Quotes about rock
page 9

“"You know that in all tombs there is always a false door?"
Renisenb stared. "Yes, of course."
"Well, people are like that too. They create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is a bare rock … And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself."”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

(1945)

People, Truth, Thinking, Reality

“My voice likes rock music. My problem is, I can do a lot of things, but I have to find my own voice.”

Lucy Lawless (1968) New Zealand actress

Jamie Sotonoff (October 5, 2007) "The soulful side of a warrior princess", Daily Herald, p. 18.

Music, Problem

“I have a big legacy of The Clash to live up to and I don't intend to uriny on a legend. I intend to build forward into the next century. The music has to be by the musicians, and there's too much changing things by the record company. I got a message for everyone in a record company: We don't care if you lose your job! You ruin music and I'll get all the smoothers out off the way, the people who smooth the sound off. Let the musicians have the music the way they want it, and not the way you think the grandmothers and 3-year olds will gonna buy it. Cause this is not about 3-year olds or grandmothers… This is Rock and Roll!”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Bizarre Festival (21 August 1999)

People, Music, Way, Thinking

“Well Crocodile Rocking is something shocking,
When your feet just can't keep still.
I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Crocodile Rock
Song lyrics, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (1973)

Time

“Although what is called ‘philosophical speculation’ is undoubtedly on the decline, many of the practically minded have not yet freed themselves from a method of reasoning, which, in the last analysis, has its roots in theology and metaphysics. No science which pretends to be exact can accept an untested theory or doctrine; yet even in an exact science there is often an admixture of magic, theology, and philosophy. It is one of the tasks of our time to aid scientific reasoning to attain its goal without hindrance. Whoever undertakes this is concerned not so much with ‘philosophy,’ properly speaking, as with ‘anti-philosophy.’ For him there is but one science with subdivisions — a unified science of sciences. We have a science that deals with rocks, another that deals with plants, a third that deals with animals, but we need a science that unites them all.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Otto Neurath (1931) "Physicalism: The Philosophy of the Viennese Circle," in: The Monist, Vol. 41, No. 4 (October, 1931), pp. 618-623; Lead paragraph
1930s

Science, Time, Animals

“M. I. A.: No. My fashion icon is Colonel [Muammar al-] Gaddafi, and he always has been. He’s rock ’n’ roll.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

Fashion

“There is one thing I don't understand about Astral Weeks. Of all the records I have ever made that one is definitely not rock. You could throw that record at the wall, take it to music colleges, analyze it to death. Nobody is going to tell me that it is a rock album. Why they keep calling it one I have no idea.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

An Oral History of Popular Music (1989)

Death, Music, Idea, Understanding

“He went up on the mountain beside the giant stone
They knew he was insane so they left him alone
He'd given up enlisting help for there was no one else
He spent his days devising ways to stop the rock himself
One night while he was working building braces on the ledge
The ground began to rumble the rock trembled on the edge.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

The Rock
Song lyrics, Portrait Gallery (1975)

Way, Mountain, Help, Night

“Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirletters/id/9847/show/9846 to Catharine Merrill, from New Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley (9 June 1872); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 9: Persons and Problems 1870s

Love, Men, God, People

“I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll.”

Nick Lowe (1949) British singer

"I Knew the Bride" on Dave Edmunds' album Get It (1977) (Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe performance) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT2EQoWBHWU

“Jumbled black rocks adorned an otherwise pale, flat landscape of salmons and khakis. Mountains rose in distant ridges. Out there in the Namaqua sea, I found myself thinking of South Africa as an island. Like Robinson Crusoe, I was walking its perimeter, noting the extent of my domain, checking for cannibals, finding fresh water. Sure, there were 47 million others who might make such a claim, but theirs were no more valid than mine, only similar. Beating my drum, singing the land, proclaiming it mine from coast to coast.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

The Marginal Safari: Scouting the Edge of South Africa (2010)

Mountain, Thinking, Water, Distant

“On the way home from school, I’d go two blocks out of my way to pass by Lopez’ Pool Hall to look for cigarette butts that the veteranos had flicked to the sidewalk. They had G. I. hair cuts, their old, spit-shined paratrooper boots and the same khaki uniforms they wore to fight the Japs. I’d pretend not to notice them leaning against the building. With my head down, I’d walk along the gutter and just casually push the longer butts with my toe as if I were kicking a can or a rock … just a barefoot boy with cheek humhumming along the road on a hot summer day in his Huckleberry Finn strides, oh yes!”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 91.

