Quotes about realization
page 13

“Our legislation in this area needed to be updated, and especially in light of France’s request for armed assistance after the attacks in Paris. We realized that our existing legislation was not flexible enough. We live in a fast changing world, and our laws on overseas military support must reflect new realities.”

Timo Soini (1962) Finnish politician

Timo Soini, Finland’s foreign minister, on Finland responding to other nations that are in need of support, such as battling ISIS, quoted on Defense News, "Finnish Legislation Seeks Direct Military Support for Partners" http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/2016/02/18/finnish-legislation-seeks-direct-military-support-partners/80563622/, February 18, 2016

World, Law, Support, Reality

“Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.”

Amelia Earhart book Last Flight

Source: Last Flight (1937), p. 50

“The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science, or outside of it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses. First, in the engineering sense: Science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge – all information between human beings – can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance – and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it – the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

World, Religion, History, Literature

“Your future -our world's future- is far more malleable and controllable than most people realize.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.240

People, World, Future

“I wrote a song called "Father & Son" about the son running off to do his own thing. Now the story is about my son coming back and bringing a guitar into the house. A couple of years ago, one morning after prayers, his guitar was lying around. I picked it up and my fingers knew exactly where to go. I'd written some words and when I put them to music, it moved me and I realized I could have another job to do. Things just grew from there.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On producing new music, after shunning the music business for over two decades, as quoted in "The Billboard Q and A: Yusuf Islam" by Nigel Williamson, in Billboard Magazine (17 November 2006)

Music, Lying, Housing

“[This] is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

John McCarthy (1974), quoted in: Joscha Bach (2009) Principles of Synthetic Intelligence PSI, p. 233
1970s

Problem, Study, Animals

“This project [an Impressionist exhibition in Paris] is very much up in the air. Degas' perversity makes it almost impossible of realization; there are clashes of vanity in this little group [of impressionists] that make any understanding difficult. It seems to me that I am the only one without any pettiness of character. This makes up for my inferiority as a painter.... the truth is that our value [of woman] lies in feeling, in intuition, in our vision that is subtler than that of men, and we can accomplish a great deal provided that affectation, pedantry and sentimentalism do not come to spoil everything.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote of Berthe Morisot, 1885; as cited in Impressionist quartet, ed. Jeffrey Meyers; publishers, Harcourt, 2005, p. 94
Edgar Degas was the organizing force of most Impressionist exhibitions; this one never took place
1881 - 1895

Men, Truth, Feeling, Understanding

“It was this indifference to the quality of his material that earned Liszt the contempt of his most distinguished contemporaries and of many of the most respectable critics and historians of posterity. It was, nevertheless, his greatest strength. It made it possible for him to manipulate the material ruthlessly, to concentrate on effects of realization with unprecedented intensity, and to integrate styles and techniques of performance into composition in a new way. His invention of novel keyboard effects and his mastery of musical gesture have always been undervalued, especially by pianists of the German school who prefer the kind of music that can be executed while soulfully regarding the ceiling. On the whole, the most genuine understanding of his music has been displayed by musicians of eastern Europe, and he may almost be considered as the founder of Russian pianism.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 8 : Liszt: On Creation as Performance

School, Music, Way, Understanding

“Finally, the proper religious faith gives you this type of balance and this type of perspective that I’m talking about. This, you see, is something of the genius of great religion, that on the one hand, it gives man a sense of belonging and on the other hand, it gives him a sense of dependence on something higher. So he realizes that there is something beyond in which he lives and moves and even moves and gains his being. This is what great religion does for him.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Faith, Religion, Sense, Dependency

“Contemporary man has begun to lose his naiveté as … the deep causes of the situation in which he finds himself are becoming clearer. He realizes that to attack these deep causes is the indispensable prerequisite for radical change. And so he has gradually abandoned a simple reformist attitude regarding the existing social order, for, by its very shallowness this reformism perpetuates the existing system.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation (1971), p. 48

Change

“You have babies at home. And you have a life. And if you don't, you have to realize that we're people and that we just need privacy and we need our respect. And those are things that you have to have as a human being.”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

Matt Lauer interview http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13347509/page/4/, MSNBC (14 June 2006)

Life, People, Home, Baby

“The social organization of work is the most complicated and difficult problem that humanity has ever had to solve. It being possible to realize that organization (a difficult translation or me: "Cette organisation ne pouvant être réalisée par", Fr.) neither by violence, nor by merely external (or outward) or legal measures, it require the free participation of all (or everybody) to the joint (or common, or in commun) work, and, consequently, to a regeneration (or reconditioning) of men that bring them to overcome their selfishness et understand their duty towards themselves et towards the community.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 47.

Men, Communication, Understanding, Problem

“Sartre observed that he had never felt so free as during the German occupation when (as a member of the French resistance) he was in constant danger of being arrested and shot. Could there be a more conclusive proof that human beings are freer than they realize, and that their freedom is eroded by habit and laziness?”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

L'amour: The Ways of Love (1970)

Freedom

“As for the journey of life; at some point you will realize that YOU are the driver and you will drive!”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 41

Life

“Affirmative action has to be combined with a broader program of social reform that would emphasize social rights: the right to employment, the right to education, the right to good health. Over the years, black leaders have been slow to recognize the need for a very, very progressive agenda. Anytime someone has talked about putting America back to work, blacks should have said yes, but they didn't. They were so preoccupied with affirmative action that they didn't provide the kind of leadership that would help some of the other progressive folks. Only now are black leaders beginning to realize the impact of economic issues.”

