Quotes about real (5916 quotes, page 48)

“Thank God for the hours of training, thank God that, for all its sometimes stupidity, the British army was the only army that trained its infantry with real ammunition.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 283
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

God , Stupidity , Training

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

William Napoli (1948) American politician

When asked for a scenario in which an exception to a 2006 South Dakota state ban on abortion could be invoked. Source: PBS NewsHour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/abortion_3-03.html (3 March 2006)

Life , Girl

“We know how to speak many falsehoods which resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.”

Hesiod Greek poet

We know to tell many fictions like to truths, and we know, when we will, to speak what is true.
We know how to tell many lies that pass for truth, and we know, when we wish, to tell the truth itself.
Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), lines 27–28. Variant translations:

“The real question is: "Should we have public schools?" Let's argue about that one for a while first. If we are going to have them, then we should discuss what could be taught in them. Who decides what is going to be taught in them? Does Bill Clinton decide what's taught? Or Osama Bin Laden decide what's taught? Should you decide what's taught, or should I decide? The whole problem is that some people have this idiot idea that children belong to the state. No, no, no, children belong to God, they are entrusted to parents. The parents should decide what God wants them to be taught, the state does not ever have children. It is sterile, it can't have children, they want to steal yours.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

God , Children , People , School

“The real bug here is that the design of the system even permits this class of bug. It is unconscionable that someone designing a critical piece of security infrastructure would design the system in such a way that it does not fail safe.”

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

" http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/04/the-awful-thing-about-getting-it-right-the-first-time-is-that-nobody-realizes-how-hard-it-was/" (About Ubuntu Bug)

Way

“Mike Flynn is a fine person, and I asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence, who is with us today. And I was not happy with the way that information was given. He didn't have to do that, because what he did wasn't wrong. What he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves in this room, were given that information, because that was classified information that was given illegally. That's the real problem.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, February

People , Way , Problem , Personality

“To win real rewards, we must firmly decline the deceptive rewards offered by society.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle

“Quite often, when actors have such a strong charisma in real life, eventually it has to affect the characters they play. For myself I'm not charismatic in that way. I'm not a "performer". Ideally I would stay mute as River. That's the reason why, for a long time, I've said the opposite of what I really thought. In interviews, I've also played characters that I wasn't. I've lied and often contradicted myself to dumbfound people. It's all over now, because I have nothing left to hide. Eventually, I'm quite an ordinary person.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Last interview, Premier, (October 1993)

Life , People , Way , Strong

“What the sorrowful Jew of Amsterdam called the essence of a thing, the effort that it makes to persist indefinitely in its own being, self-love, the longing for immortality, is it not perhaps the primal and fundamental condition of all reflective or human knowledge? And is it not therefore the true base, the real starting-point, of all philosophy, although the philosophers, perverted by intellectualism, do not recognize it?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point

Love , Knowledge , Effort

“As I have noted elsewhere, and with the clarity of hindsight, I think Stan and Jack made a mistake when they decided to make Thor the “real” Thor. “Whosoever holds his hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor(r)!” That was really all I needed to know. But, of course, the rest of the Norse mythology began appearing early on, so it was only natural (if a tad anal) that fans should start writing in wondering what had happened to the real Thor.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20511&PN=1&TPN=3
Regarding Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s version of Thor

Nature , Thinking , Appearance

“Now Tom was - the hell with that, he said to himself. It is something that happens to everybody. I should know about that by now. It is the only thing that is really final, though.
How do you know that? he asked himself. Going away can be final. Walking out the door can be final. Any form of real betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final.”

Ernest Hemingway book Islands in the Stream

Pt. 3: At Sea, Section 19
Islands in the Stream (1970)

Death , Hell , Betrayal

“Just as some survivors of the Standard Gravure massacre expressed sympathy with Joseph Wesbecker, [Robert] Mack was, to many, a kind of hero. This is a crucial point, because in the case of real random murderers like serial murders, survivors never express sympathy with the murderer. However, in rebellions, survivors often do sympathize, particularly if the rebel belongs to the same oppressed group as they do.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part IV: Wage Rage, page 129.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

“Every culture has a Story of the People to give meaning to the world. Part conscious and part unconscious, it consists of a matrix of agreements, narratives, and symbols that tell us why we are here, where we are headed, what is important, and even what is real. I think we are entering a new phase in the dissolution of our Story of the People, and therefore, with some lag time, of the edifice of civilization built on top of it….
But the new mythos has not yet emerged. We will abide for a time in the space between stories. Those of you who have been through it on a personal level know that it is a very precious - some might say sacred - time. Then we are in touch with the real. Each disaster lays bare the real underneath our stories. The terror of a child, the grief of a mother, the honesty of not knowing why. In such moments we discover our humanity. We come to each other’s aid, human to human. We take care of each other. That’s what keeps happening every time there is a calamity, before the beliefs, the ideologies, the politics take over again.
How can we prepare? We cannot prepare. But we are being prepared.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

Charles Eisenstein, 2013:The Space Between Stories http://charleseisenstein.net/2013-the-space-between-stories/, Charleseisenstein.net, 2013