School, Way, Home, Boy

“Where would rock and roll be without feedback?”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

Dark Side of the Moon Sessions
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972)

“I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane to St. John Rivers (Ch. 34)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Love, Idea, Help

“I beheld their chief, tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. His shield the rising moon! He sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the silent hill!”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Book I
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

“I would say it was about time that you believe in something. And sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll ain't it…. A lot of people used to think they were.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

People, Sex, Thinking, Time

“The waves were indifferent, and the wind; and the rocks neither knew nor cared who owned them, Christ’s Vicar or an English King.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

Fifth measure “The White Boat” (p. 179)
Pavane (1968)

Christ, Indifference

“Industry must be humanized, not destroyed. It must be the instrument not of selfishness, but of service. Change not the law, but the attitude of the mind. Let our citizens look not to the false prophet but to the pilgrims. Let them fix their eyes on Plymouth Rock as well as Beacon Hill. The supreme choice must be not to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Law and Order (1920)

Law, Change, Falseness, Selfishness

“The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.”

Walter Pater (1839–1894) essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer

On the Mona Lisa, in Leonardo da Vinci The Renaissance http://www.authorama.com/renaissance-1.html (1873)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“Spiral's views are so enchanting that when I heard them, I cleared off to Australia, strolled up Ayres Rock to the meditating Aborigines, pulled down my trousers and pants, polished my dinkle 'til it was as stiff as a pipe, prised its end open and shouted, "Lads, who wants a blow of my didgeridoo?!" They said they faced this ignorance from the white man on an almost daily basis.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Big Brother's Big Mouth (2004–2007)

“Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Universe

“Music’s playin’ up and down the block
Mostly Christian, Blues, Country, Folk, and Southern Rock
It’s our little piece of paradise way out here in the woods
There is always somethin’ goin’ on down in the trailerhood.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Trailerhood.
Song lyrics, Bullets in the Gun (2010)

Music, Way, Country

“Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Between Going and Staying

Love, Books, World, Light

“A window of opportunity for me usually involves a rock.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

“And to me it seems that you have fallen asleep upon a white rock, and in a parish of dreams, and have dreamt all this in a moment while it was night.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Philopatris, xxi, as translated in the epigraph, p. 8
The White Stone (1905)

Dreams, Night

“This is the kingdom of the chemical elements, the substances from which everything tangible is made. It is not an extensive country, for it consists of only a hundred or so regions (as we shall often term the elements), yet it accounts for everything material in our actual world. From the hundred elements that are at the center of our story, all planets, rocks, vegetation, and animals are made. These elements are the basis of the air, the oceans, and the Earth itself. We stand on the elements, we eat the elements, we are the elements. Because our brains are made up of elements, even our opinions are, in a sense, properties of the elements and hence inhabitants of the kingdom.”

Peter Atkins (1940) British chemist

Source: Periodic Kingdom (1995), Chapter 1. The Terrain

World, Sense, Animals, Country

“Command & Conquer is very much a part of what my style…was founded on, combining the various elements of rock, electronic, hip-hop, and contemporary edge with some orchestral and some what-not—it comes down to not having limitations on what it is you can do, and when you have a project like this that allows you that freedom and that creativity to thrive, you can really take advantage…I think the biggest difference now is, imagine my mindset and the way I was thinking and writing when Command & Conquer first came out, and add about fifteen years experience to that—I think that's what you can expect from Universe at War.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Petroglyph Video Podcast Source: [Kevin Yu, Frank Klepacki = date=2007-03-27, http://www.petroglyphgames.com/news/index.php?id=149&year=2007, VIDEO PODCAST: THE KING IS BACK TO PREVIEW THE MUSIC IN UAW!, Petroglyph Games http://www.petroglyphgames.com/, 22 April, 2007]

War, Way, Imagination, Thinking

“The Court has no fears for the safety of the Christian religion. It does not believe that the rock upon which Christianity stands can ever be shaken.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

Trial of Mary Ann Carlile (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 1050.