William Julius Wilson (1935) American sociologist

Interview with Mother Jones.

Health, Education, Help

“At their ten-year high school reunion, they realized they all had something in common: crime. Cassidy covered it, Nicole investigated it, and Allison prosecuted it. At the time, Nicole was working for the Denver FBI field office, but not long afterward she was transferred to Portland. At Allison’s suggestion the three women met for dinner, and a friendship began. They had half-jokingly christened themselves the Triple Threat Club in honor of the Triple Threat Chocolate Cake they had shared that day.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 12

Women, Friendship, School, Time

“They [the critics] forget that while the artist never works outside his time yet his art will go on to be merged gradually into the new art of a new age. There will be no short stop. We shall not, contrary to the expectation of these people, hear of the sudden death of Cubism, abstraction, so-called modern art.... if they could but realize that energy is a spiritual movement and that they must conceive of working under a law of universal aesthetic progress, as we do in science, in mathematics, in physics.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Quote from: 'Stuart Davis', Arshile Gorky, in 'Creative Art 9', September 1931
1930 - 1941

Death, People, Age, Law

“Many leaders are in the first instance executives whose primary duty is to direct some enterprise or one of its departments or sub-units…
It remains true that in every leadership situation the leader has to possess enough grasp of the ways and means, the technology and processes by means of which the purposes are being realized, to give wise guidance to the directive effort as a whole…
In general the principle underlying success at the coordinative task has been found to be that every special and different point of view in the group affected by the major executive decisions should be fully represented by its own exponents when decisions are being reached. These special points of view are inevitably created by the differing outlooks which different jobs or functions inevitably foster. The more the leader can know at first hand about the technique employed by all his group, the wiser will be his grasp of all his problems…
But more and more the key to leadership lies in other directions. It lies in ability to make a team out of a group of individual workers, to foster a team spirit, to bring their efforts together into a unified total result, to make them see the significance of the particular task each one is doing in relation to the whole.”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 115; as cited in: William Sykes " Visions Of Hope: Leadership http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2012/08/leadership_2.php." Published on August 12, 2012.

Way, Problem, Decision, Effort

“Functionalist systems theories. The theorists in this tradition explain the emergence and/or maintenance of parts, structures, institutions, norms or cultural patterns of a social system in terms of their consequences, that is, the particular functions each realizes or satisfies. This includes, for instance, their contribution to the maintenance and reproduction over time of the larger system. The major functionalist in sociology is arguably Talcott Parsons.”

Tom R. Burns (1937) American sociologist

Source: Systems theories (2006), p. 1.

Time, Parting

“I'd never seen him out front before. It was also the first time I realized that Fred had sex appeal. Fred. Wherever did he get it?”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Adele Astaire on Astaire's performance in Gay Divorce. Source: "He Worries, Poor Boy." Variety, March 18, 1936, p. 3. (M).

Sex, Time

“This man talked like he could build the barns by himself, like he could till the soil by himself. And he failed to realize that wealth is always a result of the commonwealth.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

Wealth

“If the skeptic still wants to complain that God killed women and children in the Old Testament, he should realize that He did more than that. He proclaimed the death sentence on the entire human race - every man, woman, and child. We will all die because we have sinned against God.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Death, Women, God, Children

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.”

Stacey Campfield (1968) US politician

Men, People, Sex, Guy

“To the scientists of 1850, Hamilton's principle was the realization of a dream. …from the time of Galileo scientists had been striving to deduce as many phenomena of nature as possible from a few fundamental physical principles. …they made striking progress …But even before these successes were achieved Descartes had already expressed the hope and expectation that all the laws of science would be derivable from a single basic law of the universe. This hope became a driving force in the late eighteenth century after Maupertuis's and Euler's work showed that optics and mechanics could very likely be unified under one principle. Hamilton's achievement in encompassing the most developed and largest branches of physical science, mechanics, optics, electricity, and magnetism under one principle was therefore regarded as the pinnacle of mathematical physics.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 441.

Law, Dreams, Hope, Mathematics

“I wasn't aware of Chargaff's rules when he said them, but the effect on me was quite electric because I realized immediately that if you had this sort of scheme that John Griffith was proposing, of adenine being paired with thymine, and guanine being paired with cytosine, then you should get Chargaff's rules. I was very excited, but I didn't actually tell Chargaff because it was something I was doing with John Griffith…. This was very exciting, and we thought "ah ha!" and we realized - I mean what anyone who is familiar with the history of science ought to realize - that when you have one-to-one ratios, it means things go to together. And how on Earth no one pointed out this simple fact in those years, I don't know.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The DNA Story (1973, film, VSM Productions)

History, Science

“One of the things that the show did for me was bring up so many women’s issues and the notion that homophobia is a form of misogyny. The women’s community and the gay community are interrelated, whether you’re straight or not. It also made me realize how connected women are everywhere. Women who are gay are repressed in similar ways as women who are straight.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview at 20th Annual GLAAD Awards (18 April 2009) http://www.l-word.com/news/GLAAD_LA2009_2.php.

