Quotes about resolve
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“I declare I hold [physicians] to be true heroes, when I regard their hard existence, their pure pathetic lives; when I recall their cheerfulness and manliness; when I see them, generously forgetful of self, answering every call with alacrity; when I think of the warm heart that beats so steadfastly under the fuzzy damp coat; when I know that the lantern that guides them in a dark night to the house of distress is but like their own calm purpose and resolve shining forth to guide and comfort others.”

Jacob Mendes Da Costa (1833–1900) American physician

[citation needed]

Thinking, Heart, Housing, Night

“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.”

Clement Freud (1924–2009) English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef

The Observer (1964-12-27)
Misattributed to George Bernard Shaw on The West Wing, Season 2, Episode 14: The War At Home. Fictional President Bartlett, smoking a cigarette, spoke the second half of the quote and attributed it to Shaw. His chief of staff disputed whether it was Shaw, and the President concurred.

Love, Drink

“We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay IV: "Ad Valorem," (p. 135 of 1881 edition http://books.google.com/books?id=59UWAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22leaving%20heaven%20to%20decide%20whether%20they%20are%20to%20rise%20in%20the%20world%22%20intitle%3AUnto%20intitle%3AThis%20intitle%3ALast%20inauthor%3AJohn%20inauthor%3ARuskin&pg=RA1-PA135#v=onepage&q=%22leaving%20heaven%20to%20decide%20whether%20they%20are%20to%20rise%20in%20the%20world%22%20intitle:Unto%20intitle:This%20intitle:Last%20inauthor:John%20inauthor:Ruskin&f=true|). Unto This Last (1860)

Happiness, People, Pleasure, World

“True penitential confession is joined with reformation. He that does not forsake his sin, as well as confess it, forsakes the benefit of his confession. And indeed, there is no real confession of sin, where there is no real forsaking of sin. It is not enough for us to confess the sins we have committed, but we must resolve against committing again the sins we have committed.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Works of Thomas Brooks, pp.413-4

“Negotiations can resolve differences, cooperation can replace confrontation and development can create a win-win scenario.”

Chiang Pin-kung (1932–2018) Taiwanese politician

Chiang Pin-kung (2010) cited in: "ARATS delegation arrives in Taipei http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/12/21/2003491489" in The China Post, 21 December 2010. Statement made during his welcoming speech to Chen Yunlin at the Chairman of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) at the Grand Hotel in Taipei for the sixth round of high-level cross-strait talks between ARATS and SEF, 20 December 2010.

“If someone tells you he is going to make "a realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"The American Realist Playwrights", p. 296. First published in Harper's Magazine (July 1961)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Understanding, Decision

“I understand the anger Americans feel today. In the past, our presidents have channeled that anger, and forged it into resolve, into endurance and high purpose, and into the will to defeat the enemies of freedom. Our anger was transformed into energy directed for good.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Feeling, Understanding, Freedom, Past

“It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work.”

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976) German theologian

Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 3

World, Faith, Thinking, Science

“The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men, the shock troops of a hateful ideology, gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America. By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Mission Accomplished (May 2003)

Men, Hate, War, World

“If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. Women have no government. Men have organized a government, and they maintain it to the utter exclusion of women…. [¶] Under such glaring inconsistencies, such unwarrantable tyranny, such unscrupulous despotism, what is there left [for] women to do but to become the mothers of the future government? [¶] There is one alternative left, and we have resolved on that. This convention is for the purpose of this declaration. As surely as one year passes from this day, and this right is not fully, frankly and unequivocally considered, we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government, complete in all its parts and to take measures to maintain it as effectually as men do theirs. [¶] We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the south. We are plotting revolution; we will overslough this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead, which shall not only profess to derive its power from consent of the governed, but shall do so in reality.”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

A Lecture on Constitutional Equality, also known as The Great Secession Speech, speech to Woman's Suffrage Convention, New York, May 11, 1871, excerpt quoted in Gabriel, Mary, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.Car.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1st ed. 1998 ISBN 1-56512-132-5, pp. 86–87 & n. [13] (ellipsis or suspension points in original & "[for]" so in original) (author Mary Gabriel journalist, Reuters News Service). Also excerpted, differently, in Underhill, Lois Beachy, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull (Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridge Works, 1st ed. 1995 ISBN 1-882593-10-3, pp. 125–126 & unnumbered n.

Women, Men, Reality, Time

“While our nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack. Our enemies are patient and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard. At the same time, we must continue to engage the world with confidence and clear purpose. In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

People, World, Home, Confidence

“This we do know: a world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive. With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)

World, Peace, Faith, Hope

“I was infected with my desire, my resolve, to make it in broadcasting. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how.”

Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster

Cosell.

