Quotes about repeat
page 4

George Holmes Howison photo
Luís de Camões photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Nowadays, one of the churches of Tlön maintains platonically that such and such a pain, such and such a greenish-yellow colour, such and such a temperature, such and such a sound, etc., make up the only reality there is. All men, in the climactic instant of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.”

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variant: Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Poul Anderson photo
Henri Matisse photo
Anton Chekhov photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas For Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter, p. 248

Michael von Faulhaber photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo

“The trends that produced Schumann’s early piano works started out not so much from Weber’s refined brilliance as from Schubert’s more intimate and deeply soul-searching idiom. His creative imagination took him well beyond the harmonic sequences known until his time. He looked at the fugues and canons of earlier composers and discovered in them a Romantic principle. In the interweaving of the voices, the essence of counterpoint found its parallel in the mysterious relationships between the human psyche and exterior phenomena, which Schumann felt impelled to express. Schubert’s broad melodic lyricism has often been contrasted with Schumann’s terse, often quickly repeated motifs, and by comparison Schumann is often erroneously seen as short-winded. Yet it is precisely with these short melodic formulae that he shone his searchlight into the previously unplumbed depths of the human psyche. With them, in a complex canonic web, he wove a dense tissue of sound capable of taking in and reflecting back all the poetical character present. His actual melodies rarely have an arioso form; his harmonic system combines subtle chromatic progressions, suspensions, a rapid alternation of minor and major, and point d’orgue. The shape of Schumann’s scores is characterized by contrapuntal lines, and can at first seem opaque or confused. His music is frequently marked by martial dotted rhythms or dance-like triple time signatures. He loves to veil accented beats of the bar by teasingly intertwining two simultaneous voices in independent motion. This highly inde-pendent instrumental style is perfectly attuned to his own particular compositional idiom. After a period in which the piano had indulged in sensuous beauty of sound and brilliant coloration, in Schumann it again became a tool for conveying poetic monologues in musical terms.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Joseph E. Stiglitz photo
Ray Comfort photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Patrick White photo
John Napier photo
Amir Khusrow photo

“They have four books in that language (Sanskrit), which they are constantly in the habit of repeating. Their name is Bed (Vedas). They contain stories of their gods, but little advantage can be derived from their perusal.”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

Extract trs. in Elliot and Dowson, III, p. 563. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5
Nuh Siphir

“What is happening now in Yemen is simply a repeat: ministers are also escaping accountability for their involvement in consistent Saudi attacks on civilian targets such as schools and hospitals – using similar rockets to those supplied to Iraq in the 1960s.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

For the British political elite, the invasion of Iraq never happened http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/british-political-elite-invasion-iraq-never-happened-435103022 (19 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Mandell Creighton photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/09/03/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, Sep 03, 2007
2000s

Lewis Black photo
Kenji Miyazawa photo
Smokey Robinson photo
L. Onerva photo
John Martin photo

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

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

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

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet photo
Julius Streicher photo

“I have to repeat again and again: He who knows the Talmud, knows the Jew! The laws of the Talmud are contrary to the German system of laws. You should acknowledge the importance of discussing this matter in connection with the judiciary budget. Once you know what the Talmud orders the Jew to do, you will understand today's state of affairs.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Ich muss es immer wieder sagen: Wer den Talmud kennt, kennt den Juden! Die Gesetze des Talmuds sind unserer deutschen Rechtsordnung entgegengesetzt. Erkennen Sie daraus, wie wichtig es ist, dass diese Frage im Zusammenhang mit dem Justizetat besprochen wird. Wenn Sie wissen, was der Talmud dem Juden befiehlt, dann werden Sie auch unseren Zustand von heute begreifen.
05/01/1925, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament; debate about the budget of ministry of justice ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Jean Froissart photo