Women, Way, Communication

“An art mode, new or old, is for the creative mind essentially a point of beginning. Content is brought into being by the activity through which the artist translates the movement into himself. In such an appropriation, there is no difference between an ongoing movement and one that is finished. During the reign of Minimalism, a painter might realize the new through Impressionism. That art history has a schedule of continuous advances en masse is a fantasy of the historian. The shared syntax of art movements is constantly replaced by the sensibility and practice of individuals. The avant-garde art of yesterday is the only modern equivalent of an aesthetic tradition. The fading of the ideas of a movement does not mean that it can no longer be a stimulus to creation. At the very dawn of a movement, the work of its artists commences to replace the concept; instead of Cubism there appear Picasso, Braque, Gris. Compared to the activities to which they give rise, ideas in art have a brief life. In the last analysis, the vitality of art in our time depends on works produced by movements after they have died.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 230, Art on the Edge (1975) "Shall These Bones Live?: Art Movement Ghosts"

Life, Art, History, Idea

“We don't stop and realize that we are dealing with people—the far-left doesn't think we need a military to start with, they really don't. You've heard me say this before, they really believe if all countries would just stand in a circle and unilaterally disarm and hold hands then all threats would go away, they believe that. They would never say that but they do believe that.”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

2012-12-04
The Frank Gaffney Show
Radio
http://www.securefreedomradio.org/2012/12/04/teetering-on-a-failed-state/, quoted in * 2012-12-05
Inhofe Claims Obama and Liberals Hope to Disband the Military
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/inhofe-obama-liberals-hope-disband-military

People, Thinking, Country

“The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let’s not try to be witty, but record the worst of human viciousness we’ve seen without changing one word. When that’s done, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That’s work enough for a lifetime.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 3

Life, People, Way, Change

“Our research has shown that your body often has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself—and much more quickly than people once realized—when we address the underlying causes of illness. For many people, the choices we make each day in what we eat and in how we live are among the most important underlying causes. When most people are prescribed medications to lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar, they are usually told, “You will have to take this for the rest of your life," often in ever-increasing dosages. Why? Because the underlying causes are not being addressed. When I lecture, I often show a slide of doctors busily mopping up the floor around an overflowing sink without also turning off the faucet.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

The Spectrum (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), p. 16 https://books.google.it/books?id=YgooDmnD6l0C&pg=PA16.

Life, People

“The things that we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from. From the normal vantage point, it certainly seems that only with discipline can we withstand the temptations that surround us: overeating, drugs, video games, mindless internet surfing, and everything else we consume. These things are undeniably destructive to our own lives and beyond; therefore, it would seem, we cannot always trust desire at all. But when we recognize that these are not really what we desire, our goal becomes not to suppress desire but to identify the true want or need, and to fulfill it. That is no trivial task; it is a profound path of self-realization.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible http://charleseisenstein.net/project/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/ The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

Pleasure, Game, Thinking, Joy

“p>The inherent contradictions and binds men find themselves in in trying to become less macho in their relationship with a woman were poignantly expressed in a letter written by a young man to a New York newspaper in response to an article that addressed itself to a question posed by a woman writer—whether women would be able to think of a non-macho man as sexy. The letter writer wrote:I am by nature a gentle and non-aggressive 27-year-old man who often finds women turned off sexually by my tenderness and non-macho view of the world. I have come to realize that for all their talk, a lot of women still want the hairy, sexy, war-mongering, aggressive machoman of their dreams. So after several fruitless years as a gentle poet-man, I now turn myself into a heavy machismo when I go out with a woman. It works. I open the doors, I order the food and drinks, I decide which movie or play we will see. I keep my shirt unbuttoned down past my nipples and wear a gold chain around my neck with a carved elephant tusk medallion, and if the relationship is not working out, I make the first move and tell my companion that I'm sorry but we're through.The sad thing about all this is that it works.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

After all those years of being naturally sensitive and gentle, and now I've got to turn myself inside out just to appear sexy. It's fun and it's nice, but I do wish I could just be myself again.</blockquote>
Who Is the Victim? Who Is the Oppressor?, pp. 165–166
The New Male (1979)

Women, Men, War, World

“I envisaged future generations of Iranians proudly taking their rightful place among the vast family of nations, and fulfilling their responsibilities with dignity. I hoped to see dispelled for ever the medieval shadows from which Iran had emerged only half a century ago, and that the light which is the very essence of Iranian civilization and culture would prevail. Throughout my reign, I lived only for the realization of this dream which was beginning to become reality.
It will be seen that I worked tirelessly and keenly to this end. I had ceaselessly to struggle against all sorts of obstacles and difficulties. I had to confront innumerable plots and intrigues both inside the country and abroad. I combated the all-powerful, multi-national trusts and cartels when all my advisers warned me against such challenges. I may have made mistakes, of course, but this long battle was not one of them.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 11
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On himself

Family, Dreams, Hope, Reality

“(…) Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Clean, well-ordered life
Source: "I am That." P.31.

