Quotes about room
page 17

Jacques Maritain photo

“There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Ransoming the Time (1941), p. 14.

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Roger Raveel photo

“[I have] all respect for that neoclassicism [of Piet Mondrian ], but it would sacrifices me too much to architecture. That kind of art does indeed fit perfectly in very modern rooms of modern buildings in equally modern cities, but never again a handcart can drive in there and never again someone can speak or think of a white dog cart in the fog. I am longing for a painting that can hang in a modern environment and still have its 'personal' life.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): Al mijn respect voor dat neo-klassicisme [van Mondriaan], maar dat offert me teveel aan de architectuur. Dat werk past inderdaad gegoten in zeer moderne vertrekken van moderne gebouwen in even moderne steden maar er kan dan nooit meer een stootkar in rijden en nooit kan nog iemand spreken of denken aan een witte hondenkar in de mist. Ik verlang een schilderij die kan hangen in een moderne omgeving en die toch een ‘eigen’ leven heeft.
Quote of Raveel, in a letter to his friend Hugo Claus, from Machelen aan de Leie, after February 1951; as cited in Hugo Claus, Roger Raveel; Brieven 1947 – 1962, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Ludion; Gent Belgium, 2007 - ISBN 978-90-5544-665-0, p. 133 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1945 - 1960

Mickey Spillane photo
Daniel Radcliffe photo
Jon Stewart photo

“The best-laid plans of mice and comedians usually wind up on the cutting-room floor.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Charleston Gazette interview http://jon.happyjoyfun.net/tran/1999/99_0109charl.html, January 9, 1999

Stevie Nicks photo
Alberto Gonzales photo

“Torture is not tolerated by this country on the battlefield or off. Anyone who tortures or abuses a detainee tarnishes the service of every honorable student and soldier in this room today. The President has said this, and I will say it again: those who commit torture in the name of the United States government will be prosecuted. In any discussion of Guantanamo, detainees and military commissions, I think that one final fact helps put things in perspective — and that is the fact that members of al Qaeda are not merely common criminals. Some critics around the world have argued that they are “just” criminals, that their crimes somehow do not amount to war crimes. But here are the facts: al Qaeda seeks to employ weapons of mass slaughter as a means of achieving political goals against both the civilian and military capacity of the United States, Europe, and our allies throughout the world. Its members continue to fight our Armed Forces on battlefields around the world, and they will continue to do so until we stop them. Al Qaeda has committed acts on a scale that transcends mere crime, as recognized by NATO immediately after the attacks of September 11th. Their crimes are therefore nothing less than war crimes. Given the magnitude of the atrocities al Qaeda has committed, there can be no comparison between the crimes of its members and that of common civilian criminals.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

Bill Engvall photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Zia Haider Rahman photo
Roger Ebert photo
Anna Akhmatova photo
Henry Rollins photo
William Burges photo

“We have no architecture to work from at all; indeed, we have not even settled the point de depart… our art… is domestic, and… the best way of advancing its progress is to do our best in our own houses… if we once manage to obtain a large amount of art and colour in our sitting-rooms… the improvement may gradually extend to our costume, and perhaps eventually to the architecture of our houses.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 91-92; Cited in: "William Burges 1827-1881 London Architect" in: In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement http://books.google.com/books?id=56F8Qv96FzwC&pg=PA406. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 jan. 1986. p. 405

Anthony Burgess photo
Eddie Vedder photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Carol Ann Duffy photo

“Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Words, Wide Night, from The Other Country (1990).

Jessica Lynch photo
Karen Armstrong photo
Judy Garland photo

“Go and tell that nasty, rude little princess that we've known each other for long enough and gabbed enough in ladies' rooms that she should skip the ho-hum royal routine and just pop over here and ask me herself. … Tell her I'll sing if she christens a ship first.”

Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States

Garland's annoyed response to a note from Princess Margaret "commanding" her to sing at a party in 1965, as quoted in Princess Margaret : A Biography (1977) by Theo Aronson.