“It should be repeated that the English and Scots, when they meet in battle, fight hard and show great staying-power. They do not spare themselves, but go on to the limits of endurance. They are not like the Germans, who make one attack and then, if they see that they cannot break into the enemy and beat him, all turn back in a body.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et scahiez que Anglois et Escoçoiz, quant ilz se treuvent en bataille ensamble, sont dures gens et de longue alainne, et point ne s'esparngnent, mais s'entendent de eulx mettre à oultranche, comment qu'il prende. Ilz ne ressamblent pas les Alemans qui font une empainte, et, quant ilz voient qu'ilz ne puellent rompre ne entrer en leurs ennemis, ilz s'en retournent tout à ung fais.
Book 3, p. 345.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Joseph Goebbels photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“The moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations. The gain-seeking impulse supported by brute force has taken its place, and so far as the surface of things is concerned human civilization has gone back a full thousand years. Inconceivable though it be, we are brought face to face in this twentieth century with governments of peoples once great and highly civilized, whose word now means absolutely nothing. A pledge is something not to be kept, but to be broken. Cruelty and national lust have displaced human feeling and friendly international co-operation. Human life has no value, and the savings of generations are wasted month by month and almost day by day in mad attempts to dominate the whole world in pursuit of gain.
How has all this been possible? What has happened to the teachings and inspiring leadership of the great prophets and apostles of the mind, who for nearly three thousand years have been holding before mankind a vision of the moral ideal supported by intellectual power? What has become of the influence and guidance of the great religions Christian, Moslem, Hebrew, Buddhist with their counsels of peace and good-will, or of those of Plato and of Aristotle, of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of the outstanding captains of the mind Spanish, Italian, French, English, German who have for hundreds of years occupied the highest place in the citadel of human fame? The answer to these questions is not easy. Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.
Are we, then, of this twentieth century and of this still free and independent land to lose heart and to yield to the despair which is becoming so widespread in countries other than ours? Not for one moment will we yield our faith or our courage! We may well repeat once more the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Most governments have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men, ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it think of it!"
However dark the skies may seem now, however violent and apparently irresistible are the savage attacks being made with barbarous brutality upon innocent women and children and non-combatant men, upon hospitals and institutions for the care of the aged and dependent, upon cathedrals and churches, upon libraries and galleries of the world s art, upon classic monuments which record the architectural achievements of centuries we must not despair. Our spirit of faith in the ultimate rule of the moral ideal and in the permanent establishment of liberty of thought, of speech, of worship and of government will not, and must not, be permitted to weaken or to lose control of our mind and our action.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Joseph Heller photo
Henri Matisse photo
Louis Riel photo
Susan Faludi photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Josip Broz Tito photo
Ryan Adams photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Despite our repeated warnings, Qadhafi continued his reckless policy of intimidation, his relentless pursuit of terror. He counted on America to be passive.”

Jim Geraghty (1975) American journalist

Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership http://books.google.co.in/books?id=agoDd6YRT44C&pg=PA76 (1 November 2007), Simon and Schuster, p. 76

Pat Conroy photo

“Graduation was nice. General Clark liked it. The Board of Visitors liked it. Moms and Dads liked it. And the Cadets hated it, for without a doubt it ranked as the most boring event of the year. Thus it was in 1964 that the Clarey twins pulled the graduation classic. When Colonel Hoy called the name of the first twin, instead of walking directly to General Clark to receive his diploma, he headed for the line of visiting dignitaries, generals, and members of the Board of Visitors who sat in a solemn semi-circle around the stage. He shook hands with the first startled general, then proceeded to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with every one on the stage. He did this so quickly that it took several moments for the whole act to catch on. When it finally did, the Corps went wild. General Clark, looking like he had just learned the Allies had surrendered to Germany, stood dumbfounded with Clarey number one's diploma hanging loosely from his hand; then Clarey number two started down the line, repeating the virtuoso performance of Clarey number one, as the Corps whooped and shouted their approval. The first Clarey grabbed his diploma from Clark and pumped his hand vigorously up and down. Meanwhile, his brother was breezing through the hand-shaking exercise. As both of them left the stage, they raised their diplomas above their heads and shook them like war tomahawks at the wildly applauding audience. No graduation is remembered so well.”