Life, People, Truth, Fear

“So the Free Man is Free. Absolutely Free. Not just a little bit free. Not cut off from all of this. That's not the nature of His Freedom—humorlessness relative to the world still, non-pleasure still. No, in His Freedom He becomes capable of humor in life, capable of pleasure, or enjoyment, in the forms that are arising. That is the fullness of God-Realization. All of the humorless, pleasureless forms of experience that are often associated with God-Realization in the traditions are not God-Realization in Truth.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Sex, Laughter, and Real-God-Realization 1975

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/slg.php

Life, God, Pleasure, Truth

“Once there was a megalomaniac in the Sugamo hospital who called himself "Ashiwara Shōgun." He hung a cardboard medal around his neck and bestowed dignified words to those he met to take with them on their way. Now that the war is over, we can see clearly that what the military did wasn’t at all different. And now they want to reintroduce medals yet again… After winning the Russo-Japanese war, we thought we’d won colonies. But what really came of it? After losing the Second World War, we realized that we had only earned the hatred of the Russians… Everyone is talking about loyalty to the fatherland. The question is simply where this loyalty will take us. I too was completely convinced when I went to war against the Russians, but after our defeat, I realized that we had done something that we shouldn’t have. In any case, it’s better not to make war in the first place.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

Zen ni kike (To you) (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1987)

War, World, Way, Question

“We must first awake before we can walk in the right direction. We must discover our illusions before we can even realize that we have been sleepwalking. The least and the most we can hope for is that each of us may penetrate the unknown jungle of images in which we live our daily lives. That we may discover anew where dreams end and where illusions begin. This is enough. Then we may know where we are, and each of us may decide for himself where he wants to go.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 261.

Dreams, Hope

“The Turkish and Greek tyrants had reduced the Bulgarian people to the lowest level of human culture, but their Bulgarians could not root out. Under the consciousness of the people there were still embryos of national sense. The Bulgarian people realized that it was a people and had its own independent state and even managed to win its people's church. Russia freed a part of the Bulgarian people. The liberated Bulgarians were called for autonomous rule, but they were divided into two divisions … One of them, called Slavophiles, was of the opinion that Bulgaria should be placed under Russia's protectorate because it could not be itself ruled … The other party, which was called patriots, was for an independent Bulgaria. The fierce struggles between these two parties fill the history of Bulgaria from liberation to the world war. Russophiles grew up with various modern trends, such as Communists, Socialists, and other truths that did not give birth to tobacco and native tobacco. Fatherland was considered a vice for backwardness. It's hard for him to say he's a patriot.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Source: Ziezi ex quo Vulgares, "Забравеният д-р Ганчо Ценов" http://ziezi.net/cenov.html

War, People, Truth, World

“Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: after reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.”

Truman Capote (1924–1984) American author

From a 1957 interview
Truman Capote: Conversations (1987)

Way, Imagination, Nature, Silence

“If one removes the first two letters from this word 'spoil' he soon realizes what Russia will really be after — obviously, oil.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Interpreting the significance of the English version of Ezekiel 38:12 as evidence of the USSR's belligerence toward Israel, on the Old Time Gospel Hour (1979); as quoted in What Should We Believe? (1987) by Aurelia T. Fule, Ch. VIII: "Why Should the "New Teaching" Trouble Us?" http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=406

“The way to control circumstances is to control the forces within yourself to make a greater man of yourself, and as you become greater and more competent, you will naturally gravitate into better circumstances. In this connection, we should remember that like attracts like. If you want that which is better, make yourself better. If you want to realize the ideal, make yourself more ideal. If you want better friends, make yourself a better friend. If you want to associate with people of worth, make yourself more worthy. If you want to meet that which is agreeable, make yourself more agreeable. If you want to enter conditions and circumstances that are more pleasing, make yourself more pleasing. In brief, whatever you want, produce that something in yourself, and you will positively gravitate towards the corresponding conditions in the external world.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 3, p. 49

People, World, Way, Nature

“There has been a revolution, then, but a silent one. It has taken place with such stealth, and so gradually, that people have become accustomed to it little by little. I am reminded of the famous Chinese executioner whose ambition it was to be able to cut off a head so that the victim would not realize what had happened. For years he worked on his skill, and one day he cut off a head so perfectly that the victim said: "Well, when are you going to do it?"”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

The executioner gave a beatific smile and said: "Just kindly nod."
Introduction, p. viii. ; quoted in The Feminist Crusades: Making Myths and Building Bureaucracies (c. 2007) Zepezauer ISBN 9781425972868
How Civilizations Fall

People, Smile

“Religion is another name for the realization of Truth. It consists in becoming and being one with the Supreme Being. Doctrines and dogmas are only details of a secondary nature.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

Source: A Practical Guide to Samadhi (1957), p. 143

Truth, Religion, Nature

“There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism?First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption?The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?”

Barry Schwartz (1946) American psychologist

The Paradox of Choice, Google TechTalks http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200# (April 27, 2006)

People, Thinking, Freedom, Time

“There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

"Signs in Rotation" (1967) in The Bow and the Lyre : The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History (1973) as translated by Ruth L.C. Simms, p. 249

“It is surely unnecessary to dwell on the interest and importance of a study which instructs us that every pebble we tread upon bears the impress of the Almighty's hand, and affords evidence of Creative wisdom; that every grain of sand, every particle of dust scattered by the wind, may be composed of the aggregated skeletons of beings, so minute as to elude our unassisted vision, but which possessed an organization as marvellous as our own;—a science discoveries have realized the wildest imaginings of the poet,—whose realities far surpass in grandeur and sublimity the most imposing fictions of romance;—a science whose empire is the earth, the ocean, the atmosphere, the heavens;—whose speculations embrace all elements, all space, all time;—objects the most minute, objects the most colossal;—carrying its researches into the smallest atom which the microscope can render accessible to our visual organs,—and comprehending all the phenomena in the boundless Universe, which the powers of the telescope can reveal.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Wisdom, Imagination, Reality, Study

“Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.”

