Quotes about readiness
page 12

“And I will pretend
That I don't know of your sins
Until you are ready to confess.
But all the time, all the time,
I'll know, I'll know.And you can use my skin
To bury secrets in,
And I will settle you down.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

I Know
Song lyrics, When the Pawn… (1999)

Secret, Time

“The guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle… [a guerrilla fighter] is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1960), Ch. 1: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare

Reality

“Truth cannot be taught but it is quickly recognized by the person ready to discover it.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Truth, Personality

“The people who bought the houses are from the lower income group and they have been waiting for their houses to be ready for the last 12 years.”

Samy Vellu (1936) Malaysian politician

on an abandoned housing scheme in Sungai Limau, as quoted in The Star, 21 November 2000
Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things

People, Waiting, Housing

“No, there are no long stages of preparation through which you must pass; all things are now ready; there is nothing to hinder you from becoming a Christian this very hour. And, if any of you have been trying to make yourself better until you are weary and discouraged in the work, all you have to do is to put it into stronger hands.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 152.

“Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

Knowledge

“What a duty it is to cultivate a pleasant manner! how many a meeting does it make cheerful which would otherwise have been stupid and formal! We do not mean by this the mere routine of polite observance, but we mean that general cheerfulness which, like the sunshine lights up whatever it touches, that attention to others which discovers what subject is most likely to interest them, and that information which, ready for use, is easily laid under contribution by the habit of turning all resources to immediate employ. In short, a really pleasant manner grows out of benevolence, which can be as much shown in a small courtesy as in a great service.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Stupidity, Light

“No matter what they say the time has come
I'm ready now to start a new beginning
With all our hopes and all our dreams
And I know the stars will shine for you and for me
From the moment you believe.”

Melanie C (1974) British singer-songwriter, actress and businesswoman

"The Moment You Believe" (co-written with Peter-John Vettese) · YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=519yuRHApfY This Time (2007)

Dreams, Hope, Star, Time

“He was keeping track of time. It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you're waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock onto the steady pace of the passing seconds. It's like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough to be reach for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you always know what time it is.”

Lee Child book Die Trying

Die Trying.

Thinking, Winter, Time, Waiting

“In randori, one must search out the opponent's weaknesses and be ready to attack with all the resources at his disposal the moment the opportunity presents itself, without violating the rules of judo.”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

Source: Kodokan Judo (1882), p. 22

“I am finally ready for the world. I hope it’s ready for me.”

Tarik Gunersel (1953) Turkish actor

Oluşmak (To Become) Aphorisms (Pan Publishing House, Istanbul, 2011)

World, Hope

“I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Attributed

Literature, Learning

“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

I Strove with None (1853). The work is identified in Bartlett's Quotations, 10th edition (1919) as Dying Speech of an old Philosopher.
Quoted in W. Somerset Maugham: The Razor's Edge, The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia, 1944, p. 161.

Love, Life, Art, Nature

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html

People, Food, Freedom, Water

“Sex is too easy for women to get, and too hard for men. I mean, honestly, for a man to walk into someplace and have every woman ready to take him home, he'd have to rule the world. A woman would have to do her hair.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

The Golden Goose Special (1997)

Women, Men, World, Sex

“The teacher thus needs a basic education in dogma and asceticism. Apologetics is certainly also good, but the former seems more important to me: ready arguments, as right as they may be, often do not have penetrating force. But she whose soul is formed through the truths of faith — and I call this ascetic formation — finds words which are proper for this human being and for this moment respectively.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

Truth, Education, Faith, Soul

“So those whose heads with snowy locks are crowned,
More ready to advise than aid are found.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Così da sempre ogni capo canuto
Piu volentier consilio, ched ajuto.
XXX, 61
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“Out of the total number of the persons designated for the execution, fifteen men were led in each case to the brink of the mass grave where they had to kneel down, their faces turned towards the grave. When the men were ready for the execution one of my leaders who was in charge of this execution squad gave the order to shoot. Since they were kneeling on the brink of the mass grave, the victims fell, as a rule, at once into the mass grave.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 157 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Men, Personality

“So if you've had enough
and are ready for your stand
I'll be waiting with
the stone that's in my hand.”

Everlast (1969) American singer and songwriter

"Stone in My Hand"
Whitey Ford Sings the Blues (1998)

Waiting

“You are ready to give your life for your honour … Be ready to give up your honour for your soul.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

#614
The Furrow (1986)

Life, Soul

“An experiment is a question which we ask of Nature, who is always ready to give a correct answer, provided we ask properly, that is, provided we arrange a proper experiment.”

