Quotes about reader
page 6

“Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for contemporary feminist movement-it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife. She made her plight and the plight of white women like herself synonymous with a condition affecting all American women. In so doing, she deflected attention away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were college-educated, white women who were compelled by sexist conditioning to remain in the home. … Specific problems and dilemmas of leisure class white housewives were real concerns that merited consideration and change but they were not the pressing political concerns of masses of women. Masses of women were concerned about economic survival, ethnic and racial discrimination, etc. When Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, more than one third of all women were in the work force. Although many women longed to be housewives, only women with leisure time and money could actually shape their identities on the model of the feminine mystique.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 1-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=uvIQbop4cdsC&pg=PA1. <br class="br">Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory

Life, Women, Men, Money

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Truth of Intercourse.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

Literature

“I've always been surprised at the degree of success of The Mirror and the Lamp and the range and duration of esteem for it. … I had no reason to expect in 1953 that it would appeal to more than a specialized group interested in literary criticism. I think one of the reasons why it's been of interest to a broad spectrum of readers is because one of its emphases was on the role of metaphors in steering human thinking. It was a very early book to insist on the role of metaphors in cognition, as well as in imaginative literature — to claim that key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions. … Natural Supernaturalism is quite well known and even used as a textbook, but it never seems to have attracted the acclaim of its predecessor.”

M. H. Abrams (1912–2015) American literary theorist

Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)

Books, Imagination, Literature, Nature

“After six years of war service, I rejoined Ilford Public Library service in 1946, and set about completing my F. L. A., begun in 1940. This service had a good tradition of assistance to readers, and when I joined the Metal Box C. in 1948, I soon realised how the skills required for a scientific and industrial research “information officer” depended on the basic techniques of librarianship, notably classification and cataloguing. The enhancement of these led to the development of higher levels, in literature searching, and, more particularly, in current awareness service and selective dissemination of information….
Meeting with S. R. Ranganathan in 1948 gave me a new view of classification as facet analysis plus traditional generic analysis and I applied this in schemes for Packaging, Occupational Safety and Health, and Education. This experience has suggested to me that facet analysis applied to any subject can reveal hitherto uncoordinated concepts - materials, processes, etc – and thus offer an indication of possible areas of future research. This could be a unique Information Science to the World Wide Web.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Douglas Foskett (2000-04) " From Librarianship to Information Science http://faculty.libsci.sc.edu/bob/scrapbook/foskett2.htm" at

War, Health, World, Education

“Fantasists aren't natural readers. They grow restive easily.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Nature

“Having presented all the relevant nanoscale mechanisms, thus laying down a firm background for the readers’ understanding, the author moves to the topic of architectural challenges in Chapter 7. This field is claimed still to be an unsolved problem so the author gives examples of currently used technologies and points out potential architectural solutions such as self-assembly, carbon nanotubes, or quantum systems. That is why it makes the book even more valuable for those who intend to involve nanonetworks in their research.”

Stephen F Bush

Book Reviews, REVIEWER: JAKUB PALIDER, NANOSCALE COMMUNICATION NETWORKS STEPHEN F. BUSH, ARTECH HOUSE, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1-60807-003-9, HARDCOVER, 308 PAGES, IEEE Communications Magazine, August 2011.

Books, Understanding, Problem

“Teachers and writers share a responsibility to create the next generation of readers. We need to create and cultivate in our classrooms a dialectic of intellect and intuition, of mental attention and sensory engagement. In poetry, intellectual-ity without physicality becomes dull and barren, just as intuition untethered by intellect quickly becomes sloppy and subjective. We need to augment methodology with magic”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

36
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

Teachers

“While the spoken word can travel faster, you can’t take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

The Enduring American Press (October 1964) edited by The Hartford Courant

Travel, Home

“I am not advising my readers to refuse to have their children vaccinated, since you now have to take vaccination into consideration because of the prominence of it in society. It is very possible, however, that science itself will in time discover the unfortunate side effects of many such procedures and begin to reevaluate the entire subject.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Way Toward Health (1997), p. 196

Children, Science, Time

“Summing up, Nanoscale Communication Networks is a demanding but also very interesting book, an ambitious primer. It is definitely a good starting point for further reading. The author guides the reader through all the aspects of nanonetworks, giving in most cases a clear description of his thinking process within transitions between equations. There are also many cross references between chapters and sections which give a broader view of the topic and help to memorize it. One can also find many pictures, diagrams and tables throughout this book in order to systematize the presented knowledge.”