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

"The Free Market Cargo Cult" (1990).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“One finds in this subject a kind of demonstration which does not carry with it so high a degree of certainty as that employed in geometry; and which differs distinctly from the method employed by geometers in that they prove their propositions by well-established and incontrovertible principles, while here principles are tested by inferences which are derivable from them. The nature of the subject permits of no other treatment. It is possible, however, in this way to establish a probability which is little short of certainty. This is the case when the consequences of the assumed principles are in perfect accord with the observed phenomena, and especially when these verifications are numerous; but above all when one employs the hypothesis to predict new phenomena and finds his expectations realized.”

Christiaan Huygens book Treatise on Light

Treatise on Light (1690) - preface, Translated by Michael R. Matthews, Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy. 1989. p. 126

Way, Nature, Perfection

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…. And when you realize the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

The first sentence, attributed to Garfield since the 1890s http://books.google.com/books?id=-RoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA156&dq=%22Whoever+controls+the+volume+of+money%22, is almost certainly a paraphrase of Garfield's "absolute dictator" quote, above. The second part is a late 20th-century commentary misattributed to Garfield. Misattributed

Men, Money, Way, Country

“Most of today's youth seem to almost instinctively realize that they are living on borrowed time. After all, we are the first generation that has had to live with the knowledge that we could completely destroy ourselves. People want to know what to do about it, or if there is any way to avoid it or prepare for it, to survive it.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

A More Sure Word of Prophecy (2 Peter 1:19)

People, Youth, Way, Knowledge

“Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth—Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Truth, Soul, Success

“There was no other alternative [to the disappearances]… [Military leaders] were in agreement that it was the price that must be paid to win the war against subversion and we needed that it not be obvious so society would not realize it. It was necessary to eliminate a large group of people who could not be brought to justice nor [openly] shot either.”

Jorge Rafael Videla (1925–2013) Argentinian President

Videla in 2012, as quoted in Adam Bernstein (May 17 2013). "Jorge Rafael Videla, ruthless Argentine junta leader, dies at 87". The Washington Post.

War, People, Justice

“Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on Aesthetics

As quoted in the Introduction to Aesthetics (1842), translated by T. M. Knox, (1979), p. 89
Lectures on Aesthetics (1835)

Art, Feeling, Idea, Universe

“Where you have older children, make current events part of the dinner table talk. Be quick to point out left-wing slanting of news, TV or radio broadcasts. There is far more of this slanting than most people realize.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Children, People, Parting

“Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 54

Sense, Christ, Perfection

“Prince is intelligent. He never visits the studio when I am working for him; and I have never met him in person. He sends me memos and we talk over the phone. Once I sent him my Grammy-winning CD. I heard from people that were present at the time that while he took out the disc he looked away from the cover, saying, 'I don't want to know what he looks like. It is working just fine as it is.' Prince does not want to meet me because he knows that the minute he walks into a studio he will start interfering. It is uncommon that a person with such a strong ego realizes that I have an ego too.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Clare Fischer: The Best Kept Secret in Jazz" http://www.artistinterviews.eu/?page_id=5&parent_id=22/

People, Intelligence, Strong, Time

“That Homeric epic and the earliest Hebrew poetry were the results of long and rich developments should have been apparent to anyone who realizes that artistic perfection is never created ex nihilo.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
Adventures in the Nearest East (1957)

Perfection

“He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals

Beauty, Heart

“Sometimes I have a sense of what I'm seeing being a small fraction of what's there. Not always there, but probably more often than I realize. Something will come up, and I'll realize I'm thinking about the world a little differently than my friends.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

World, Thinking, Sense

“…and then President Robbins began to speak.
After two sentences one realized once more that President Robbins was an extraordinary speaker, a speaker of a—one says an almost extinct school, but how does one say the opposite? a not-yet-evolved school? He did something so logical that it is impossibe that no one else should have thought of it, yet no one has. President Robbins crooned his speeches.
His voice not only took you into his confidence, it laid a fire for you and put your slippers by it and then went into the other room to get into something more comfortable. It was a Compromising voice.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 25

School, Confidence

“It is essential to realize at this point that the formalism to be developed, although we cast it initially primarily in the framework of natural systems, is in fact applicable to any situation in which a class of objects is associated with real numbers, or in fact classified or indexed by any set whatever. It is thus applicable to any situation in which classification, or recognition, or discrimination is involved; indeed, one of the aims of our formalism is to point up the essential equivalence of the measurement problem in physics with all types of recognition or classification mechanisms based on observable properties of the objects being recognized or classified.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Source: Fundamentals of measurement and representation of natural systems. (1978), Ch. 2. The Basic Formalism; Quoted in: Mikulecky, Donald C. " Robert Rosen: the well‐posed question and its answer‐why are organisms different from machines? http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/PPRISS3.html." Systems Research and Behavioral Science 17.5 (2000): 419-432.

