Quotes about realization
page 28

Lord Randolph Churchill photo
John Cleese photo
Donnie Dunagan photo

“I think I could have been appointed as the aide-de camp in the White House, it wouldn't make any difference — it's Bambi that's so dear to people. But I love it now — when people realize, 'This old jerk, he's still alive and was Bambi.' And I wouldn't take anything for it, not a darn thing for it.”

Donnie Dunagan (1934) actor and United States Marine

Maj. Bambi: Meet The Marine Who Was Disney's Famous Fawn http://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427821763/major-bambi-meet-the-marine-who-was-disney-s-famous-fawn (July 31, 2015)

Amanda Lear photo

“People only know me as a celebrity and don't realize how much more important art is to me than makeup and set costumes. Show business pays the rent, but painting is my only true passion, so I define myself as a painter who works in show business. Art is a kind of therapy to me, thanks to which I can interpret my feelings. An empty canvas before my eyes is synonymous with the absolute freedom of expression.”

Amanda Lear (1939) singer, lyricist, composer, painter, television presenter, actress, model

http://www.eventiesagre.it/Eventi_Mostre/18010_Sogni+Miti+Colori.html, Eventi Mostre. Sogni Miti Colori 07/06/2008-30/06/2008 Pietrasanta (LU), Toscana, www.eventiesagre.it, Italian, 28 February 2013

Ray Kurzweil photo

“I quickly realized that you had to have a good idea of the future if you were going to succeed as an inventor.”

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

"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Hema Malini photo
Zakir Hussain (politician) photo
Harry Harrison photo
John Middleton Murry photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo
Hermann Hesse photo

“We were picking apart a problem in linguistic history and, as it were, examining close up the peak period of glory in the history of a language; in minutes we had traced the path which had taken it several centuries. And I was powerfully gripped by the vision of transitoriness: the way before our eyes such a complex, ancient, venerable organism, slowly built up over many generations, reaches its highest point, which already contains the germ of decay, and the whole intelligently articulated structure begins to droop, to degenerate, to totter toward its doom. And at the same time the thought abruptly shot through me, with a joyful, startled amazement, that despite the decay and death of that language it had not been lost, that its youth, maturity, and downfall were preserved in our memory, in our knowledge of it and its history, and would survive and could at any time be reconstructed in the symbols and formulas of scholarship as well as in the recondite formulations of the Glass Bead Game. I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Demi Lovato photo

“You'll change inside when you realize
The world comes to life and everything's bright
From beginning to end when you have a friend by your side.”

Demi Lovato (1992) American singer, songwriter, actress, and author

Gift Of A Friend
Lyrics, Here We Go Again (2009)

Margaret Cho photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“The disciples realized that they too were his enemies, and that he had overcome them by his love. It is this that opens the disciple’s eyes, and enables him to see his enemy as a brother.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", p. 150.

Andy Warhol photo
James M. McPherson photo
Bel Kaufmanová photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo
Meher Baba photo

“The happiness of God-realization is self-sustained, eternally fresh and unfailing, boundless and indescribable. And it is for this happiness that the world has sprung into existence.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Message of 1955, in God Speaks : The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose (1973), p. 139.
General sources

George Pólya photo
Paul Krugman photo
Boutros Boutros-Ghali photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo
Al Sharpton photo

“Clearly, [President Bush] lied. Now if he is an unconscious liar, and doesn't realize when he's lying, then we're really in trouble.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Source: Democratic presidental debate at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin held on 15 Feb. 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44506-2004Feb15_4.html.

Douglas Coupland photo
Alec Baldwin photo
Edgar Degas photo
Benjamin Graham photo

“Even the most conservative must realize that the recent transformation of surplus from an individual to a national disaster implies a scathing indictment of our capitalist system as it has now developed.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part I, Chapter I, The Changing Role of Surplus Stocks, p. 17
Storage and Stability (1937)

Camille Pissarro photo
Paul Krugman photo
Sister Nivedita photo
Betty Friedan photo
Emma Goldman photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Hayley Williams photo

“Love that so many of you are saying your 2 fav bands are Green Day & Paramore. Do you even realize how cool that is for us to hear!?”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