Stephen F Bush

Books, Communication, Knowledge, Thinking

“I refuse to play the wink-wink-nudge-nudge game with readers. I don’t like whimsy because it doesn’t treat the fantastic seriously, and treating the fantastic seriously is one of the best ways of celebrating dialectical human consciousness there is. The one-sided celebration of the ego-driven contextually constrained instrumentally rational (as opposed to rational in a broader sense) is bureaucratic: the one-sided celebration of the subconscious, desire/fantasy driven is at best utopian, at worst sociopathic. The best fantasies—which include sf and horror—are constructed with a careful dialectic between conscious and subconscious.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

interview with Joan Gordon

Way, Game, Sense

“Reader, look,
Not at his picture, but his book.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

To the Reader [On the portrait of Shakespeare prefixed to the First Folio] (1618), lines 9-10

Books

“If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 42.

Secret, Books, History

“Man's life is like unto a winter's day,—
Some break their fast and so depart away;
Others stay dinner, then depart full fed;
The longest age but sups and goes to bed.
O reader, then behold and see!
As we are now, so must you be.”

Joseph Henshaw (1608–1679) British bishop

Horæ Sucissive (1631), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life, Age, Winter

“All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,—to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we wants to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,—whose speech is Song.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Music, Passion, Singing, Heart

“I believe one of the functions of language used poetically is to explore experiences and hidden sources of behavior in a way that will not be tedious to the reader.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Tiger and the Rose, 1971

Way, Behavior

“When I came back to Paris in 1931, after a long convalescence in the South, the 'Abstraction-Création' group had just be founded. Vantongerloo had been given our mailing list. At the same time I learned of Van Doesburg's death in Davos. The first issue of 'Abstraction-Création' came off the press just a year later, printed in the same dusty small shop that had brought out 'Cercle et Carré' and where I had earned a meagre living as a non-union proof-reader and make-up man. 'Abstraction-Création' had a much wider influence than its predecessor. From 1932 to 1936 an annual cahier presented reproductions and statements by painters.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), pp. 100-101

Death, Learning, Time

“!-- I come from the Arts Lab. Most of the writing I used to do was used for performance, so consequently I learnt that when you are reading a poem it has to read properly, which is to do with syllables and stresses. What takes me the longest with my fine writing, like say Voice of the Fire, is reading it through and finding the bits where it clunks, where it’s one syllable too long, and once you find that rhythm – the reader probably won’t be aware of it, consciously, but there is a tidal wave embedded in the prose that the reader is responding to. In the last chapter of Voice in the Fire, where it is actually me talking in my own voice, I don’t use the word ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘mine’. I don’t know why – perhaps I had been reading that Private Eye column where it is all ‘I’ ‘I’ ‘I’ and started to feel a bit self-conscious about it – but --> I thought if I can still be the central voice but without having an ‘I’ there, and by not having it there, it makes it easier for the reader to slip into the consciousness of the narrator. If you remove the letter ‘I’ it becomes a universal I. Everybody is the author walking down those streets while they are in the prose.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Art, Feeling, Universe, Reading

“…We beg leave to transport the reader to the back-parlour of the post-master's house at Fairport, where his wife, he himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters, in order, from the outside of the epistles, and, if they are not belied, occasionally from the inside also, to amuse themselves with gleaning information, or forming conjectures about the correspondence and affairs of their neighbours. Two females of this description were, at the time we mention, assisting, or impeding, Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty.”

Walter Scott book The Antiquary

The Antiquary (1816), On the postal service

Time, Housing, Country

“It is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," etc.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

Feeling, Rage, Sea

“Never explain- your reader is as smart as you. Your reader is not just any reader, but is the rare one with ears in his head.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

I SUGGEST Advice to Young Poets Basili Bunting Poetry Archive, Durham University Library 190
I SUGGEST Advice to Young Poets

“Mathematics and philosophy are cultivated by two different classes of men: some make them an object of pursuit, either in consequence of their situation, or through a desire to render themselves illustrious, by extending their limits; while others pursue them for mere amusement, or by a natural taste which inclines them to that branch of knowledge. It is for the latter class of mathematicians and philosophers that this work is chiefly intended j and yet, at the same time, we entertain a hope that some parts of it will prove interesting to the former. In a word, it may serve to stimulate the ardour of those who begin to study these sciences; and it is for this reason that in most elementary books the authors endeavour to simplify the questions designed for exercising beginners, by proposing them in a less abstract manner than is employed in the pure mathematics, and so as to interest and excite the reader's curiosity. Thus, for example, if it were proposed simply to divide a triangle into three, four, or five equal parts, by lines drawn from a determinate point within it, in this form the problem could be interesting to none but those really possessed of a taste for geometry. But if, instead of proposing it in this abstract manner, we should say: "A father on his death-bed bequeathed to his three sons a triangular field, to be equally divided among them: and as there is a well in the field, which must be common to the three co-heirs, and from which the lines of division must necessarily proceed, how is the field to be divided so as to fulfill the intention of the testator?"”