People , World , Thinking , Time

“We seek a saviour, someone to rescue us from the problems of the world. A saviour is the simple story, the easy option and that is why it is so compelling. You don't have to do anything except believe. There's no need to negotiate with other people, or figure out how to create a robust system within the bizarre and contradictory parameters of human nature. I must admit I fell prey to this when I first met Julian Assange. He was going to lead the way to a bold new age. Instead I learned that power when concentrated is dangerous no matter who holds it or for whatever good intention. The real revolution happens in our own minds, when we stop believing there is someone or some agency who has all the answers, who is infallible and will save us, and instead come to realise we have that ability within ourselves. We may be susceptible to cults of personality, but we can build a check against this into our political systems.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Pages 237-238.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

People , Age , World , Way

“Yes, Johannes Vermeer [Dutch 17th century master painter] paints in thin layers – there is no waste effort – and those small dots – no, they are not like Seurat's, though they contain all the light the pointillist may have wished for, concentrated, hovering before the object, but not obliterating it... Vermeer is not a sun painter, but rather a moon-painter – like Uccello – that's good, it is the pure, final stage of art, the moment when it becomes more real than reality.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1942 - 1948, Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), pp. 357-58: in: 'A visit to the Metropolitan Museum with Gorky', Ethel Schwabacher]], 1947

Art , Reality , Effort , Light

“No real painter ever wants be known through any other medium than his painting.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)

Painting

“Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Women , Men , Children , Food

“A good skeptical mind doesn't waste itself on drugs or ideology, and prefers to break the rules in our minds, in the form of humor, rather than in real life.”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

From an elegy http://www.zompist.com/dfcdead.html to the Dysfunctional Family Circus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysfunctional_Family_Circus

Life

“We assert—and on the basis of the most recent socialist literature that you cannot deny—that the real history of capitalism is only now beginning, because capitalism is not just a system of oppression; it also represents a choice of value,…”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, edit., Charles F. Delzell, The MacMillian Press (1970) p. 23. Speech given on June 21, 1921 in Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.
1920s

History , Literature

“A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people, as no historical reconstruction can.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Preface
The Roman Way (1932)

People , Literature , Knowledge

“The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government’s agents may, under the law, invade the employer’s office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 43

Law , Penalty

“A reason to have computers understand natural language is that it’s an extremely effective way of communicating. What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real intelligence on the part of the listener, and that there are many other ways of communicating with a computer that can be more effective, given that it doesn’t have the intelligence.”

Terry Winograd (1946) American computer scientist

Interview in Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions (2007), ch. 7 http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/TerryWinograd

Way , Intelligence , Communication , Understanding

“Until you deal with your real personal issues, you'll never be able to control yourself.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14

Personality

“An ad that pretends to be art is — at absolute best — like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.”

David Foster Wallace book A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Essays

Smile , Art , Feeling , Perfection

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men , War , People , Age

“My first essay at making a steam engine was when I was fifteen. I then made a real working; steam-engine, 1 3/4 diameter cylinder, and 8 in. stroke, which not only could act, but really did some useful work; for I made it grind the oil colours which my father required for his painting. Steam engine models, now so common, were exceedingly scarce in those days, and very difficult to be had; and as the demand for them arose, I found it both delightful and profitable to make them; as well as sectional models of steam engines, which I introduced for the purpose of exhibiting the movements of all the parts, both exterior and interior. With the results of the sale of such models I was enabled to pay the price of tickets of admission to the lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry delivered in the University of Edinburgh. About the same time (1826) I was so happy as to be employed by Professor Leslie in making models and portions of apparatus required by him for his lectures and philosophical investigations, and I had also the inestimable good fortune to secure his friendship. His admirably clear manner of communicating a knowledge of the fundamental principles of mechanical science rendered my intercourse with him of the utmost importance to myself. A hearty, cheerful, earnest desire to toil in his service, caused him to take pleasure in instructing me by occasional explanations of what might otherwise have remained obscure.”

James Nasmyth (1808–1890) Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor

James Nasmyth in: Industrial Biography: Iron-workers and Tool-makers https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZMJLAAAAMAAJ, Ticknor and Fields, 1864. p. 337

Friendship , Pleasure , Communication , Nature

“Real togetherness in married couples and indeed in any couple comes from words, not just the words that are spoken – spoken voluntarily – but the words one doesn't keep to oneself – at least not without the intervention of the will.”