Nature, Problem

“People don't realize that there is another choice.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016, Interview with CNBC's John Harwood (August 22, 2016)

People

“Far from being misanthropic, when an animal activist reaches out to a fellow human being, she or he is not only advocating on behalf of animals but helping another person realize the connection between our oppression of animals and the oppression of humans — and how liberating one group benefits the other.”

Mark Hawthorne (author) (1962) American activist

"Animal Liberation Is Human Liberation", in OpEdNews.com (11 December 2007) http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mark_haw_071211_animal_liberation_is.htm

Help, Animals, Personality

“What makes art interesting is the fact that anyone can realize it as soon as the idea has been formulated. That’s the point.”

Lawrence Weiner (1942) American artist

" Art Dictionary: Lawrence Weiner, A Sculptor of Language http://www.hatjecantz.de/lawrence-weiner-5098-1.html," at hatjecantz.de. 2012.

Art, Idea

“The youth was a cretin, and didn’t even realize that he was.
He could think of no more disastrous combination.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter V (p. 303).

Youth, Thinking

“Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Religion, Waiting

“At its 10th December Conference in Geneva the Future of Human Rights Forum endorsed new structures and mechanisms to advance the realization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly 65 years ago. Among important initiatives discussed by a high level panel was the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly aimed at empowering world citizens and giving them direct participation in the political processes that affect them. Democracy lives from consultation and participation and a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly can meaningfully advance this goal.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2013 Future of Human Rights Forum http://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/2013-future-of-human-rights-forum/. 2013

World, Democracy, Universe, Future

“I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Someone Like You (1998)

Life, Way, Strong, Heart

“After singing stop the war in Croatia for a couple of months we realized nobody was going to give us a hand and we had to do this on our own.”

Goran Višnjić (1972) Croatian actor

War, Singing

““Your collection is not a woman. That’s only a metaphor—an abstraction! You’ll be dying for nothing, for a principle that nobody else can even comprehend.”
As she spoke, Jane became convinced that she herself would never willingly die for a principle. She might feel guilty about it, but she’d smile and lie, knuckle under, pretend, anything, in order to survive. It made her feel a little sad to realize this, but also, at the same time, very adult.”

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 15 (p. 263)

Lie, Sadness, Smile, Feeling

“The menace of communism in this country will remain a menace until the American people make themselves aware of the techniques of communism. No one who truly understands what it really is can be taken in by it. Yet the individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.”

J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972) American law enforcement officer and first director of the FBI

The Elks Magazine (August 1956).

People, Communication, Understanding, Evil

“The Declaration of Independence was a source of inspiration to believe in ideals that transformed us from Jews to Israelis. … I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice. I believe that despite all the objective and subjective difficulties, the future of Israel and its position in the family of enlightened nations will depend on our ability to realize the promise of the founding fathers as they canonized it in the Declaration of Independence. I have always believed that there is no military solution to the Jewish Arab conflict, neither from a moral nor a strategic one and since a solution is therefore inevitable I ask myself, why wait?”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Statement at the Knesset upon receiving the Wolf Prize, May 9, 2004, transcript online https://electronicintifada.net/content/daniel-barenboims-statement-knesset-upon-receiving-wolf-prize-may-9-2004/5080 (16 May 2004) at The Electronic Intifada.

People, Family, Justice, Dreams

“A basic change in political ethics is required for the realization of the proposal [The dialog among civilizations].”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

UNESCO 1999
Attributed

Change

“Since I was a child, I’ve used my imagination to escape from life. At the same time, my imagination has plagued me with both reality-based anxieties as well as anxieties based entirely in the imagination, such as the fear of Hell I was taught to have by the Catholic Church. Paired with a talent for literary composition, a talent that it took me over ten years to refine, I became a writer of horror stories. To my mind, writing is the most important form of human expression, not only artistic writing but also philosophical writing, critical writing, etc. Art as such, especially programmatic music such as operas, seems trivial to me by comparison, however much pleasure we may get from it. Writing is the most effective way to express and confront the full range of the realities of life. I can honestly say that the primary stature I attach to writing is not self-serving. I’ve been captivated to some degree by all forms of creativity and expression—the visual arts, film, design of any sort, and especially music. In college I veered from literature to music for a few years, which is the main reason it took me six years to get an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. Since my instrument is the guitar, I know every form and style in its history and have written the classical, acoustic, and electric forms of this instrument. I think because I have had such a love and understanding of music do I realize, to my grief, its limitations. Writing is less limited in the consolations it offers to those who have lost a great deal in their lives. And it continues to console until practically everything in a person’s life has been lost. Words and what they express have the best chance of returning the baneful stare of life.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Wonderbook Interview with Thomas Ligotti http://wonderbooknow.com/interviews/thomas-ligotti/

Love, Life, Pleasure, Fear

“God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom
Variant: God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

God, Soul, Heart

“Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party—whether he realizes it or not—must always come out the worse.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"Morreion" (first published in Flashing Swords #1, March 1973), chapter 4
Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