Jean-Étienne Montucla (1725–1799) French mathematician

This way of stating it will, no doubt, create a desire in most minds to discover the method of solving the problem; and however little taste people may possess for real science, they will be tempted to try iheir ingenuity in finding the answer to such a question at this. <br class="br">Source: Preface to Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. (1803), p. ii; As cited in: Tobias George Smollett. The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature http://books.google.com/books?id=T8APAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA410, Volume 38, (1803), p. 410

Death, Men, People, Books

“Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned. The questioning of linguistic conventions is one of the main duties of what we call literature.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

Literature, Question

“My strongest conviction as to the future of the negro therefore is, that he will not be expatriated nor annihilated, nor will he forever remain a separate and distinct race from the people around him, but that he will be absorbed, assimilated, and will only appear finally, as the Phoenicians now appear on the shores of the Shannon, in the features of a blended race. I cannot give at length my reasons for this conclusion, and perhaps the reader may think that the wish is father to the thought, and may in his wrath denounce my conclusion as utterly impossible. To such I would say, tarry a little, and look at the facts.”

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

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

People, Thinking, Appearance, Future

“1920
The Times
London, Saturday, May 8, 1920.
“The Jewish peril.”
A disturbing pamphlet
Call for inquiry.
(From a correspondent.)
The Times has not as yet noticed this singular little book. Its diffusion is, however, increasing, and its reading is likely to perturb the thinking public. Never before have a race and a creed been accused of a more sinister conspiracy. We in this country, who live in good fellowship with numerous representatives of Jewry, may well ask that some authoritative criticism should deal with it., and either destroy the ugly “Semitic” body or assign their proper place to the insidious allegations of this kind of literature.
In spite of the urgency of impartial and exhaustive criticism, the pamphlet has been allowed, so far, to pass almost unchallenged. The Jewish Press announced, it is true, that the anti-semitism of the “Jewish Peril” was going to be exposed. But save for an unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ and for an almost equally unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of contribution to the ‘’Nation’’ of March 27, this exposure is yet to come. The article of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ is unsatisfactory, because it deals mainly with the personality of the author of the book in which the pamphlet is embodied, with Russian reactionary propaganda, and the Russian secret police. It does not touch the substance of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The purely Russian side of the book and its fervid “Orthodoxy.” Is not its most interesting feature. Its author-Professor S. Nilus-who was a minor official in the Department of Foreign Religions at Moscow, had, in all likelihood, opportunities of access to many archives and unpublished documents. On the other hand, the world-wide issue raised by the “Protocols” which he incorporated in his book and are now translated into English as “The Jewish Peril,” cannot fail not only to interest, but to preoccupy. What are the these of the “Protocols” with which, in the absence of public criticism, British readers have to grapple alone and unaided?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret, Books, World, Religion

“It is very hard to write this way, beginning things backward, and the author hopes the reader will realize this and not grudge this little word of explanation. I know I would be very glad to read anything the reader ever wrote, and I hope the reader will make the same sort of allowances. If any of the readers would care to send me anything they ever wrote, for criticism or advice, I am always at the Café du Dôme any afternoon, talking about Art with Harold Stearns and Sinclair Lewis, and the reader can bring his stuff along with him, or he can send it to me care of my bank, if I have a bank.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Torrents of Spring

Part 2, Ch. 5
Harold Stearns was a once-well-known New York writer and intellectual whom Hemingway knew when they were both living in Paris.
The Torrents of Spring (1926)

Hope, Art, Way, Reading

“I knew Muhammad Mujeeb personally. He was Head of the Department of History and Shaikh-ul-Jamia… In 1972, however, there was a mild 'confrontation' between him and me. Sometime that year there was a Selection Committee meeting for the post of Professor of History in Delhi University. I was then a Reader and candidate for the post of Professor. Mujeeb was an 'expert'… Mujeeb asked me a question: "Why did the Hindu convert to Islam?" It was a loaded question carrying the suggestion that the initiative for conversion came from the Hindu. In all probability Mujeeb expected me to say that the Hindus suffered from the injustices of the caste system, that Islam was spiritually so great and its message of social equality so attractive that the Hindus queued up for conversion the moment they came in contact with Islamic invaders. A tactful candidate (not a truthful one) would have said what Mujeeb desired, but my answer was different. I said that Hindus did not (voluntarily) convert to Islam; they were converted, often forcibly, as told by Muslim chroniclers. Muslim invaders and rulers felt proud of their achievements in the fields of loot and destruction, enslavement and proselytization. Their chroniclers, writing at their command or independently, speak about their achievements in these spheres in glowing terms. They repeatedly write about the choice offered to the Hindus - "Islam or death". Mujeeb expected a different answer. I was not selected.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 6