Javier Marías (1951) Spanish writer

La verdadera unidad de los matrimonios y aun de las parejas la traen las palabras, más que las palabras dichas—dichas voluntariamente—, las palabras que no se callan—que no se callan sin que nuestra voluntad intervenga—.
Source: Corazón tan blanco [A Heart So White] (1992), p. 132

“SHALMANESER That real cool piece of hardware up at the GT tower. They say he's apt to evolve to true consciousness one day. Also they say he's as intelligent as a thousand of us put together, which isn't really saying much, because when you put a thousand of us together look how stupidly we behave.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (17) "Brighter Than A Thousand Men"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Intelligence

“I've extended my hospitality to one of my friends, a former student of Gleyre's, who lacks a studio at the moment. Renoir, that's his name, is a real worker, he takes advantage of my models and helps me pay for them.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

In a letter to his parents, c. 1868; as quoted in Frédéric Bazille, Prophet of Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn & Dixon Gallery, Memphis, 1992-93, p. 38
Renoir would move in with Bazille around 1868, and Bazille's letter is only one example of his charitable nature
1866 - 1870

Help

“It's not a fantasy performance, Jane. Come on. Everything I do is real. It comes out of my head. I live this life every day. When I'm onstage it's my therapy. It's not a performance. It's a ritual. And the ultimate performance would be when I've reached my peak and I'm not there yet so don't you all clap when I say this I'll commit suicide and I'll take your kids with me.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jane Whitney Show July 16. 1993.
On The Jane Whitney Show

Life , Suicide

“Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden.”

Chinua Achebe book No Longer at Ease

Source: No Longer at Ease (1960), Chapter 5 (pp. 43–44)

Feeling , Quotes

“Convince yourself. Kovno is a treasure-trove for artists. It is gloomy, the lamps don't make it lighter and the streets are getting darker. Their violet windows hover threateningly in the darkness. The elusive lines of low houses, on them - the glimmer of green and red flames - illuminating rows of shops. Bright green bright red stripes [all] fall on the violet sidewalk. And all those shadows are full of people who only speak about one thing, about love, in the dialect, Polish or broken Russian. Whispers and loud words touch the silence, like the green and red bands of light - the darkness of the night. Something terrible, terrible lies over everything, I feel a shudder, it seems I am in another world, far away from real life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as cited in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
1906 - 1911

Love , Life , People , World

“We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 2.2
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

World , Imagination

“Apparently we’re now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don’t think anything of it.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

October 16, 2005 weblog post http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/10/16/news.html#theywantyou

Life , People , Way , Thinking

“It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 229

Intelligence , Business

“Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life , Pain , Dreams , Soul

“We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons. …The Liberal party, high and low, have discovered, if they ever forgot it, that the real road to success…lies in adhering to the old principles of the party.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to Liberals in Belmont (2 January 1903), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 394
Leader of the Opposition

Success , Housing

“Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, "What are you going to do about the farm question?" And he knows right away - bang, bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. "What are you going to do on the farm problem?" "Well, I don't know. I used to be a general, and I don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can't tell you ahead of time what solution, but I can give you some of the principles I'll try to use - not to make things difficult for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have some way to take care of them," etc., etc., etc.
Now such a man would never get anywhere in this country, I think. It's never been tried, anyway. This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when the real fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around. And the result of this of course is that the politician must give an answer. And the result of this is that political promises can never be kept. It is a mechanical fact; it is impossible. The result of that is that nobody believes campaign promises. And the result of that is a general disparaging of politics, a general lack of respect for the people who are trying to solve problems, and so forth. It's all generated from the very beginning (maybe - this is a simple analysis). It's all generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to find the answer instead of trying to find a man who has a way of getting at the answer.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture III: "This Unscientific Age"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

People , Way , Question , Problem

“I want to go further and further. I can hardly wait until I am a real artist. And then I long so for life. I've only begun to get a little taste of it.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In her Journal-entry, December, 1898; as quoted in Modersohn-Becker P, Busch G, Reinken LV: Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals, Taplinger; New York 1983, p. 118
1898

Life , Waiting

“[about how he and his wife can't go out on a date, since they're married]
(A) I'm not going to get to pick the restaurant. Because I'm going to go "where do you want to eat?", and she's going to go "I don't care." So I'll say, "okay, how about Italian?" "Hmmmm…." I'm not going to get to pick the movie, and there's a real good chance I'm not going to get lucky! That's not a date!”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Aged and Confused (2009)

Chance

“Donkey Punch is a very extreme, real-world thriller – it’s about characters and events that are based in reality and it pushes them into very dark and extreme situations where they have to do things that they would never have imagined. The film shows all this quite realistically and doesn’t pull its punches.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[Bloody Disgusting, Interview Donkey Punch: Writer/Directory Olly Blackburn, Mr. Disgusting, http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/interview/441, 23 February 2012, 2011, Bloody-Disgusting LLC]

World , Imagination , Reality

“If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they’re easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it’s boring.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Life , People , World , Cars

“The North Korean state is essentially two things: 1) a large money-laundering concern; 2) the world’s largest prison and slave labor camp. Now, however, it is a large money-laundering concern and prison camp that has additionally extorted its way to nuclear weapons. Any U. S. policy should begin and end with the knowledge of what North Korea really is. It is not a state engaged in the normal give-and-take of diplomacy, seeking "security assurances" in return for "denuclearization" or some other such deal conjured up by diplomats whose experience is in dealing with real countries who negotiate in good faith. Rather, North Korea has had a pretty good run with its current approach of extortion, criminality and the deprivation of its own people.”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/11/all_you_need_to_know_about_north_korea
North Korea is a nuclear criminal enterprise
Daniel Blumenthal
February 12, 2013
Foreign Policy
USA
February 13, 2013
http://web.archive.org/web/20130708033612/http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/11/all_you_need_to_know_about_north_korea
July 8, 2013
no

Money , People , World , Faith

“So do something that would have worked anyway whether God is real or not, and then simply assume that it worked because God is real. Of course. That’s religious logic for you.”