Fear, Religion

“Classifying rock music is an easy way for kids to identify with it. A band like Finch screams and sings, so they classify that with the Used because I scream and sing. But at the same time, we are worlds different. When I was listening to Nirvana, I never got involved in the fact that they were grunge-rock or whatever people were starting to call it at the time. I was raised listening to many different things. But everything has to be put into a category. That's fine with me. The music says enough.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

G. Brown (January 3, 2003) "Screams catapult Utah's The Used", The Denver Post, The Denver Post Corp., p. FF-02.

People, World, Music, Way

“I love the joy of mountains
Wandering free with no concerns
Every day I find food for this old body
There's leisure for thinking, nothing to do
Often I carry an ancient book
Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion
To look down a thousand foot precipice
Overhead are swirling clouds
A cold moon chilly cold
My body feels like a flying crane”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Love, Books, Food, Feeling

“Our party remains as firm as this rock and will not be divided by any force in Germany.”

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

1930s, From the film Triumph of the Will (1935)

“There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Act II
Buchanan Dying (1974)

Heart

“Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky
was my big empty factory…
the Lorax…
and I.
The Lorax said nothing.
Just gave me a glance,
just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance,
as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants.
And I'll never forget the grim look on his face
when he heisted himself and took leave of this place,
through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace.
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word:
UNLESS.”

Dr. Seuss The Lorax

Whatever that meant . . . well, I just couldn't guess.
The Lorax (1971)

Sadness, Forgetting

“[A]fter I got evicted from the Republican Party, I began reading considerably more of the works of American anarchists, thanks largely to Murray Rothbard…and I was just amazed.When I read Emma Goldman, it was as though everything I had hoped that the Republican Party would stand for suddenly came out crystallised. It was a magnificently clear statement. And another interesting things about reading Emma Goldman is that you immediately see that, consciously or not, she's the source of the best in Ayn Rand. She has the essential points that the Ayn Rand philosophy thinks, but without any of this sort of crazy solipsism that Rand is so fond of, the notion that people accomplish everything all in isolation. Emma Goldman understands that there’s a social element to even science, but she also writes that all history is a struggle of the individual against the institutions, which of course is what I’d always thought Republicans were saying, and so it goes.In other words, in the Old Right, there were a lot of statements that seemed correct, and they appeal to you emotionally, as well; it was why I was a Republican—isolationist, anti-authoritarian positions, but they’re not illuminated by anything more than statement. They just are good statements. But in the writings of the anarchists the same statements are made, but with this long illumination out of experience, analysis, comparison…it's rock-solid, and so I immediately realised that I'd been stumbling around inventing parts of a tradition that was old and thoughtful and already existed, and that's very nice to discover that—I don't think it's necessary to invent everything.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

Anarchism in America http://alexpeak.com/art/films/aia/ (15 January 1983)

People, Hope, History, Understanding

“The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang — home-going. So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil. Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death’s arms, dust to dust, spirit to spirit — waited on, watched over, noticed only by their Maker, each arriving at its own heaven-dealt destiny. All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day they were first tried. Trees towering in the sky, braving storms of centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast — all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love. Yet all are our brothers and they enjoy life as we do, share heaven’s blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity. 'Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

pages 439-440 ("Trees towering … into eternity" are the next-to-last lines of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.) John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Life, Death, Law

“The friends of genuine, and I will add of rational Christianity, have not, however, on the whole, much reason to regret that their enemies have not made these distinctions; since by this means, we have been taught to make them ourselves; so that Christianity is perhaps as much indebted to its enemies, as to its friends, for this important service. In their indiscriminate attacks, whatever has been found to be untenable has been gradually abandoned, and I hope the attack will be continued till nothing of the wretched outworks be left; and then, I doubt not, a safe and impregnable fortress, will be sound in the center, a fortress built upon a rock, against which the gates of death will not prevail.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Death, Hope

“The character and conquest of the invincible champion are ever the same. A Lacedaemonian died while writing with his own blood on a rock — " Sparta has conquered!" But, O, there is an illustration higher and better than any derived from mere earthly annals. Jesus veiled His glory in the skies; shrouded divinity in mortality, and with godhead and humanity coalesced in His person, entered the lists with more than mortal strife against the powers of hell. He drank the bitter cup with sublimer resignation than the sages of earth ever knew; contended victoriously where finite champions must inevitably have been destroyed; fell, like the strong man, destroying His foes by His death; persevered on our behalf in all the fearful descent from the august throne of the Eternal to the stony floor of the cold and gloomy sepulchre; that Hope's sweet fountain might gush up for mankind in Golgotha, and Salvation plant her banner with immortal triumph at the portal of the conquered tomb.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 451.