Death, Truth, History, Question

“Fellini has sometimes been accused of not being interested in the work of other directors but I never found this accusation to hold true. The Federico I knew was not only a voracious reader but extremely interested in hearing about international directors, most notably, Nanni Moretti, Pedro Almodovar, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Akira Kurosawa, David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. Clearly, part of the pleasure of discussing these directors was the stimulus for new ideas that their latest films gave him. Although we never explored Portuguese film in any depth, the films of Manoel de Oliveira and Joao César Monteiro genuinely fascinated Federico. At the urging of Mastroianni, he went to see A Divina Comédia (1991), Oliveira’s superb allegory about Western civilization, and returned enthralled. He had long been obsessed by the theme of insane asylums and Oliveira’s masterful blend of philosophy and religion appealed to him at a time in his life when such questions as death and resurrection had become pressing concerns. I do not know where or in what format Federico saw Monteiro’s Recordaçoes de Casa Amarela (1989) but it was a film he described as “deliriously eccentric, a satirical bizarrie that Bunuel would have adored."”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini’s favorite directors
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Life, Death, Pleasure, Religion

“A work of art is not about something, it is something, in the same way that life is not something that has meaning, only significance. And art's intentions are entirely innocent – no comment, no opinion, no attempted coercion. All – all! – art attempts to do is to quicken the sense of life, to make vivid for the reader the mysterious predicament of being alive for a brief span in this exquisite and terrible world.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Fully Booked: Q & A with John Banville (2012)

Life, World, Art, Way

“Cliff was a very smart guy, a reader, very eloquent. I just don't understand why he went, and not one of us.”

Kirk Hammett (1962) American musician

Playboy (April 2001)

Guy, Understanding

“Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.”

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

“To a Father,” letter 5.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

“I busied myself to think of a story, — a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Fear, Business, Nature, Thinking

“The reader does not need a technical vocabulary to read poetry, only a voice in the head or out loud which can deliver the sounds.”

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006

Reading

“Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

The Book Fool, p. 296.
A History of Reading (1996)

Books

“Few poets have made a more interesting rhetoric out of just fooling around: turning things upside down, looking at them from under the sofa, considering them (and their observer) curiously enough to make the reader protest, “That were to consider it too curiously.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 64
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Fools

“The private reader of listener can become an executant of felt meaning when he learns the poem or the musical passage by heart. To learn by heart is to afford the text or music an indwelling clarity and life-force.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 3 (p. 9).

Life, Music, Learning, Heart

“Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole — so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

On the Art of Fiction"; originally published in The Borzoi 1920 (1920)
Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

Art

“Tertiary syphilis, as my readers will not need reminding perhaps, comes, when it comes at all, about ten years after the initial infection. About two thirds of syphilitics miss it, especially if they are women or coloured. It is believed, though without solid evidence, that it attacks the sedentary more than the active. This means that writers and composers, granted that primary lesion, are prone to it.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Women

“Thus we see clearly that the Papacy has substituted a false or sham sacrifice, in the place of the one everlasting, complete and never-to-be-repeated sacrifice of Calvary, made once for all time. Thus it was that Papacy took away from Christ's work the merit of being rightly esteemed the Continual Sacrifice, by substituting in its stead a fraud, made by its own priests. It is needless here to detail the reason why Papacy denies and sets aside the true Continual Sacrifice, and substitutes the "abomination," the Mass, in its stead; for most of our readers know that this doctrine that the priest makes in the Mass a sacrifice for sins, without which they cannot be canceled, or their penalties escaped, is at the very foundation of all the various schemes of the Church of Rome for wringing money from the people, for all her extravagancies and luxuries. "Absolutions", "indulgences", and all the various presumed benefits, favors, privileges and immunities, for either the present or the future life, for either the living or the dead, are based upon this blasphemous doctrine of the Mass, the fundamental doctrine of the apostasy. It is by virtue of the power and authority which the sacrifice of the Mass imposes upon the priests, that their other blasphemous claims, to have and exercise the various prerogatives which belong to Christ only, are countenanced by the people.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 102.

