Quotes about reflection

page 16

Essay as "Mr. X" (1969)
Context: My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.
There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there.

Founding Address (1876), Some Characteristics of the American Ethical Movement (1925)
Context: Spiritual evolution is the progressive advance of mankind toward a state of things in which the light of ethical perfection shall be reflected from the face of human society; that is, in which all men shall live and move and have their being in mutually promoting the highest life of each and all. It means that the object of social reformation shall not be a mere change in the conditions under which men live, but a change in human nature itself. It means that we shall look forward consciously to the breaking forth of new powers in ourselves, to the release, through our own efforts, of capacities dimly latent in us.

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)
Context: If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character. The same principle that it is necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among our own people it is also necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among the different nations. During the war we were required not only to put a strong emphasis on everything that appealed to our own national pride but an equally strong emphasis on that which tended to disparage other peoples. There was an intensive cultivation of animosities and hatreds and enmities, together with a blind appeal to force, that took possession of substantially all the peoples of the earth. Of course, these ministered to the war spirit. They supplied the incentive for destruction, the motive for conquest. But in time of peace these sentiments are not helps but hindrances; they are not constructive.

L.A. Cooper and R.N. Shepard (1984). "Turning something over in the mind." Scientific American 251(6), 106-114; p. 114.
Context: In spite of some unresolved issues, the close match we have found between mental rotation and their counterparts in the physical world leads inevitably to speculations about the functions and origin of human spatial imagination. It may not be premature to propose that spatial imagination has evolved as a reflection of the physics and geometry of the external world. The rules that govern structures and motions in the physical world may, over evolutionary history, have been incorporated into human perceptual machinery, giving rise to demonstrable correspondences between mental imagery and its physical analogues.

Brown v. United States, 256 U.S. 335, 343 (16 May 1921).
1920s

Source: Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions, 1996, p. 658
Context: Conceptions of control refer to understandings that structure perceptions of how a market works and that allow actors to interpret their world and act to control situations. A conception of control is simultaneously a worldview that allows actors to interpret the actions of others and a reflection of how the market is structured. Conceptions of control reflect market-specific agreements between actors in firms on principles of internal organization (i. e., forms of hierarchy), tactics for competition or cooperation, and the hierarchy or status ordering of firms in a given market. The state must ratify, help to create, or at the very least, not oppose a conception of control.

Source: Physics and Politics http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/phypl10.txt (1869), Ch. 5
Context: I wish the art of benefiting men had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has become slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the, benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world, and this is entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by rapid action — that they will most benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen "something" ought to be done to stay and prevent it.

"La Mer" (1943) - Live performance by Trenet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHYj1-3QrrY - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_nopTFuZA - "Beyond the Sea" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEIDep_UMmk, an adaptation of the music of "La Mer", sung by Bobby Darin
Context: The sea
This one seen to dance alongside the clear gulfs
To the reflections silver
The sea
Of the changeable reflections
Under rain.

VII, 3, 8, 1325b16–20
Politics

Congressional speech (1849)
Context: God is more to me than a grand and solitary Being, though refulgent with infinite perfections. Contemplated as enthroned in the midst of his works, his spiritual offspring in all the grand circuit of the worlds he has formed become a multiplying glass, reflecting back the Original in the profusion and countlessness of infinity. But when the wickedness of man cuts off entire generations and whole races from the capacity of reflecting back this radiant image of the Creator, then all that part of the universe where they dwell becomes black and revolting, and all that portion of the Mirror of Souls which was designed to reproduce and rekindle the glories of the Eternal absorbs and quenches the rays which it should have caught and flamed with anew, and multiplied and returned.

Letter to his father-in-law, the Duc d'Ayan (4 December 1776), as quoted in George Washington's Generals and Opponents: Their Exploits and Leadership (1994) by George Athan Billias, p. 219
Context: I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow.

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: I say the entities that are named as gods by Earthians are imagined into being by Earthians as personal helper-buddies, justifiers, threateners (my god can beat up your god). They don't "run on" anything any more than a mirror image "runs on" anything. They merely reflect what people want them to be. "I want to have more children than my brother does, thus proving I'm a better man than he is, so my god tells me I should have a big family." "I want to screw women, so my god is going to give me seventy virgins I can screw for all eternity." The "gods" in The Margarets who could really do anything were actually an old, highly evolved race of real people. The others were only reflections. The real God, who may really exist, is outside all that, perhaps watching closely, perhaps merely asleep for a few trillion years while the experiment runs out.
We — thee and me as individuals — will never know that God, though after a few trillion years, the universe as a whole may come to understand that God.

The Dance of Change (1999)
Context: Mutual reflection. Open and candid conversation. Questioning of old beliefs and assumptions. Learning to let go. Awareness of how our own actions create the systemic structures that produce our problems. Developing these learning capabilities lies at the heart of profound change.