Death, Fear, Hope, Hell

“Seven things has Lady Lackless
Keeps them underneath her black dress
One a ring that’s not for wearing
One a sharp word, not for swearing
Right beside her husband’s candle
There’s a door without a handle
In a box, no lids or locks
Lackless keeps her husband’s rocks
There’s a secret she’s been keeping
She’s been dreaming and not sleeping
On a road, that’s not for traveling
Lackless likes her riddle raveling.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 11, “The Binding of Iron” (pp. 85-86)

Secret, Dreams, Travel, Sleep

“I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Rolling Stone; reported in " In quotes: Keith Richards http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6526133.stm", BBC (April 4, 2007).

Kiss, Nature

“So analyze me, surprise me, but can't magmatize me
Scannin' while you're plannin' ways to sabotage me
I leave 'em froze like her-on in your nose
Nas'll rock well, It ain't hard to tell”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

It Ain't Hard to Tell
On Albums, Illmatic (1994)

Way

“She gets rock n roll, a rock n roll station
And a rock n roll dream.
She's making movies on location.
She don't know what it means.
But the music make her wanna be the story.
And the story was whatever was the song, what it was.
Rollergirl don't worry.
D. J. plays the movies all night long.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Skateaway
Song lyrics, Making Movies (1980)

Dreams, Music, Night

“Now, take as an illustration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have been there, I dare say. I have; and among the things that interested me were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good many people at the bottom, who were living on English taxes. Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken and retained when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour.”

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

Speech in Birmingham (18 December 1862), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869), p. 214.
1860s

War, People, Law

“I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter I: The Earth; 1. The Starting Point (p. 11)

Men, Hunger, History, Star

“I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

As quoted in The Age (25 May 2006) http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/05/24/1148150327071.html

People, Lying, Thinking

“To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", p. 186
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Bird, Wolf, Sun

“When we were growing up, the 45 single was the heart of rock-and-roll and in many regards still is. It's the hardest thing to pull off. The surest sign that a band is growing stale and running out of creative ideas is when it turns to prog. And I well remember the 1970s when prog almost destroyed rock music. It's the mold growing on a congealed band on its last legs. Indeed, it still lurks among us in new, insidious forms like indie. The few times U2 has attempted prog, we've tempered it with good songwriting.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Music, Idea, Time, Heart

“By the end of the decade it had become obvious that perhaps the one constant of our variegated and strung-out peer groups was a pervasive sense of self-consciousness that sent us in grouchy packs to ugly festivals just to be together and dig ourselves and each other, as if all of this meant something greater than that we were kids who liked rock 'n' roll and came out to have a good time, as if our very styles and trappings and drugs and jargon could be in themselves political statements for any longer than about fifteen stoned seconds, even a threat to the Mother Country! So we loved and loved and doted on ourselves and our reflections in each other even as the whole thing got out of hand and turned into mud and disaster areas and downs and death.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 66
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Love, Death, Sense, Time

“Guyana-Cult of the Damned has crawled out from under a rock and into local theaters, and will do nicely as this week's example of the depths to which people will plunge in search of a dollar. The movie is a gruesome version of the Jonestown massacre of 1978, so badly written and directed it illustrates a simple rule of movie exhibition: If a film is nauseating and reprehensible enough in the first place, it doesn't matter how badly it's made - people will go anyway.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/guyana-cult-of-the-damned-1980 of Guyana-Cult of the Damned (29 January 1980) Reviews, Zero star reviews

People, Search

“As these lines are being written, the circumstances under which I first clearly grasped the important generalisation that the laws of Heredity were solely concerned with deviations expressed in statistical units, are vividly recalled to my memory. It was in the grounds of Naworth Castle, where an invitation had been given to ramble freely. A temporary shower drove me to seek refuge in a reddish recess in the rock by the side of the pathway. There the idea flashed across me, and I forgot everything else for a moment in my great delight.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity ( 1909 ed. http://books.google.com/books?id=X9IIAQAAIAAJ)

Law, Idea, Memory

“From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Life, Death, Men, God

“As roll a thousand waves to the rocks, so Swaran's host came on. As meets a rock a thousand waves, so Erin met Swaran of spears.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Book I
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

“Where art thou, beam of light? Hunters, from the mossy rock, saw ye the blue-eyed fair?”