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

Patheos, The Cow http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/01/22/the-cow/ (January 22, 2016)

God

“Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model… He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. xxix; As cited in: Jesper Simonsen (1994) Administrative Behavior: How Organizations can be Understood in Terms of Decision Processes http://jespersimonsen.dk/Downloads/Simon-introduction.pdf. Roskilde Universitet.

World

“The mindless ferocity of this man, and all those like him, their real loathing born of nothing more solid than insecurity and fear…It was a channel. Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Silver on the Tree (1977), Chapter 4 “Midsummer Day” (p. 54)

Fear , Freedom

“A lot is said, by foreigners and the left, about America being a violent society. Yet if you subtract the crime statistics for its largest cities — places that have been under the strict political control of so-called "progressives", sometimes for many generations — what remains, the real America, is the most peaceful, productive, prosperous, and truly progressive civilization in all of human history.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"In Praise of Social Benefactors," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2013/tle734-20130818-04.html 18 August 2013.

Peace , History

“I was real, real sad about that play. Four more outs to throw a no-hitter … I was really sad. I saw the play on the field and thought he was out. But he's human (umpire Bill Miller) and anybody can make a mistake.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Author Unknown, Cubs 4, Arizona 1 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=230822129, Yahoo! Sports, Retreived on June 14, 2007
2003

Sadness

“Will we solve the crises of next hundred years? asked Krulwich. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” said Wilson. “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Quoted in Harvard Magazine http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente from a public discussion between Wilson and James Watson moderated by NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich, September 9, 2009.

God , Understanding , Question , Nature

“The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Fear

“Andrew Holland was prosecuted in the UK for possessing "extreme pornography", a term which appears to mean porn that judges and prosecutors consider shocking. He had received a video showing a tiger having sex with a woman, or at least apparently so.
He was found innocent because the video he received was a joke. I am glad he was not punished, but this law is nonetheless a threat to other people. If Mr Holland had had a serious video depicting a tiger having sex with a woman, he still would not deserve to go to prison. … I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors.
A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?
Perhaps I am spared because this photo isn't "disgusting", but "disgusting" is a subjective matter; we must not imprison people merely because someone feels disgusted. I find the sight of wounds disgusting; fortunately surgeons do not. Maybe there is someone who considers it disgusting for a parrot to have sex with a human. Or for a dolphin or tiger to have sex with a human. So what? Others feel that all sex is disgusting. There are prejudiced people that want to ban all depiction of sex, and force all women to cover their faces. This law and the laws they want are the same in spirit.
Threatening people with death or injury is a very bad thing, but violence is no less bad for being nonsexual. Is it worse to shoot someone while stroking that person's genitals than to shoot someone from a few feet away? If I were going to be the victim, and I were invited to choose one or the other, I would choose whichever one gave me the best chance to escape.
Images of violence can be painful to see, but they are no better for being nonsexual. I saw images of gruesome bodily harm in the movie Pulp Fiction. I do not want to see anything like that again, sex or no sex. That is no reason to censor these works, and would still not be a reason even if most people reacted to them as I do.
Since the law doesn't care whether a real human was really threatened with harm, it is not really concerned about our safety from violence, any more than it is concerned with avoiding suffering for corpses or animals. It is only prejudice, taking a form that can ruin people's lives.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Extreme Pornography Law in the UK" (2010) http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html
2010s

Death , Women , Pain , People

“A Warning to all
Close minded, petty, or malicious, great and small spirits! Just as the whole plot of Parsifal of the festal play of Richard Wagner is only an allegory, a symbolical depiction with no real occurrence in the material world, so the above explanation of the Graal-secret is not to be understood as literal, personal, material, earthly, relative to vulgar events. But it is only to be understood as totally impersonal, symbolical, and relative on purely spiritual grounds.”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Secret , World , Personality

“At heart, the issues raised in a work of fantasy are those we face in real life. In whatever guise—our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity; or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death—the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love and mercy, is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Newbery Award acceptance speech (1969)

Love , Life , Death , War

“I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand... How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (22 July 1812), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40
1800s - 1810s