“Sher Shah Sur’s name is associated in our textbooks with the Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar to Dacca, with caravanserais, and several other schemes of public welfare. It is true that he was not a habitual persecutor of Hindus before he became the emperor at Delhi. But he did not betray Islam when he became the supreme ruler. The test came at Raisen in 1543 AD. Shaykh Nurul Haq records in Zubdat-ul-Tawarikh as follows: “In the year 950 H., Puranmal held occupation of the fort of Raisen… He had 1000 women in his harem… and amongst them several Musulmanis whom he made to dance before him. Sher Khan with Musulman indignation resolved to conquer the fort. After he had been some time engaged in investing it, an accommodation was proposed and it was finally agreed that Puranmal with his family and children and 4000 Rajputs of note should be allowed to leave the fort unmolested. Several men learned in the law (of Islam) gave it as their opinion that they should all be slain, notwithstanding the solemn engagement which had been entered into. Consequently, the whole army, with the elephants, surrounded Puranmal’s encampment. The Rajputs fought with desperate bravery and after killing their women and children and burning them, they rushed to battle and were annihilated to a man.””

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Zubdat-ul-Tawarikh quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. Chapter 7 ISBN 9788185990231

Women, Men, Children, Family

“I do not consider myself a philosopher. I am a biologist, attempting to grapple with the Schrodinger question, “What is Life?” It turns out that this is not an empirical question, to be resolved through observation in a laboratory.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Rosen, Robert. " On the limitations of scientific knowledge http://www.synapse9.com/ref/Rosen_On_Limitations_of_Sci.pdf." Boundaries and barriers: On the limits to scientific knowledge, Reading, MA: Perseus Books (1996): 199-214.

Life, Question

“It's extremely dangerous trying to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law — first the ‘Rose Revolution', then they'll think up something like blue. [word play here: "rose" having the colloquial sense of "lesbian" in modern Russian, and "blue" meaning "gay"]”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

On the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, News conference http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/russia/article405454.ece, (23 December 2004). On Ukraine

Law, Problem, Thinking, Sense

“Putin hasn’t come out of the blue, you know? It’s not just Putin. That’s why again in my book Winter is Coming, I emphasize why Vladimir Putin and enemies of the free world must be stopped. Because Putin, you may call him bosses of bosses, Capo dei Capi, he’s like a spider in the center of this web. Because Putin helps other bad guys, other thugs, dictators, and terrorists to sort of feel free to attack the free world. Because they all know that unless they attack the free world, unless they attack the United States as the leader of the free world, they will have no credibility with their own people because neither Putin nor Iranian mullahs, nor Al Qaeda, Islamic State or other dictators around the globe, they have nothing to offer but confrontation. They have to present themselves of the protectors of their own people against the world evil. And of course, they have to attack the free world that produces everything that, by the way, they use quite effectively against us. They cannot compete in innovations, they cannot compete in ideas, in productivity. But they can compete in something quite different because for us, each human life is unique. *For them, killing a thousand people, hundreds of thousands of people, a million is a demonstration of strengths. So we should realize that they have no allergy for blood. And they will keep pressing their advantage, and it’s not that we have grown – that our enemies have grown stronger. It’s our resolve that has grown weaker.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Life, People, Books, World

“Although I cannot accuse myself of being remarkably unstable, I do not pretend that I have never altered my opinion both in respect to men and things. Indeed, I have been very much modified both in feeling and opinion within the last fourteen years. When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. This had brought me to other conclusions. When I was a child, I thought and spoke as a child. But the question is not as to what were my opinions fourteen years ago, but what they are now. If I am right now, it really does not matter what I was fourteen years ago. My position now is one of reform, not of revolution. I would act for the abolition of slavery through the Government — not over its ruins. If slaveholders have ruled the American Government for the last fifty years, let the anti-slavery men rule the nation for the next fifty years. If the South has made the Constitution bend to the purposes of slavery, let the North now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom and justice. If 350,000 slaveholders have, by devoting their energies to that single end, been able to make slavery the vital and animating spirit of the American Confederacy for the last 72 years, now let the freemen of the North, who have the power in their own hands, and who can make the American Government just what they think fit, resolve to blot out for ever the foul and haggard crime, which is the blight and mildew, the curse and the disgrace of the whole United States.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

Men, Justice, Feeling, Question

“There are two general Methods made use of in the Mathematicks, viz. Synthesis and Analysis, which we shall explain, after having acquainted the Reader, that the Method we make use of to resolve a Mathematical Problem, is called Zetetick; and that that Method which determines when, and by what way, and how many different ways a Problem may be resolved, is called Poristick. But in treating of Methods, we will first premise, that in general, a Method is the Art of disposing a Train of Arguments or Consequences in a right Order, either to discover the Truth of a Theorem, which we would find out, or to demonstrate it to others, when found.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702, p. 26

Truth, Art, Way, Mathematics

“If there is to be a competition, there must be some basis for resolving it. It is also clear that the competition should be experienced based.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

, p. 53
Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 2. Adaptive Systems