Life, Money, People, Penalty

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

"A Few Words to a Young Writer" http://www.ursulakleguin.com/WordsYoungWriter.html (2008)

Truth, Fear, Art, Way

“I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Soul, Nature, Thinking, Effort

“This is a simple story of a battle; such a tale as may be told by a soldier who is no writer to a reader who is no soldier.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), I

“This film is extremely visual. It is difficult to describe in words without running the risk of losing or boring the reader.
I have come up with a simplified summary, therefore, like a readers guide, which will conjure up the images in as few words as possible :
— the beginning is Leon: The Professional
— the middle is Inception
— the end is 2001: A Space Odyssey
Don't interpret this as pretension on my part, merely a visual, emotional and philosophical point of reference.”

Luc Besson (1959) French film director, writer, and producer

"NOTA", for his film Lucy, as quoted in "Luc Besson's Statement Of Intent For 'Lucy' Compares The Film To '2001,' 'Inception' & 'Leon The Professional'" by Kevin Jagernauth, in Indiewire (28 July 2014) http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/luc-bessons-statement-of-intent-for-lucy-compares-the-film-to-2001-inception-leon-the-professional-20140728

Parting

“Our American newspapers serve a double purpose. They bring knowledge and information to their readers, and at the same time they play a most important part in connection with the business interests of the community, both through their news and advertising departments. Probably there is no rule of your profession to which you gentlemen are more devoted than that which prescribes that the editorial and the business policies of the paper are to be conducted by strictly separate departments. Editorial policy and news policy must not be influenced by business consideration; business policies must not be affected by editorial programs. Such a dictum strikes the outsider as involving a good deal of difficulty in the practical adjustments of c very-day management. Yet, in fact, I doubt if those adjustments are any more difficult than have to be made in every other department of human effort. Life is a long succession of compromises and adjustments, and it may be doubted whether the press is compelled to make them more frequently than others do.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Life, Communication, Business, Knowledge

“It is better to have the child in the chimney corner moved by what happens in the poem, in spite of his ignorance of its real meaning, than to have the poem a puzzle to which that meaning is the only key. Still, complicated subjects make complicated poems, and some of the best poems can move only the best readers; this is one more question of curves of normal distribution. I have tried to make my poems plain, and most of them are plain enough; but I wish that they were more difficult because I had known more.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Answers to Questions," from Mid-Century American Poets, edited by John Ciardi, 1950 [p. 170]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Question

“To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Dial (January 1917).

Intelligence, Understanding, Reading

“So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)

Beauty, Fools, Art, Question

“Subject. A Subject is a mechanism for guiding a reader (analyst, problem domain expert, manager, client) through a large, complex model. Subjects are also helpful for organizing work packages on larger projects, based upon initial OOA investigations.”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

Source: Object-oriented design (1991), p. 106.

Problem, Help

“A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.”

Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic

The Sunday Times, November 29, 1987.

Reading

“I am sure of one thing: many silent readers and young people full of energy will secretly be grateful to us, will be fired by enthusiasm for this book [the Blaue Reiter Almanac ] and will judge the world in accordance with it.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in a letter to Kandinsky, (c. Dec. 1911), quoted in 'Vezin 150'; as quoted in Movement, Manifesto, Melee: The Modernist Group, 1910-1914, Milton A. Cohen, Lexington Books, Sep 14, 2004, p. 67
1911 - 1914

People, Books, World

“Behold, most beloved reader, thus true faith or true knowledge begets love, and love begets obedience to the commandments of God. Therefore Christ Jesus says, "He that believeth on him is not condemned." Again at another place, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death into life," Jn. 5:24. For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonished and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.246

Love, Life, Death, God

“There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books, Intelligence, Sense, Teachers

“On the subject of the left’s latest cause du jour, the “white phosphorus” fairy tale, Michael Moynihan asks a question to which LGF readers probably already know the answer: How Credible is Jeff Englehart?”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

November 09, 2005 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=18177&only

Question

“Its literary merits must be left to the judgment of its readers; as to its truth, I should not hesitate to make the confident assertion that from the first word to the last I have aimed at nothing else.”

Flavius Josephus (37–100) first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer

Closing words, trans. G. A. Williamson
The Jewish War (c. 75 CE)

Truth, Confidence

“They attacked the astronomers as though they were criminals—the geologists as though they were assassins. They regarded physicians as the enemies of God—as men who were trying to defeat the decrees of Providence. The biologists, the anthropologists, the archaeologists, the readers of ancient inscriptions, the delvers in buried cities, were all hated by the theologians. They were afraid that these men might find something inconsistent with the Bible.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

Men, God, Hate

“To a modern reader the connexion at first site may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and the productivity of the earth.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 64, The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires (spelling as per text).