2010-06-04
Veteran White House Reporter Helen Thomas Retires After Israel Remarks
Democracy Now
Pacifica Radio
2010-06-08
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/8/veteran_white_house_reporter_helen_thomas
2010-11-03

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I speak about universal evolution and teleological evolution, because I think the process of evolution reflects the wisdom of nature. I see the need for wisdom to become operative. We need to try to put all of these things together in what I call an evolutionary philosophy of our time.

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: In January 1865, Louis Wigfall, one of the rebel chiefs, said, in Richmond, 'Sir, I wish to live in no country where the man who blacks my boots or curries my horse is my equal'. Three months afterwards, when the rebel was skulking away to Mexico, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, walked through the streets of Richmond and respectfully lifted his hat to the men who blacked Louis Wigfall's boots and curried his horse. What did it mean? It meant that the truest American president we have ever had, the companion of Washington in our love and honor, recognized that the poorest man, however outraged, however ignorant, however despised, however black, was, as a man, his equal. The child of the American people was their most prophetic man, because, whether as small shop-keeper, as flat-boatman, as volunteer captain, as honest lawyer, as defender of the Declaration, as President of the United States, he knew by the profoundest instinct and the widest experience and reflection, that in the most vital faith of this country it is just as honorable for an honest man to curry a horse and black a boot as it is to raise cotton or corn, to sell molasses or cloth, to practice medicine or law, to gamble in stocks or speculate in petroleum. He knew the European doctrine that the king makes the gentleman; but he believed with his whole soul the doctrine, the American doctrine, that worth makes the man. He stood with his hand on the helm, and saw the rebel colors of caste flying in the storm of war. He heard the haughty shout of rebellion to the American principle rising above the gale, 'Capital ought to own labor and the laborer, and a few men should monopolize political power'. He heard the cracked and quavering voice of medieval Europe in which that rebel craft was equipped and launched, speaking by the tongue of Alexander Stephens, 'We build on the comer-stone of slavery'. Then calmly waiting until the wildest fury of the gale, the living America, which is our country, mistress of our souls, by the lips of Abraham Lincoln thundered jubilantly back to the dead Europe of the past, 'And we build upon fair play for every man, equality before the laws, and God for us all'.

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 21. How I Tried to Teach the Theory of Three Dimensions to My Grandson, and With What Success
Context: I awoke rejoicing, and began to reflect on the glorious career before me. I would go forth, methought, at once, and evangelize the whole of Flatland. Even to Women and Soldiers should the Gospel of Three Dimensions be proclaimed. I would begin with my Wife.
Just as I had decided on the plan of my operations, I heard the sound of many voices in the street commanding silence. Then followed a louder voice. It was a herald's proclamation. Listening attentively, I recognized the words of the Resolution of the Council, enjoining the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of any one who should pervert the minds of the people by delusions, and by professing to have received revelations from another World.

Foreword to Excellence in Education (2003) http://www.agakhanacademies.org/general/vision<!-- Aga Khan Academy, Mombasa brochure p. 3 http://www.akdn.org/publications/case_study_academies_mombasa.pdf, also quoted at The Aga Khan Academies http://www.agakhanacademies.org/mombasa/student-projects -->
Context: What students know is no longer the most important measure of an education. The true test is the ability of students and graduates to engage with what they do not know, and to work out a solution. They must also be able to reach conclusions that constitute the basis for informed judgements. The ability to make judgements that are grounded in solid information, and employ careful analysis, should be one of the most important goals for any educational endeavor. As students develop this capability, they can begin to grapple with the most important and difficult step: to learn to place such judgements in an ethical framework. For all these reasons, there is no better investment that individuals, parents and the nation can make than an investment in education of the highest possible quality. Such investments are reflected, and endure, in the formation of the kind of social conscience that our world so desperately needs.

He doesn’t want a society where he is separate as Negro, but one where he is just another man.
Constance Webb, "Notes preliminary to a full study of the work of Richard Wright" (privately published, 1946)

Book 1 (Sefer HaMadda'<!--[sic]-->), 4.12
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)
Context: When a man reflects on these things, studies all these created beings, from the angels and spheres down to human beings and so on, and realizes the divine wisdom manifested in them all, his love for God will increase, his soul will thirst, his very flesh will yearn to love God. He will be filled with fear and trembling, as he becomes conscious of his lowly condition, poverty, and insignificance, and compares himself with any of the great and holy bodies; still more when he compares himself with any one of the pure forms that are incorporeal and have never had association with any corporeal substance. He will then realize that he is a vessel full of shame, dishonor, and reproach, empty and deficient.