“The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. They are few in number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour and, I believe, the resolve of every Member of the House.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104910 First term as Prime Minister

Life, People, Peace, Hope

“Social woes have been on the rise over the past years. I do believe that the only way to resolve these problems is decentralisation. Our problems will not be resolved as long as only the government is in charge of our cultural affairs.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Presidential campaign, 2013

Way, Problem, Past

“This democratic method of resolving contradictions among the people was epitomized in 1942 in the formula “unity, criticism, unity”. To elaborate, it means starting from the desire for unity, resolving contradictions through criticism or struggle and arriving at a new unity on a new basis. In our experience this is the correct method of resolving contradictions among the people.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 在一九四二年，我们曾经把解决人民内部矛盾的这种民主的方法，具体化为一个公式，叫做“团结——批评——团结”。讲详细一点，就是从团结的愿望出发，经过批评或者斗争使矛盾得到解决，从而在新的基础上达到新的团结。按照我们的经验，这是解决人民内部矛盾的一个正确的方法。

People

“The idea that reason requires an impartial treatment of individuals corresponds to well-known principles. To resolve the questions of distributive justice, Leibniz proposes the following maxim: “Put your self in the place of everyone.” In recent theories, this amounts to saying that the choice of a just organization of society must take place behind a “veil of ignorance,” an idea that can be interpreted in several ways. For utilitarianism, each individual must count as one, and none as more than one. For John Rawls, we have to choose the form of society that favors the least advantaged, whoever they might be. Another impartial idea is that of universal rights, embodied in the two declarations of 1776 and 1789.”

Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic

Reason and Rationality (2009)

Justice, Way, Idea, Question

“He dreamt that night that he rode through the woods on a low ridge. Below him he could see deer in a meadow where the sun fell on the grass. The grass was still wet and the deer stood in it to their elbows. He could feel the spine of the mule rolling under him and he gripped the mule's barrel with his legs. Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed, he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins slender like bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day ever was and he was riding to his death.”

Cormac McCarthy book Child of God

Source: Child of God (1973), p.162

Love, Death, World, Sadness

“Being Gentlemen and very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty; they had before his coming in, readily agreed promiscuously to use when they pleased Elements and Principles as terms equivalent: and to understand both by the one and the other, those primitive and simple bodies of which the mixt ones are said to be composed, and into which they are ultimately resolved.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Physiological Considerations Part of the First Dialogue (16)
The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Love, Understanding

“September the 11th brought out the best in America, and the best in this Congress. And I join the American people in applauding your unity and resolve. Now Americans deserve to have this same spirit directed toward addressing problems here at home. I'm a proud member of my party — yet as we act to win the war, protect our people, and create jobs in America, we must act, first and foremost, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

War, People, Home, Problem

“A resolve to do whatever proper thing it takes separates the weak from the strong. The strong are determined to do whatever possible and proper thing to get to their goal.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Strong

“Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognize the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future.
Just as America's role is indispensable in preserving the world's peace, so is each nation's role indispensable in preserving its own peace.
Together with the rest of the world, let us resolve to move forward from the beginnings we have made. Let us continue to bring down the walls of hostility which have divided the world for too long, and to build in their place bridges of understanding — so that despite profound differences between systems of government, the people of the world can be friends.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Second Inaugural Address (1973)

Hostility, People, World, Peace

“The professional philosopher in keen competition with the natural scientist resolves to be more certain about less.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 59

Nature

“A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know that after the storm, the runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will grow clear by tomorrow. All of these events are distant in time and space, if they're all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, and influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of rainstorm by contemplating the whole not any part of the pattern.
Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.”

Peter M. Senge book The Fifth Discipline

Source: The Fifth Discipline (1990), p. 7 as cited in: Vivien Martin (2003) Leading Change in Health and Social Care. p. 37

Understanding, Business, Problem, Distant

“In advanced capitalism it expresses the fundamental contradiction between, on the one hand, the increasing socialisation of consumption, and on the other hand, the capitalist logic of the production and distribution of its means of consumption, the outcome of which is a deepening crisis in this sector at the same time as popular protest demands an amelioration of the collective material conditions of daily existence. In an attempt to resolve these contradictions and their resulting conflicts, the state increasingly intervenes in the city; but, as an expression of a class society, the state in practice acts according to the relations of force between classes and social groups, generally in favour of the hegemonic fraction of the dominant classes.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: City, Class and Power, 1978, p. 3

Time

“If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things — solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria — as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present only as an idea.”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 43 - "The Resurrection Of Sri Yukteswar"

Men, God, World, Idea

“Andrew Jackson neatly resolved the issue by walking into congress and placing his hand on the Bible they kept there as a reminder of all the virtues they worked so hard to get the voters to believe they possessed.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 19.