James Macpherson Temora

Temora, Book VI, p. 353
The Poems of Ossian

Art, Light

“Does that make you happy, Mr. Rock & Roll Fantasy? You know what? Eddie Vedder’s gonna live to be 98. How’s that make you feel, huh? I love you, come back. You come back! You love us. You love me, don’t you? You love Frances. Where are you? Are you happier now?”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

April 10, 1994 at Kurt Cobain's public memorial at Seattle Center's Flag Pavilion, Entertainment Weekly (April 22, 1994) http://ew.com/article/1994/04/22/remembering-kurt-cobain/ 1991–1995

Love, Feeling, Happiness

“O. K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed "The Mau Maus of East Harlem," and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: "He was promising…").”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen" (1980), from Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, ed. Peter Guralnick (Da Capo Press, 2000, ISBN 0306809990), p. 100

Love, Death, Music

“(On the prospect of Thatcher's death) Be serious - this is just a fantasy, because if she were killed, would it actually make any difference? Would things get any better? Course they wouldn't; don't kid yourself. They'd get worse, because she would become a martyr – this monetarist martyr - a cult figure, like Eva Peron. Can you imagine the televised funeral? There she'd be, laid out in a glass coffin, in the blue gear, the hair-do and all the rest of it. She'd be laying there just really life-like - just like she was in life - a bit warmer. It would be on the telly. You thought Winston Churchill was bad; you can imagine what this would be like. And then, of course, it wouldn't stop at that. There would be films - The Night Brighton Rocked. There'd be musicals. Tim Rice would be churning out the musicals about her life - Magita. There'd be Elaine Page belting out the big numbers: 'Don't Cry for Me, Barnet Finchley”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Token Women, 1984
Stand-up

Life, Death, Women, Music

“Long before… our techniques of today, men could conceive and build structures adapted to the requirements of resistance… because he had observed… the branches of a tree bending under the weight of fruits and the tensioned cords of strings in which children have rocked from time immemorial…”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

p, 125
Philosophy of Structures (1958)

Men, Children, Tree, Time

“He that peruses Homer, is like the traveller that surveys mount Atlas; the vastness and roughness of its rocks, the solemn gloominess of its pines and cedars, the everlasting snows that cover its head, the torrents that rush down its sides, and the wild beasts that roar in its caverns, all contribute to strike the imagination with inexpressible astonishment and awe. While reading the Aeneid is like beholding the Capitoline hill at Rome, on which stood many edifices of exquisite architecture, and whose top was crowned with the famous temple of Jupiter, adorned with the spoils of conquered Greece.”

Joseph Warton (1722–1800) English literary critic

The Works of Virgil (1753), Dedication, pp. viii–ix

Travel, Imagination, Reading

“God gave me a soul / And your rock 'n' roll
In and out my brain / And running through my vein / You're my sunshine / You're my rain”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

The Hindu Times
Heathen Chemistry (2002)

God, Soul

“Cold Mountain is hidden in white clouds
It's peaceful to be cut off from the busy world
I use dry grass for cushions in my mountain home
My only light is the round moon
My bed is the rock beside the green pool
Tigers and deer are my companions
I delight in this happy peaceful life
Forever beyond the world of men”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Life, Men, World, Peace

“It's just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticized for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is.”

Angus Young (1955) Scottish Australian guitarist

Interview with the Atlanta Gazette in May 1979

Music, Time, Parting, Personality

““My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child.””

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Bessie's song (Ch. 3)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Men, God, Hope, Angels

“I’m gonna rock you baby to sleep
I’m gonna make you crazy over me
I’m gonna hold you like you’ve never been held before
And love you till you tell me you can’t love anymore
I’m gonna shake your emotion right down to your soul
And then I’m gonna love you all over in and out of control
If this is how love is supposed to feel
Baby I know I’ve fallen head over heels
I’m gonna rock you baby.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Rock You Baby.
Song lyrics, Unleashed (2002)

Love, Feeling, Soul, Sleep

“My name is Bono and I am a rock star.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

An allusion to Apple Computer's "switch" commercials, which ended with such statements.
PENN Address (2004)

Star

“Once you've taken a public stand you know is right, never back down; anything less than a rock-hard stance will let your enemies nibble you to death.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some New Tactical Reflections".