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority
Context: In what cases, then, let us ask in the first place, is the testimony of a man unworthy of belief? He may say that which is untrue either knowingly or unknowingly. In the first case he is lying, and his moral character is to blame; in the second case he is ignorant or mistaken, and it is only his knowledge or his judgment which is in fault. In order that we may have the right to accept his testimony as ground for believing what he says, we must have reasonable grounds for trusting his veracity, that he is really trying to speak the truth so far as he knows it; his knowledge, that he has had opportunities of knowing the truth about this matter; and his judgment, that he has made proper use of those opportunities in coming to the conclusion which he affirms.
However plain and obvious these reasons may be, so that no man of ordinary intelligence, reflecting upon the matter, could fail to arrive at them, it is nevertheless true that a great many persons do habitually disregard them in weighing testimony. Of the two questions, equally important to the trustworthiness of a witness, "Is he dishonest?" and "May he be mistaken?" the majority of mankind are perfectly satisfied if one can, with some show of probability, be answered in the negative. The excellent moral character of a man is alleged as ground for accepting his statements about things which he cannot possibly have known.

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 32
Context: It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us. Visiting an American university — not mine — several years after this, I was introduced to one of the first of the great American historians of Nazi Germany. He lived in a comfortable house at the edge of the campus, where he collected not only books on his topic but also the official china of the Third Reich. His dogs, two enormous German shepherds, patrolled the front yard day and night. Over drinks with other faculty members in his living room, he told me in no uncertain terms how he despised Hitler’s crimes and wanted to expose them in the greatest possible detail to the civilized world. I left the party early, walking carefully past those big dogs, unable to shake my revulsion.

1880s, Agnosticism (1889)
Context: When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis," — had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)
Context: Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary Principle, Time will mend it:—till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral; a hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now. These scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men,—thanks to it for a service such as Newspapers have seldom done,—ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said Needlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.

Vol. I, ch. 2.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)
Context: The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VII Further Observations on Homer <!-- p.244, 1965 paper -->
Context: The ancient theory of heroic genealogy... reflects paternity at two levels: human and divine. A man's inheritance comes from his human father, but his qualitative superiority among mortals comes from his divine father. When Odysseus is called Zeus-born (diognēs) this does not mean that the poet has forgotten... that he is the son of human Laertes.... Zeus is often described as impregnating noble ladies, not so much to gratify his lust for women, but because divine parentage was a necessity among the claims of the aristocracy. Odysseus is a superhuman because he is diogenēs; but he is king of Ithaca because of his human father Laertes. Jesus is divine because of his heavenly Father; but he derives his kingship of the Jews from the mortal Joseph, who was heir to the throne (Matthew I). While normative Judaism has has tried to strip the Old Testament of this phenomenon, vestiges have nevertheless remained in the text.

Liquidation (2003)
Context: Thereafter, the scenes had succeeded one another, turn and turn about, in the drama as in reality, to the point that, in the end, Kingbitter did not know what to admire more: the author's-his dead friend's-crystal-clear foresight or his own, so to say, remorseful determination to identify with his prescribed role and stick to the story.
Nowadays, though, with the lapse of nine years, Kingbitter was interested in something else. His story had reached an end, but he himself was still here, posing a problem for which he more and more put off finding a solution. He would either have to carry on his story, which had proved impossible, or else start a new story, which had proved equally impossible. Kingbitter undoubtedly could see solutions to hand, both better ones and worse; indeed, if he reflected more deeply, solutions were all he could see, rather than lives.

"Liberty and Democracy" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (13 April 1925), also in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy : New Selections from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (1994) edited by Terry Teachout, p. 35
1920s
Context: Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply cannot tolerate the thing. In order to keep any coherence in the governmental process, to prevent the wildest anarchy in thought and act, the government must put limits upon the free play of opinion. In part, it can reach that end by mere propaganda, by the bald force of its authority — that is, by making certain doctrines officially infamous. But in part it must resort to force, i. e., to law. One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. Always they condition it with the doctrine that the state, i. e., the majority, has a sort of right of eminent domain in acts, and even in ideas — that it is perfectly free, whenever it is so disposed, to forbid a man to say what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming "dangerous," ie, of being heard and attended to, it exercises that prerogative. And the overwhelming majority of citizens believe in supporting it in the outrage. Including especially the Liberals, who pretend — and often quite honestly believe — that they are hot for liberty. They never really are. Deep down in their hearts they know, as good democrats, that liberty would be fatal to democracy — that a government based upon shifting and irrational opinion must keep it within bounds or run a constant risk of disaster. They themselves, as a practical matter, advocate only certain narrow kinds of liberty — liberty, that is, for the persons they happen to favor. The rights of other persons do not seem to interest them. If a law were passed tomorrow taking away the property of a large group of presumably well-to-do persons — say, bondholders of the railroads — without compensation and without even colorable reason, they would not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it.