“Britain has never been cowed by fear or hatred or terror. Our Great British resolve faced down Hitler; it defeated Communism; it saw off the IRA’s assaults on our way of life. Time and again we have stood up to aggression and tyranny.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Life, Fear, Way, Communication

“There has never been anything great in the world except through the courage and resolve of one man who defies the prejudices of the multitude.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Il ne s'est jamais rien fait de grand dans le monde que par le courage et la fermeté d'un seul homme qui brave les préjugés de la multitude.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 43, 27082 2892-7]
On prejudices

World, Courage

“Your case no tame expedients will afford,
Resolve on death or conquest by the sword,
Which for no less a stake than life you draw,
And self-defence is Nature's eldest law.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. I, lines 455–458.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Life, Death, Law, Nature

“If we want to normalize relations between Pakistan and India and bring harmony to the region, the Kashmir dispute will have to be resolved peacefully through a dialogue, on the basis of the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. Solving the Kashmir issue is the joint responsibility of our two countries … Mr Vajpayee, … I take you up on this offer. Let us start talking in this spirit.”

Pervez Musharraf (1943) 10th President of Pakistan

Quoted in [Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, http://www.questia.com/read/118148594/kashmir-roots-of-conflict-paths-to-peace, 2003, Harvard University Press, 1]

People, Country

“My will, my faith and my body have been challenged, but make no mistake, my heart is strong and my resolve to fight will never be broken.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Anastacia fights on after cancer operation http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/music/newsid_2818000/2818723.stm, BBC Newsroom, March 4, 2003. General Quotes

Faith, Strong, Heart, Fight

“The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six words: ‘God said, Let there be light’.”

James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe

The Mysterious Universe (1930)

God, World, Travel, Light

“In much of precolonial Nigeria, and indeed Africa, ethnic nations organized people within communities into peer groups and trained them, from babyhood to old age, to serve their communities. When successful, this system provided all members of a community not only with a sense of belonging but also with a vehicle for helping to shape the community's direction and pace of change. In this system, people knew they were entitled to help resolve any issue that affected the community.
This sense of entitlement grows out of a series of rituals that begin the day a child is born. When a baby is born, after the first few seconds, it lets out a yelp, which announces its arrival, and which is met by expressions of joy. Among the Yoruba, the arrival is acknowledged with a naming ceremony where parents give names that express rich meaning and hopes for the baby. When I arrived, my parents named me Hafsat Olaronke, which means the treasured one and honor is being cared for. For my parents, they saw in me one who would be cherished and who would bring honor to her community. Many in other parts of the world are impressed when they discover my name's meanings, but the truth is that most African names have beautiful meanings.”

Hafsat Abiola (1974) Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist

Architects of Peace (2000)

People, Truth, Age, World

“The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

"RGE Conference Call on the Economic and Financial Outlook... and why the Treasury TARP bailout is flawed," http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253762/rge_conference_call_on_the_economic_and_financial_outlookand_why_the_treasury_tarp_bailout_is_flawed RGE Monitor (2008-09-26).

Money

“In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve a problem.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 405

Problem

“In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 119
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Mathematics

“I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, — for I have had a little experience in that business, — that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, — and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Fools, Business, Thinking, Strong

“It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,—that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Death, Age, Idea, Nature

““How… how can”—savagely, he slashed an arm down before him in absolute negation of all he saw—“such be? How could God allow it?”
“God? You fool—there is no God!”
The words struck Faust like a great bronze clapper, shattering the crusted certainties of a lifetime, reverberating, setting up echoes that washed back and forth through his being in slowly lessening waves, leaving no atom unshaken, no belief untouched. There was no God. He knew this for the truth, recognized it as such on an almost physical level, for it summed up everything he had ever thought or reasoned. It resolved a thousand doubts. It left no question unanswered. There was no God! Everything was possible now. Nothing was forbidden.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 2, “Revelations” (pp. 30-31)

God, Truth, Fools, Question

“I saw among them, much merit - much patient suffering - wonderful endurance - industry - care and desire to be and to appear respectable. I saw also the oppression of the laws as well as of most of their employers, and that also in which in its immediate effect is even more intolerable, the contumely with which all who thought themselves above them treated them. I not only saw all this but I felt it also, and I resolved never to abandon the working people and I never will.”