“The demand of the day is for a higher standard and style of Christian life. Every follower of Christ must represent His religion purely, loftily, impressively, before that multitude of "Bible-readers" whose only Bible is the Christian.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 115.

Life, Religion, Christ

“Tadzik Gumiński (later a reader in pediatry), who was also fascinated by astronomy, lived at Szpitalna Street and I lived at Garncarska Street. Not far from our homes, at Podwale, where the scientific bookstore is now located, was the optical shop Maruńczak and the Company. And in this store, as little kids, we bought lenses and other parts necessary to build the telescope. This telescope, of course, was primitive. But thanks to it, we spent many nights observing the sky, deciphering star systems. It was really great fun.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). "Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny" http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Home, Star, Parting, Night

“The main problem for the average reader -- particularly of The Great Beast -- is that Crowley seems such an intolerable show-off that it is hard to believe anything he says.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), p. 73

Problem

“Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Tree, Joy

“I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Men

“Even today, as regards East Timor, where our brutal Indonesian satellite (authors of the 1965-1966 butcheries) have very possibly killed as many people as did the Khmer Rouge, there is a virtually complete blackout of information in the Free Press. This is a bloodbath carried out by a friendly power and is thus of little interest to our readers. It is a “benign bloodbath” in our terminology.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 22.

People

“Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age
Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

"Beauty in This Iron Age" in Starlanes #11 (Fall 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Age, Beauty

“Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Reviewing World within World, the autobiography of Stephen Spender, in The Tablet (5 May 1951)

Life, Art, History

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

Life, God, Way, Reality

“Here’s the problem with the web — this is so cool, it’s worth it. The internet is decentralized in the sense that you can kind of nuke any part of it and it still works. That was its original design. The World Wide Web isn’t that way. You go and knock out any particular piece of hardware, it goes away. Can we make a reliable web that’s served from many different places, kind of like how the Amazon cloud works, but for everybody? The answer is yes, you can. You can make kind of a pure to pure distribution structure, such that the web becomes reliable. Another is that we can make it private so that there’s reader privacy. Edward Snowden has brought to light some really difficult architectural problems of the current World Wide Web. The GCHQ, the secret service of the British, watched everybody using WikiLeaks, and then offered all of those IP addresses, which are personally identifiable in the large part, to the NSA. The NSA had conversations about using that as a means to go and… monitor people at an enhanced level that those are now suspects. Libraries have long had history with people being rounded up for what they’ve read and bad things happening to them. We have an interest in trying to make it so that there’s reader privacy”

Brewster Kahle (1960) American computer engineer, founder of the Internet Archive

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle on Recode Decode https://www.recode.net/2017/3/8/14843408/transcript-internet-archive-founder-brewster-kahle-wayback-machine-recode-decode (March 8, 2017)

People, Secret, World, Way

“Even measured by Wiener's standards Cybernetics is a badly organised work — a collection of misprints, wrong mathematical statements, mistaken formulas, splendid but unrelated ideas, and logical absurdities. It is sad that this work earned Wiener the greater part of his public renown, but this is an afterthought. At that time mathematical readers were more fascinated by the richness of its ideas than by its shortcomings.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Norbert Wiener (2008)

Sadness, Mathematics, Idea, Time

“I have come to believe that large print, thick and heavy paper, and wide margins and oversize leading is indicative of the expected intelligence of the reader. … Compare children's books and books on Web Duhsign or other X-in-21-days books. If the reading level of a specification is below college level, chances are the people behind it are morons and the result morose.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/6b361a9c756dc9a1 (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Children, People, Books, Intelligence

“Amrita Sher-Gill: Art and Life: A Reader (page xvii)”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

Life, Art

“Is compulsion necessarily a violation of the law of love? To offer an affirmative answer is to deny the validity of all existing governments. This is the position of Tolstoy and other absolute non-resistants. Few readers of these words, however, will agree that anarchy alone is consistent with love.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)

Love, Law

“I hope the reader will not just read through the examples but will also ask why it is that such material is not placed before our students. After all it is not difficult to come by, and, as the reader will agree after going through it, it has the most direct bearing on our denationalization. Yet, even though he may have considerable interest in our current problems, even though he may have been following closely the public discourse on such problems, in all probability the reader would not have come across the material. Why is this so?”

Arun Shourie book Missionaries in India

Missionaries in India

Hope, Problem, Reading

“There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer – reading is so much a part of it.”