As quoted in Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery (1998) by G. Cameron Hurst, G. Cameron Hurst, 3rd, G. Hurst I, p. 4

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
Context: A Government which has decided on embarking on the hazardous and terrible enterprise of war must at the outset present a one-sided case in justification of its action, and cannot afford to admit in any particular whatever the smallest degree of right or reason on the part of the people it has made up its mind to fight. Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed, and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question. A moment's reflection would tell any reasonable person that such obvious bias cannot possibly represent the truth. But the moment's reflection is not allowed; lies are circulated with great rapidity. The unthinking mass accept them and by their excitement sway the rest. The amount of rubbish and humbug that pass under the name of patriotism in war-time in all countries is sufficient to make decent people blush when they are subsequently disillusioned.

Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Context: Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time (1950)
Context: In the final analysis, the acid test of a genuine will to peace is the willingness of disputing parties to expose their differences to the peaceful processes of the United Nations and to the bar of international public opinion which the United Nations reflects. It is only in this way that truth, reason, and justice may come to prevail over the shrill and blatant voice of propaganda; that a wholesome international morality can be cultivated.

Bayard vs. Lionheart, The Evening Sun, Baltimore (26 July 1920), newspapers.com/clip https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21831908/hl_mencken_article_26_jul_1920_the/
1920s
Context: All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or count himself lost. … All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Introduction to The Annotated Alice (1960) // The Annotated Alice. The Definitive Edition (1999), by Lewis Carroll (Author, Christ Church College, Oxford), John Tenniel (Illustrated by), Martin Gardner (Editor, Introduction and notes by), page viii
Context: The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: It is not without a certain hesitation that I have decided to take the philosophy and ideal of Anarchy as the subject of this lecture.
Those who are persuaded that Anarchy is a collection of visions relating to the future, and an unconscious striving toward the destruction of all present civilization, are still very numerous; and to clear the ground of such prejudices of our education as maintain this view we should have, perhaps, to enter into many details which it would be difficult to embody in a single lecture. Did not the Parisian press, only two or three years ago, maintain that the whole philosophy of Anarchy consisted in destruction, and that its only argument was violence?
Nevertheless Anarchists have been spoken of so much lately, that part of the public has at last taken to reading and discussing our doctrines. Sometimes men have even given themselves trouble to reflect, and at the present moment we have at least gained a point: it is willingly admitted that Anarchists have an ideal. Their ideal is even found too beautiful, too lofty for a society not composed of superior beings.

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 111-112

As quoted in Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas, p. 225
Variant translation: Before the passing sky, in long hours of contemplation of its magnificent and ever-changing beauty, I am seized by an incomparable emotion. The whole expanse of nature is reflected in my own sincere and feeble soul. Around me the branches of trees reach out toward the firmament, here are sweet-scented flowers smiling in the meadow, here the soft earth is carpeted with sweet herbs. … Nature invites its ephemeral and trembling travelers to experience these wonderful and disturbing spectacles — that is what I call prayer.
As quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit (2001) by H. Charles Romesburg, p. 240
Context: I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. … Even the fundamental "I am," which cannot be doubted, is no guide to action until it takes to itself "I shall be," which goes beyond experience. The question is not, therefore, "May we believe what goes beyond experience?" for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but "How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?"

Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), p. 1 of Introduction
Context: Few books today are forgivable. Black on canvas, silence on the screen, an empty white sheet of paper are perhaps feasible. There is little conjunction of truth and social "reality". Around us are pseudo-events, to which we adjust with a false consciousness adapted to see these events as true and real, and even as beautiful. In the society of men the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie. What is to be done? We who are still half alive, living in the often fibrillating heartland of a senescent capitalism — can we do more than reflect the decay around and within us? Can we do more than sing our sad and bitter songs of disillusion and defeat? The requirement of the present, the failure of the past, is the same: to provide a thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man.

Harry Truman at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Convention, Atlantic City (May 13, 1954), Good Old Harry

Introduction : The absurdity of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd (1961)
Context: The Theatre of the Absurd … can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time.  The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions. The decline of religious faith was masked until the end of the Second World War by the substitute religions of faith in progress, nationalism, and various totalitarian fallacies. All this was shattered by the war.

"The Holy Dimension", p. 338
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: The account of our experiences, the record of debit and credit, is reflected in the amount of trust or distrust we display towards life and humanity. There are those who maintain that the good is within our reach everywhere; you have but to stretch out your arms and you will grasp it. But there are others who, intimidated by fraud and ugliness, sense scorn and ambushes everywhere and misgive all things to come. Those who trust develop a finer sense for the good, even at the hight cost of blighted hopes. Charmed by the spell of love, faith is, as it were, imposed upon their heart.