Francis Place (1771–1854) English social reformer

Cited in: Dudley Miles (1988), Francis Place, 1771-1854: the life of a remarkable radical. p. 49

People, Law, Suffering, Appearance

“The freedom secured by the Constitution consists, in one of its essential dimensions, of the right of the individual not to be injured by the unlawful exercise of governmental power. The mandate for segregated schools, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954); a wrongful invasion of the home, Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961); or punishing a protester whose views offend others, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397 (1989); and scores of other examples teach that individual liberty has constitutional protection, and that liberty’s full extent and meaning may remain yet to be discovered and affirmed. Yet freedom does not stop with individual rights. Our constitutional system embraces, too, the right of citizens to debate so they can learn and decide and then, through the political process, act in concert to try to shape the course of their own times and the course of a nation that must strive always to make freedom ever greater and more secure. Here Michigan voters acted in concert and statewide to seek consensus and adopt a policy on a difficult subject against a historical background of race in America that has been a source of tragedy and persisting injustice. That history demands that we continue to learn, to listen, and to remain open to new approaches if we are to aspire always to a constitutional order in which all persons are treated with fairness and equal dignity. Were the Court to rule that the question addressed by Michigan voters is too sensitive or complex to be within the grasp of the electorate; or that the policies at issue remain too delicate to be resolved save by university officials or faculties, acting at some remove from immediate public scru-tiny and control; or that these matters are so arcane that the electorate’s power must be limited because the people cannot prudently exercise that power even after a full debate, that holding would be an unprecedented restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right held not just by one person but by all in common. It is the right to speak and debate and learn and then, as a matter of political will, to act through a lawful electoral process.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U. S. ____, (2016), plurality opinion.

People, Education, School, Law

“In the aftermath of the war, we find one of the most hidden eras of US history; and that is the period of radical reconstruction. It certainly remains the most radical era in the entire history of the United States of America. And this is an era that is rarely acknowledged in historical texts. … There were progressive laws passed challenging male supremacy. This is an era that is rarely acknowledged. During that era of course we had the creation of what we now call historically black colleges and universities and there was economic development. This period didn’t last very long. From the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, we might take 1865 as that day until 1877 when a radical reconstruction was overturned—and not only was it overturned but it was erased from the historical record—and so in the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s. One hundred years later.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)

War, Law, History, Universe

“Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

The Common School Journal, Vol. V, No. 19 (2 October 1843)

Reading

““In the year 817, eight hundred and seventeen Hijri, he resolved to march with intent of jihad against the unbelievers of Girnar, a famous fort in Sorath. Raja Mandalik fought with him but was defeated and took refuge in the fort. It is narrated that even though that land (region) this time did not get complete brightness form the lamp of Islam, yet the Sultan subdued the fort of Junagadh situated near the foot of Girnar mountain. Most of the Zamindars of Sorath became submissive and obedient to him and agreed to pay tribute. After that, he demolished the temple of Sayyedpur in the month of Jamadi I of the year 818, eight hundred and eighteen Hijri… In the year 823, eight hundred and twenty-three Hijri, he attended to the establishment of administrative control over his dominion. He suppressed refractoriness wherever it was found. He demolished temples and constructed masjids in their places…”364”

Ahmad Shah I (1389–1442) Indian king who founded Ahmedabad city

Sidhpur (Gujarat) Mir’at-i-Ahmadî, Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp. 37-38.

Mountain, Time

“To say that an arms race always leads to war seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse. A government resolved to attain ends detrimental to its neighbours, which does not shrink from the possibility of war, makes preparations for war, its neighbours take defensive action, and you say an arms race is beginning. But this is the symptom of the intention of one government to challenge or destroy its neighbours, not the cause of the conflict. The pace is set by the potential aggressor, and, failing collective action by the rest of the world to resist him, the alternatives are an arms race or surrender.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Interview https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/01/winston-churchill-new-statesman-archive with Kingsley Martin for the New Statesman (7 January 1939) The 1930s

War, World, Horse

“Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist… The therapy effected by life itself is not, however, within one's control. Neither hardships nor friendships nor religious experience can be arranged to meet the needs of the particular individual. Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may entirely crush another.”

Karen Horney (1885–1952) American-German psychoanalyst

Karen Horney Our Inner Conflicts (1945)

Life, Friendship, Way, Help

“Humanity faces the most complex task of its history so far. Stated in a solution-oriented way, it is necessary gradually to reorganize this planet at two levels. One must deal with the competing necessities of biosphere and mankind with all their environmental and climatic consequences. On the other level, it is necessary to resolve the demands of competing nations and worlds within mankind's hierarchy of socioeconomic developmental levels and the "Christmas tree" of sociopolitical, ideological, and military consequences.”

Krafft Arnold Ehricke (1917–1984) German aerospace engineer

The Extraterrestrial Imperative (1978)

World, Way, History, Tree

“Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

No. 6.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)

“We're fighting on many fronts, and Iraq is now the central front. Saddam holdouts and foreign terrorists are trying desperately to undermine Iraq's progress and to throw that country into chaos. The terrorists in Iraq believe their attacks on innocent people will weaken our resolve. That's what they believe. They believe that America will run from a challenge. They're mistaken. Americans are not the running kind.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Speech in Portsmouth, NH http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031009-7.html (October 9, 2003) These lines have sometimes been attributed to Paul Wolfowitz, who was reported to have said them the next day, perhaps quoting the President's speech. 2000s, 2003

People, Fight, Country

“A topic that sometimes succeeds in being fully resolved with the help of long explanations in speech or writing, with arguments and letter, but more often fails the harder it is pursued, can be resolved by dumbness in a single hour.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Help