Source: The Boo (1970), p. 33

Randy Pausch photo
Karl Wolff photo

“If you repeat to the Führer the story of the radio message from your agent, I won't go to the gallows alone. You and the Reichsführer will hang beside me.”

Karl Wolff (1900–1984) SS general

To Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Quoted in "The Last 100 Days" - by John Toland - 1966

Ray Nagin photo

“Some of these guys are so violent that it is hard for witnesses to come forward, and they get involved in repeat criminal activities, so it is unfortunate that they had to die, but it did kind of end the cycle that we were struggling with.”

Ray Nagin (1956) politician, businessman

Discussing two brothers suspected in 14 murders who were found shot to death, quoted in Mayor: Crime Part of New Orleans `brand' http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001649.html, Washington Post, 10 August 2007
2007

Agatha Christie photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
David Hume photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Albert Hofmann photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Francis de Sales photo

“A heart-memory is better than a mere head-memory. Better to carry away a little of the love of Christ in our souls, than if we were able to repeat every word of every sermon we ever heard.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 373.

Randolph Bourne photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is not fit to rule another country must admit that a class is not fit to rule another class.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)

H. G. Wells photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
R. H. Tawney photo
Phillip Abbott Luce photo

“Borrowing a chapter from the Nazis, they believe that the more often a lie is repeated, the more people are prone to accept it as truth. Nothing is too scandalous for them, and I am constantly amazed at the fact that at one time I was a close associate of people capable of such deceitful behavior.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

As quoted in “Escape Artist: Recalling a YAF hero—the unlikely, liberating journey of Phillip Abbott Luce”, Shawn Steel, California Political Review, July-August (2000) pp. 23-28

John Horgan (journalist) photo
Josip Broz Tito photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Glenn Beck photo

“Glenn Beck: But I was standing on the stage with Freedom Works on Friday in a show that we’re going to air tonight at 8:00 on TheBlaze and I was giving a speech and it struck me about halfway through, the similarities of what is being done right now to the beginning of our country— we are repeating, and we're at the very beginning of it, but we're repeating all of the steps that it took for use to be free in— around the time of the Declaration of Independence, don't you think?
David Barton: I agree. And I look—
Glenn Beck: It's starting to happen.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2012-11-05
Will Christians show up this time? Glenn interviews David Barton
http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/05/will-christians-show-up-this-time-glenn-interviews-david-barton/
The Glenn Beck Program
Radio, quoted in * 2012-11-05
Beck & Barton Say Romney Will Win Because 'We are Repeating all of the Steps' the Founders Took to Create This Nation
Kyle
Mantyla
RightWingWatch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beck-barton-say-romney-will-win-because-we-are-repeating-all-steps-founders-took-create-nati
2012-11-07
2010s, 2012

Kit Carson photo
Patrick Matthew photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“Now I ask you whether you yourself have not often noticed that the policy of floating between the old and the new is not tenable? Just think this over. Sooner or later it ends with one's standing frankly either to the right or to the left.
It is no ditch, and I repeat, then it was '48 [the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, ] now it is '84 [1884]; then there was a barricade of paving stones - now it is not of stones, but a barricade as to the incompatibility of old and new.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Autumn 1884; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 381) p. 38
1880s, 1884

John Herschel photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Chris Hedges photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 5.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)

Thomas Kuhn photo
Heather Brooke photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“If some people hadn’t felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained it, they would have turned into quite different people.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Wenn mancher sich nicht verpflichtet fühlte, das Unwahre zu wiederholen, weil er’s einmal gefügt hat, fo wären es ganz andere Leute geworden.
Maxim 586, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Kevin Kelly photo
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Evagrius Ponticus photo
George H. W. Bush photo
Sidney Lanier photo