C. V. Boys (1855–1944) British physicist

[Charles Vernon Boys, Soap-bubbles and the forces which mould them: Being a course of three lectures delivered in the theatre of the London institution on the afternoons of Dec. 30, 1889, Jan. 1 and 3, 1890, before a juvenile audience, Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1896, 11]

Question, Nature

“The spirit of the Knowledge Society is the spirit of Pluralism—a readiness to accept the Other, indeed to learn from him, to see difference as an opportunity rather than a threat.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

Address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (2 December 2006)]

Knowledge, Learning

“I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

“Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 262-3)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Life, Death, War, People

“The common sense of people will surely prove to them someday that mutual support and cooperation are only sensible for the security and happiness of all. Such faith keeps me continually ready and purposeful with energy to do what one person can towards shaping the environment in which the human being can grow with freedom.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

This I Believe (1951)

Happiness, People, Faith, Support

“The "Second System Effect":
An architect’s first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used “next time.” Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Page 55.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995)

Confidence, Idea, Time, Parting

“Surely you’ll at least see the Temple? Respect all religions, is my motto, believe in none. Sensible principle. Still, you know, must say, after all, two thousand beautiful priestesses! All ready, willing, able—and I must say—dextrous!— to do their best to inspire male worshippers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!”

Avram Davidson book The Phoenix and the Mirror

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 8

Love, Religion, Beauty

“I find that trials help very much in detaching us from this earth. They make us look higher than this world. Here below, nothing can satisfy us. We cannot enjoy a little rest except in being ready to do God's will. [-] Truly, life isn't cheerful. It is very difficult to be attached to it. Au revoir, dear Pauline, my Confidante.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

March 18(?), 1888
General Correspondence

Life, God, World, Help

“In the depth of the night not daring to let any one know
I secretly took a huge stone and dashed it against my arm.
For drawing the bow and waving the banner now wholly unfit;
I knew henceforward I should not be sent to fight in Yün-nan.
Bones broken and sinews wounded could not fail to hurt;
I was ready enough to bear pain, if only I got back home.
My arm—broken ever since; it was sixty years ago.
One limb, although destroyed,—whole body safe!
But even now on winter nights when the wind and rain blow
From evening on till day's dawn I cannot sleep for pain.
Not sleeping for pain
Is a small thing to bear,
Compared with the joy of being alive…”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"The Old Man with the Broken Arm" (a satire on militarism)
Arthur Waley's translations

Pain, Home, Sleep, Winter

“The landlord's laugh was ready chorus.”

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter

Source: Tam o' Shanter (1790), Line 50

“As far as France is concerned, we are ready to envisage everything that can be done under UNSCR 1441. […] But I repeat that every possibility offered by the present resolution must be explored, that there are a lot of them and they still leave us with a lot of leeway when it comes to ways of achieving the objective of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction which may exist in Iraq. I'd like nevertheless to note that, as things stand at the moment, I have, to my knowledge, no indisputable proof in this sphere.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

Source: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actu/bulletin.gb.asp?liste=20030211.gb.html Statement made during a joint press conference, Paris, February 10 2003 Diplomacy with Iraq 2000s

Way, Knowledge

“The device [electronic I Ching calculator] also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to 4. …anything above 4 it represented merely as "A Suffusion of Yellow." Dirk was not certain if this was a programming error or an insight beyond his ability to fathom, but he was crazy about it anyway, enough to hand over twenty pounds of ready cash for the thing.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 10

Error

“I don't have a specific picture in my mind's eye. I want to end up with a picture that I haven't planned. This method of arbitrary choice, chance, inspiration and destruction may produce a specific type of picture, but it never produces a predetermined picture. Each picture has to evolve out of a painterly or visual logic: it has to emerge as if inevitably. And by not planning the outcome, I hope to achieve the same coherence and objectivity that a random slice of nature (or a ready-made) always possesses. Of course, this is also a method of bringing in unconscious processes, as far as possible. I just want to get something more interesting out of it than those things that I can think out for myself.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from an interview with Sabine Schütz, 1990; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6 1990's

Hope, Nature, Thinking, Chance

“The book of Proverbs repeatedly praises child abuse, saying that the bruises (or "blue stripes of the rod") are an indication of a well-trained child. Otherwise, God constantly has people killing children, and sometimes even eating them. Remember when Lot tried to satisfy a rape mob by offering them his own virgin daughters? Remember when Jephthah murdered his own child as a sacrifice to God? There's four books in the Old Testament where God demands that we sacrifice our firstborn sons, so the story of Abraham being ready to kill his own kid pales in comparison to what God demanded later on. How's that for family values! And don't think that all this Old Testament stuff didn't apply to Christians; Jesus said that He came to fulfill the law, not to change it, that not one jot or tiddle of those old Mosaic laws change under Him, and He said that anybody who didn't follow all of those old Mosaic laws would be called "least in Heaven."”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