Mickey Spillane photo
Jane Austen photo

“Always when I look at anyone's art, I get flashes of the person. If I walk into a room and there's a painting by Joan Mitchell, I say, "There's Joannie." Or Grace, if it's Grace Hartigan. And to me all art is self-portraits.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

Quote in: an tape-recorded interview with Elaine de Kooning on August 27, 1981 http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-elaine-de-kooning-11999; conducted by Phyllis Tuchman, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral Histories.
1972 - 1989

“Man is liberated from his illusions to make room for a fresh set.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 93

Robert Frost photo

“The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" The Bear http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bear-the/"
1920s

Charlton Heston photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“Mr Mayor and gentlemen - I have great pleasure in associating myself in how ever humble and transitory manner with this great and splendid undertaking. I am glad to be associated with an enterprise which I hope will carry still further the prosperity and power of Liverpool, and which will carry down the name of Liverpool to posterity as the place where a great mechanical undertaking first found its home. Sir William Forwood has alluded to the share which this city took in the original establishment of railways. My memory does not quite carry me back to the melancholy event by which that opening was signalised, but I can remember that which presents to my mind a strange contrast with the present state of things. Almost the earliest thing I can recollect is being brought down here to my mother's house which is close in the neighbourhood, and we took two days on the road, and had to sleep half way. Comparing that with my journey yesterday I feel what an enormous distance has been traversed in the interval, and perhaps a still larger distance and a still more magnificent rate of progress will be achieved before a similar distance of time has elapsed from the present day. I will not detain you in a room where it is perhaps difficult to hear. Of all my oratorical efforts, the one which I find most difficult to achieve is that of competing with a steam engine. Occasionally you are invited to do it at railway stations, and I know distinguished statesmen who do it with effect, but I think I have never ventured to compete in that line. I will therefore, though with some fear and trembling, fulfil the injunctions of Sir William Forwood, and proceed to handle the electric machinery which is to set this line in motion. I only hope the result will be no different from what he anticipates.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

At the opening of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, 4 February 1893. Quoted in the Liverpool Echo of the same day, p. 3
1890s

Charles Darwin photo

“[blind_man] A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

This is attributed, with an expression of doubt as to its correctness, in Mathematics, Our Great Heritage: Essays on the Nature and Cultural Significance of Mathematics (1948) by William Leonard Schaaf, p. 163; also attributed in Pi in the Sky : Counting, Thinking and Being (1992) by John D. Barrow. There are a number of similar expressions to this with various attributions, but the earliest published variants seem to be quotations of Lord Bowen:
When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room — looking for a black hat — which isn't there.
Lord Bowen, as quoted in "Pie Powder", Being Dust from the Law Courts, Collected and Recollected on the Western Circuit, by a Circuit Tramp (1911) by John Alderson Foote; this seems to be the earliest account of any similar expression. It is mentioned by the author that this expression has become misquoted as a "black cat" rather than "black hat."
An earlier example with "hat" as a learned judge is said to have defined the metaphysician, namely, as a blind man looking for a black hat in a dark room, the hat in question not being there Edinburgh Medical Journal, Volume 3 (1898)
With his obscure and uncertain speculations as to the intimate nature and causes of things, the philosopher is likened to a 'blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there.'
William James, himself apparently quoting someone else's expression, in Some Problems of Philosophy : A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911) Ch. 1 : Philosophy and its Critics
A blind man in a dark room seeking for a black cat — which is not there.
A definition of metaphysics attributed to Lord Bowen, as quoted in Science from an Easy Chair (1913) by Edwin Ray Lankester, p. 99
A blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
A definition of metaphysics attributed to Lord Balfour, as quoted in God in Our Work: Religious Addresses (1949) by Richard Stafford Cripps, p. 72
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
H. L. Mencken, as quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 427
A metaphysician is like a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat — which isn't there.
Variant published in Smiles and Chuckles (1952) by B. Hagspiel
Misattributed

Simon Phipps photo
Brandon Boyd photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“The anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion …, loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Aids to Reflection, 1839 https://archive.org/stream/aidstoreflection06cole#page/142/mode/2up, p. 142.