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 39
Context: Reading implies a use of the reflective faculty, and very few have that faculty developed much beyond the anthropoid stage, let alone possessing it at a stage of development which makes reading practicable.
As I said, the fact that few literate persons can read is easily determinable by experiment. What first put me on track of it was a remark by one of my old professors. He said that there were people so incompetent, so given to reading with their eyes and their emotions instead of with their brains, that they would accuse the Psalmist of atheism because he had written, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." The remark stuck by me, and I remember wondering at the time whether the trouble might be that such people hardly had the brains to read with. It seemed possible.

Evolution and Ethics (1893)
Context: Even purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by tradition and professing to hold good for all time, are put to the question. Cultured reflection asks for their credentials; judges them by its own standards; finally, gathers those of which it approves into ethical systems, in which the reasoning is rarely much more than a decent pretext for the adoption of foregone conclusions.<!--p. 56

Idyll 29; lines 27-28; translation by C. S. Calverley, from Theocritus, translated into English Verse.
Idylls

Collected Aphorisms
Context: Most of the time man does not do what he wills, but what he has willed. Through his decisions, he always gives himself only a certain direction, in which he then moves until the next moment of reflection. We do not will continuously, we only will intermittently, piece by piece. We thus save ourselves from willing: principle of the economy of the will. But the higher man always experiences this as thoroughly immoral.

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships
Context: An extreme reflection of the dangers confronting modern social development is the growth of racism, nationalism, and militarism and, in particular, the rise of demagogic, hypocritical, and monstrously cruel dictatorial police regimes. Foremost are the regimes of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao Tse-tung, and a number of extremely reactionary regimes in smaller countries, such as Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Greece, Albania, Haiti, and other Latin American countries.
These tragic developments have always derived from the struggle of egotistical and group interests, the struggle for unlimited power, suppression of intellectual free­dom, a spread of intellectually simplified, narrow-minded mass myths <!-- (the myth of race, of land and blood, the myth about the Jewish danger, anti-intellectualism, the concept of lebensraum in Germany, the myth about the sharpening of the class struggle and proletarian infallibility bolstered by the cult of Stalin and by exaggeration of the contradictions with capitalism in the Soviet Union, the myth about Mao Tse-tung, extreme Chinese nationalism and the resurrection of the lebensraum concept, of anti-intellectualism, extreme anti-humanism, and certain prejudices of peasant socialism in China).
The usual practice is the use of demagogy, storm troop­ers, and Red Guards in the first stage and terrorist bureaucracy with reliable cadres of the type of Eichmann, Himmler, Yezhov, and Beria at the summit of deification of unlimited power.

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Context: Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church. According to Justinian, the Roman people had formally transferred to the emperors the entire plenitude of its authority, and, therefore, the emperor’s pleasure, expressed by edict or by letter, had force of law. Even in the fervent age of its conversion the empire employed its refined civilization, the accumulated wisdom of ancient sages, the reasonableness and subtlety of Roman law, and the entire inheritance of the Jewish, the pagan, and the Christian world, to make the Church serve as a gilded crutch of absolutism. Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience — a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth. This vital element, which many centuries of warfare, of anarchy, of oppression, had extinguished in the countries that were still draped in the pomp of ancient civilization, was deposited on the soil of Christendom by the fertilising stream of migration that overthrew the empire of the West.

Black Boy (1945)

Surprised by Joy (1955)
Context: I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental. I think that all things, in their own way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. "Reflect" is the important word. This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image.

"Trinity" article in The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) Vol 15, p. 53
Context: TRINITY. Trinitarian doctrine touches on virtually every aspect of Christian faith, theology, and piety, including Christology and pneumatology, theological epistemology (faith, revelation, theological methodology), spirituality and mystical theology, and ecelesial life (sacraments, community, ethics). This article summarizes the main lines of trinitarian doctrine without presenting detailed explanations of important ideas, persons, or terms. The doctrine of the Trinity is the summary of Christian faith in God, who out of love creates humanity for union with God, who through Jesus Christ redeems the world, and in the power of the Holy Spirit transforms and divinizes (2 Cor. 3:18). The heart of trinitarian theology is the conviction that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is involved faithfully and unalterably in covenanted relationship with the world. Christianity is not unique in believing God is "someone" rather than something," but it is unique in its belief that Christ is the personal Word of God, and that through Christ's death and resurrection into new life, "God was in Christ reconciling all things to God" (2 Cor. 5:19). Christ is not looked upon as an intermediary between God and world but as an essential agent of salvation. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost, by whom we live in Christ and are returned to God (Father), is also not a "lesser God" but one and the same God who creates and redeems us. The doctrine of the Trinity is the product of reflection on the events of redemptive history, especially the Incarnation and the sending of the Spirit.

1900s, The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Context: At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy.