“Verse is a set of specially related sounds, repeated aloud.”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

Preface to The Science of English Verse 1880

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Muhammad photo
Mike Pence photo

“Further, [President Clinton's] repeated lies to the American people in this matter compound the case against him as they demonstrate his failure to protect the institution of the presidency as the 'inspiring supreme symbol of all that is highest in our American ideals'. Leaders affect the lives of families far beyond their own 'private life.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

On the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in a column titled "Why Clinton Must Resign or Be Impeached" — https://www.bustle.com/p/mike-pence-quotes-about-impeachment-reveal-what-he-really-thinks-of-presidents-having-affairs-10026765 (circa late 1990s)

Enoch Powell photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“There is no. man, there is no people, without a God. That God may be a visible idol, carved of wood or stone, to which sacrifice is offered in the forest, in the temple, or in the market-place; or it may be an invisible idol, fashioned in a man's own image and worshipped ardently at his own personal shrine. Somewhere in the universe there is that in which each individual has firm faith, and on which he places steady reliance. The fool who says in his heart "There is no God" really means there is no God but himself. His supreme egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the center of the universe which is thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of his personal satisfactions. So it has come to pass that after nearly two thousand years much of the world resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there are as many idols as idol worshippers, and every such idol worshipper finds his idol in the looking-glass. The time has come once again to repeat and to expound in thunderous tones the noble sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill, and to declare to these modern idolaters "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
There can be no cure for the world's ills and no abatement of the world's discontents until faith and the rule of everlasting principle are again restored and made supreme in the life of men and of nations. These millions of man-made gods, these myriads of personal idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart and mind of man brought back to a comprehension of the real meaning of faith and its place in life. This cannot be done by exhortation or by preaching alone. It must be done also by teaching; careful, systematic, rational teaching, that will show in a simple language which the uninstructed can understand what are the essentials of a permanent and lofty morality, of a stable and just social order, and of a secure and sublime religious faith.
Here we come upon the whole great problem of national education, its successes and its disappointments, its achievements and its problems yet unsolved. Education is not merely instruction far from it. It is the leading of the youth out into a comprehension of his environment, that, comprehending, he may so act and so conduct himself as to leave the world better and happier for his having lived in it. This environment is not by any means a material thing alone. It is material of course, but, in addition, it is intellectual, it is spiritual. The youth who is led to an understanding of nature and of economics and left blind and deaf to the appeals of literature, of art, of morals and of religion, has been shown but a part of that great environment which is his inheritance as a human being. The school and the college do much, but the school and the college cannot do all. Since Protestantism broke up the solidarity of the ecclesiastical organization in the western world, and since democracy made intermingling of state and church impossible, it has been necessary, if religion is to be saved for men, that the family and the church do their vital cooperative part in a national organization of educational effort. The school, the family and the church are three cooperating educational agencies, each of which has its weight of responsibility to bear. If the family be weakened in respect of its moral and spiritual basis, or if the church be neglectful of its obligation to offer systematic, continuous and convincing religious instruction to the young who are within its sphere of influence, there can be no hope for a Christian education or for the powerful perpetuation of the Christian faith in the minds and lives of the next generation and those immediately to follow. We are trustees of a great inheritance. If we abuse or neglect that trust we are responsible before Almighty God for the infinite damage that will be done in the life of individuals and of nations…. Clear thinking will distinguish between men's different associations, and it will be able to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to render unto God the things which are God's.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Making liberal men and women : public criticism of present-day education, the new paganism, the university, politics and religion https://archive.org/stream/makingliberalmen00butluoft/makingliberalmen00butluoft_djvu.txt (1921)

“President Obama repeated the grandiose nonsense that has tainted American foreign policy since World War II, the hubristic absurdity that the United States is the one indispensable nation in world affairs.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The State of the Union is Still a State of War http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7189"

Sri Aurobindo photo