Life , Beauty , Art , Nature

“One afternoon I went to visit him. [Jacob, an older and close friend of Jopie - a real freebooter]. I knew he was home, I took pen, ink and my sketchbook with me and did half a liter of gin in my pocket. He lived in the back of an alley and was sitting in his chair by the window.... I told him, 'You will get the whole bottle, but one condition. I want to make a beautiful drawing of you, so first you have to sit still for twenty minutes and look at me closely. If I look at you and you don't look at me, the deal is over....'Okay', he said. I never had a model like him before... Stock-still he sat.... and looked at me without a single blink of his eyes. Within half an hour he was there on the paper - razor-sharp... While I am writing this down, it is as if he is sitting in front of me again..”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Op een middag ging ik bij hem op bezoek. [bij Jacob, een oudere en hechte vriend van Jopie en een echte vrijbuiter]. Ik wist dat hij thuis was, nam pen en inkt en mijn schetsboek mee en deed een halve liter jenever in mijn zak. Hij woonde achter in een steegje en zat in zijn stoel bij het raam.. .Ik zei: 'Je krijgt de hele fles van me, onder één voorwaarde. Ik wil een prachtige tekening van je maken en daarvoor moet je eerst twintig minuten doodstil zitten en me strak aankijken. Als ik naar jou kijk en jij kijkt niet naar mij, dan gaat het over.. ..'Afgesproken', zei hij. Ik heb nog nooit zo’n model gehad!.. .Doodstil zat hij.. ..en keek me zonder ook maar één keer met zijn ogen te knipperen strak in mijn gezicht. Binnen een half uur stond hij haarscherp op het papier.. .Terwijl ik dit opschreef was het net alsof hij weer voor me zat.
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 58

Beauty , Home , Drawing

“There are a large number of claims circulating about rampant anti-Semitism on college campuses. When you go actually go through the records, talk to the schools, speak to the deans and so forth, all of these claims turn out to be fraudulent. There’s just no record of this so-called rampant anti-Semitism on college campuses. The most striking example is Columbia University where […] pro-Israel outsiders were disrupting the classrooms of these professors [falsely accued of anti-Semitism], secretly video-taping their lectures and being turned, as the Columbia Report put it, into informers for the pro-Israel lobby. The real story was the harassment of professors who were critical of Israeli policy.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

http://www.peuplesmonde.com/article.php3?id_article=381 Interview with Norman Finkelstein]
Other sourced statements

School , Universe , Falseness

“You spend months and months listening to the music, absorbing, practicing, working with real musicians who worked with them and getting as much of that as you can. And then the day you start shooting, you have to throw it all away. Because, they had no self-consciousness. They were natural performers and at that time, it wasn't about how you could synthesize a voice and make it appealing, it was about the natural little hiccups and the way you related a story or wrote the soul in the words you wrote. And 90% of your popularity was your performance and your interpretation of your own song. So, once we learned it all you just have to just kind of hope it all sunk in somewhere and just let it all go, cause they just had incredible confidence.”

Reese Witherspoon (1976) American film actress and producer

On making Walk the Line
IGN Interview with Reese Witherspoon http://movies.ign.com/articles/666/666865p1.html (November 15, 2005).

Hope , Music , Way , Soul

“In greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant who was strong as long as he had contact with the earth. When he was lifted from the earth he lost strength. So it is with engineers. They must not become isolated from the real world…”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

The Rickover Effect (1992)

World , Strong

“I performed at a show at the MoMA. There was this big dinner there, and I was seated in this hall with the mayor of New York and all these extremely wealthy art-supporting and art-buying people. There was a piece of work hanging in the hall-it was a fan. This fan was supposed to swing by the momentum of its own propeller. So, while we were having dinner, the fan was stopped, and the guy next to me, a curator at P. S.1, said, "Look, this is what art symbolizes today." Like, that piece of art is supposed to be moving, but just to have dinner we've stopped the art. That's what New York is like today. You can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/kehinde-wiley/#page2 with Kehinde Wiley on the "recycled object" for Interview magazine (2008)
Sourced quotes

People , World , Art , Guy

“The public acceptance of "I Love Lucy" and "Our Miss Brooks" has been a source of great inspiration for me. The challenge has been a real one -- one I have found both stimulating and exciting.”

Karl Freund (1890–1969) German film director and cinematographer

Filming The Lucy Show (December 1953)

Love

“The wise man is not waiting for the realness of the world to prove itself to him. How can one be an authority before the experiencing of this realness? My master taught me—and to me it seems chash, meaning correct—that you must not defend against the entering of knowledge.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 18, “A Net of Stars” (p. 266).

World , Knowledge , Waiting

“The process which has led us to this result, and which might justifiably be called a Critique of all Scepticism, yields also the final impossibility of materialism in a still clearer way than we noticed before. We saw, some distance back, that the actual of sense could by no possibility be the source of consciousness, being, on the contrary, its mere phenomenon — its mere externalised presentation (picture-object) originated from within. But the hypothetical potential of sense, the assumed subsensible substance called matter, we have now seen to be precisely that self-contradiction talked of as the physical thing-in-itself, and it therefore disappears from the real universe along with that illusion. We have, then, a definitive Critique of all Materialism.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Later German Philosophy, p.170-1

Way , Sense , Universe

“I don't believe the good times are over.
I don't believe the thrill is all gone.
Real love is a man's salvation;
The weak ones fall, the strong carry on.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Straight Into Darkness
Lyrics, Long After Dark (1982)

Love , Strong , Time

“I've seen those big machines come rolling through the quiet pines.
Blue suits and bankers with their Volvos and their valentines.
Give us this day our daily discount outlet merchandise.
Raise up a multiplex and we will make a sacrifice.
Now we're gonna get the big business.
Now we're gonna get the real thing.
Everybody's all excited about it.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

No Man's Land.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Business

“We date real women in the Palace of Wisdom.”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

