Quotes about right
page 42

“While no man in his right mind would advocate sending our ground forces into continental China, and such was never given a thought, the new situation did urgently demand a drastic revision of strategic planning if our political aim was to defeat this new enemy as we had defeated the old.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)

“World peace is threatened not only by weapons of mass destruction but also by conventional weapons which have led to countless violations of human rights, including the rights to life and to physical integrity. A strong treaty can contribute greatly to international and regional peace, security and stability.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Statement by the United Nations (UN) Independent Expert about how countries must regulate arms trade to prevent human rights violations – http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42578&Cr=Arms+Trade&Cr1#.UeWCAI2nq24. 2012

Life, World, Peace, Strong

“I was like a gravedigger while I painted these corpses [of the dead Baader-Meinhoff members]. It was just work. If I felt one of them looked too theatrical, I painted over it… I was afraid more of the reaction on the left than the right. It was still very dangerous to deal with this subject in Germany. There was fear that the museum where I showed them might be bombed. All my friends were on the left, but I was not. They said: 'Someone with the right mentality could do this, but not Richter - he is too bourgeois. He steals Baader-Meinhof away from us.' To me, they were part of the problem. I was standing outside watching how people, on both sides [left / right], ignored the truth because of their beliefs, beliefs that made them crazy. That was the point of the pictures.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

In 1988, Richter painted a series of 15 works titled 'October 18, 1977.' It shocked Germany, especially left. The series was based on photographs of the anti-capitalist Baader-Meinhof group, which called itself the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction) and were in prison and died in 1977.
after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

People, Truth, Fear, Problem

“We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Family, Law, Sex, Home

“I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan.
Welcome to the land of fame excess - am I going to fit in?
I jump into the cab, here I am for the first time,
I look to the right and I see the Hollywood sign.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Party in the USA, her second hit song
Song lyrics

Dreams, Time

“A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 178

God, Universe

“Any religion that endorses violence is incapable of delivering spiritual enlightenment — how obvious does that have to be? — and it has no right even to call itself a religion. Without the shield of religion to hide behind, Islam would be banned in the civilized world as a political ideology of hate — and we have no obligation to make allowances for it, any more than we do for Nazism. It's a bigger threat to our freedom than Nazism ever was. Yes, both are totalitarian, and both divide the world unnecessarily into us-and-them, the pure and the impure, and both make no secret of their desire to exterminate the Jews. But we were all more or less on the same side against the Nazis, whereas the Islamonazis have got plenty of friends among people in the West who ought to know better.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"No mosque at Ground Zero" (4 June 2010) http://youtube.com/watch?v=vjS0Novt3X4 2010

Hate, People, Secret, World

“I repel the suggestion made here in the heat of debate, that the committee or any of its members who favor this proposition seek in any form to mar the Constitution of the country, or take away from any State any right that belongs to it, or from any citizen of any State any right that belongs to him under that Constitution.”

John Bingham (1815–1900) American lawyer and politician

Debates leading up to the passage of the 14th amendment https://books.google.com/books?id=ccNqUnrhdskC&pg=PA1088

Country

“Katie Couric: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families, who are struggling with healthcare, housing, gas and groceries, allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?Sarah Palin: That's why I say, I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out, but ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping tho— uh, oh, it's got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as— competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview with Katie Couric, The Early Show (), quoted in * 2008-09-25
Palin: ‘What The Bailout Does Is Help Those Who Are Concerned About Health Care Reform’
Ryan
Powers
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/09/25/29772/palin-bailout-healthcare/
2008, 2008 interviews with Katie Couric

Money, Family, Help, Parting

“Like Rousseau, whom he resembles even more than he resembles Voltaire, Shaw never gave a social form to his assertiveness, never desired to arrive and to assimilate himself, or wield authority as of right.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Source: Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943), II

“For the Gay International, transforming sexual practices into identities through the universalizing of gayness and gaining 'rights' for those who identify (or more precisely, are identified by the Gay International) with it becomes the mark of an ascending civilization, just as repressing those rights and restricting the circulation of gayness is a mark of backwardness and barbarism.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
Desiring Arabs

Universe

“Toleration in religion was one of the great rights of man, and a man ought never to be deprived of what was his natural right.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (19 April 1791), quoted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume IV (1815), p. 192.
1790s

Religion, Nature

“The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Interview with the Associated Press, 2003-04-07
Excerpt from Santorum interview
USA Today
2003-04-23
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-23-santorum-excerpt_x.htm
2011-09-01

People, Idea, Thinking, Passion

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Life, Wisdom, Women, Men

“This is an opportunity for bipartisanship and transcendence, an opportunity to find our better selves and in rising to meet this challenge, create a better brighter future — a future worthy of the generations who come after us and who have a right to be able to depend on us.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Law School speech (2006)

Future, Dependency

“There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.</u”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Epigram at the end of the table of contents. (Underlining in source.)
Trout Fishing In America

“A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.”