Dermot Healy (1947–2014) Irish writer

Small talk: Dermot Healy, 2011

Reading, Parting

“Those who argue for a nonpolitical reading of Paul can point out that one of the first things he addresses in the beginning of the letter to the Romans is sexual perversion—usually seen as a moral rather than a political issue. Through must of its history, the church has picked up this concern and focused on morality instead of politics. Everything changes, however, if we realize that we are presented here with a false dichotomy, now as then. In Paul's world, it would have been understood that sexuality was tied up with power since one of the prerogatives of the powerful was sexual penetration. Certain homosexual activities in Paul's time could thus be considered displays of the inequality of power. Equally important, the sexual escapades of the emperor were well known to the people. In Romans 1:31 Paul reproaches rebelliousness against parents; most of his readers would have been aware of Emperor Nero's incestuous relations with his mother. Not even sexuality and politics can be separated in Paul's thinking.”

Joerg Rieger (1963) divinity school scholar

Source: Christ and Empire (2007), pp. 45-46

People, World, History, Thinking

“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

“Tell a dream, lose a reader, said Henry James. Joyce told a dream, Finnegans Wake, and he told it in puns - cornily but rightly regarded as the lowest form of wit. This showed fantastic courage, and fantastic introversion. The truth is Joyce didn't love the reader, as you need to do. Well, he gave us Ulysses, incontestably the central modernist masterpiece; it is impossible to conceive of any future novel that might give the form such a violent evolutionary lurch. You can't help wondering, though. Joyce could have been the most popular boy in school, the funniest, the cleverest, the kindest. He ended with a more ambiguous distinction: he became the teacher's pet.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of Ulysses, p. 446
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Love, Truth, School, Dreams

“Most chess books only sell a few thousand copies, and a book titled something like “Women in Chess” would sell even fewer. The idea with this title was to spread the book outside the competitive chess world. I’m interested in attracting readers who love chess but play only casually, and feminists interested in male dominated fields.”

Jennifer Shahade (1980) chess player

On the title of her book Chess Bitch : Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport
Gothamist interview (2006)

Love, Women, Books, World

“One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns readers…He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; "lays waste" a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the government itself. He is kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Character of Cobbett" <br class="br"> Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Country

“The reader will understand that I despise these "yellows"; they are utterly without honor, they are vulgar and cruel; and yet, in spite of all their vices, I count them less dangerous to society than the so-called "respectable" papers, which pretend to all the virtues, and set the smug and pious tone for good society — papers like the "New York Tribune" and the "Boston Evening Transcript" and the "Baltimore Sun," which are read by rich old gentlemen and maiden aunts, and can hardly ever be forced to admit to their columns any new or vital event or opinion. These are "kept" papers, in the strictest sense of the term, and do not have to hustle on the street for money. They serve the pocketbooks of the whole propertied class — which is the meaning of the term "respectability" in the bourgeois world. On the other hand the "yellow" journals, serving their own pocketbooks exclusively, will often print attacks on vested wealth, provided the attacks are startling and sensational, and provided the vested wealth in question is not a heavy advertiser.”

Upton Sinclair book The Brass Check

The Brass Check (1919)

Money, World, Understanding, Question

“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

“Classical poetry counts on people's similarity. It regards idea associations as unequivocal. This is a mistake. In any case, it rests on a fulcrum of idea associations: 'Above the peaks is peace.'... The poet counts on poetic feelings. And what is a poetic feeling? The whole poetry of peace / quiet stands or falls on the reader's ability to feel. Words are not judged here.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s
Source: 'Consistent Poetry Art', Schwitters' contribution to 'Magazine G', No. 3, 1924, ed. Hans Richter; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, (commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 151.

People, Peace, Feeling, Idea

“Hindu writers have been entirely excluded from holding public offices, and all the worshipping places of the infidels and great temples of these infamous people have been thrown down and destroyed in a manner which excites astonishment at the successful completion of so difficult a task. His Majesty personally teaches the sacred kalima to many infidels with success. All the mosques in the empire are repaired at public expense. Imama, criers to the daily prayers, and readers of the khutba, have been appointed to each of them, so that a large sum of money has been and is still laid out in these disbursements.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Mir-at-i 'alam, Mir-at-i Jahan-numa, of Bakhtawar Khan, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. VII, p. 159.
Quotes from late medieval histories

Money, People, Success, Personality

“I hope I have seduced the reader to consider that we have in front of us the possibility of an open-ended quest for resonant passages between human experience and cognitive science. The price however is to take first-person accounts seriously as valid domain of phenomena. And beyond that, to build a sustained tradition of phenomenological examination that is almost entirely nonexistent today in our western science and culture at large.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Varela (1996) "Neurophenomenology : A methodological remedy for the hard problem" in: Journal of Consciousness Studies, J. Shear (Ed.), June 1996. Cited in: Francisco J. Varela 1946 - 2001 http://www.enolagaia.com/Varela.html on enolagaia.com, 2013

Hope, Science, Personality

“Which ever one of you will want to become a journalist, let him remember to choose his own master: the reader.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

From a lecture of journalism at the University of Turin, 12 May 1997; cited in La Stampa, 14 April, 2009.
1950s - 1990s

“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to 'a war against' whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Afterword to the 2012 edition.
Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Life, War, World

“What you get as a wiki reader is access to people who had no voice before.”