He even criticized the Pharisees for not murdering disobedient children the way God commanded. Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

God, Children, People, Books

“A father is rarely a good teacher; either he thinks he knows things and finds his knowledge to be very slight, or he knows but explains badly, or he is too severe and impatient because teaching bores him, or he is dangerously indulgent because he loves his children too much. It is from professional teachers who have made a success of the art that we must learn its rules. There can be no teaching without discipline. A pupil must first learn to work. Training of the will must precede that of the mind, and this is why home teaching is never very successful. Excuses are too easily accepted: the child has a headache; he has slept badly; there is a party somewhere. A school makes no compromise and that is its virtue. I am inclined to prefer the boarding-school system. It has some serious drawbacks; it sometimes produces immorality and it is always rather severe, but it makes men. The system forces boys to find their own places in a group; in a family they find these places ready-made and it is too easy for them. If absolutely necessary, and if the parents are judicious, day schools are satisfactory up to the age of fifteen or sixteen. For boys between the ages of seventeen and twenty, freedom in a large city is fatal.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Love, Men, Children, Age

“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Four, Chapter VII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four

Love, Freedom, Time

“Mass, time, magnetic moment, the unconscious: we have grown up with these symbolic concepts, so that we are startled to be told that man had once to create them for himself. He had indeed, and he has: for mass is not an intuition in the muscle, and time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 2: "The Habit of Truth", §5 (p. 35)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

Time

“By March, 1908, we were ready to announce Model T, but not to produce it, On October 1 of that year the first car was introduced to the public. From Joe Galamb's little room on the third floor had come a revolutionary vehicle. In the next eighteen years, out of Piquette Avenue, Highland Park, River Rouge, and from assembly plants all over the United States came 15,000,000 more.”

Charles E. Sorensen (1881–1968) American businessman

Source: My Forty Years with Ford, 1956, p. 110 ; As cited in: EyeWitness to History (2005)

Cars

“Yeah I'm in love with the girl in the four-wheel drive
Chrome steel bumpers and red step side
She has a large time in her large machine
Man I wonder how she gets up in that thing
It casts a big shadow sittin' in the sun
She's got it revved up rockin' ready to run
And someday soon I'm gonna climb right up
And take a little ride in her big ol' truck.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Big Ol' Truck.
Song lyrics, Boomtown (1994)

Love, Girl, Time, Sun

“But your Squabbles about a Bishop I wish to see speedily ended. … Each Party abuses the other, the Profane and the Infidel believe both sides, and enjoy the Fray; the Reputation of Religion in general suffers, and its enemies are ready to say, not what was said in the primitive Times, Behold how these Christians love one another, but, Mark how these Christians [hate] one another! Indeed when religious People quarrel about Religion, or hungry People about their Victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Jane Mecom, 23 February 1769 http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=16&page=050a Epistles

Love, People, Religion, Suffering

“It's different now, it's different now. Now I can speak the truth. I can tell you that the one thing I really, really couldn't bear when I was an MP were my constituents. [laughter] Let's face it: the people have contempt for the politicans; it is as nothing to the contempt we have for you. [laughter] All over this country, there are politicians on their way to the Labour Party conference, coming away from the LibDem one, getting ready to go to the Conservative one, thinking "God, at last he's said it. He's said what we all feel, that happiness is the constituency in the rear-view mirror."”

Gyles Brandreth (1948) British writer, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament

The News Quiz series 72, episode 1 (BBC Radio 4, 24 September 2010).

God, Happiness, People, Truth

“It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo stillmore complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume III, chapter I: "The Spread of Evolution", page 18 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=30&itemID=F1452.3&viewtype=image; letter to Joseph Hooker (1871) The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Light, Change

“I'm honoured by the confidence the council has shown in me as well as my team and Jack Layton. I clearly have big shoes to fill, but I'm also fortunate to be standing on such a solid foundation. Jack Layton has spent eight years building this New Democrat movement for a better Canada, eight years building a team that is ready to tackle any circumstance with hope and optimism. That's exactly what you can expect from us in the coming weeks”

Nycole Turmel (1942) Canadian politician

Turmel accepts NDP leadership during Layton absence http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110728/ndp-interim-leader-110728/ July 28, 2011.

Hope, Shoe, Confidence, Optimism

“What is required is self-belief, most importantly. And secondly, you should be ready to listen, to be strong to acknowledge what your weakness is, and learn, improve… If you have that, then all this that you are talking about, fielding, running between wickets, they are all minor things…”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

In an interview on "Fielding, running between wickets" quoted in "The Rediff Cricket Interview / Kapil Dev".