Daniel T. Gilbert photo
Marcus Brigstocke photo
Taj El-Din Hilaly photo
Kurt Schwitters photo
Steve Jobs photo
Mwai Kibaki photo

“There is no room for communists in Kenya.”

Mwai Kibaki (1931) Former president of Kenya

Statement as Vice-President of Kenya in 1978, as quoted in Kenya : The Quest for Prosperity (1984) by Norman Miller and Rodger Yeager, (second edition 1994) Page 173. ISBN 0813382025

Herman Melville photo

“You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Jefferson Davis photo

“Julia Hayden, the colored school teacher, one of the latest victims of the White man's League, was only seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of respectable parents in Maury County, Tennessee, and had been carefully educated at the Central College, Nashville, a favorite place for the instruction of youth of both sexes of her race. She is said to have possessed unusual personal attractions as well as intelligence. Under the reign of slavery as it is defined and upheld by Davis and Toombs, Julia Hayden would probably have been taken from her parents and sent in a slave coffle to New Orleans to be sold on its auction block. But emancipation had prepared for her a different and less dreadful fate. With that strong desire for mental cultivation which marked the colored race since their freedom, in all circumstances where there is an opportunity left them for its exhibition, the young girl had so improved herself as to become capable of teaching others. She went to Western Tennessee and took charge of a school. Three days after her arrival at Hartsville, at night, two white men, armed with their guns, appeared at the house where she was staying, and demanded the school teacher. She fled, alarmed, to the room of the mistress of the house. The White Leaguers pursued. They fired their guns I through the floor of the room and the young girl fell dead within. Her murderers escaped.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

"Louisiana and the Rule of Terror" http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=EL18741010.2.9#, The Elevator (10 October 1874), Volume 10, Number 26.

Geert Wilders photo
Alan Blinder photo
Edith Stein photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo

“Enlightenment does nothing more than eavesdrop on likely wolves in their dressing rooms, where they put on and take off their sheep’s clothing.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 43

Morrissey photo

“PM: What annoys you most about yourself?
M: Practically everything. I miss not being able to stand up straight. I tend to slide into rooms and sit on the chair behind the door.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "Wilde child", interview by Paul Morley, Blitz (April 1988).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“In philosophy at the universities truth occupies only a secondary place and, if called upon, she must get up and make room for another attribute.”

Man sieht daraus, daß in der Universitäts-philosophie die Wahrheit nur eine sekundäre Stelle einnimmt und, wenn es gefordert wird, aufstehn muß, einer andern Eigenschaft Platz zu machen.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 152, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Henry Adams photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Greatness
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Edward Carpenter photo

“Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Hillary Clinton photo

“But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

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

Clinton Speech For National Multi-Housing Council https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927 (24 April 2013), WikiLeaks.
Attributed

Alice A. Bailey photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Bill Bryson photo
Siegfried Sassoon photo
Lou Reed photo

“Life's like a mayonnaise soda
And life's like space without room
And life's like bacon and ice cream
That's what life's like without you”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

What's Good Full lyrics online http://www.lyricsforall.com/display/lyric/7312/2147393643/Lou+Reed/What%27s+Good/
Lyrics

Jordan Peterson photo

“You plunge into that underworld space, and that's also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that's a horrible place to be. And that's hell. That's why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don't understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it's only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it's only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic. And I've seen that with people many times. And I think that anybody who uses their imagination on themselves can see how that happens, because I can't imagine that there isn't a single person in the room who hasn't nursed fairly intense fantasies of revenge, at least at one point in their life – and usually for what appear to be good reasons. It can shake your faith in being to be betrayed, but if it shakes it so badly that you turn against being itself, that's certainly no solution. All it does is make everything that's bad, even worse.”

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

Other

Joakim Noah photo

“I don't know about this place, man. I just stayed in my hotel room, man. Every time I look out my window, it's pretty depressing out here, man. It's bad, it's bad. No. No going out in Cleveland, man. It's all factories.”