The Palace Of Wisdom

Wisdom , Women

“At a certain age children are greatly intrigued by the possibility of locating themselves on a map. It appears strange that one's familiar life should actually have all occurred in an area delineated by a set of quite impersonal (and hitherto unfamiliar) coordinates on the surface of the map. The child's exclamations of "I was there" and "I am here right now" betray the astonishment that the place of last summer's vacation, a place marked in memory by such sharply personal events as the ownership of one's first dog or the secret assembling of a collection of worms, should have specific latitudes and longitudes devised by strangers to one's dog, one's worms, and oneself. This locating of oneself in configurations conceived by strangers is one of the important aspects of what, perhaps euphemistically, is called "growing up". One participates in the real world of grown-ups by having an address. The child who only recently might have mailed a letter addressed "To my Granddaddy" now informs a fellow worm-collector of his exact address – street, town, state and all – and finds his tentative allegiance to the grown-up world view dramatically legitimated by the arrival of the letter.”

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) Austrian-born American sociologist

Source: Invitation to Sociology (1963), p. 81

Life , Children , Secret , Age

“What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 212

World

“I think I am easy to make fun of. I try not to pay too much attention. You can't let critics dictate what you do… The thing that fascinates me, is the emotion in music, the way it can make me cry or laugh or be angry. I'm not trying to be hip or cool, and I'm not scared to put everything I have into songs. Passion is the greatest thing that music can evoke. We live in a society where I think people often find it hard to express themselves, but sometimes a song can do that for you. It might not be groundbreaking, but there is something about the simplicity of presenting songs where it's all about the lyric and the melody. People don't need to get through a whole lot of production to get to the root of the song. It's just music doing what music does best… A lot of things in the mainstream are repetitive and soulless and have been churned out without any real conviction. It is really unfair to call Coldplay insufferable, when they obviously care about what they do. James [Blunt] too. Too much of the music industry is controlled by lawyers and businessmen, making music like it's a product on the factory line. That's what I call insufferable.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

[Neil McCormick, Who is right? Critics or the public?, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/09/29/bmneil29.xml, The Telegraph, 2005-09-29]

People , Music , Way , Thinking

“The men seldom have any real, concrete notions of what combat is like. Their minds are full of romanticized, Hollywood versions of their future activity in combat, colored with vague ideas of being a hero and winning ribbons and decorations.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 44

Men , Color , Idea , Future

“The real problem of living creatures is that for most of the time they are not aware that they are an active force. They become aware of it briefly -- as the lion tracks its prey, as the warrior gallops into battle -- but, for the most part, they feel as helpless as leaves carried on the wind. When we look back at our struggles, we often become aware of how much we have achieved. Meanwhile, as we plod along in the present moment, trying to anticipate the next problem, life seems a long uphill grind. Yet man has always had these moments in which he sees that things are not as bad as they appear -- those moments of exaltation or deep relaxation, when he suddenly becomes aware of the powers of his own mind. It is in these moments that he suddenly grasps the basic nature of his problem: that he is stifled and blinded by "close-upness" -- by the sheer pressure of the world against his senses. The moments of insight permit him a bird's-eye view of his own life, and make him aware that his everyday consciousness amounts to a worm's-eye view.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 248

Life , World , Feeling , Nature

“OK, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Attributed to Torvalds in LinuxWorld interview.
Responding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution's claim that Linus Torvalds is not the real father of Linux.
Attributed

“Few men, I imagine, who become great started on their career with the intention of becoming so. The intention generally accompanies the unsuccessful. The secret of real greatness seems to be a happy knack of doing things as they come in your way; and they rarely present themselves in the form which careful preparation would enable you to deal with.”

Mandell Creighton (1843–1901) English historian and ecclesiastic

Heroes, address given to the Social and Political Education League (4 November 1898)

Men , Secret , Way , Imagination

“I have pledged loyalty to the Constitution of India…it is the constitution of a new state, enacted by independent citizens for the first time in the history of the country. Ours is a young and new state, though it represents an ancient community that has sought to attain eternal, constant values over the centuries with the help and cooperation of other communities and its own unique style… Our past is neither static nor dead. Rather, it is a living and dynamic entity. It has its bearings upon our present and helps us in constructing our future…I perceive it clearly that education should play an important role in the renewing our past. I firmly adhere to the truth that education is the real means for realizing national objectives. The essential features of a nation are determined by its educational plans”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

In his a first address on 13 May 1967 as as President of India delivered in the central hall of the Parliament, in: p. 337.
Quest for Truth (1999)

Truth , Education , History , Communication

“I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath — someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts … just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown …. [being given] free rein [by director Christopher Nolan was] fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Interview remarks published in Empire, from interviews conducted in November 2007.
[Dan Jolin, Fear Has a Face, http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/covers/image.asp?id=24227&gallery=1365&caption=%23223%20%28January%202008%29, Empire, 223, January, 2008, 87–88, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, 2008-07-08]
[Dan Jolin, The Dark Knight, http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/covers/image.asp?id=27819&gallery=1365&caption=%23229+%28July+2008%29, Empire, 229, July, 2008, 92–100, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, 2008-08-18]
[Olly Richards, World Exclusive: The Joker Speaks: He's a Cold-blooded Mass-murdering Clown, http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?nid=21560, Empire, Web, Bauer Verlagsgruppe, November 28, 2007, 2008-08-18]

“Let's just get to the political heart of the matter, No matter what you want to call it, beyond border enforcement, a lot of people, particularly on our side, don't want to have a debate about this. Even if you debate it, you're wrong. Even if you're open-minded about compromise, you're wrong. It's a very simple answer to a complex problem. Send them all back. End of discussion, end of debate. Now that to me is not a realistic approach to a real problem.”