Strong, Learning

“One reason, perhaps, why the politician today is slow to take up methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends.
The newspaperman looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or withholding information the politician can often effectively censor political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Page 120
Propaganda (1928)

Life, Communication, Business, Dependency

“One of the most natural of reactions during the war was intolerance. But the inevitable disregard for the opinions and feelings of minorities is none the less a disturbing product of war psychology. The slow and difficult advances which tolerance and liberalism have made through long periods of development are dissipated almost in a night when the necessary war-time habits of thought hold the minds of the people. The necessity for a common purpose and a united intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else. But when the need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as a military demobilization. Progress depends very largely on the encouragement of variety. Whatever tends to standardize the community, to establish fixed and rigid modes of thought, tends to fossilize society. If we all believed the same thing and thought the same thoughts and applied the same valuations to all the occurrences about us, we should reach a state of equilibrium closely akin to an intellectual and spiritual paralysis. It is the ferment of ideas, the clash of disagreeing judgments, the privilege of the individual to develop his own thoughts and shape his own character, that makes progress possible. It is not possible to learn much from those who uniformly agree with us. But many useful things are learned from those who disagree with us; and even when we can gain nothing our differences are likely to do us no harm. In this period of after-war rigidity, suspicion, and intolerance our own country has not been exempt from unfortunate experiences. Thanks to our comparative isolation, we have known less of the international frictions and rivalries than some other countries less fortunately situated. But among some of the varying racial, religious, and social groups of our people there have been manifestations of an intolerance of opinion, a narrowness to outlook, a fixity of judgment, against which we may well be warned. It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion. To a great extent this country owes its beginnings to the determination of our hardy ancestors to maintain complete freedom in religion. Instead of a state church we have decreed that every citizen shall be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as to his religious beliefs and affiliations. Under that guaranty we have erected a system which certainly is justified by its fruits. Under no other could we have dared to invite the peoples of all countries and creeds to come here and unite with us in creating the State of which we are all citizens.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War, People, Religion, Feeling

“The true artist always refuses to conform to any standards others than his own. That’s why the attacks in Russia against Shostakovitch and Prokofiev are identical to the attacks that have been made here against American pioneers of abstract painting like Davis, Holty, or Morris. In Russia it was Malevich and Gabo, in this country at the moment it is people like Rothko, Baziotes, Pollock, my self and many others who are being attacked. The names may vary, but the methods, the motives; the objects of attack are essentially the same. Only meritocracy is forever immune, because it is forever ready to conform.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

quote of Gottlieb, on the attacks on artistic freedom in 1948
Lecture at Forum: the Artist Speaks, museum of Modern Art, New York, May 5, 1948.
1940s

People, Quotes, Motivation, Freedom

“Our Italian ally has been a source of embarrassment to us everywhere. It was this alliance, for instance, which prevented us from pursuing a revolutionary policy in North Africa. In the nature of things, this territory was becoming an Italian preserve and it was as such that the Duce laid claim to it. Had we been on our own, we could have emancipated the Moslem countries dominated by France; and that would have had enormous repercussions in the Near East, dominated by Britain, and in Egypt. But with our fortunes linked to those of the Italians, the pursuit of such a policy was not possible. All Islam vibrated at the news of our victories. The Egyptians, the Irakis and the whole of the Near East were all ready to rise in revolt. Just think what we could have done to help them, even to incite them, as would have been both our duty and in our own interest! But the presence of the Italians at our side paralysed us; it created a feeling of malaise among our Islamic friends, who inevitably saw in us accomplices, willing or unwilling, of their oppressors. For the Italians in these parts of the world are more bitterly hated, of course, than either the British or the French. The memories of the barbarous, reprisals taken against the Senussi are still vivid. Then again the ridiculous pretensions of the Duce to be regarded as The Sword of Islam evokes the same sneering chuckle now as it did before the war. This title, which is fitting for Mahomed and a great conqueror like Omar, Mussolini caused to be conferred on himself by a few wretched brutes whom he had either bribed or terrorized into doing so. We had a great chance of pursuing a splendid policy with regard to Islam. But we missed the bus, as we missed it on several other occasions, thanks to our loyalty to the Italian alliance! In this theatre of operations, then, the Italians prevented us from playing our best card, the emancipation of the French subjects and the raising of the standard of revolt in the countries oppressed by the British. Such a policy would have aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of Islam. It is a characteristic of the Moslem world, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, that what affects one, for good or for evil, affects all.”