“After a major terrorist attack, every society faces a choice between fear and resolve. The world’s great democracies can’t sacrifice our values or turn our backs on those in need. Therefore, we must choose resolve. And we must lead the world to meet this threat.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech on fighting ISIS (November 20, 2015)

World, Fear, Democracy

“In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XII, p. 149

Thinking

“The brain attempts to recognize this odor image by scanning and resolving it into previously stored patterns”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 469 as cited in: Donald A. Wilson, Richard J. Stevenson (2010) Learning to Smell: Olfactory Perception from Neurobiology to Behavior. p. 2

“Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations…This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives…We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this hate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech on the 25th Anniversary of the Announcement of the National Socialist Party's Program http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-speech-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-announcement-of-the-national-socialist-party-s-program-february-1945 (February 24, 1945) 1940s

Men, God, Hate, People

“The idealist seeks the security of a static harmony, and therefore considers every tension evil. Unitary man recognizes tension as an essential feature of the formative process operating in man. Man creates in resolving tensions, but never brings them to an end. The contrasts of past, present and future forms provide an inexhaustible source of tension.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 274

Evil, Past, Future

“From my tenderest youth I have considered the union of Ireland with Great-Britain as the scourge of the Irish nation. And that the people of this country can have neither happiness nor freedom whilst that connection endures. Every day's experience, and every fact that arose, convinced me of this truth; and I resolved, if I could, to separate the two countries. But as I knew Ireland could not of herself, throw off the yoke, I sought for help wherever I could find it.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Speech to the Court-Martial, assembled to pass sentence on his life (November 10, 1798) http://rewinn.com/8043.html

Happiness, People, Truth, Youth

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

World, Business, Water, Personality

“Central to the Smithian approach is our willingness to see critically what we observe around us. The sense of comfort that is often associated with being content with the world as it is can seriously hamper the pursuit of justice. This understanding goes strongly against a line of thought that was powerfully presented by Friedrich Nietzshe. ‘The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad’, said Nietzshe. I think I can, with some effort, understand what Nietzsche meant, but it is hard for me, even with a lot of effort, to see that Nietzshe’s hypothesis helps us to understand the causation or resilience of the nastiness of the world in which we live. Nor, I must insist (this I do as a thoroughly unreligious person), does it offer any obvious insight into the lives and achievements of Martin Luther King, or Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, who have tried to reduce injustice in the world and have done so with non-negligible success.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

World, Justice, Understanding, Thinking

“In nations composed of both cultured and uncultured elements, the uncultured will govern because it is their habit to attack and resolve doubts with their fists in cases where the cultured have failed in the art of governing. The uncultured masses are lazy and timid in the realm of intelligence, and they want to be governed well. But if the government hurts them, they shake it off and govern themselves.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1881)

Art, Intelligence, Hurt

“O, cross of my bleeding Lord, may I meditate on thee more, may I feel thee more, may I resolve to know nothing but thee.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 173.

Feeling

“Yet today our military is still organized more for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for industrial age operations, rather than for information age battles. There is almost no relationship between our budget priorities and a strategic vision. The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk. Now we must shape the future with new concepts, new strategies, new resolve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)

War, Age, Future

“The search for the most effective conflict resolution procedure requires identification of the primary objective in resolving different kinds of disputes. This article focuses on the kind of disputes considered in the legal system and draws on the results of the authors' empirical studies to develop a general theory of procedure for attaining the objectives of "truth" and "justice" in situations of cognitive conflict, conflict of interest, and in "mixed" disputes.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: "A theory of procedure." 1978, p. 541, Abstract

Truth, Justice, Search, Study

“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Letter to James Boswell, December 7, 1782, p. 494
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Happiness

“A wedge strategy is where you focus on a highly charged issue at the borders of rationality and emotion. The emotional content of the issue can create a moral conviction that the issue needs to be resolved at any cost. Tactics that would otherwise be called into question can then be employed to resolve the issue. This sets precedent for the future use of those tactics in other arenas.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_06-29-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Question, Future

“But the most vocal and articulate on anti-democracy views among these groups is Hizb al-Tahrir, founded in Palestine in the 1950s but currently active internationally, in particular in Britain, Pakistan and some Arab countries… Hizb al-Tahrir calls for a campaign of education and intellectual debate which would lead to the re-establishment of the khilafa. While employing the concept of the 'Islamic State', Hizb al-Tahrir espouses the traditional belief that the restoration of the khilafa is both necessary and sufficient to resolve the problem of governance. Even Hizb al-Tahrir, however, could not resist the seduction of democratic procedures. The khalifa has to be elected, and consultative councils form part of the structure of power.”