Death

“In 1850 Mr. Calhoun said, 'Let us be done with compromises. Let us go back and stand upon the Constitution'. Four years afterwards, the most Christian and most democratic statesman we have had in our history since Washington, Mr. Seward, accepted the challenge thrown out by Mr. Calhoun, solemnly saying, 'The sands of compromise are sliding from beneath my feet, and they are taking hold once more of the rock of the Constitution'.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

History

“World War II changed the demography. For a while, high seriousness was a part (only a part) of the mix. No one likes to think that the vector that has carried him into the demography could get lost in the demography, but that is what happens. Rock and roll—or the generating spirit of rock and roll—could get lost there, easily. And just think of all the ideas—and changes—there were implicit in the hegemony of rock and roll. We could be left with... just some of the music.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

Collapsing Dominant (1997)

War, World, Music, Idea

“But really we wanted to do something that was more kind of different than what most punk rock bands are doing right now, where they are all dressing in black and acting pissed or sad or wearing make-up. Its just not what we are into.”

Tom DeLonge (1975) American rock musician

In interview for Absolutepunk.net http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=290928 about his band Angels and Airwaves. (January 2008).

Sadness

“The work of charity, of the love of God, is to endeavor to to liberate God from brute matter, to endeavor to give consciousness to everything, to spiritualize or universalize everything; it is to dream that the very rocks may find a voice and work in accordance with the spirit of this dream; it is to dream that everything that exists may become conscious, that the Word may become life.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity

Love, Life, God, Dreams

“Roger: But really, a punk rock kid is the same all over the world, it’s the same dress code, everyone’s wearing chucks, it’s the same skull tattoo, it’s the same look, and everyone’s happy to be there. Our fans are the same everywhere.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

World, Tattoo, Happiness

“On a more personal note, I see many similarities between India's Dalit problems and the African-American problems that have rocked the US since its beginnings. For this reason, I personally take Dr. Ambedkar as one of my heroes.”

David Mumford (1937) American mathematician

David Mumford. " 'All men are created equal'? http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2015/AllMen.html," at dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog, June 16, 2015.

Problem, Personality

“And I'm going on in believing in Him. You'd better know Him, and know His name, and know how to call His name. You may not know philosophy. You may not be able to say with Alfred North Whitehead that He's the Principle of Concretion. You may not be able to say with Hegel and Spinoza that He is the Absolute Whole. You may not be able to say with Plato that He's the Architectonic Good. You may not be able to say with Aristotle that He's the Unmoved Mover. But sometimes you can get poetic about it if you know Him. You begin to know that our brothers and sisters in distant days were right. Because they did know Him as a rock in a weary land, as a shelter in the time of starving, as my water when I'm thirsty, and then my bread in a starving land. And then if you can't even say that, sometimes you may have to say, "He's my everything. He's my sister and my brother. He's my mother and my father." If you believe it and know it, you never need walk in darkness. Don't be a fool. Recognize your dependence on God. As the days become dark and the nights become dreary, realize that there is a God who rules above. And so I’m not worried about tomorrow. I get weary every now and then. The future looks difficult and dim, but I’m not worried about it ultimately because I have faith in God.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

God, Faith, Fools, Sister

“Earth was once molten rock, and now it makes spaceships.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Found on Pilgrimage to NASA's Apollo Flight Center http://thegreatstory.org/nasa-houston.html write up by Connie Barlow, a fellow in Evolutionary Spirituality

“O, how I choke in uttering my disgrace!
Thinking I her embraced whom I did seek,
A mountain hard I found I did embrace.
Overgrown with trees and bushes nothing sleek.
Thus (grappling with a mountain face to face,
Which I stood pressing for her angel's cheek)
I was no man: no but a stupid block
And grew unto a rock another rock.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Stanza 56 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); spoken by Adamastor.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto V

Stupidity, Angels, Mountain, Thinking

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1872(?), page 92
John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Soul, Mountain, Flowers

“Twas when the seas were roaring
With hollow blasts of wind,
A damsel lay deploring,
All on a rock reclined.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