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

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

Hate, War, World, Feeling

“But I do think we need to explore the commitment problem, which has caused many women to mistakenly conclude that men, as a group, have the emotional maturity of hamsters. This is not the case. A hamster is MUCH more capable of making a lasting commitment to a woman, especially if she gives it those little food pellets. Whereas a guy, in a relationship, will consume the pellets of companionship, and he will run on the exercise wheel of lust; but as soon as he senses that the door of commitment is about to close and trap him in the wire cage of true intimacy, he'll squirm out, scamper across the kitchen floor of uncertainty and hide under the refrigerator of Non-Readiness.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Column, August 18, 1991
Columns and articles

Women, Men, Food, Guy

“Heart of oak are our ships,
Heart of oak are our men;
We always are ready.”

David Garrick (1717–1779) English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer

Hearts of Oak. Compare: "Our ships were British oak, And hearts of oak our men", S. J. Arnold, Death of Nelson.

Men, Heart

“Right trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. And forasmuch as the King’s good grace hath appointed me to attend upon his highness into the North parties of his land, which will be to me great cost and charge, whereunto I am so suddenly called that I am not so well purveyed of money therefore as behoves me to be, and therefore pray you as my special trust is in you, to lend me an hundred pound of money unto Easter next coming, at which time I promise you ye shall be truly thereof content and paid again, as the bearer hereof shall inform you: to whom I pray you give credence therein, and show me such friendliness in the same as I may do for you hereafter, wherein ye shall find me ready. Written at Rising the 24 day of June.

R. Gloucestre

Postscript:

Sir I say I pray you that ye fail me not at this time in my great need, as ye will that I show you my good lordship in that matter that ye labour to me for.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Earliest extant letter of Richard III (then Duke of Gloucester), 1469, reprinted in Paul Murray Kendall’s Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

Money, Time

“His mind resembled the vast ampitheatre, the Colisæum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, which like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drives them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

Referring to Johnson (26 October 1769)
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

“Think about the two qualities that a virus, or any sort of parasitic replicator, demands of a friendly medium, the two qualities that make cellular machinery so friendly towards parasitic DNA, and that make computers so friendly towards computer viruses. These qualities are, firstly, a readiness to replicate information accurately, perhaps with some mistakes that are subsequently reproduced accurately; and, secondly, a readiness to obey instructions encoded in the information so replicated.”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Thinking

“His last words were spoken to a woman, to the nurse who was holding his hand. Perhaps we all have the last words ready when we go into the last room. Perhaps the thing about last words is not how good they are, but whether we can get them out. What Larkin said faintly was, "I'm going to the inevitable."”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)

“Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God's eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God's eternal light is ready to show you your way; God's eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God's unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 265.

Love, Life, God, Peace

“I belong to no nation, no civilization, no society, no race, but to the Divine. I obey no master, no rules, no law, no social convention, but the Divine. To Him I have surrendered all, will, life and self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His will, with complete joy, and nothing in his service can be sacrifice, for all is perfect delight.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

from Collected Works of The Mother, Volume 2, Words of Long Ago, p.166 (February, 1920, Japan) http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/mother/on_herself.php Also quoted by Debbie Magee, in "Auroville — The City Of Dawn in South India" (27 February 2009) http://serreal.ning.com/group/greencommunities/forum/topics/auroville-the-city-of-dawn-in, also in Beyond the Mask: The Rising Sign — Part I: Aries — Virgo, Part 1 by Kathleen Burt (1 January 2010) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Q4kbBqVe0RIC&pg=PA46, p. 46 Sayings

Life, Law, Joy, Perfection

“I rejoice that the reign of Christ is such, while it thrills the soul with emotions, and opens before the highest intellect the most boundless conceptions, we are left at the same time ready, though our hearts be thrilled, to have our hands filled for deeds of benevolence and love. The happiest moments may be the busiest moments.”

Matthew Simpson (1811–1884) American bishop and academic

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 130.

Love, Soul, Time, Heart

“Early one morning in the winter of 1906-7, Henry Ford dropped in at the pattern department of the Piquette Avenue plant to see me. 'Come with me, Charlie,' he said, 'I want to show you something.'
I followed him to the third floor and its north end, which was not fully occupied for assembly work. He looked about and said, 'Charlie, I'd like to have a room finished off right here in this space. Put up a wall with a door in big enough to run a car in and out. Get a good lock for the door, and when you're ready, we'll have Joe Galamb come up in here. We're going to start a completely new job.”

Charles E. Sorensen (1881–1968) American businessman

The room he had in mind became the maternity ward for Model T. Source: My Forty Years with Ford, 1956, p. 96 ; As cited in: EyeWitness to History, " Henry Ford Changes the World, 1908 http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ford.htm," www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2005).