Suha Taji-Farouki (1950) British Islamic scholar

Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, I. B. Tauris, London 2004

Education, Democracy, Problem, Parting

“Amerika faces no meaningful threat to its security except from those who live within its own territorial borders.
The domestic upheavals of the 1960’s and 70’s taught empire some valuable lessons on just how dangerous an informed and discontent population can be. As a result, and through a steady application of misinformation, carrots, and sticks, empire has worked steadily to drain the focus, resolve, and militancy of the informed and discontented. From that point to this, empire has manufactured a discontinuity in popular struggle, while maintaining continuity in its own growth and consolidation. One of the empire’s principal tools and weapons has been its prisons.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

“It is impossible to have workers' control within a capitalist society. Capitalism, by its very nature, produces contradictions which cannot be resolved until and unless we change the system of society…The unions could only have class collaboration and compromise with the mixed economy, and those who advanced the theory of workers' control in present-day society were putting forward an intellectual, Utopian dream, idealistic, unworkable and unattainable.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

The Miner (5 December 1977), quoted in Paul Routledge, "Scargill attack on idea of worker directors", The Times (5 December 1977), p. 17

Dreams, Nature, Change

“I resolved that no revolutionary movement was going to be brought into being in the USA unless I brought it into being.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

Quoted in the Washington Post (17 February 1974) under his pseudonym "Lyn Marcus".

“I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 1, Introduction

Nature

“Administration is both social engineering and applied psychology. It is apparatus and mechanics, incentives and human nature. Let no one think it is merely the former. Nowhere is the need for psychology greater than in the organization, direction, and inspiration of men working in large groups. Outstanding administrative results are produced by spirit, morale, atmosphere; these, in turn, are the product of psychological mainsprings and invigorating incentives. As Benjamin Lippincott has recognized, both governmental and business administration resolve fundamentally into the role played by effective incentives.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Study of Administration." 1937, p. 30

Men, Business, Nature, Thinking

“The intensity of my feelings was reinforced by other events of the late '60s: the riots, the marches, the sense that something had to be done, done quickly to resolve the issue of race. In college there was an air of excitement, apprehension and anger. We started the Black Students Union. We protested. We worked in the Free Breakfast Program. We would walk out of school in the winter of 1969 in protest.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

School, Feeling, Sense, Winter

“Any attempt by political forces in the Third World to resolve the problems of their neo-colonial integration into the world trading system on the basis of national sovereignty is as naive as would be the attempt of black South Africans if they opted for a 'bantustan' solution to their particular politico-economic dilemma.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest" (1988–9), in Fanged Noumena, p. 57

World, Problem

“The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.”

Lysander Spooner book No Treason

Source: No Treason (1867–1870), No. I, p. 9

Men, Nature

“A major social problem we face today is how to control the political process that is eroding the free enterprise market system. Although I am pessimistic that we will in fact ever resolve this problem completely, we will surely never solve it unless we develop a viable positive theory of the political process. Such a political theory will not be complete until we also have developed a theory that explains why we get the results we do out of the mass media.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Michael C. Jensen, 'Toward a Theory of the Press,' in Economics and Social Institutions, Karl Brunner, Editor (Martinus Nijhoff Publishing Company, 1979).

Problem

“Once the will is resolved, one’s spirit is strengthened. Even a peasant's will is hard to deny, but a samurai of resolute will can sway ten thousand men.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. V.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

Men

“Resolved, to ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

No. 41.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)

“Every social need, such as the need for friendship, must be a party to its own satisfaction: I cannot passively find my friend as a ready-made friend; a ready-made human being he may be, but his friendship for me I must help to create by my own active resolve.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XII : The Will as a Maker of Truth, p. 140.

Friendship, Help

“As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds, as is stated on good authority, have vivid dreams, and this is shewn by their movements and voice, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. … Few persons any longer dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", page 46 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=59&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Dogs, Dreams, Imagination, Cats

“The Government has now resolved to enter upon an arms race, and the people will have to pay for their mistake in believing that it could be trusted to carry out a policy of peace. … This is a War Budget. We can look in the future for no advance in Social Legislation. All available resources are to be devoted to armaments.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (22 April 1936), quoted in "Mr. Attlee on a war budget", The Times (23 April 1936), p. 16.
1930s

War, People, Peace, Future

“The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign… After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-1997 of I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 October 1997) Reviews, One-star reviews

Light

“Why then dost thou choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are moved by them? And why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of things which happen to thee? for then thou wilt use them well, and they will be material for thee. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest; and remember…”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 58
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Art, Way, Nature

“Plato was accused by some of his twentieth-century critics of racism, totalitarianism, fascism, and other political crimes with a very contemporary flavor. These accusations are too anachronistic to be taken seriously; whatever explains Hitler and Mussolini, it is not the dialogues of Plato. The more plausible complaint is that Plato does not take seriously the inescapability of politics in some form. Plato’s metaphysics is fascinating; so is his conviction that the just man does better than the unjust man, no matter what earthly fate befalls him. His political thinking often amounts to an injunction to abolish the conflicts that politics exists to resolve and fantasies about how it might be done.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 2 : Plato and Antipolitics