Darkness, p. 91
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: People have asked me why — if meditation is so great and gives you so much bliss — are my films so dark, and there's so much violence?
There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world right now, and most films reflect the world in which we live. They're stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They're going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.
I fall in love with certain ideas. And I am where I am. Now, if I told you I was enlightened, and this is enlightened filmmaking, that would be another story. But I'm just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.
We all reflect the world we live in. Even if you make a period film, it will reflect your times. You can see the way period films differ, depending on when they were made. It's a sensibility — how they talk, certain themes — and those things change as the world changes.
And so, even though I'm from Missoula, Montana, which is not the surrealistic capital of the world, you could be anywhere and see a kind of strangeness in how the world is these days, or have a certain way of looking at things.

On his blog, talking about genre http://www.danielabraham.com/?p=160
Context: I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed.
And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)

Federalist No. 51 (6 February 1788)
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of Government. But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

From Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1 (1947/1991)
Context: The method of Marx and Engels consists precisely in a search for the link which exists between what men think, desire, say and believe for themselves and what they are, what they do. This link always exists. It can be explored in two directions. On the one hand, the historian or the man of action can proceed from ideas to men, from consciousness to being - i. e. towards practical, everyday reality - bringing the two into confrontation and thereby achieving archieving criticism of ideas by action and realities. That is the direction which Marx and Engels nearly always followed in everything they wrote; and it is the direction which critical and constructive method must follow initially if it is to take a demonstrable shape and achieve results.
But it is equally possible to follow this link in another direction, taking real life as the point of departure in an investigation of how the ideas which express it and the forms of consciousness which reflect it emerge. The link, or rather the network of links between the two poles will prove to be complex. It must be unravelled, the thread must be carefully followed. In this way we can arrive at a criticism of life by ideas which in a sense extends and completes the first procedure.

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter XXI: "Mauritius To England" (second edition, 1845), pages 499-500 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=512&itemID=F14&viewtype=image
Context: I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. … And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)
Context: The civil rights establishment, led by the NAACP, fought the good fight that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. They fought that fight under the banner of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which reflected the equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The classic statement of this principle is to be found in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous 1896 decision that enshrined "separate but equal" into constitutional law for more than half a century, "In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior dominant ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved".

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)
Context: Religious belief, trust, a sense of connection to the universe — no matter what you call it, there is a spiritual component to strong families. They see their lives as imbued with purpose, reflected in the things they do for one another and the community. Small problems provide a chance to grow; large ones are a lesson in courage. A mother whose son died of a brain tumor bravely returned to the hospital where he had died in order to set up a research fund. When she saw the parents of children who currently were suffering, she told her son’s doctor: "If any research you do produces any advance, my son’s passing won’t have been totally without purpose." It takes a certain type of spiritual grace to see beyond one’s own misery to the needs of others. Strong families try to live so they can look outward — and inward — every single day.

1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
Context: Reflections of this type made it clear to me as long ago as shortly after 1900, i. e., shortly after Planck's trailblazing work, that neither mechanics nor electrodynamics could (except in limiting cases) claim exact validity. By and by I despaired of the possibility of discovering the true laws by means of constructive efforts based on known facts. The longer and the more despairingly I tried, the more I came to the conviction that only the discovery of a universal formal principle could lead us to assured results.... How, then, could such a universal principle be found? After ten years of reflection such a principle resulted from a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic field at rest. However, there seems to be no such thing, whether on the bases of experience or according to Maxwell's equations. From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the stand-point of such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest.

To Isaac N. Morris (1868), as quoted in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: July 1, 1868&ndash;October 31, 1869 https://books.google.com/books?id=JXn2Bq8KpDEC&pg=PA37&dq=%22I+have+no+prejudice+against+sect+or+race,+but+want+each+individual+to+be+judged+by+his+own+merit.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eucJVYHXK4SxggSXj4S4BQ&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false, by Ulysses S. Grant, p. 37. Also quoted in Grant http://books.google.com/books?id=TssAXSdPTi4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=GrantJean+E.+Smith&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MVrWU7qCI47lsATyroKADg&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=prejudice%20against%20sect&f=false (2001), by Jean Edward Smith, pp. 459–460.
1860s, Letter to Isaac N. Morris (1868)
Context: Give Mister Moses assurances that I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit. Order No. 11 does not sustain this statement, I amidt, but then I do not sustain that order. It never would have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment penned, without one moment's reflection.

Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John (1911)
Novels published under the pseudonym Edith van Dyne
Context: I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and — and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another — a sequel — feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?