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

Speech http://books.google.ca/books?id=zFclDyk2LTEC&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false (15 November 1867). 1860s

Sex, Color, Box

“Let me see if I get this right. We need to borrow $10 billion from China, and then we give it to Musharraf, who is a military dictator, who overthrew an elected government. And then we go to war, we lose all these lives promoting democracy in Iraq. I mean, what's going on here?”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

GOP debate on Fox News, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, January 10, 2008 http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-debatetrans11jan11,0,7962304.story?page=23 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wuu-ElI56Mw 2000s, 2006-2009

War, Democracy

“I am Ra. The Law of One, though beyond the limitations of name, as you call vibratory sound complexes, may be approximated by stating that all things are one, that there is no polarity, no right or wrong, no disharmony, but only identity. All is one, and that one is love/light, light/love, the Infinite Creator.”

Carla Rueckert

Session 4 http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=4#20 Quotations as Ra

Love, Law, Light

“Our vulnerability [ to ressentiment], is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone “has the right” to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

[paraphrasing the view of Max Scheler], p. 25.
The Art of Life (2008)

Education

“Patience! They will come to it gradually! Rousseau has sold a landscape for five hundred francs; for my part, I have sold a view of Fontainebleau for seventy-five francs. And I am commissioned to ask you for companion sketches to your drawings. And this time, instead of twenty francs, they are to pay you twenty-five! (Millet replied resignedly: 'If I could only sell two drawings a week at that price all would go right!”

Narcisse Virgilio Díaz (1807–1876) French painter

Diaz to Millet, c. 1845; as quoted by Albert Wolff, in Notes upon certain masters of the XIX century, - printed not published MDCCCLXXXVI (1886), The Art Age Press, 400 N.Y. (written after the exhibition 'Cent Chefs-d'Oeuvres: the Choice of the French Private Galleries', Petit, Paris / Baschet, New York, 1883, p. 20
In Paris Diaz had sold three drawings of his friend Millet for sixty francs, but Millet stayed still thoughtful, for he had to think of the morrow
Quotes of Diaz

Time, Parting, Drawing, Patience

“Accidents are not accidents but precise arrivals at the wrong right time.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Being Late http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21366/Being_Late From the poems written in English

Time

“The Yugoslavs accuse us of allegedly being chauvinists, of interfering in their internal affairs, and of demanding a rectification of the Albanian -Yugoslav borders. A number of our friends think and imply that we Albanian communists swim in such waters. We tell our friends who think thus that they are grossly mistaken. We are not chauvinists, we have neither demanded nor demand rectification of boundaries. But what we demand and will continually demand from the Titoites, and we will expose them to the end for this, is that they give up perpetrating the crime of genocide against the Albanian minority in Kosova and Metohia, that they give up the white terror against the Albanians of Kosova, that they give up driving the Albanians from their native soil and deporting them 'en masse' to Turkey. We demand that the rights of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia should be recognized according to the Constitution of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Is this chauvinist or Marxist?”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People, Thinking, Water

“There's a great phrase from Eric Jantsch … and he says, "these self-organizing dynamics are in every place in the universe, waiting at their marks". I love that phrase because you get that … the power for making water exists everywhere in the universe but the conditions have to be right. But if the conditions are right, then these self-organizing dynamics leap to it. So I think it's something like that, that the possibility for sentience has always been there but has been waiting for a chance to really display.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

MeaningofLife.tv interview, 2007

Love, Thinking, Universe, Water

“Freedom was a word that everyone mentioned but none of us knew. There wasn't much left for anyone to die for, except the right to remain peculiar.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

Freedom

“Lancelet said, “And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference…””

Marion Zimmer Bradley book The Mists of Avalon

The Mists of Avalon (1983)

Evil

“With all that this country has given me, I felt it wasn't right for me to be enjoying life in Indian Hill when Marines were fighting and dying in Iraq.”

Paul Hackett (1962) American lawyer and activist

Interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Life, Fight, Country

“You know, I have this version of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. God, in expelling Adam and Eve, kind of felt bad. He had gotten very angry, right? You know, you get angry and then you feel, "Well, maybe I overreacted." So, God was in that kind of mood when he expelled Adam and Eve from the garden. But his hands were tied. He had to go through with it; he had made the decision. God doesn't want to constantly second-guess himself. But he thought, "I know. I'll give them self-deception. Things are going to be truly horrendous out there, but they'll never notice."”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source: The Museum of Modern Art with Ron Rosenbaum http://www.errolmorris.com/content/interview/moma1999.html

God, Feeling, Mood, Decision

“Do you think that a reporter has a right to supply or suppress any part of a judgment?”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Cadell v. Palmer (1833), 1 Cl. & F. 372.