Cars, Winter, Maternity

“Archie waited a beat- in strict command of the room, the silence almost unbearable- and said, "Everything in Brother Eugene's room is held together by screws. The chairs, the desks, the blackboards. Now, with your little screwdriver- maybe you'd better bring along various and assorted sizes, just in case- you start to loosen. Don't take out the screws. Just loosen them until they reach the point where they're almost ready to fall out, everything hanging by a thread…" A howl of delight came from the guys- probably Obie, who had gotten the picture, who could see the house that Archie was building, the house that didn't exist until he built it in their minds.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 35

Guy, Silence, Waiting, Housing

“I was weak and pathetic and I couldn't control myself. An explanation, especially a bullshit one, doesn't alter the circumstances. I need to change, I have to change, and at this point, change is my only option, unless I am ready to die. All that matters is that I make myself something else and someone else for the future.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

A Million Little Pieces (2003)

Change, Future

“Born enemies don't fight. Nations you would say were designed to go to war against each other — by their skins, their language, their smell: always jealous of each other, always hating each other — they're not the ones who fight. You will find the real antagonists in nations fate has groomed and made ready for the same war.”

Jean Giraudoux The Trojan War Will Not Take Place

Tiger at the Gates (1935)

Hate, Fate, War, Fight

“When humans face testings and tragedy, they should remember the angels who are always standing ready to lend their celestial assistance, comfort and council. You should never feel lonely, neglected, fearful, or defeated when you remember that there are the shining ones. They are watching with keen interest and a great desire to help to raise you, to stimulate you into contact with your own superior inner resources.”

Flower A. Newhouse (1909–1994) American mystic

Touched by Angels
Angels

Fear, Angels, Feeling, Help

“You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 267

People, Truth

“Our high God is sovereign Wisdom of all: in this low place He arrayed and dight Him full ready in our poor flesh, Himself to do the service and the office of Motherhood in all things.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 60

Wisdom, God

“A question arises regarding the angels who dwell with us, serve us and protect us, whether their joys are equal to those of the angels in heaven, or whether they are diminished by the fact that they protect and serve us. No, they are certainly not; for the work of the angels is the will of God, and the will of God is the work of the angels; their service to us does not hinder their joy nor their working. If God told an angel to go to a tree and pluck caterpillars off it, the angel would be quite ready to do so, and it would be his happiness, if it were the will of God.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon IV : True Hearing
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)

God, Happiness, Angels, Question

“The Goddess Fortune is the devils servant ready to Kiss any ones Arse.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Inscription on Illustrations to Dante "No. 16: HELL Canto 7"
1810s

Kiss

“When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Mahābhāṣya

Effort

“Gylfie looked at Soren gravely. "That is why we must learn how to fly before the next newing."
"But I won't be ready. I won't have enough feathers," Soren said.
"Almost, though."
"Almost? There's a difference, Gylfie, between almost and enough."”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

"Yes. The difference is belief, Soren. Belief."
Source: The Capture (2003), Chapter Nineteen: "To Believe", p. 139

Learning, Flying

“Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Children, Intelligence, Idea, Time

“I have always said that, with any sculpture, you have to be able to say, 'although this is not a ready-made, it could be one'. That's what a sculpture has to look like. It must have a certain relation to reality. I mean, not airy-fairy, let alone fabricated, so aloof and polite… And I don't see this aspect in many artists' work. Often, my feeling is that they think something up that is supposed to be art. That's not what I want at all. Rather, a sculpture is really a photo – although it can be shifted, it must still always have an aspect that reality has too.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Art, Feeling, Photo, Thinking

“For peace and brotherhood at the axis of a democratic republic, I am ready to serve the Turkish State, and I believe that for this end I must remain alive.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

As quoted in Turkish Press Review (1 June 1999) http://www.byegm.gov.tr/YAYINLARIMIZ/CHR/ING99/06/99X06X01.HTM#%200.

Peace

“People die when they are ready to die, for reasons that are their own. No person dies without a reason. You are not taught that, however, so people do not recognize their own reasons for dying, and they are not taught to recognize their own reasons for living — because you are told that life itself is an accident in a cosmic game of chance.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 835
The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, (1981)

Life, People, Game, Chance

“It is no ready made article; it has grown through the centuries as native to our country and people as the oak, ash, or thorn. It has given her people freedom and taught them the difference between freedom and licence. That is the Constitution that is threatened to-day, not quite openly yet, by the Socialist Party in their conference, tendenciously by sketching a course of action which if it takes place means the destruction of the Constitution. You may dispute that as much as you like, but in effect taking away the executive power of the House of Commons is the way every tyranny starts. It is proletarian Hitlerism and nothing else, and it can be nothing else. I want you to realize it in time.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Birmingham (6 October 1933), quoted in The Times (7 October 1933), p. 14.
1933

People, Way, Freedom, Time

“There's only two paragraphs in there about George Washington … little or nothing about Martin Luther King, a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs… I think most people when they finish that course, they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS … We have got to stop this silliness crucifying ourselves.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Fox News' Ben Carson Thinks New AP U.S. History Course Will Make Students Join ISIS" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/ben-carson-ap-us-history_n_5910982.html, The Huffington Post (January 10, 2014)

People, Thinking, Evil

“I always look for people whose ideas coincide with mine, and then I'm ready to give them a chance to make a name for themselves.”

