you can treat casually, and that in a big, complex, diverse country, the only way that you can be successful is by listening and reaching out and working with a wide variety of people.”

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

2016, News Conference With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany (November 2016)

People, World, Way, Question

Quotes about reach page 3

Quotes about reach
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