Thinking, Parting

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reuters (31 March 1998)

People, Justice, Dreams

“I sensed I was about to take one of the most important risks of my life. But I felt so right that I didn't hesitate.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 92

Life, Sense

“I’ll have to throw it at him, Rebel thought. Swing it up, catch him under the jaw, break a few teeth. Then grab the knife and hold him for the security people. That was a good plan. It ranked right up there with suddenly learning how to teleport.”

Michael Swanwick book Vacuum Flowers

Source: Vacuum Flowers (1987), Chapter 5, “People's Sheraton” (pp. 74-75)

People, Learning

“turning a big dial taht says "Racism" on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/841892608788041732] Tweets by year, 2017

“I love working. I'm not a vacation guy. Right? Like Obama, he plays golf in Hawaii. He flies in a 747.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 4, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC_3IxKcQIA April 21, 2016 rally 2010s, 2016, April

Love, Guy

“If I die, then I die. And if I don’t, then I don’t. Right now I feel good. I am aware that in some of my recent photos I look somewhat unhealthy, but that’s what illness can do. I’m not going to worry about that, I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from an interview for El Mundo (2014), regarding the announcement of Morrissey's cancer diagnosis
In interviews etc., About life and death

Feeling, Photo, Dead

“Contingency theorists suggest that we can best proceed by appointing 'the right people' to the job we have in mind, and by creating flexible authority, communications, and reward structures that will motivate them to satisfy their own needs through the achievement of organizational goals.”

Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization

Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 78; as cited in: Steffen Blaschke (2008). Structures and Dynamics of Autopoietic Organizations. p. 42

People, Communication, Motivation

“The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Man and the State (1951), p. 179.

“Every campus, of course, also has its rabble of young "liberals," who are forever making a din as they "demonstrate" for "world peash," "snivel rights," and the like, and who, if we may judge from their appearance and their yammering, are as afraid of war as they are of soap. I am sure that every student here present fully understands the importance of staying on the good side of the young "intellectuals" -- I mean the windward side, of course.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Can 'Liberals' be Educated?", speech (January 7, 1966) published in National Vanguard http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=5442 (July 8, 2005) 1960s

War, World, Understanding, Appearance

“A word to Sen. Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it -- we'll go at it over the next two months -- you know that's the nature of this business -- and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and my admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, and that's an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights. No country -- no country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Sen. Obama and his supporters for their achievement.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

People, Business, Support, Nature

“As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them, were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was right.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 26

People, Communication

“Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

"Discussion on Making All Things Equal"; Variant: If right were really right, it would be so different from not-right that there would be no room for argument. If so were really so, then it would be so different from not-so that there would be no room for argument.

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Children, People, Truth, Lie

“Well, it's been the monopolizing of great wealth, which tends to happen in basically unjust societies and undemocratic societies. We have plenty of would-be democrats, would-be liberals, and would-be progressives. But how do you organize? The Democratic Party is a machine to get votes for its people, none of who should probably be elected to the high offices of state. That's all. The Republican Party is fundamentally crooked and might well be outlawed one of these days. Le Pen, you know, in France, who is an out-and-out fascist, the French have managed in some clever way to contain him. I mean, he's always running for president; his votes never seem to show up. I don't know how they do it, but we've got to do that with the Republican base, the religious right. We don't want them running the country. Nobody does. Certainly not the founding fathers. And I think we have to ride herd on them and make sure they do not seize the state.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On fascism http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=342 2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

People, Way, Thinking, Country

“Political science, by which I mean nothing more abstruse or academic than consideration of a foreign country as a country in its own right, seems to have been almost completely supplanted by a preoccupation with international relations. What is thought irrelevant to that side of things (often wrongly) is considered beneath notice. This can be seen by the reflexiveness with which journalists now contact I. R. professors or nuclear specialists for comment on North Korea’s motivations, party conferences, personality cult, etc — and the perfect confidence with which that comment is supplied.This is not to say that discussion of the current crisis does justice to international relations as a discipline. Usually it is conducted in a very simplistic, moralizing, America-centric fashion, with no apparent sense of history. Much of the stuff on Twitter or in op-ed pieces is all the more embarrassing for having been written from a presumed position of great intellectual superiority to Donald Trump. For all his unsuitedness to be president, the fellow is no more ignorant of North Korea’s political nature than most of his critics are.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, And Then What? (June 2018)

Justice, Confidence, History, Motivation

“Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist.
Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

People, Beauty, Thinking

“What's happening is that 8% of the world's people use 35% of the world's petroleum, and are ready to blow everybody off the map to keep it that way. This is nothing more than a manifestation of junkie psychology on a mass scale. We're addicted, they got it, we're happy to pay for it, but if they won't sell it we'll break into their house and take it, because by god it will go into our right arm. that's the plan.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