Lindsey Graham (1955) United States Senator from South Carolina

On immigration; articles.sfgate.com, 17 March 2006 accessed 4 February 2010 http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-03-17/news/17287919_1_guest-worker-plan-illegal-immigrants-border-crackdown-bill
2000s

People , Problem , Heart

“Although quantum theory involves the use of nonlocal states, such as wave packets and entangled states, there is nothing in the theory, or in the real world so far as it is accurately described by quantum theory, that corresponds to the sorts of instantaneous nonlocal influences which have often been thought to arise in the situation envisaged in the EPR paradox, or implied by the fact that quantum theory violates Bell inequalities.”

Robert Griffiths (physicist)

"Quantum Locality", Found Phys (2011) 41: 705–733

World

“In astronomy two characteristics are common to all data on which the solution of the great problems depends. The first is the extreme minuteness of the quantities to be measured. …New epochs were inaugurated in the beginning of the seventeenth century by the invention of the telescope, and in the last third of the nineteenth by the discovery of photography and spectroscopy…. The other characteristic is that astronomy always requires a very large number of data. …These two characteristics of the data that the astronomer requires to build his science on make two things more necessary in astronomy than in any other science: patience and organised coöperation. …The astronomer—each working at his own task…—is always conscious of belonging to a community, whose members, separated in space and time, nevertheless feel joined by a very real tie, almost of kinship. …whatever his special work may be it is always a link in a chain, which derives its value from the fact that there is another link to the left and one to the right of it. It is the chain that is important, not the separate links.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Feeling , Communication , Problem , Science

“We must be careful to discriminate between our own incapacity to test truth and the necessary improbability of an event. It is plain that from our ignorance of the remote spheres of God's action we cannot judge of His works removed from our experience; but a fact is not necessarily doubtful because it cannot be reached by our ordinary senses. To recapitulate, we may lay down the following propositions:
1. That there is no real physical distinction between miracles and any other operations of the Divine energy : that we regard them differently is because we are familiar with one order of events and not the other.
2. There is nothing incredible in a miracle, and the credibility of a miraculous event is to be measured only by the evidence which sustains it. And although the extraordinary character of a phenomenon may render the event itself improbable, it does not, therefore, necessarily render it either incredible or untrue.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix, p. 489
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

God , Truth , Sense

“The commander's talents are given greatest scope in rough hilly country. Mountains allow him too little real command over his scattered units and he is unable to control them all; in open country, control is a simple matter and does not test his ability to the fullest.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 3

Mountain , Country

“When our thoughts — which bring actions — are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

Quoted in Linda O. McMurray, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 107

Hate , Hell

“I know I've caused you trouble,
I know I've caused you pain.
But I must do the right thing;
I must do myself a favour
And get real, get right with the Lord.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Get Real Get Right"
Lyrics, The Age of Adz (2010)

Pain

“One common tactic [socialists like to use] is to point to countries that liberals like and dub them real-world models of socialism. Thus Scandinavian countries with generous social safety nets become the real-world proof that socialism works. Others will just point to government-run programs or institutions—national parks, the VA, whatever—and say “socialism!””

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

What about Venezuela? “Shut up,” they explain.
2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

World , Country

“That movie (Zombi Holocaust) was also shot in Croce Verde. Not exactly on the same spot as the Emanuelle movie, but very near. I particularly remember the lovely leading actress, Alessandra delli Colli, the wife of one the greatest Italian cameramen, Tonino delli Colli. There was also this great Japanese guy, who used to have real snakes curl up on his belly! He was incredible.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Love , Guy

“If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his "human right."”

Murray N. Rothbard book For a New Liberty

For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (1973)

Life , World

“It is always the teacher who must learn the most … or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 2: "The Haj in the Heart", Ch. 5
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

Learning , Teachers

“The real crazies who are looking for a messiah… after an hour or so they realise I'm not it and go off and look somewhere else.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

“Many solutions are offered as to how to gain the something more in life. …Wealth, strength, and keenness of intellect, taken separately of together, do not constitute the essence of real life. …At its best, life consists of these things, plus something more. …In Jesus Christ we see perfection in life. …From an imperfect understanding of Jesus Christ, it would appear that real life depends upon the fulfilling of three conditions—the dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God, with ourselves, and with our fellowmen. …If we fulfill to any degree these three conditions of being in friendly relations with God, ourselves, and our fellows, we shall discover something more of the meaning of life.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 63-67

Life , God , Understanding , Appearance

“I don't mean to criticize anyone in any way that I wouldn't criticize myself. I think people should have fun, and have a good time, and enjoy the luck that we have to be lazy and dwell in consumerism. But I think that it's a balance. And our job as actors is empathy. Our job is to imagine what someone else's life is like. And if you can't do that in real life, if you can't do that as a human being, then good luck as an actor…. I just think it's an important thing to engage in the world. And it's just too easy not to in our society.”