Joakim Noah (1985) American–French basketball player

About the City of Cleveland, interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN0WqSeCKW8 (2010), TNT

William S. Burroughs photo
Camille Paglia photo
Robert Frost photo

“All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" An Old Man's Winter Night http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-old-man-s-winter-night-2/"
1960s

Lucian Freud photo
Ellen Kushner photo

“He felt the almost sexual thrill of being the one in the room with all the power.”

Part IV, Chapter VI (p. 405)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

András Petőcz photo
Camille Paglia photo
Tom Rath photo

“Hector had always been known as a great shoemaker. In fact, customers from such far-off places as France claimed that Hector made the best shoes in the world. Yet for years, he had been frustrated with his small shoemaking business. Although Hector knew he was capable of making hundreds of shoes per week, he was averaging just 30 pairs. When a friend asked him why, Hector explained that while he was great at producing shoes, he was a poor salesman -- and terrible when it came to collecting payments. Yet he spent most of his time working in these areas of weakness.
So, Hector's friend introduced him to Sergio, a natural salesman and marketer. Just as Hector was known for his craftsmanship, Sergio could close deals and sell. Given the way their strengths complemented one another, Hector and Sergio decided to work together. A year later, this strengths-based duo was producing, selling, and collecting payment for more than 100 pairs of shoes per week -- a more than threefold increase.
While this story may seem simplistic, in many cases, aligning yourself with the right task can be this easy. When we're able to put most of our energy into developing our natural talents, extraordinary room for growth exists. So, a revision to the "You-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be" maxim might be more accurate.”

Tom Rath (1975) American author

StrengthsFinder 2.0, 2007
Source: Tom Rath, "The Fallacy Behind the American Dream," Business Journal, Feb. 8, 2007 (Excerpted from StrengthsFinder 2.0)

Kent Hovind photo

“He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.”

Ronald Knox (1888–1957) English priest and theologian

Reply when asked why he did not visit Rome, quoted in Penelope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (1977)

Jonathan Pearce photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Tod A photo

“I was in Brooklyn and it was freezing cold. I was living in a room with no windows and paying too much in rent. I envisioned sitting under a palm tree. I followed my nose from there.”

Tod A (1965) American musician

(on why he left America to travel the world) ALARM Magazine (July 7, 2008).

Vanna Bonta photo

“Before it exploded one night, I went to a four grade, two room schoolhouse and we had textbooks from the 1940s.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[9690va$mjc$1@panix3.panix.com, 2001]
2000s

Chester W. Nimitz photo

“The war with Japan had been enacted in the game rooms at the War College by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war. We had not visualized these.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

Writing the president of the US Naval War College shortly after World War II. Quoted by Donald C. Winter, Secretary of the Navy http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/secnav/winter/SECNAV_Remarks_NWC_Current_Strategy_Forum.pdf]

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Quentin Crisp photo
Taylor Swift photo
Aron Ra photo
William Faulkner photo
Rick Santorum photo

“If there's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America, he said it about 6 weeks ago. He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and he said this was in response to the Ryan budget. And he said this, he said, talking about these three programs: He said 'America is a better country because of these programs. I will go one step further: America is a great country because of these programs.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Ladies and gentlemen, America was a great country before 1965.
Rick Santorum: 'America Was a Great Country Before 1965'
Crooks and Liars
2011-06-05
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rick-santorum-america-was-great-country-19
2011-06-07
misquoting Barack Obama speech on 2011-04-13 in response to Paul Ryan's budget proposal, which would replace Medicare with a voucher program: "'There but for the grace of God go I,' we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I'll go further — we would not be a great country without those commitments."

Fred Shero photo
J. M. Barrie photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Nancy Peters photo
Walter Scott photo

“Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses, and call up your men;
Come open the West Port, and let me gang free,
And it's room for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee!”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

The Doom of Devorgoil, Bonny Dundee (1830), Chorus.