History Ends in Green (1983)

God, Happiness, People, World

“In other words: Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing. Against the revolution, nothing, because the revolution also has its rights, and the first right of the revolution is the right to exist, and no one can oppose the revolution's right to exist. Inasmuch as the revolution embodies the interests of the people, inasmuch as the revolution symbolizes the interests of the whole naion, no one can justly claim a right to oppose it.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

People

“A dissertation on the rights of man in a state of nature. He asserted that every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no law, but the law written on his heart, and revealed to him by his Maker in the constitution of his nature and the inspiration of his understanding and his conscience. His right to his life, his liberty, no created being could rightfully contest. Nor was his right to his property less incontestable. The club that he had snapped from a tree, for a staff or for defence, was his own. His bow and arrow were his own; if by a pebble he had killed a partridge or a squirrel, it was his own. No creature, man or beast, had a right to take it from him. If he had taken an eel, or a smelt, or a sculpion, it was his property. In short, he sported upon this topic with so much wit and humor, and at the same time so much indisputable truth and reason, that he was not less entertaining than instructive. He asserted that these rights were inherent and inalienable. That they never could be surrendered or alienated but by idiots or madmen, and all the acts of idiots and lunatics were void, and not obligatory by all the laws of God and man.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1810s, Letter to William Tudor (1818)

Life, God, Truth, Law

“One should feel in the right arm the vibration of the bow hair on the strings. […] The moment tension or hardness enters into the hand then of course the vibrations will not be felt- they cannot penetrate.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

On proper holding of the bow
Source: Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist, P.143

Feeling

“But I had forgotten about the seven bowls of God's wrath stored in the minds of some of the unhappier prophets on the reactionary right,…”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Dies Irae, p. 133
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

God

“Just try and keep up with those feet of his sometime! Try and look graceful while thinking where your right hand should be, and how your head should be held, and which foot you end the next eight bars on, and whether you're near enough to the steps to leap up six of them backward without looking. Not to mention those Astaire rhythms. Did you ever count the different tempos he can think up in three minutes?”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Ginger Rogers in Evans, Harry. "Ginger, Leila, and Fred." Family Circle, May 8, 1936. (M).

Thinking

“Despite overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic influence, there is a tendency for those with pronounced free-market views to reject the reality of global warming. The reason underpinning this is transparent – if one accepts human-mediated climate change, then supporting mitigating action should follow. But the demon of regulation is a bridge too far for many libertarians. Given that climate change affects everyone whether they consent to it or not, then unregulated use of natural resources infringes the property rights of others and is ideologically equivalent to trespass, so the tenuous property rights house of cards comes crashing down.When faced with this ideological dilemma, free-market advocates often resolve the cognitive dissonance by simply rejecting the reality of climate change, rather than acknowledging that their axiom is fundamentally flawed.”

David Robert Grimes (1985) researcher

"Libertarian ideology is the natural enemy of science," The Guardian August 29, 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/29/libertarian-ideology-natural-enemy-science

Support, Nature, Reality, Change

“I listened to a panel of judges and I'll comment on that — I will not comment on the statements made by, um, certainly one judge — but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they'd do what they should be doing. I mean it's so sad, they should be, you know, when you read something so simple, and so beautifully written, and so perfectly written — other than the one statement, of course, having to do with "he" or "she" — but when you read something so perfectly written, and so clear to anybody, and then you have lawyers and you watched, I watched last night in amazement, and I heard things that I couldn't believe, things that really had nothing to do with what I just read, and I don't ever want to call a court biased, so I won't call it biased, and we haven't had a decision yet, but courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, February

Sadness, Justice, Decision, Reading

“1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.
2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.
3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.
4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?
5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.
6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Whither Socialism?

Source: Whither Socialism? (1994), Ch. 1 : The Theory of Socialism and the Power of Economic Ideas

Books, Way, Communication, Failure

“You are drafted and you get Tommy John right away, you have to wonder what are (the Mets) thinking of you then? I was advancing slowly (through the minor leagues). I started seeing guys who were drafted higher than me and signed for more money than me getting released. I was 24 in High-A and you don’t want to think about (finding another career), but I knew I had to prove myself. So I had to figure this out.”