Natalie Portman (1981) Israeli-American actress

Inside the Actor's Studio interview by James Lipton, New School University, November 21, 2004 http://www.natalieportman.com/npcom.php?page_number=24&limit=100&view=

Life , People , World , Way

“The real core of what being an engineer is. You have a scientific basis, but when you don't have the science, you put in some bugger factors, some safety factors, and so forth and you get smart enough, and you get the job done anyhow, right? Economically, and as close to on time as you can make it. And if the customer is asking for something that's outlandish, give him what you can, and educate him back to what it is.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1989), p. 25.

Education , Science , Time

“The economist’s “demand” is not the real demand; his “consumption” is an artificial consumption. For the economist, only that person really demands, only that person is a real consumer, who has an equivalent to offer for what he receives.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Die Nachfrage des Ökonomen ist nicht die wirkliche Nachfrage, seine Konsumtion ist eine künstliche. Dem Ökonomen ist nur der ein wirklich Fragender, ein wirklicher Konsument, der für das, was er empfängt, ein Äquivalent zu bieten hat.
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)

Personality

“It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“It is good to be back in the People's House. But this cannot be a real homecoming. Under the Constitution, I now belong to the executive branch. The Supreme Court has even ruled that I am the executive branch — head, heart, and hand.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Source: 1970s, Address to Congress (12 August 1974)

People , Heart , Housing

“Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

"Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism" http://www.dorislessing.org/unexamined.html, in Our Country, Our Culture - The Politics of Political Correctness (1994), Partisan Review Press, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips

Dogs , Motivation , Idea

“An energetic crudity, even a riotous absurdity, has more promise in it than a clever and elegant mediocrity, because it shows that the young man is speaking out of his own heart, and struggling to express himself in his own way rather than in the way he finds in other men's books. The early works of original writers are usually very bad; then succeeds a short interval of imitation in which the influence of some favourite author is distinctly traceable; but this does not last long, the native independence of the mind reasserts itself, and although perhaps academic and critical demands are somewhat disregarded, so that the original writer on account of his very originality receives but slight recognition from the authorities, nevertheless if there is any real power in the voice it soon makes itself felt in the world.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Men , Books , World , Way

“What many of our businesses are lacking is confidence: confidence to expand; confidence to borrow; confidence to grow; and the confidence to fuel a real economic recovery that benefits everybody, offering decent jobs, paying decent wages and bridging the skills gap.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Devolution and Growth Across Britain (19 June 2015)

Confidence , Business

“…the work of a poet who has a real talent, but not for words.”

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

of The Listening Landscape by Marya Zaturenska; “Town Mouse, Country Mouse”, p. 69
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 29

Youth , Time , Happiness

“All the major teachers have told us that we should love our neighbors as ourselves and that we should love God with all of our heart. They have also told us that this world is not our original home. It is no accident that such diverse yet harmonious teachers have made this consistent, universal presentation. Consider how similar their messages have been: not one major prophet, not one bona fide teacher has said that this world is our home. Instead, these teachers have constantly emphasized that the kingdom of God is the real home that we seek. They are not just trying to get us to be escapists and run away from life. Instead, they are trying to bring us back to reality and to help us escape from this material prison. Although they come from diverse traditions, their message is the same.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 3: Angels and Demigods, p. 55

Love , Life , God , World

“Part of any serious QA is removing Perl code the same way you go over a dilapidated building you inherit to remove chewing gum and duct tape and fix whatever was kept together for real.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: can lisp do what perl does easily? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Perl

Way , Parting

“This is very pretty,” said Elizalde…
“It’s morbid,” snapped Sullivan. “Burying a bunch of dead bodies, and putting a fancy marker over each one so the survivors will know where to go and cry. What if the markers got rearranged? You’d be weeping over some stranger. Not some stranger, even, some cast-off dead body of a stranger, like a pile of fingernail clippings or old shoes, or the dust from inside an electric razor. What’s the difference between coming out here to think about dead Uncle Irving, and thinking about him in your own living room? Okay, here you can sit on the grass and be only six feet above his inert old body. Would it be better if you could dig a hole, and sit only one foot above it?” He was shaking. “Everybody should be cremated, and the ashes should be tossed in the sea with no fanfare at all.”
“It’s a sign of respect,” said Elizalde angrily. “And it’s a real, tangible link. Think of the Shroud of Turin! Where would we be if they had cremated Jesus?”

Tim Powers book Expiration Date

“I don’t know—we’d have the Ashtray of Turin.”
Source: Expiration Date (1995), Chapter 40 (p. 308; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Shoe , Thinking , Grass , Cry

Quotes about real page 48

Quotes about real
page 48