Michael Balcon (1896–1977) English Film producer

Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 ed): Art. Michael Balcon p. 28

People, Idea, Chance

“We have to give the American people a referendum. We will win this referendum if we have it now. If we wait and delay five or six years we will lose this referendum. The public is way ahead of the political class. They get that things are broken. They get that we're spending their kids' inheritance and mortgaging their future. They are ready to be talked to like adults and not like children. So when they see the demagoguery that is directed toward people or ideas that are sincere and are real, it doesn't work anymore. The Democrats are going to come at us with their old playbook. They're going to tap into the emotions of fear, anger, and envy. But that's not aspirational. That's not hope and change, and I don't think it's going to work anymore.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Source: Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (2010), p. 15

Children, People, Fear, Hope

“To the masculine mind there appears to be something strangely exhilarating in the thought of a woman being abruptly torn from her home without sufficient time to put her wardrobe in order, and to all the men responsible for this voyage the most delightful feature apparently of the whole affair was the fact that I should be forced to get ready in five hours for a seventy-five days' voyage around the world.”

Elizabeth Bisland Whetmore (1861–1929) American writer and journalist

Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bisland/stages/stages.html

Men, World, Home, Appearance

“Here understand I in truth that all manner of things are made ready for us by the great goodness of God, so far forth that what time we be ourselves in peace and charity, we be verily saved.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 40

God, Truth, Peace, Understanding

“"I did a lot of preaching this week. I had my sermons ready. The good part is the congregation was listening. I wish I had passed the collection plate. I would’ve made a lot of money. But I did it for free." — Edwards, following a win against the Chargers in 2006.”

Herm Edwards (1954) American football player, coach and analyst

With Kansas City

Money, Parting

“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. Surely we must free men and women together before we can free women. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands -- the ownership and control of their lives and livelihood -- are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind are ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless against the powerful organizations which modern parties represent and which contrive to rule the people? They rule the people because they own the means of physical life, land, and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press, the church, and the school. You say that the conduct of the woman suffragists is being disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possible way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully concealed -- news of dreadful conditions under which labourers are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in mills and mines and left without compensation, news of famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labour before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Out of the Dark (1913), To a Woman-Suffragist

Life, Women, Men, Children

“Lawyers are like rhinoceroses: thick-skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge.”

David Mellor (1949) former British politician, non-practising barrister, broadcaster, journalist and businessman

Question Time, BBC1 (1992-12-03).

“May I therefore acknowledge the tender glow of health induced by reading, as I sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of ready wreath and quick biography!”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

After a Dutch newspaper prematurely! reported his death in 1902
1870 - 1903

Health, Reading, Sun

“Progress of his Version. Luther was gradually prepared for this work. He found for the first time a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, to his great delight, and made it his chief study. He derived from it his theology and spiritual nourishment; he lectured and preached on it as professor at Wittenberg day after day. He acquired the knowledge of the original languages for the purpose of its better understanding. He liked to call himself a "Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures."
He made his first attempt as translator with the seven Penitential Psalms, which he published in March, 1517, six months before the outbreak of the Reformation. Then followed several other sections of the Old and New Testaments,—the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer of King Manasseh, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, etc., with popular comments. He was urged by his friends, especially by Melanchthon, as well as by his own sense of duty, to translate the whole Bible.
He began with the New Testament in November or December, 1521, and completed it in the following March, before he left the Wartburg. He thoroughly revised it on his return to Wittenberg, with the effectual help of Melanchthon, who was a much better Greek scholar. Sturz at Erfurt was consulted about coins and measures; Spalatin furnished from the Electoral treasury names for the precious stones of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The translation was then hurried through three presses, and appeared already Sept. 21, 1522, but without his name.
In December a second edition was required, which contained many corrections and improvements.
He at once proceeded to the more difficult task of translating the Old Testament, and published it in parts as they were ready. The Pentateuch appeared in 1523; the Psalter, 1524.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Understanding, Knowledge, Sense, Study