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

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

People

“The texts, as encountered by readers, emanate from the diffuse body of Scientology departments. They have no real sender. The way ordinary Scientologists experience it, the texts are generated by the vast apparatus that is routinizing Hubbard's legacy. Furthermore, careful measures are taken to emphasize that the only visible individual, David Miscavige, is a servant of Hubbard's message, not an agent in his own right. Moreover, Miscavige as a person is clouded in mystery. He is the de facto leader of Scientology, yet remains utterly remote. Hubbard, who died in 1986, is alone in embodying the organization.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Mikael Rothstein, "Scientology, scripture, and sacred tradition" in – [Lewis, James R. Lewis, w:James R. Lewis, Olav Hammer, The Invention of Sacred Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 0521864798, 36].
About

Way, Personality

“Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6

Intelligence

“Now there was one of these Essens, whose name was Manahem, who had this testimony, that he not only conducted his life after an excellent manner, but had the foreknowledge of future events given him by God also. This man once saw Herod when he was a child, and going to school, and saluted him as king of the Jews; but he, thinking that either he did not know him, or that he was in jest, put him in mind that he was but a private man; but Manahem smiled to himself, and clapped him on his backside with his hand, and said," However that be, thou wilt be king, and wilt begin thy reign happily, for God finds thee worthy of it. And do thou remember the blows that Manahem hath given thee, as being a signal of the change of thy fortune. And truly this will be the best reasoning for thee, that thou love justice [towards men], and piety towards God, and clemency towards thy citizens; yet do I know how thy whole conduct will be, that thou wilt not be such a one, for thou wilt excel all men in happiness, and obtain an everlasting reputation, but wilt forget piety and righteousness; and these crimes will not be concealed from God, at the conclusion of thy life, when thou wilt find that he will be mindful of them, and punish time for them." Now at that time Herod did not at all attend to what Manahem said, as having no hopes of such advancement; but a little afterward, when he was so fortunate as to be advanced to the dignity of king, and was in the height of his dominion, he sent for Manahem, and asked him how long he should reign. Manahem did not tell him the full length of his reign; wherefore, upon that silence of his, he asked him further, whether he should reign ten years or not? He replied, "Yes, twenty, nay, thirty years;" but did not assign the just determinate limit of his reign. Herod was satisfied with these replies, and gave Manahem his hand, and dismissed him; and from that time he continued to honor all the Essens. We have thought it proper to relate these facts to our readers, how strange soever they be, and to declare what hath happened among us, because many of these Essens have, by their excellent virtue, been thought worthy of this knowledge of Divine revelations.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 15.11.4-5
Antiquities of the Jews

Love, Life, Men, God

“I never had much of a vocabulary. In fact, my friend Bob Schneider would still be alive today if I'd known the difference between "antidote" and "anecdote". He got bitten by a copperhead, and I'm telling him funny stories out of Reader's Digest. His head started to swell, I said "This ain't working."”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

He goes, "READ FASTER!!"
They Call Me Tater Salad

Reading

“I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

"Q & A: Anne Rice on Following Christ Without Christianity" interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Christianity Today (17 Augutst 2010) http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=89167

Love, People, Religion, Way

“Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

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

Source: The Encyclopedist’s Lair, The New York Times, November 18, 2007, 2007-11-19 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-domains-t.html?ex=1196139600&en=25f7b166ceba3519&ei=5070&emc=eta1,

People, Communication, Knowledge, Thinking

“I was in Miami, reading at the book fair. My partner on the platform had won the Pulitzer Prize the previous day. At the book signing afterwards, Pulitzer Man had waiting for him a queue of admiring readers that stretched up the spine of Florida, while I had three people — an academic who was writing something on my work, the usual maniac in a raincoat, and a kindly chap who leaned down and said to me in a confidential whisper, “I'm not going to buy your book, but you looked so lonely I felt I had to come and talk to you.””

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)

People, Books, Waiting, Reading

“Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks. This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry…. [The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it…. in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto… —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

I. Bernard Cohen, Preface to Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton (1952)

World, Imagination, Nature, Problem