Jacob deGrom (1988) American baseball player

quoted by Kristie Ackert of www.nydailynews.com http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/jacob-degrom-prove-years-success-article-1.3391972

Money, Guy, Thinking

“We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

As quoted in Freedom in the World: Political Rights & Civil Liberties, 1990-1991 https://web.archive.org/web/20180917224837/https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom_in_the_World_1990-1991_complete_book.pdf (1991), New York: Freedom House, p. 16 1990s

“We do not remember that our people - during our sad but proud Romanian history - at any time tolerated being dishonoured. Our fields are full of the dead, but not of cowards. Today we are free men with the consciousness of our rights. Slaves we are not and never were. We receive death, but not humiliation. Rest assured, we have sufficient moral strength left to find an honourable exit from a life we cannot support without honour and dignity.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

Life, Death, Men, People

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Not found in Lewis's works. "Integrity means doing the right thing at all times, without hesitation" is found in a 1943 syndicated newspaper column. Elsie Robinson, "Listen, World!" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/58360960/, Evening News (Harrisburg, PA), 1943-02-24, p. 10. "Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is there to judge" is found (unattributed) in the 1965 Journal of Clinical Psychology https://books.google.com/books?id=9rm1AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22integrity%22+%22doing+the+right+thing%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22doing+the+right+thing%22. The quote became attributed to C.S. Lewis by 2012 https://books.google.com/books?id=XH-1TURLaf4C&pg=PT154&dq=integrity+%22even+when%22+%22c+s+lewis%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6x9XznoTKAhUKymMKHdoKCKoQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=integrity%20%22even%20when%22%20%22c%20s%20lewis%22&f=false. Misattributed

Deep, Powerful

“This may be why New Yorkers instinctively avoid making eye contact with each other in crowded places, why they "look right through you," as dismayed visitors often complain. They are not looking right through you at all; they are discreetly avoiding an intrusion into your space. They sense the danger in a place where a one-degree temperature rise can mean an explosion.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Spaced In" (p.120)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Sense

“I simply nod, for I have already noticed the short distance between his right and left eyes. It is my secret way of detecting fags. I know he will speak. And the first thing the idiot says is, “Are you by any chance Samoan?” All my life strangers have been interested in my ancestry. There is something about my bearing that cries out for history. I’ve been mistaken for American Indian, Spanish, Filipino, Hawaiian, Samoan and Arabian. No one has ever asked me if I’m a spic or a greaser. Am I Samoan? “Aren’t we all?””

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

I groan.
Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 68.

Life, Secret, Way, History

“12 principles for a 21st century conservatism.
1. The fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid.
2. Peaceful social being is preferable to isolation and to war. In consequence, it justly and rightly demands some sacrifice of individual impulse and idiosyncrasy.
3. Hierarchies of competence are desirable and should be promoted.
4. Borders are reasonable. Likewise, limits on immigration are reasonable. Furthermore, it should not be assumed that citizens of societies that have not evolved functional individual-rights predicated polities will hold values in keeping with such polities.
5. People should be paid so that they are able and willing to perform socially useful and desirable duties.
6. Citizens have the inalienable right to benefit from the result of their own honest labor.
7. It is more noble to teach young people about responsibilities than about rights.
8. It is better to do what everyone has always done, unless you have some extraordinarily valid reason to do otherwise.
9. Radical change should be viewed with suspicion, particularly in a time of radical change.
10. The government, local and distant, should leave people to their own devices as much as possible.
11. Intact heterosexual two-parent families constitute the necessary bedrock for a stable polity.
12. We should judge our political system in comparison to other actual political systems and not to hypothetical utopias.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Speech of Jordan Peterson at Carleton Place for the Conservative Party of Ontario <nowiki>[12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0</nowiki>] Concepts

War, People, Family, Peace

“I was going to say he's a piece of work, but that might not translate too well. Is that all right, if I call you a 'piece of work?”

Jean-Claude Juncker (1954) Luxembourgian politician

George W. Bush, June 20 2005 EuropeanVoice http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/juncker-is-a-piece-of-work-but-is-that-good-/52663.aspx.

“It is with considerable reluctance that I criticize the monetarists, because, though I consider their proposed monetary policy unfeasible, they are after all much more nearly right in their assumptions and prescriptions than the majority of present academic economists. The simplistic form of the quantity theory of money that they hold is not tenable; but they are overwhelmingly right in insisting on how much "money matters," and they are right in insisting that in most circumstances, and over the long run, it is the quantity of money that is most influential in determining the purchasing power of the monetary unit. Other things being equal, the more dollars that are issued, the smaller becomes the value of each individual dollar. So at the moment the monetarists are more effective opponents of further inflation than the great bulk of politicians and even putative economists who still fail to recognize this basic truth.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money, Truth

“Advancing the vision of freedom serves our highest ideals, as expressed in the U. N.'s Charter's commitment to the dignity and worth of the human person. Advancing this vision also serves our security interests. History shows that when citizens have a voice in choosing their own leaders, they are less likely to search for meaning in radical ideologies. And when governments respect the rights of their people, they're more likely to respect the rights of their neighbors.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

People, History, Search, Freedom

“The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Individuality http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html (1873). Context: The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.