“The Church must preach to the bourgeois on his duties, must reveal to him values that were more especially his own, must set the seal of divine approval on his efforts, on his work; and, satisfied with himself, he would be no less so with God and with his Church. … The Church must not present him with far-ranging concepts or try to raise him out of his own sphere but, rather, talk to him of the daily round, of the minute concerns of life, and tell him that God required no more of him. That was what the Jesuits realized very clearly.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), pp. 160-162

Life, God, Effort

“We've got to realize that we're in a ball game at a certain juncture, at this point, where we better go back to bipartisanship in looking at foreign policy, be we conservatives or liberals, or Democrats or Republicans, that this country is beginning to lose its footing in the world, not only as a leader, but as a friend, or as a credible enemy. We are being perceived, perhaps somewhat accurately, as a rather paralyzed giant that is ripe to fall off the tree like an over-ripe plum, and fulfill Khrushchev's prophecy, "We will bury you!" He didn't mean overcome us with nuclear weapons. He meant that we, in our sloppy thinking and presumption about not being able to live with prosperity, and not being able to look things in the eye, would simply weaken until our interests were eroded to the point, and our credibility was eroded to the point, that we couldn't stand.”

Jeremiah Denton (1924–2014) American Vietnam War POW and politician

"Terrorism and Politics" https://www.c-span.org/video/?101188-1/terrorism-politics (June 3, 1985 ) C-SPAN video with audience question & answers, 23:18.

World, Game, Thinking, Tree

“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 4 : Public Enemy

Way, Memory

“We must examine the degree to which we coddle middle-class girls. There is something sick about it. The girls I see on campuses are often innocuous, with completely homogenized personalities, miserable, anorexic and bulimic. The feminist movement teaches them that it's men's fault, but it isn't. These girls go out into the world as heiresses of all the affluence in the universe. They are the most pampered and most affluent girls on the globe. So stop complaining about men. You're getting all the rewards that come with the nice-girl persona you've chosen. When you get into trouble and you're batting your eyes and someone is offending you and you are too nice to deal with it, that's a choice. Assess your persona. Realize the degree to which your niceness may invoke people to say lewd and pornographic things to you — sometimes to violate your niceness. The more you blush, the more people want to do it. Understand your part of it and learn to parry. Sex talk is a game. The girls in the Sixties loved it. If you don't want some professor to call you honey, tell him.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Love, Men, People, World

“As to the origin of life, any life, I thought, we remain ignorant. Our science theorizes about the beginning of the cosmos or the birth of life. Our religions postulate endless versions of a man-God, hardly more rational than we are, as the Creator. In the past I have sometimes thought that maybe life is meaningless after all. Then I'd think that maybe the Seth material is a kind of cosmic poppycock -- the chemical composition of my mind somehow intelligent enough to understand the irony of its own meaninglessness, then spinning desperate yarns, as many psychologists would say; futile fantasies leading nowhere. But then I'd think that a brain that could conceive or order somehow had to emerge from a greater order. Besides that, earlier I hadn't realized (I thought, feeling better) that science and religion had spun some pretty weird yarns themselves, and if poppycock was being measured on a scale of one to ten, in my book anyhow they'd each get a twelve and a gold star.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 51

Life, God, Books, Religion

“We either must jump in this mess strongly regardless of the risk or refuse to take our rightful place in the world. More than at any time since the Napoleonic period Western Civilization and Christianity are at stake. That puts it strongly but is no exaggeration just the same. Lincoln was a moral and upright man. He was a pacifist at heart. But when there was no other alternative he did not equivocate nor cravenly talk of peace when there was no peace. He grabbed the bull by the horns; realizing that the nation could not endure half slave and half free, he threw down the gauntlet and eradicated the evil. We are faced with the same thing and the longer we wait the worse it becomes.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents regarding World War II (April 25, 1941)

World, Peace, Evil, Time

“It is realized that if there is to be peace in the world, it must be attained through men and with man, in his nature and mores, just about as he now is. Intensive effort is exerted to reach the hearts and minds of men with the vital pleas for peace and human understanding, to the end that human attitudes and relations may be steadily improved. But this is a process of international education, or better, education for international living, and it is at best gradual. Men change their attitudes and habits slowly, and but grudgingly divorce their minds from fears, suspicions, and prejudices.”

Ralph Bunche (1904–1971) American diplomat

Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time (1950)

Men, World, Education, Fear

“If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the common expression of a universal phenomenon, then we could finally ask the truly fundamental question raised by the prospect of Martian fossils. If life originates as a general property of the material universe under certain conditions (probably often realized), then how much can the basic structure and constitution of life vary from place to independent place?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"War of the Worldviews", p. 352
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Question, Universe

“I think all human beings are and should be fearful [of death, but realizing that death is a real tragedy.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Futurist Ray Kurweil Bring Dead Father Back to Life http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/futurist-ray-kurzweil-bring-dead-father-back-life/story?id14267712 (2011)

Death, Fear, Thinking

“We sometimes imagine, under the influence of Spenglerian philosophy or some other kind of "historical morphology," that we live in a similar age [to the Romans], the last witnesses of a condemned civilization. But condemned by whom? Not by God, but by some supposed "historical laws." For although we do not know any historical laws, we are in fact able of inventing them quite freely, and such laws, once invented, can then be realized in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

"Looking for the Barbarians"

God, Age, Law, Imagination

“Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are …but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom
Variant: Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are... but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.