Fate, Thinking

“The International Atomic Energy Agency and I are humbled, proud, delighted and above all strengthened in our resolve by this most worthy of honours.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)

“What's evil for the hawk is the mouse because, you know, the mouse is quick and gets away but I did this one realization every scientist goes through at one point… if you gave the hawk power, the power of God, the first thing the hawk might do is to slow down the mouse. But then the hawk would lose it's speed. And then if you slow the mouse all the way down, so it can just barely move, the hawk would lose its flight. So that in a weird way the tension between those two say natural enemies is what gives birth to their beauty. So I definitely feel that the tension we have right now within the human community in particular — that those are ultimately going to be resolved with a deeper harmony and a deeper appreciation for one another.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

God, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“At the heart of death’s history lie not only the emotion of grief and the breaking of bonds between each other and our place in this world but also the hope of answering the queries and resolving the injustices of a lifetime.”

Douglas Davies

Source: A Brief History of Death (2005), Ch. 1 : Journey Beyond.

Death, Lie, World, Hope

“The moderns contended that the concentration on virtue contradicts the concern for well-being. Aristotle admitted that “equipment” as well as virtue is necessary for happiness, but he said nothing about how that equipment is acquired. A careful examination of the acquisition of equipment reveals that virtue impedes that acquisition. Liberality, for example, presupposes money and not caring for it overmuch. But one must care for it to get it. Moreover, spending money exhausts it, so that liberality makes the need for acquisitiveness greater than it would have been without the virtue. Liberality both discourages and encourages acquisitiveness, putting man in contradiction with himself. … The miser is not likely to need to steal. And his quest for profit can, properly channeled, produce benefits for others. In the old system he is given a bad conscience and a bad name. But it would seem that nature is not kind to man, if the two elements of happiness—virtue and equipment—are at tension with one another. Equipment is surely necessary, so why not experiment with doing without virtue? If a substitute for virtue can be found, the inner conflict that renders man’s life so hard could be resolved.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” pp. 282-283.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Life, Money, Happiness, Nature

“I never forgot that schooling had irretrievably changed my family’s life. That knowledge, however, did not weaken ambition. Instead, it strengthened resolve. Those times I remembered the loss of my past with regret, I quickly reminded myself of all the things my teachers could give me. (They could make me an educated man.) I tightened my grip on pencil and books. I evaded nostalgia. Tried hard to forget. But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers. I remembered too well that education had changed my family’s life. I would not have become a scholarship boy had I not so often remembered.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life, Books, Education, School

“He resolved not to speak again until he had controlled his temper.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 3, "Hort Town"

““On the 1st Rajab 990 [AD 1582] he (Husain Qulî Khãn) encamped by a field of maize near NagarkoT. The fortress (hissãr) of Bhîm, which is an idol temple of Mahãmãî, and in which none but her servants dwelt, was taken by the valour of the assailants at the first assault. A party of Rajpûts, who had resolved to die, fought most desperately till they were all cut down. A number of Brãhmans who for many years had served the temple, never gave one thought to flight, and were killed. Nearly 200 black cows belonging to Hindûs had, during the struggle, crowded together for shelter in the temple. Some savage Turks, while the arrows and bullets were falling like rain, killed those cows. They then took off their boots and filled them with the blood and cast it upon the roof and walls of the temple.”173”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Jalãlu’d-Dîn Muhammad Akbar Pãdshãh Ghãzî (AD 1556-1605) Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

“Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

7 May 1789
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

“Finding an alternative to supplement military ways of resolving international conflicts has been taken up by many people skilled in various areas such as political science, economics, social studies, modelling and simulation, intelligence and expert systems, military strategy and weaponry as well as private business and industry.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Harold Chestnut, Peter Kopacek, Tibor Vámos (1989) International conflict resolution using system engineering: proceedings of the IFAC workshop, Budapest, Hungary, 5-8 June 1989. International Federation of Automatic Control.

People, Way, Intelligence, Business

““But a second afterthought would follow, and I should ask: What must be the nature of this life dissevered from Nature,—bodiless, void of all sense-perception? What would be left in it except the pure elements of reason, the pure elements of perception, the pure formularies of science, and pure imagination? But what are these, altogether, but the common equipment, not of my mind or of some other individual mind, but of the universal human nature? And what is that universal nature but just the nature of the eternal Cosmic Consciousness? Yes, my personality has vanished; and death, in dissolving the tie to Nature under the alluring prospect of an existence for me wholly self-referred and self-sustaining, has resolved me back into the infinite Vague of the Cosmic Mind, as this might, perchance, be fancied to be in itself, apart from Nature and creation,””

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.118-9

Life, Death, Imagination, Nature

Quotes about resolve page 3

Quotes about resolve
page 3