God, People, Truth

“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.”

Lee Iacocca book Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (2007), Scribner,

Cars, Madness

“With the collapse of the old welfare states, all this has come to seem decidedly quaint. As the language of antibureaucratic individualism has been adopted, with increasing ferocity, by the Right, which insists on “market solutions” to every social problem, the mainstream Left has increasingly reduced itself to fighting a kind of pathetic rearguard action, trying to salvage remnants of the old welfare state: it has acquiesced with–often spearheaded–attempts to make government efforts more “efficient” though the partial privatization of services and the incorporation of ever-more “market principle,” “market incentives,” and market-based “accountability processes” into the structure of the bureaucracy itself.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules (2015)

Problem, Effort, Fight

“But the cards are stacked against us. Scurrilous and abusive rhetoric is spewed by politicians and so-called religious leaders, who cloak themselves by turning the Constitution on its head and claim protection and permission to demonize and denigrate us. Hiding behind the perversion of the concepts of religious freedom and political speech, those people have carved out a special right to impose their bigotry and hatred for us.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me
Variant: We want to be able to move freely and safely in our daily lives, free from the threat of random hate violence. themselves by turning the Constitution on its head and claim protection and permission to demonize and denigrate us. Hiding behind the perversion of the concepts of religious freedom and political speech, those people have carved out a special right to impose their bigotry and hatred for us.

People, Freedom

“Lionel: I've been getting a lot of calls about you, Marge. People just love your no-pressure approach.
Marge: Well, you know what we say: the right house for the right person.
Lionel: I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The right house is the house that's for sale. And the right person is anyone.”

Phil Hartman (1948–1998) Canadian American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist

On the Simpsons, Lionel Hutz

Love, People, Secret, Housing

“Here's what I've started thinking: All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more I climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God, Thinking, Heart

“Successful people never forget what they love to do and are passionate about. They quickly learn to follow their own path and to make the right choices, no matter how crazy or unpopular they might appear to others. Just look at Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, who quit studying at a prestigious university to pursue his dreams.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Love, People, Dreams, Study

“I think Larry is right to notice that the contradictions are catching the allies up already. It's one of those cases where even before you begin bombing the children, the coalition is falling apart. And that's good news. And I'm very much in favor of it. Some Powell or other is messing up the war.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Panel on Public Domain at Duke University Law School, November 10, 2001 http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/mpegcast.html.

War, Children, Thinking

“The average Briton, as well as honorable and right honorable members of the House, had known that England possessed colonies and had understood that colonies, as a matter of course, existed to supply him with sugar and rice, indigo and tobacco, and in return to buy at a good price whatever he might himself wish to sell.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Housing

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Death, Men, Forgiveness, Suffering

“You have to learn all the big ideas in the key disciplines in a way that they're in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life. If you do that, I solemnly promise you that one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to your right and left and you’ll think "my heavenly days, I'm now one of the few competent people in my whole age cohort."”

Charlie Munger (1924) American business magnate, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist

If you don't do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows. USC Law School Commencement Speech http://genius.com/Charlie-munger-usc-law-commencement-speech-annotated (2007-05-13)

Life, People, Age, Way

“About the cover of "The world wont’ listen"
It represents the band to me. On the front you've got four guys who look like, if not the band, then Smiths fans. On the back you've got the female side of it - individually they really look like the Smiths: Morrissey on the far right, me on the second right, Andy [Rourke, bass] on the second left and Mike [Joyce, drums] on the far left. To find a picture like that is really clever. We didn't discuss it, but I understood.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from "The 100 best record covers of all time", Q (June 2001).

World, Guy

“I shall not rest until, once again, the destinies of our people and our party are joined together again in victory at the next general election Labour in its rightful place in government again.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Philip Webster, "Blair sets sights on Downing Street", The Times, 22 July 1994.
Speech on being elected Leader of the Labour Party, 21 July 1994.
1990s

People, Victory

“Islam was getting raised from the status of an imperialist ideology to that of a religion. The residues of Islamic imperialism were now being rehabilitated as the representatives of a religious community which was in a ‘minority’ and which was trying to ‘save’ itself from the ‘domination of a majority’. The frantic efforts of a foreign fraternity to retain its unequal rights and privileges, earned during the days of its military domination, were now being described as ‘a minority’s struggle for self-identity’.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Religion, Communication, Effort

“Was George Orwell right about 1984?”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Keynote address at Apple's annual sales conference first introducing the Macintosh "1984" commercial, which ends with the announcer saying "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." (October 1983) - (online video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSiQA6KKyJo 1980s

“I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality and moral choice—and that is precisely why we are under the obligation to recognise and respect the rights of animals.”

