Quotes about reference
page 12

Girolamo Cardano photo

“For as positio refers to a line, quadratum to the surface, and cubum to a solid body, it would be very foolish for us to go beyond this point. Nature does no permit it.”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

The Great Rules of Algebra (1968)
Context: Although a long series of rules might be added and a long discourse given about them, we conclude our detailed consideration with the cubic, others being merely mentioned, even if generally, in passing. For as positio refers to a line, quadratum to the surface, and cubum to a solid body, it would be very foolish for us to go beyond this point. Nature does no permit it.

Alfredo Rocco photo
Romila Thapar photo
Bal Gangadhar Tilak photo
Paul J. McAuley photo

“I read in some of it (the reference is to Shakespeare). It’s not so bad when you get used to it, pretty archaic though. Why do you like old stuff like this?”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

“It has everything in it, if you look hard enough,” Dorthy said, taking the sheaf. “Love, jealousy, avarice, loyalty, murder, madness...I find it reassuring that human nature is so constant.”

Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 171; ellipses in the original)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Karl Pearson photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Syed Ahmed Khan photo
Alan Watts photo
Chögyam Trungpa photo
Willard van Orman Quine photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo
Frantz Fanon photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
David Lloyd George photo
John Bright photo

“He…made observations with regard to the Queen, which, in my opinion, no meeting of people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers, ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.) … But Mr. Ayrton referred further to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been by many persons a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Loud and prolonged cheers.
Speech in St James's Hall, Piccadilly, London (4 December 1866), quoted in The Times (5 December 1866), p. 7
1860s

Annie Besant photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“An Englishman who, by a most careful investigation into the various representations, has sought to discover what is meant by Brahma, believes that Brahma is an epithet of praise, and is used as such just because he is not looked on as being himself solely this One, but, on the contrary, everything says of itself that it is Brahma. I refer to what Mill says in his History of India.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

He proves from many Indian writings that it is an epithet of praise which is applied to various deities, and does not represent the conception of perfection or unity which we associate with it. This is a mistake, for Brahma is in one aspect the One, the Immutable, who has, however, the element of change in him, and because of this, the rich variety of forms which is thus essentially his own is also predicated of him. Vishnu is also called the Supreme Brahma. Water and the sun are Brahma.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 27
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 2

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“We must first of all, however, definitely understand, in reference to the end we have in view, that it is not the concern of philosophy to produce religion in any individual.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Its existence is, on the contrary, presupposed as forming what is fundamental in every one. So far as man's essential nature is concerned, nothing new is to be introduced into him. To try to do this would be as absurd as to give a dog printed writings to chew, under the idea that in this way you could put mind into it. It may happen that religion is awakened in the heart by means of philosophical knowledge, but it is not necessarily so. It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify, and quite as little is it necessary for it to make good its claims by showing in any particular case that it must produce religious feelings in the individual.
Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Translated from the 2d German ed. by E.B. Speirs, and J. Burdon Sanderson: the translation edited by E.B. Speirs. Published 1895 p. 4
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1 (1827)

Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“You know that I do not share your opinion in this matter. That Spinozism and Atheism are to me two different things. That when I read Spinoza I can only explain him by reference to himself and that if it came to naming a book which, of all that I know, most agrees with my way of seeing things, then I would have to name the Ethics—even though by nature I do not share his way of seeing things.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Original in German: Du weißt daß ich über die Sache selbst nicht deiner Meinung bin. Daß mir Spinozismus und Atheismus zweyerlei ist. Daß ich den Spinoza wenn ich ihn lese mir nur aus sich selbst erklären kann, und daß ich, ohne seine Vorstellungsart von Natur selbst zu haben, doch wenn die Rede wäre ein Buch anzugeben, das unter allen die ich kenne, am meisten mit der meinigen übereinkommt, die Ethik nennen müsste.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in one of his letters to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1785
G - L, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Michael Witzel photo

“In general, the books of RV level I (RV 4-6) are thoroughly South Asian and have reference to local climate, trees and animals. We therefore have to take them seriously at their word, and cannot claim that they belong just to Afghanistan.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

WITZEL 2000: The Languages of Harappa. Witzel, Michael. Feb. 17, 2000. (WITZEL 2000a:§13). Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Melanie Joy photo

“There is a vast mythology surrounding meat, but all the myths are in one way or another related to what I refer to as the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary.”