Direct Art Magazine, "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin", Fall-Winter 2006,Vol. 13, p. 86, http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.php?id=791 and http://afonline.artistsspace.org/view_artist.php?aid=3883

1860s, Life and Letters in New England (1867)
Context: The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and intellectual. There was a new consciousness. The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world.
This perception is a sword such as was never drawn before. It divides and detaches bone and marrow, soul and body, yea, almost the man from himself. It is the age of severance, of dissociation, of freedom, of analysis, of detachment. Every man for himself. The public speaker disclaims speaking for any other; he answers only for himself. The social sentiments are weak; the sentiment of patriotism is weak; veneration is low; the natural affections feebler than they were. People grow philosophical about native land and parents and. relations. There is an universal resistance to ties rand ligaments once supposed essential to civil society. The new race is stiff, heady and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws. They have a neck of unspeakable tenderness; it winces at a hair. They rebel against theological as against political dogmas; against mediation, or saints, or any nobility in the unseen.
The age tends to solitude. The association of the time is accidental and momentary and hypocritical, the detachment intrinsic and progressive. The association is for power, merely, — for means; the end being the enlargement and independency of the individual.

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision
Context: p>Although I had less than a minute for reflection, I felt, by a kind of instinct, that I must conceal my experiences from my Wife. Not that I apprehended, at the moment, any danger from her divulging my secret, but I knew that to any Woman in Flatland the narrative of my adventures must needs be unintelligible. So I endeavoured to reassure her by some story, invented for the occasion, that I had accidentally fallen through the trap-door of the cellar, and had there lain stunned.The Southward attraction in our country is so slight that even to a Woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and well-nigh incredible; but my Wife, whose good sense far exceeds that of the average of her Sex, and who perceived that I was unusually excited, did not argue with me on the subject, but insisted that I was ill and required repose.</p

Astræa
1840s, Poems (1847)
Context: p>Each to each a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared repeats,
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words;
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm. Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and the purest winds,
Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state;
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge
To those who gaze from the sea's edge.
It is there for benefit;
It is there for purging light;
There for purifying storms;
And its depths reflect all forms;
It cannot parley with the mean,—
Pure by impure is not seen.
For there's no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
Daily stoops to harbour there.</p

Darkness, p. 91
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: People have asked me why — if meditation is so great and gives you so much bliss — are my films so dark, and there's so much violence?
There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world right now, and most films reflect the world in which we live. They're stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They're going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.
I fall in love with certain ideas. And I am where I am. Now, if I told you I was enlightened, and this is enlightened filmmaking, that would be another story. But I'm just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.
We all reflect the world we live in. Even if you make a period film, it will reflect your times. You can see the way period films differ, depending on when they were made. It's a sensibility — how they talk, certain themes — and those things change as the world changes.
And so, even though I'm from Missoula, Montana, which is not the surrealistic capital of the world, you could be anywhere and see a kind of strangeness in how the world is these days, or have a certain way of looking at things.

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 7
Context: When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it.

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in (August 25, 2016)
Context: For all Americans. Because I believe we are stronger together. It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.... Let’s keep moving forward together. Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia. Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: I often use the metaphor of Perseus and the head of Medusa when I speak of science fiction. Instead of looking into the face of truth, you look over your shoulder into the bronze surface of a reflecting shield. Then you reach back with your sword and cut off the head of Medusa. Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it’s really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us.

Query XVIII (1782); for more quotes from this document see: Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785)
1780s, Notes on the State of Virginia
Context: In a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

Section 4, member 2, subsection 3, Causes of Despair, the Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Rigid Ministers, Misunderstanding Scriptures, Guilty Consciences, etc.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

On considering his wife's suggestion that he write his autobiography, Prologue, p. xiii
A Tale of Two Continents (1997)
Context: I made a discovery, perhaps known to others but new to me: I need not put myself center stage but can rather place myself at the side, like a Greek chorus. As the curtain rises, I can walk to the center and can speak as follows: I wish to tell you of happenings in the twentieth century, as I witnessed them and reflected upon them. You will see me return to center stage, but only occasionally. Once that imagery had gotten hold of me, I went back to Ida and said yes, I shall try.

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Eight
Context: My theory is that sushi and kaiseki are dishes that evolved in peaceful, prosperous times, when eating well was the normal state of affairs. In this country we have the illusion that there's always this warm, loving community we belong to, but the other side of that is a sort of exclusiveness and xenophobia, and our food reflects that. Japanese cuisine isn't inclusive at all-infact it's extremely inhospitable to outsiders, to people who don't fit into the community.