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Source: The Rights of Animals (1965), p. 21

Imagination, Animals

“I'll never forget the first thing she said to me, she said: "Hey - you've got weasels on your face." Right then I knew it was true love.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

"Albuquerque", Running with Scissors.
Song lyrics

Love, Forgetting

“Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. That is why Hillary Clinton's message is that things will never change. My message is that things have to change – and they have to change right now.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)

Money, Business, Change

“Ghostwritten’s secret agenda is to offer up eight different answers to the question, "Why do things happen?" so it has the right to monkey about with time and history. number9dreams’s secret agenda is to offer eight different answers to the question, "In what space does the mind operate?"”

David Mitchell (1969) English novelist

Interview in Stop Smiling magazine (29 June 2007) http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=841

Secret, History, Question, Time

“Some people can't see miracles when they're right in the middle of them.
Better than seeing miracles that don't exist.
You're determined to stand entirely alone, aren't you?
That's where I've always stood.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

People

“As a 15 year jurist, I like to think I speak with clarity. So let me try again. When a United States Senator commits a non criminal act of indiscretion; and when it is brought to his attention he immediately has the integrity to apologize; and the apology is accepted by the victim: IT IS WRONG for the dogs of war to leap onto his back and demand his resignation from the United States Senate. It is morally wrong.
And as an aside for all you sanctimonious judges who are demanding my resignation, hear this. I was a civil right lawyer actively prosecuting sexual harassment cases on behalf of the Attorney General's Office before Anita Hill and before you were born.
Lighten up folks. This is how Democrats remain in the minority.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-17-2017 PM

War, Dogs, Thinking

“I’ve always felt that animals are the purest spirits in the world. They don’t fake or hide their feelings, and they are the most loyal creatures on Earth. And somehow we humans think we’re smarter—what a joke. Every time I had to do a report or a debate in school, I would research the topic of animal rights. I was horrified to find the cruelty and pain that they were forced to endure at our hands. … I aspire to have a lot of land one day, where I will rescue and board many animals.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

“P!nk Tells Circus, ‘Pack Your Trunks!’”, interview with PETA (18 July 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/pink-tells-circus-pack-your-trunks/.

Pain, World, School, Feeling

“The reason for his anguish, the intolerable burden which had broken him at last, was the simplest thing in the world: he loved his wife. He always had, and he always would. Nothing could change that, but that was what had made his agony bite so deep, the reason he couldn't forgive himself for not somehow making things "all right" again… and the reason he'd had to turn to someone else to rebuild himself when the collapse came. It had been cowardly of him, in many ways, but he simply could not have made himself dump his weakness, his collapse on her shoulders while she coped with everything God had already done to her.”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Echoes of Honor (1998)

Love, God, World, Way

“The first principle of a Keyes administration, it will apply in foreign policy, it will apply in domestic policy, it will apply everywhere. There is a God, and we are not him! I will not join the Clinton Democrats who worship government as their god! I will not join the Dole Republicans who worship power as their god! I will not join the Forbes Republicans who worship money as their god! I will stand where the founders of this nation stood, and I will give my respect and allegiance to the creator God who is the ground of justice and who is the ground of all our human rights!”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Miscellaneous Source: Alan Keyes, January 27, 1996 at the Louisiana Republican Convention. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/96_01_27lagop.htm.

Money, God, Justice

“The ISIS barbarians were actually quite right in entitling their video “A Message Written in Blood.” Up and down the centuries, tyrants and their lackeys have thought that they could wipe out the followers of Jesus through acts of violence. But as Tertullian observed long ago, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. And they were furthermore right in sending their message to “the Nation of the Cross.””

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

But they should know that the cross taunts them. ISIS and the Meaning of the Cross https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/a-message-in-blood-isis-and-the-meaning-of-the-cross/4677/ (March 20, 2015)

“Well, I had tried out a few schemes of my own, until one day I began to watch Joe Jackson. He looked to me about the freest, longest hitter I had seen anywhere. He could take a good, natural cut at the ball without losing his balance and when he landed the ball usually kept going until it disappeared. If you will remember, he was the first to hit one over the right field stands at the Polo Grounds. So I said to myself: If that style works so well with Jackson, why not for me? And I began keeping my right foot well forward and my left foot well back. In the first place, being a left-handed hitter, this gave me a chance to get in a lot of leverage and to get my full weight back of the punch. It brought my body around in a half turn and as I stepped into the ball with my right foot I was turning in a natural way in the same direction my bat was traveling. I tried this idea out; it worked great—and I've stuck to it ever since.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Sportlight: Learning From Others" by Grantland Rice, in The New York Tribune (March 15, 1923), p. 14