The What D'ye Call It (1715), Act II, sc. viii

Sea

“With each tentative tiptoe and stumble, I had to inwardly assure myself that I was a good comedian and that my life was not pointless. “I am addicted to comfort,” I thought as I tumbled into the wood chips. I have become divorced from nature; I don’t know what the names of the trees and birds are. I don’t know what berries to eat or which stars will guide me home. I don’t know how to sleep outside in a wood or skin a rabbit. We have become like living cutlets, sanitized into cellular ineptitude. They say that supermarkets have three days’ worth of food. That if there was a power cut, in three days the food would spoil. That if cash machines stopped working, if cars couldn’t be filled with fuel, if homes were denied warmth, within three days we’d be roaming the streets like pampered savages, like urban zebras with nowhere to graze. The comfort has become a prison; we’ve allowed them to turn us into waddling pipkins. What is civilization but dependency? Now, I’m not suggesting we need to become supermen; that solution has been averred before and did not end well. Prisoners of comfort, we dread the Apocalypse. What will we do without our pre-packed meals and cozy jails and soporific glowing screens rocking us comatose? The Apocalypse may not arrive in a bright white instant; it may creep into the present like a fog. All about us we may see the shipwrecked harbingers foraging in the midsts of our excess. What have we become that we can tolerate adjacent destitution? That we can amble by ragged despair at every corner? We have allowed them to sever us from God, and until we take our brothers by the hand we will find no peace.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life, God, Peace, Food

“I'm thinking that somewhere around the world, I remember after this 9/11 event back home, people didn't feel much like playing, singing, people didn't feel like going out. But then I thought you know, that somewhere in the world, somebody's hiding behind a rock or a tree, or a wall, or something, and somebody else has been shooting at them for quite some time. Somebody's dreaming, somebody's hoping that somewhere, somebody's singing. Somebody's smiling, and laughing, and life is good, and it's fun to be a human being, and it's all right. And I thought man we got to keep that spirit going, you know, and so we got back out on the road. But I think of that every time that we play now. It would be nice to go anywhere in the world to go and do these kind of things and have fun and live right and not be worried about stuff like that. That's my hope, that everywhere in the world that will happen soon.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Statements said on "Live in Sydney" before playing "Highway in the Wind"

Life, People, World, Smile

“Sweet little rock and roller, sweet little rock and roller
Her daddy don’t have to scold her, her mother can’t hardly hold her
She never gets any older, sweet little rock and roller”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Sweet Little Rock and Roller" (1958)
Song lyrics

“The sea ebbs and flows, but the rock remains unmoved.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 101.

Sea

“Top back, candy paint
Damn I got expensive taste
Flex on 'em everyday
Champagne, celebrate
I get freaky, all my girls we have a kiki
Rock a party like
Purple boomin' Lamborghini”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Cars"
Song lyrics, Other songs

Girl, Painting

“Identify an agrarian problem—greenhouse gas emissions, overuse of antibiotics and dangerous pesticides, genetically modified crops, salmonella, E. coli, waste disposal, excessive use of water—and trace it to its ultimate origin and you will likely find an animal. … Research shows that veganism, which obviates the inherent waste involved in growing the grains used to fatten animals for food in conventional systems, is seven times more energy efficient than eating meat and, if embraced globally, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from conventional agriculture by 94 percent. … But with rare exception, those in the big, lumpy tent have thrown down a red carpet for “ethical butchers” while generally dismissing animal rights advocates as smug ascetics (which they can be) and crazed activists (ditto) who are driven more by sappy sentiment than rock-ribbed reason. It’s an easy move to make. But the problem with this dismissal—and the overall refusal to address the ethics of killing animals for food—is that it potentially anchors the Food Movement’s admirable goals in the shifting sands of an unresolved hypocrisy. Let’s call it the “omnivore’s contradiction.””

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Loving Animals to Death: How Can We Raise Them Humanely and Then Butcher Them?", in The American Scholar (Spring 2014) https://theamericanscholar.org/loving-animals-to-death/.

Food, Problem, Water, Time

“I remember when rock was young,
Me and Suzie had so much fun
Holding hands and skimming stones.
Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own.
But the biggest kick I ever got
Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock.
While the other kids were Rocking Round the Clock,
We were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Crocodile Rock
Song lyrics, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (1973)

“I didn't plan on rock 'n' roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock 'n' roll with jazz, and I thought I could make money playing music. In rock 'n' roll you can realize anything that you can in jazz or anything. There's no limitation other than the beat. You have more freedom than you do in anything except jazz — which is dying — as far as making any money is concerned.”