God, World, Freedom, Time

“It is important to realize that the exercise of any skill depends on the ability to create an abstract system of some kind out of the totality of the world around us. For instance, the carpenter is not interested in wood as a biological or chemical entity. He is sensitive to many of its grosser physical properties but not to many subtler ones. The wood of a carpenter is not the real — that is, the complete substance — but merely wood as a material on which the carpenter can exercise his skill.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 9

World, Exercises, Dependency

“God has created the human frame for the express purpose of giving man the opportunity of realizing the Divinity.”

Hans Ji Maharaj (1900–1966) Indian guru

God

“That evening I met a black witch with a red cat, walking on a headland above the sea.
I had reached the sea unexpectedly, but the sea is unexpected in any event to one who has never known it. You think it land at first, or sky, and penultimately mist. Then you realize a vast azure mass of water lies like a dragon in the sun’s last rays, breathing and shifting on the beaches.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part II “The Wolf Hunt”, Chapter 3 (p. 182)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Cats, Thinking, Water, Sun

“They realized that the gains that you get by statistical methods are gains that you get without new machinery, without new people. Anybody can produce quality if he lowers his production rate. That is not what I am talking about. Statistical thinking and statistical methods are to Japanese production workers, foremen, and all the way through the company, a second language. In statistical control you have a reproducible product hour after hour, day after day. And see how comforting that is to management, they now know what they can produce, they know what their costs are going to be.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

If Japan Can...Why Can't We? (1980)

People, Way, Thinking

“Secondly, the student is trained to accept historical mis-statements on the authority of the book. If education is a pre- paration for adult life, he learns first to accept without question, and later to make his own contribution to the creation of historical fallacies, and still later to perpetuate what he has learnt. In this way, ignorant authors are leading innocent students to hysterical conclusions. The process of the writers' mind provides excellent material for a manual on logical fallacies. Thirdly, the student is told nothing about the relationship between evidence and truth. The truth is what the book ordains and the teacher repeats. No source is cited. No proof is offered. No argument is presented. The authors play a dangerous game of winks and nods and faints and gestures with evidence. The art is taught well through precept and example. The student grows into a young man eager to deal in assumptions but inapt in handling inquiries. Those who become historians produce narratives patterned on the textbooks on which they were brought up. Fourthly, the student is compelled to face a galling situation in his later years when he comes to realize that what he had learnt at school and college was not the truth. Imagine a graduate of one of our best colleges at the start of his studies in history in a university in Europe. Every lecture he attends and every book he reads drive him mad with exasperation, anger and frustration. He makes several grim discoveries. Most of the "facts", interpretations and theories on which he had been fostered in Pakistan now turn out to have been a fata morgana, an extravaganza of fantasies and reveries, myths and visions, whims and utopias, chimeras and fantasies.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Life, Truth, Books, Education

“The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

The Methods of Ethics (1884), p. 381

Universe

“Better be careful, Jason warned himself. Why should I be careful? A nagging thought just below the surface of his mind gave him an uneasy feeling again, the feeling that something was wrong, that things were not what they seemed. Was that his imagination or just being in this small office, no air-conditioning, not even an electric fan? For some reason, the blank walls bothered him. No pictures. And no windows. I want to get out of here. He realized that he could get out of there. He could simply get up and leave. He didn't have to even speak to anybody. Hadn't they said this was voluntary? He was a volunteer. Well, he didn't feel like being a volunteer anymore. He wanted to go home.”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 99-100

Feeling, Home, Imagination

“I feel that I am respected. The other top players now realize what I am capable of. There is mutual respect among player at this ATP level, everyone knows the required quality one needs to have to be part of the elite.”

João Sousa (1989) Portuguese tennis player

On the feedback received from other ATP World Tour players. Source: João Sousa: "Partilho com o Nadal o gosto pelo Real Madrid" [Joao Sousa - 'I share with Nadal the fondness for Real Madrid' http://desporto.sapo.pt/mais_modalidades/tenis/artigo/2015/11/07/partilho-com-o-nadal-o-gosto-pelo-real-madrid,, SAPO, Portuguese, 9 November 2015]

Feeling, Parting

“The price of labor in the high-tech labor market is a function of a political, artificially created, ceaseless supply of immigrants. Prattle about the price at which American workers will do certain work is meaningless without a reference to borders and to the thing they bound—communities. Render asunder the quaint idea of borders—and the world is your labor market; communities be damned. Realize that this ceaseless supply of labor is maintained not through peaceful market forces, but through the use of political power, wielded by wealthy men and women with access. At work here is their Brave New Borderless World, not the invisible hand we love.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“ Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking https://constitution.com/tax-breaks-wont-stop-high-tech-h-1b-human-trafficking/,” Constitution.com, November 16, 2017.” 2010s, 2017

Love, Women, Men, World

“At last a growing number of physicians, private citizens and even the Federal Trade Commission are beginning to re-examine these long standing and deeply ingrained beliefs in the virtue of cow milk. And even Richard Nixon and John Connally came to realize that cow milk may not be good for you. The fact is: the drinking of cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population, and the cause of multiple forms of allergy as well; and the possibility has been raised that it may play a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks.”

Frank Oski (1932–1996) American pediatrician

Source: Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983), p. 3

Children, World, Drink, Heart