The Three Ns have been invoked to justify all exploitative systems … When an ideology is in its prime, these myths rarely come under scrutiny. However, when the system finally collapses, the Three Ns are recognized as ludicrous.
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), pp. 96-97

“Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks.”

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

This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry. ...[The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it. ...in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto... —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence.
I. Bernard Cohen, Preface to Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton (1952)

Gunnar Myrdal photo
Thiago Silva photo

“For me, Thiago has always been a reference, he is a born competitor. I consider him one of the best defenders in the world.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Sergio Ramos, 2016 http://globoesporte.globo.com/futebol/futebol-internacional/noticia/2016/01/sergio-ramos-elogia-thiago-silva-e-estranha-ausencia-da-selecao.html
From former and current footballers

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis photo

“I need hardly say that I refer to the emergence of a statistically competent technique of Sample Survey, with which I believe Professor Mahalanobis name will always be associated.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Sir Ronald Fisher in "Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in India"

Rekha photo
Patrick Swift photo
Steven Gerrard photo

“He’s been a reference to all his team-mates throughout the years and is now in history for such a brilliant career at his club for all his life.”

Steven Gerrard (1980) English footballer

Iker Casillas, Real Madrid Legend ( Source https://arjyomitra94.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/quotes-on-steven-gerrard/)

Dag Hammarskjöld photo
Julian (emperor) photo

“As a general rule, all that has been hitherto advanced respecting the nature of this deity, must be understood to refer to his properties: for the nature of the god is not one thing, and his influence another: and truly, besides these two, his energy a third thing: seeing that all things which he wills, these he is, he can, and he works. For neither doth he will that which he is not; nor is he without strength to do that which he wills; nor doth he will that which he cannot effect.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Now this is very different in the case of men, for theirs is a double nature mixed up in one, that of soul and body; the former divine, the latter full of darkness and obscurity: hence naturally arise warfare and discord between the two.
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

John Stuart Mill photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Ernest Rutherford photo
E.M. Forster photo

“Always fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched. […] Just as some poetry is of the eye (form, colour) and some of the ear, so Keats is of the palate. Not only has he constant reference to its pleasures, but the general sensation after reading him is one of tasting. 'What's the harm?”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Well, taste for some reason or the other can't carry one far into the world of beauty—that reason being perhaps that though you don't want comradership there you do want the possibility of comradership, and A cannot swallow B's mouthful by any possibility:....and this exclusiveness (to maunder on) also attaches to the physical side of sex though not the least to the spiritual.
Letter 162, to Malcolm Darling, 1 December 1916
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Luis Alberto Urrea photo
Thomas Kuhn photo

“A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than its predecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow a better representation of what nature is really like. One often hears that successive theories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, between the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there.””

Perhaps there is some other way of salvaging the notion of ‘truth’ for application to whole theories, but this one will not do. There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle. Besides, as a historian, I am impressed with the implausability of the view. I do not doubt, for example, that Newton’s mechanics improves on Aristotle’s and that Einstein’s improves on Newton’s as instruments for puzzle-solving. But I can see in their succession no coherent direction of ontological development. On the contrary, in some important respects, though by no means in all, Einstein’s general theory of relativity is closer to Aristotle’s than either of them is to Newton’s.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Postscript (1969)

Hans Morgenthau photo
David Sedaris photo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo
Lauren Ornelas photo
Emmanuel Levinas photo
Chief Joseph photo
Robert Filmer photo
Romila Thapar photo

“References to what have been interpreted as configurations of stars have been used to suggest dates of about 4000 BC for these hymns”, .... [but] “planetary positions could have been observed in earlier times and such observations been handed down as part of an oral tradition”, [so that they] “do not constitute proof of the chronology of the Vedic hymns.”

Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian

Romila Thapar: “The Perennial Aryans”, Seminar, December 1992., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate https://web.archive.org/web/20100412074243/http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Patañjali photo

“The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.”