Robby Krieger (1946) American rock guitarist and songwriter

Comment posted at his official website http://www.robbykrieger.com.

Money, People, Music, Freedom

“The eyes of the people are upon us. […] If we despond, public confidence is destroyed, the people will no longer yield their support to a hopeless contest, and American liberty is no more. […] Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters. Let us awaken then, and evince a different spirit, - a spirit that shall inspire the people with confidence in themselves and in us, - a spirit that will encourage them to persevere in this glorious struggle, until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock. We have proclaimed to the world our determination 'to die freemen, rather than to live slaves.' We have appealed to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and in Heaven we have placed our trust. […] We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

addressing a meeting of delegates to the Continental Congress, assembled at Yorktown, Pennsylvania, September 1777 ; as quoted in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, Volume 2, by William Vincent Wells; Little, Brown, and Company; Boston, 1865 ; pp. 492-493

People, World, Justice, Confidence

“Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

24 March 1895, page 337
John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Nature, Suffering, Water

“If people want to call us emo, that’s totally cool. We started out as a pop punk band, because we were very much interested in giving the band a sound like Green Day or The Descendents, but I think we’ve turned into a rock band. Some of our lyrics are definitely emotional, but some Zeppelin lyrics are pretty emotional, too. You could call them an emo band as well.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

People, Thinking

“I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 147

“Soil is not unalive. It is a mixture of broken rock, pollen, fungal filaments, ciliate cysts, bacterial spores, nematodes and other microscopic animals and their parts. 'Nature,' Aristotle observed, 'proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Independence is a political, not a scientific, term.
What is Life? (1995)

Life, Way, Nature, Animals

“Women are still a relative rarity in rock bands, and studies of women's experiences with pop and rock music have indicated that girls are socialized to pop and rock music differently from boys: boys and young men tend to learn songs by ear and talk about popular music's technical aspects, while girls and young women tend to focus on lyrics rather than on equipment and instrumentation, and to resist learning songs by ear. Miki Bernyi's experience testifies to the truthfulness of those findings:”

Holly Kruse

'Girls don't have the patience to spend six years learning someone else's music. Me and Emma [Anderson] can't jam because we only know how to play our own songs. Jamming's more of a boy's thing....I think that women play more imaginatively because they learn to play while they're writing songs, instead of waiting to be technically good first.'
Quoted in Evans, 1994, p. 44.

Women, Men, Truth, Music

“When a San Shaman goes into a trance, he harnesses that power, becomes part of the world beyond, becomes invisible to the singers and dancers around him, and draws images on the rock face. Ask the San who drew the images, and they say the spirits. And the rock face is more than a surface for the paint; it is the boundary of this world and the world beyond. …part of the meaning of it all, and the rock shelter itself assumes a special status, a place of veneration.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

World, Parting, Drawing, Painting

“Down swept the gathered waters over rocks
Which broke at times the column's foaming line;
Darkening amid the snow-white froth, it swept
Like an all conquering army, and an arch
Of sparkling hues that in the sunbeams played
Seemed to unite it with the sky which hung
Above all calmness and repose :”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(16th February 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.6
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Water, Time

“We don't propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Remarks to the 10th National Legislative Conference, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO (May 3, 1965); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, book 1, p. 480.
1960s

“Avoiding all control, I spread out sheets of white paper or canvas in the nature. For some time they stay in the grass, in the rushes of river, in the meadows or among the rocks. Nature registers its presence, covering the surface of the paper with colors, forms and tracks. This process is controlled by a number of agents; such as space and time, substance and causality. It is governed by nature's intensity. It does not, depend on man's interference. Nature is the greatest and most admirable creator, and unlike logic it doesn't fail. The artist obligation is not to shape - handicraft, but to understand the riddles of reality. In such conception of Art there lies, as in the Universe itself, an immense richness, and a countless variety of forms.”

Jacek Tylicki (1951) American artist

Catalogue to exhibition in Gallery 38 - Copenhagen, 1976, as cited in: Leszek Brogowski & Dorota Czerner (transl.). Jacek Tylicki: Art and Artworks. 2014

Art, Color, Understanding, Nature