Source: Empire of the Sun (1984), p. 201
Context: He waited for the roll-call to end, reflecting on the likely booty attached to a dead American pilot. Soon enough, one of the Americans would be shot down into Lunghua Camp. Jim tried to decide which of the ruined buildings would best conceal his body. Carefully eked out, the kit and equipment could be bartered with Basie for extra sweet potatoes for months to come, and even perhaps a warm coat for the winter. There would be sweet potatoes for Dr. Ransome, whom Jim was determined to keep alive. He rocked on his heels and listened to an old woman crying in the nearby ward. Through the window was the pagoda at Lunghua Airfield. Already the flak tower appeared in a new light. For another hour Jim stood in line with the missionary widows, watched by the sentry. Dr. Ransome and Dr. Bowen had set off with Sergeant Nagata to the commandant's office, perhaps to be interrogated. The guards moved around the silent camp with their roster boards, carrying out repeated roll-calls. The war was about to end and yet the Japanese were obsessed with knowing exactly how many prisoners they held. Jim closed his eyes to calm his mind, but the sentry barked at him, suspecting that Jim was about to play some private game of which Sergeant Nagata would disapprove.

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 16
Context: This is a mathematical universe. We are surrounded by equations and summations. Your life: the current state of your life and life itself is a direct summation of the equation you have created. Your life is a reflection of many choices you have made at the innumerable amount of choice-points you've crossed. Great endeavors are the summation of a great and deliberate equation.

Card I : The Magician http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/sot/sot02.htm
The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913)
Context: I Saw the Man.
His figure reached from earth to heaven and was clad in a purple mantle. He stood deep in foliage and flowers and his head, on which was the head-band of an initiate, seemed to disappear mysteriously in infinity.
Before him on a cube-shaped altar were four symbols of magic — the sceptre, the cup, the sword and the pentacle.
His right hand pointed to heaven, his left to earth. Under his mantle he wore a white tunic girded with a serpent swallowing its tail.
His face was luminous and serene, and, when his eyes met mine, I felt that he saw most intimate recesses of my soul. I saw myself reflected in him as in a mirror and in his eyes I seemed to look upon myself.
And I heard a voice saying:
—"Look, this is the Great Magician!

Interview with Bill Moyers http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_leonard.html, Now, PBS (28 November 2003)
Context: The words, the style always reflects a habit of mind. And the habit of mind comes in from a different angle. The habit of mind uses the colloquial here and uses the joke there. And then creates some discordant music and then something strange and wonderful happens.
And you see things differently. You see a different light is shed on it.

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 205
Context: Fermat had recourse to the principle of the economy of nature. Heron and Olympiodorus had pointed out in antiquity that, in reflection, light followed the shortest possible path, thus accounting for the equality of angles. During the medieval period Alhazen and Grosseteste had suggested that in refraction some such principle was also operating, but they could not discover the law. Fermat, however, not only knew (through Descartes) the law of refraction, but he also invented a procedure—equivalent to the differential calculus—for maximizing and minimizing a function of a single variable. … Fermat applied his method … and discovered, to his delight, that the result led to precisely the law which Descartes had enunciated. But although the law is the same, it will be noted that the hypothesis contradicts that of Descartes. Fermat assumed that the speed of light in water to be less than that in air; Descartes' explanation implied the opposite.

Middlebury College Address (2004)
Context: I know that you’ve heard this before ad nauseam, but twenty years do go by at lightning speed, and that is my first pearl of wisdom. And, now, the others in this pocket pack of precepts to live by...
Take care of yourself and be caring with others. Nurture a sense of gratitude, and be grateful for a sense of humor. Be sure to thank your parents and mentors for all they’ve given you, but give love to your future children and mentees freely without any expectation of thanks in return. Look for ways to let your light shine, but don’t be afraid occasionally to be in the dark. Strive to make your behavior above reproach, but be careful not to cast judgment on others whose behavior may reflect a different form of reality. The more you give, the richer you will become. Let your life be enhanced by the company you keep.

Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 184.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: The shootings are a direct assault on the American Dream- which is why they are so disturbing. The fear reflects how unsettling and piercing the crime is. And the fear reflects a still-censored recognition that the shootings have widespread sympathy among students, and that any student, at any school, could be next.

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 16
Context: While intent is the seed of manifestation, action is the water that nourishes the seed. Your actions must reflect your goals in order to achieve true success.

As quoted in Cnaan Liphshiz. Obama ‘chickened out’ of confronting mullahs http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=272989. The Jerusalem Post. July 6, 2012.
Interviews, 2012

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 1

On the Study Qur'an (2015). "Introduction". The Study Quran. HarperOne.

Source: The Prophets (1962), p. 168

Thoughts in Westminster Abbey (1711)

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p. 219

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p.105

Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011)

Barry Hines 1970 interview

[Smithsonian Report for 1904, 185–193, Radiation in the solar system, https://books.google.com/books?id=2G1xpr2w4PUC&pg=PA186] (p. 185)

Last paragraph of the first edition (1859). Only use of the term "evolve" or "evolution" in the first edition.
In the second http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F376&viewtype=image (1860) through sixth (1872) editions, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" to read:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 489-90 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F373&viewtype=image

The Key to Theosophy (1889)