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

Patanjali, in Hinduism http://books.google.co.in/books?id=GmQ_yp4vVhsC&pg=PA63, p. 63.

Diane Ackerman photo

“Though it has a certain Russian-roulette quality to it, eating fugu is considered a highly aesthetic experience. That makes one wonder about the condition that we, in chauvinistic shorthand, referred to as “human.””

Creatures who will one day vanish from the earth in the ultimate subtraction of sensuality that we call death, we spend our lives courting death, fomenting wars, watching sickening horror movies in which maniacs slash and torture their victims, hurrying our own deaths in fast cars, cigarette smoking, suicide. Death obsesses us, as well it might, but our response to it is so strange. Faced with tornadoes chewing up homes, with dust storms ruining crops, floods and earthquakes swallowing up whole cities, with ghostly diseases that gnaw at one’s bone marrow, cripple, or craze—rampant miseries that need no special bidding, but come freely, giving their horror like alms—you’d think human beings would hold out against the forces of Nature, combine their efforts and become allies, not create devastation of their own, not add to one another’s miseries. Death does such fine work without us. How strange that people, whole countries sometimes, wish to be its willing accomplices.
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 3 “Taste” (p. 170)

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo
J.B. Priestley photo
Enoch Powell photo

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.</p><p>Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.</p>
Source: Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (1991), pp. 487-488

Neil Kinnock photo

“Language is the most formless means of expression. Its capacity to describe concepts without physical or visual references carries us into an advanced state of abstraction.”

Ian Wilson (conceptual artist) (1940–2020) American artist, born 1940

Source: Conceptual Art, (1984), as cited in: " Ian Wilson, plug in #47; exhibition 27/09/2008 - 08/03/2009 http://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/programme/detail/?tx_vabdisplay_pi1%5Bptype%5D=18&tx_vabdisplay_pi1%5Bproject%5D=349 at Van Abbemuseum.nl, The Netherlands.

“if you ask me many of Americans have been wearing the mask even before from covid 19. the mask i refer to is of course the clown's mask.”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1272935502753087489]
Tweets by year, 2020

Mooji photo

“All that we refer to as being ours – our body, our mind, our emotions – is not what we are, essentially.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

James Howard Kunstler photo
William Thurston photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Frithjof Schuon photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Very many Americans have an offensive habit of referring to natives as `heathen.' Mahommedans and Hindus are heathen alike in their eyes.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Source: From Sea to Sea vol. 2, p. 61

Muhammad Iqbál photo

“The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Source: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Reconstruction_of_Religious_Thought/uCh14nl09jkC?hl=en (1930), p. 14

Ted Cruz photo

“For a decade, I have referred to people who violently assault police officers as terrorists.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Source: 6 January 2022 https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/06/ted-cruz-tucker-carlson-capitol-attack/

Reinaldo Arenas photo

“The writer has a fundamental responsibility to write well or to write the best he can, because if he doesn’t he’s not a writer. And when a writer writes, he’s always referring to a social and historical context…”

Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990) Cuban poet/novelist/playwright

Source: On a writer’s responsibility in “The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas in The New Yorker (2013 Dec 5)

Pema Chödron photo

“In fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg photo

“Abortion prohibition by the State, however, controls women and denies them full autonomy and full equality with men. That was the idea I tried to express in the lecture to which you referred.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

When Sen. Hank Brown (R-CO) asked about her remarks during her 1993 Senate confirmation hearing about the above quoted lecture, Ginsburg clarified her stance with the quoted sentences. As quoted in: Olivia Waxman (August 2, 2018): Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade. In: Time Magazine. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527151841/https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ from the original https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ on May 27, 2022.
1990s

Zhang Yimou photo

“The problem is that Hollywood is competition for Chinese art films. So I thought I should make a film with box office promise, that refers to Chinese culture, but also contains an art element.”

Zhang Yimou (1950) Chinese actor, film director, screenwriter and film producer

"Fighting for Peace (and Art Films), Zhang Yimou on “Hero”" in Indie Wire https://www.indiewire.com/2004/08/fighting-for-peace-and-art-films-zhang-yimou-on-hero-78697/ (27 August 2004)