“Bad boys have long fascinated audiences as well as storytellers, whatever the medium. Such rebels, often without causes beyond self-gratification, have been at the center of much of contemporary popular culture. One of the paradigms for such dramatized morality tales is Mozart's magnificent "Don Giovanni," whose musical and theatrical turns evoked awe and laughter and terror from the more that 1,500 music fans who on Saturday night flocked to Lawrence's Lied Center for the Mozart Festival Opera production. The libertine is thoroughly disreputable. Nonetheless, we look on in fascination because of his devilish smile, dashing good looks, ready wit, and the audacity of his hyper-inflated ego. If you can imagine a young Jack Nicholson with mustache, cape and a flair for sword play, you've got it. Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis gave the Don appropriate swagger and voice. He also brought a comic twist that gave the roué a touch of the trickster. Stepping out of character for a second in the midst of a briskly paced recitative, he paused, turned, and looked up at the supertitled English translation as if to check his lines. It was a joke shared by all. The pleasure of performing, even in the opera's most dramatic moments, was evident.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Chuck Berg, "Mozart's 'Don Giovanni' triumphs", Topeka Capital Journal (February, 2007) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Pleasure, Smile, Music, Imagination

“The Age of Empty Freedom … does not know that man must first through labour, industry, and art, learn how to know; but it has a certain fixed standard for all conceptions, and an established Common Sense of Mankind always ready and at hand, innate within itself and there present without trouble on its part;—and those conceptions and this Common Sense are to it the measure of the efficient and the real. It has this great advantage over the Age of Science, that it knows all things without having learned anything; and can pass judgment upon whatever comes before it at once and without hesitation,—without needing any preliminary evidence:—'That which I do not immediately comprehend by the conceptions which dwell within me, is nothing,'—says Empty Freedom.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 20

Age, Art, Sense, Freedom

“In view of the increasingly critical situation I propose to come over at once to see you with a view to trying to find a peaceful solution. I propose to come across by air and am ready to start tomorrow.
Please indicate earliest time at which you can see me and suggest place of meeting. I should be grateful for a very early reply.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

At eleven o'clock that same night Neville Chamberlain got off an urgent message to Hitler
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Peace, Time

“I'm ready. They hit me hard. I hit them hard. Doesn't matter who hits. What matters is results.”

Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player

Steve Schrader (April 13, 2008) "What the NBC microphones picked up: Predator taunting", Detroit Free Press.

“Tunisia is always ready to turn the page.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

“You are either ready to discover yourself or you are not. Ready means you have been knowingly or unknowingly practicing self-observation.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

“By 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

As quoted in NewsHour with Jim Lehrer http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/july-dec00/mccain_8-1.html (1 August 2000). 2000s

Home, Thinking

“We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger — especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

"Guest Editorial: World Domination," Linux Journal, 1 January 2000 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3676

People, World, Madness

“I beg to propose to you that toast which is the first to which honour is done in every society of Englishmen, I mean "the Health of Her Majesty the Queen" — a toast which embodies the expression of that which is the deepest and warmest feeling of every Englishman… It could not be expected that man would pursue with diligence and success the pursuits of industry if he were not assured that he would reap in security the fruits which that industry might produce, and I am happy to say that our Army, our Navy, our Militia, and our Volunteers do afford to the people of these realms that security which human arrangements can provide for them. We are happily now at peace with all foreign Powers; but the continuance of that peace is not likely to be less certain when it is known to all foreign nations that the Army, the Navy, the Militia, and the Volunteers of England are in a state of perfect efficiency, and ready if called upon to defend the interests and to maintain the honour and dignity of their country against all who might think fit to assail them.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech to the Agricultural Association at Romsey, quoted in "Lord Palmerston At Romsey," The Times (16 December 1864), p. 12.
1860s

Happiness, People, Health, Peace

“While scientists themselves may be religious men of many different faiths, their methodology was designed to be the antithesis of faith because it requires that all assumptions be questioned, that all proposed explanations be based on demonstrable evidence, and that all hypotheses be must be testable and potentially falsifiable. Blaming magic is never acceptable because miracles aren’t explanations of any kind, and there has never been a single instance in history when assuming the supernatural has ever improved our understanding of anything. In fact such excuses have only ever impeded our attempts at discovery. This is one of many reasons why science depends on methodological naturalism; because unlike religion, science demands some way to determine who’s explanations are the more accurate, and which changes would actually be corrections. Science is a self-correcting process which changes constantly because its always improving. Only accurate information has practical application. So it doesn’t matter what you wanna believe. All that matters is why we should believe it too, and how accurate your perception can be shown to be. So you can’t just make up stuff in science (like you can in religion) because you have to substantiate everything, and be able to defend it even against peers who may not want to believe as you do. Be prepared to convince them anyway. Its possible to do that in science because science is based on reason. That means you must be ready to reject or correct whatever you hold true should you discover evidence against it.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"5th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmbnxtnMB4, Youtube (January 14, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, Faith, Religion, Way