Way, Travel, Idea, Nature

“Mr. Gladstone's Doctrine which the Observer praised that every sane man has a moral Right to vote goes straight to universal suffrage which not even the most vehement Reformer has hitherto advocated. Moreover if every sane Man has that Right why does it not also belong to every sane woman Who is equally affected by Legislation and Taxation. The Truth is that a vote is not a Right but a Trust. All the Nation cannot by Possibility be brought together to vote and therefore a Selected few are appointed by Law to perform this Function for the Rest and the Publicity attached to the Performance of this Trust is a Security that it will be responsibly performed.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Charles Barrington (15 May 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 565.
1860s

Truth, Law, Universe

“My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Partly cited in: Linda Weintraub, Arthur Coleman Danto, Thomas McEvilley. Art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s. Art Insights, Inc., 1996. p. 201; And cited in Kristine Stiles, ‎Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. p. 381
"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

People, Education, Art, Feeling

“This is the essence of the problem. To Dan Rather and to a lot of other powerful members of the chattering class, that which is right of center is conservative. That which is left of center is middle of the road. No wonder they can't recognize their own bias.”

Bernard Goldberg (1945) American journalist

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (2001)

Problem

“Learn to live in harmony with each other and nature. Living a thoroughly loving joyous abundant life is your god given right. Nature is abundant. Live according to the universal law, universal principles such as Brother/Sisterly Love, Universal Peace, Individual Freedom and Prosperity for all.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

Source: Mayan Majix, Comment on Recent Extra Terrestrial Activity http://www.mayanmajix.com/art4538.html

Love, Life, God, Peace

“Radical Islam has seen us for what we are: a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can't stop injecting, even though we know it's going to kill us. And they're taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities. And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn't want to be agreed with, it wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone, and some of us, frankly, think that's a little bit too much to ask.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"More demands from Islam" (9 October 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=mHh0NdR5Jh0 2007

God, Thinking, Sense

“Right now alternative energy is still treated as a supplement rather than a substitute for fossil fuels within the energy industry as presently constituted. The rapid growth of alternative energy should not therefore be seen as a radical break with the domination of fossil fuels. That still needs to occur.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice, 2017

“In a few years all our restless and angry hearts will be quiet in death, but those who come after us will live in the world which our sins have blighted or which our love of right has redeemed.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xv

Love, Death, World, Heart

“We support the right of women to choose our own lives for ourselves. If women wish to be lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, politicians, we should have the same opportunities as men, more and more we do…But many women wish to devote themselves mainly to raising a family and running a home. And we should have that choice too. Very few jobs can compare in long-term importance and satisfaction with that of housewife and mother. For the family is the building block of society. It is a nursery, a school, a hospital, a leisure place, a place of refuge and a place of rest. It encompasses the whole of society. It fashions our beliefs. It is the preparation for the rest of our life. And women run it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Women's Conference (25 May 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107248 Third term as Prime Minister

Life, Women, Men, School

“It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.”

Bill Sali (1954) American politician

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20061108/pl_cq_politics/repelectbillsaliridaho

“I ordered Major [transport company] tomorrow afternoon 2 o'clock to pack the paintings, I am still completely in all the paintings - as nightmares they are flying around me, now you know as of old how that is, but tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock I am free. I believe there are nice things among them, the drawing has become a little too fat, but there is much good in it, and it is very well-finished. I send to Peacock. The forest with wood hackers, which was hanging above the door of my studio, then the sheep [small composition-sketch of a sheep herd with shepherd] and... I believe you know them all, 7 pieces together, afterwards I have to start working for Arnold & Tripp [art-sellers in Paris], I let those guys wait and that's not right to do..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018 (version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Morgen middag 2 uur heb ik Majoor [transportbedrijf] besteld om de schilderijen in te pakken ik ben nu nog geheel in alle die schilderijen als nacht merries zijn ze om me heen nu je weet wel van ouds, hoe of dat is maar morgen om 2 uur ben ik vrij. Ik geloof dat er aardige dingen bij zijn, de teekening is wel wat dik geworden, doch veel goeds er in, en erg af ik verzend aan Peacock Het bosch met hout hakkers, dat boven de deur van mijn atelier hing dan de schapen [klein compositieschetsje schaapskudde met herder] en [klein compositieschetsje schapen op bospad] en [klein compositieschetsje met schaapskudde] en [klein compositieschetsje koe?] en [klein compositieschetsje schaapskudde met vliegdennen] en de teekening (schapen uit het bosch komende) ik geloof dat je ze allen kent, 7 stuks te zamen, ik moet daarna ook voor Arnold & Tripp [kunsthandelaars in Parijs] aan de gang, die luitjes laat ik maar wachten en dat mag niet.. In a letter of Mauve from Laren, 27 June 1887 original text of the letter in RKD Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/10, The Hague 1880's

Art, Guy, Waiting, Drawing

Quotes about right page 42

Quotes about right
page 42