Hayley's Twitter post. http://twitter.com/#!/yelyahwilliams/status/54811243004952576 (10 September 2010)

Arundhati Roy photo
George F. Kennan photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Eddie Vedder photo

“Sometimes it's hard to concentrate these days. I was thinking about the history of this building [Eventim Apollo] and the Bowie history. So I started to think about that and my mind began to wander. It's not a good…So I haven't really been talking about some things and I kind of… now it feels like it's conspicuous because I lost a really close friend of mine, somebody who…I'll say this too, I grew up as 4 boys, 4 brothers, and I lost my brother 2 years ago tragically like that in an accident and after that and losing a few other people, I'm not good at it, meaning I'm not…I have not been willing to accept the reality and that's just how I'm dealing with it (applause starts). No, no, no, no. So I want to be there for the family, be there for the community, be there for my brothers in my band, certainly the brothers in his band. But these things will take time but my friend is going to be gone forever and I will just have to…These things take time and I just want to send this out to everyone who was affected by it and they all back home and here appreciate it so deeply the support and the good thoughts of a man who was a… you know he wasn't just a friend he was someone I looked up to like my older brother. About two days after the news, I think it was the second night we were sleeping in this little cabin near the water, a place he would've loved. And all these memories started coming in about 1:30am like woke me up. Like big memories, memories I would think about all the time. Like the memories were big muscles. And then I couldn't stop the memories. And trying to sleep it was like if the neighbors had the music playing and you couldn't stop it. But then it was fine because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realized how lucky I was to have hours worth of…you know if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I?! And I didn't want to be sad, wanted to be grateful not sad. I'm still thinking about those memories and I will live with these memories in my heart and I will…love him forever.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Talking about Chris Cornell for the first time since his death during a concert in London on June 6, 2017.

Georg Cantor photo

“I realize that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre [Foundations of a General Theory of Aggregates] (1883)

Roger Ebert photo
Theo van Doesburg photo

“Piet Mondrian realizes the importance of line. The line has almost become a work of art in itself; one can not play with it when the representation of objects perceived was all-important. The white canvas is almost solemn. Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything – that is, the spiritual.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from 'Eenheid' [Dutch art-magazine] no. 283, 6 November 1915; as quoted in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, pp. 105–106
1912 – 1919

Melanie Joy photo
Ellen DeGeneres photo

“I personally chose to go vegan because I educated myself on factory farming and cruelty to animals, and I suddenly realized that what was on my plate were living things, with feelings. And I just couldn’t disconnect myself from it any longer.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

From her website; quoted in "Why Ellen Went Vegan", in peta.org (9 November 2009) https://www.peta.org/blog/ellen-went-vegan/

Robert Sheckley photo

“Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 3 (p. 30)

César Vallejo photo

“Mechanics is a means or discipline for the realization of life, but not life itself. It ought to carry us to life itself.”

César Vallejo (1892–1938) Peruvian writer

La mecánica es un medio o disciplina para pealizar la vida, pero no es la vida misma. Esa debe llevarnos a la vida misma, que está en el juego de sentimentos o sea en la sensibilidad.
Source: Aphorisms (2002), p. 53

Paolo Bacigalupi photo
Benjamin Graham photo

“To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.”

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 20, "Margin of Safety": The Central Concept, p. 287

Antonio Negri photo
Gebran Tueni photo

“You must realize that many Lebanese are not at ease either with Syrian policy in Lebanon or with the presence of Syrian troops in our country.”

Gebran Tueni (1957–2005) journalist

open letter to Syrian leader Bashar Assad, published March 23, 2000,

Dave Barry photo

“A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Originally published in "Encyclopedia Tropicana: A Reference Book for the Modern World, Volume 1" by Joel Achenbach, The Miami Herald, May 4, 1986; quoted by Bryan Curtis, " Dave Barry: Elegy for the humorist http://slate.msn.com/id/2112218," Slate, January 12, 2005
Columns and articles

Bob Seger photo
Wilhelm Keitel photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Luboš Motl photo

“Your humble correspondent realizes that many readers are left-wing, anti-string-theory fighters. So they probably smoke marijuana and this is my modest attempt to help them.”

Luboš Motl (1973) Czech physicist and translator

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/06/marijuana-creates-holes-in-lungs.html
The Reference Frame http://motls.blogspot.com/

Salvador Dalí photo

“But I very early realized, instinctively, my life formula: to get others to accept as natural the excesses of one's personality an thus to relieve oneself of his own anxieties by creating a sort of collective participation.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

as cited in The Unspeakable confessions of Salvador Dali, Parinaud, ed. W. H. Allen, London 1976, p. 17
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Comment on deviant Dali, les aveux inavouables de Salvador Dali

David Lloyd George photo

“If there is one thing more than another better established about the British Constitution it is this, that the Commons, and the Commons alone, have the complete control of supply and ways and means. And what our fathers established through centuries of struggles and of strife, even of bloodshed, we are not going to be traitors to. Who talks about altering and meddling with the Constitution? The Constitutional Party…As long as the Constitution gave rank and possession and power it was not to be interfered with. As long as it secured even their sports from intrusion, and made interference with them a crime; as long as the Constitution forced royalties and ground-rents and fees, premiums and fines, the black retinue of extraction; as long as it showered writs, and summonses, and injunctions, and distresses, and warrants to enforce them, then the Constitution was inviolate, it was sacred, it was something that was put in the same category as religion, that no man ought to touch, and something that the chivalry of the nation ought to range in defence of. But the moment the Constitution looks round, the moment the Constitution begins to discover that there are millions of people outside the park gates who need attention, then the Constitution is to be torn to pieces. Let them realize what they are doing. They are forcing revolution.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Pat Condell photo
Ellen Page photo
Paul Graham photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Byron Katie photo

“We suffer only until we realize that we can’t know anything.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Mani Madhava Chakyar photo
Radhanath Swami photo
David Packard photo
Willie Nelson photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Clement Attlee photo
Boris Sidis photo
Ken Wilber photo
Haruki Murakami photo

“I kind of wonder if people who are outraged at the movie saw the originals when they were 13-years-olds and didn’t realize that "cheesy" was registering as "awesome."”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

About http://zompist.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/indiana-jones-and-the-synopsis-of-dread/ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Margaret Sanger photo

“[Charity] conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after time to bring children into the world. It merely says 'Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.' Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. … Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 5, "The Cruelty of Charity"

Charles A. Beard photo
Balasaraswati photo
Annabelle Wallis photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Andrew Ure photo
Anthony Giddens photo

“It is usually assumed that, in speaking, in the 1844 Manuscripts, of man’s “being reduced to the level of the animals,” and of man’s alienation from his “species-being” under the conditions of capitalist production, Marx is thinking in terms of an abstract conception of “man” as being alienated from his biological characteristics as a species. So, it is presumed, at this initial stage in the evolution of his thought, Marx believed that man is essentially a creative being whose “natural” propensities are denied by the restrictive character of capitalism. Actually, Marx holds, on the contrary, that the enormous productive power of capitalism generates possibilities for the future development of man which could not have been possible under prior forms of productive system. The organization of social relationships within which capitalist production is carried on in fact leads to the failure to realize these historically generated possibilities. The character of alienated labor does not express a tension between “man in nature” (non-alienated) and “man in society” (alienated), but between the potential generated by a specific form of society—capitalism—and the frustrated realization of that potential. What separates man from the animals is not the mere existence of biological differences between mankind and other species, but the cultural achievements of men, which are the outcome of a very long process of social development.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 15-16.

Vincent Massey photo

“This visit "north of 60" was to complete what might be called at least a preliminary survey. I arrived here and realized that my survey had hardly begun.”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Board of Trade, Yellowknife, North West Territories, February 25, 1953
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Frances Bean Cobain photo

“No. I would have felt more awkward if I'd been a fan. I was around 15 when I realized he was inescapable. Even if I was in a car and had the radio on, there's my dad. He's larger than life and our culture is obsessed with dead musicians. We love to put them on a pedestal. If Kurt had just been another guy who abandoned his family in the most awful way possible… But he wasn't. He inspired people to put him on a pedestal, to become St. Kurt.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

Response to the question, "Did you feel awkward as a teenager, not being that interested in the music Kurt made?"
" Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

Billy Joe Shaver photo
Gerhard Richter photo