Quotes about root
page 6

“Ah, happy world, where all things live
Creatures of one great law, indeed;
Bound by strong roots, the splendid flower,—
Swept by great seas, the drifting seed!”

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) American author

The Story of the Flower.

Happiness, World, Law, Flowers

“Like any major intellectual contribution, Keynes's ideas were bitterly criticized. To many people it seems obvious that massive economic slumps must have deep roots. To them, Keynes's argument that they are essentially no more than a problem of mixed signals, which can be cured by printing a bit more money, seems unbelievable.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

Money, People, Idea, Problem

“Membership in the social democracy means a struggle, a political struggle with grievous persecutions, and a private struggle for existence, a struggle that for the majority is far more difficult and heavy than the political struggle. And it is necessary, because the courage for this twofold struggle is created only by the consciousness that the injustice of society by which the great majority of mankind are to-day oppressed, corrupted and crippled, can only be abolished through a revolutionary movement, that is, a movement that shall completely exterminate capitalism with every fiber of its roots.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Democracy, Courage

“Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 116

Spring, Knowledge

“The idea of vocation I picked up in those circles created distortion until I grew strong enough to discard it. I mean the idea that vocation, or calling, comes from a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet—someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach.
That concept of vocation is rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood, in the belief that the sinful self will always be “selfish” unless corrected by external forces of virtue. It is a notion that made me feel inadequate to the task of living my own life, creating guilt about the distance between who I was and who I was supposed to be.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999)

Life, Feeling, Idea, Strong

“I would also ask you to fulfil in an abundant measure your obligation for the revival of the glory of Hindu culture and civilisation, not from a narrow or bigoted point of view but for strengthening the very root of nationalism in this country. In this great land of ours where twenty-eight crores of Hindus live, the word Hindu sometimes stinks in the nostrils of many a son of India.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Benaras Hindu University Convocation on 1st December 1940.

Country

“The black is a black man; that is, as the result of a series of aberrations of affect, he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Introduction,Page 8
Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Universe

“When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy and lightness”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Teachings on Love (2005) Full Circle Publishing ISBN 81-7621-167-2

Peace, Understanding, Light, Joy

“Morally, it is wrong to suppose the source of evil is outside oneself, that one is a vessel of holiness running over with virtue. Such a disposition is the best soil for a hateful and cruel fanaticism. It is as wrong to impute every wickedness to Jews, Freemasons, "intellectuals," as it is to blame all crimes on the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the powers that were. No; the root of evil is in me as well, and I must take my share of the responsibility and the blame. That was true before the revolution and it is true still.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: The End of Our Time (1919), p. 128

Hate, Evil

“A poet knows war without objective war in the world; it was conflict at the root of his mind that impelled him to the masking of these conflicts in the apparent resolution and order of works of art. In a dialectical sense, all poetry is war.”

Richard Eberhart (1904–2005) American poet

The War Poets

War, World, Art, Sense

“New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Marigolds".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

Love, Spring

“Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain…in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space?”

Italo Svevo book Zeno's Conscience

La vita attuale è inquinata alle radici. L'uomo s'è messo al posto degli alberi e delle bestie ed ha inquinata l'aria, ha impedito il libero spazio. Può avvenire di peggio. Il triste e attivo animale potrebbe scoprire e mettere al proprio servizio delle altre forze. V'è una minaccia di questo genere in aria. Ne seguirà una grande chiarezza... nel numero degli uomini. Ogni metro quadrato sarà occupato da un uomo. Chi ci guarirà dalla mancanza di aria e di spazio?
Source: La coscienza di Zeno (1923), P. 364; p. 436.

Life, Sadness, Tree, Animals

“Above all we are obstinately practical, rigorously down-to-earth, natural debunkers. We approach issues with a cast of mind rooted in common sense, we're rightly suspicious of ideology and sceptical of grand schemes and grandiose promises.”

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

Quoted from 'British strength and security in the world' speech (9 May 2016) - 11:50 -12:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_XSmiPezTE <br class="br">2010s, 2016

Nature, Sense

“We have reached the bottom of the 9th inning, and now it is happening, what we normally experience at any ballpark when a visiting pitcher is so close to greatness, even the hometown fans come to root for him. He has come too far, he has journeyed too long to drop it.
(With 2 out) Chris Gwynn standing at the plate, Dennis Martinez delivers…Fastball hit JUST foul along the third base line. Foul by a foot, and now the crowd seems to be inspired. It's as if they take it as a sure sign that Dennis will get what he wants, and what he wants is suddenly what they want. 47,224 on their feet. One pitch away from a pitcher's absolute Nirvana. The pitcher's dream: A perfect game. Dennis Martinez ready, here's the pitch…Popped deep in the air to center field, going deep on it is Marquis Grissom, he's got it on the track!
(Crowd cheers)
Dennis Martinez getting mobbed by his teammates on this 28th of July, 1991, 3:22 pm in the afternoon. Dennis Martinez has reached the ultimate, a perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Nothing scratchy, nothing flukey, it was a masterpiece! And with tears pouring down his cheeks, he goes down the steps and into the Expo dugout. What a game!”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Dennis Martinez's perfect game at Dodger Stadium, July 28, 1991, based off of video on mlb.com

Dreams, Angels, Game, Tear

“I think blacks are definitely moving together. This is good, because in order to have any movement, you've got to have togetherness. But I also feel that because of the way society is now, we cannot get along without the white man. And the way it is now, he cannot get along without us…We've got to go to the roots of it and just change the whole society - that's why I don't believe in what some people say about having a black state and a separate black nation.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1970s

People, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 54-55

Love, World, Way, Feeling

“[The Constructive idea.. ] has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention by any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Naum Gabo (1937) 'Editorial', p. 7 as cited in: W. Rotzler (1989) Constructive Concepts - A History of Constructive Art from Cubism to the Present, Rizzoli.
1936 - 1977, Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Life, World, Law, Art

“Pesotsky had an immense house with columns and lions, off which the stucco was peeling, and with a footman in swallow-tails at the entrance. The old park, laid out in the English style, gloomy and severe, stretched for almost three-quarters of a mile to the river, and there ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank, where pines grew with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; the water shone below with an unfriendly gleam, and the peewits flew up with a plaintive cry, and there one always felt that one must sit down and write a ballad.”

Anton Chekhov book The Black Monk

The Black Monk (1894)

Water, Housing, Cry

“Self-painting is a further development of the art of painting. The surface of an image has lost its function as the sole means of conveying expression. It was taken back to its roots, to the wall, to the object, to the living being, to the human body. By using my body as a means of conveying expression, the result created is a happening captured by a camera as it progresses, and an experience which viewers can share.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 140 (1985)

Art, Painting

“Christianity struck at the root of pagan tolerance of illusion. In claiming that there is only one true faith, it gave truth a supreme value it had not had before. It also made disbelief in the divine possible for the first time. The long-delayed consequence of Christian faith was an idolatry of truth that found its most complete expression in atheism. If we live in a world without gods, we have Christianity to thank for it.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Atheism, the last consequence of Christianit (p. 127)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

God, Truth, World, Faith

“Rectilinearity and one-sidedness, woodenness and petrification, subjectivism and subjective blindness — voilà the epistemological roots of idealism.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 38, pp. 357–61
Collected Works

“It is the glory of English Law, that its roots are sunk deep into the soil of national history; that it is the slow product of the age long growth of the national life.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter I, Old English Law, p. 3

Life, Age, Law, History

“One of the core values of libertarianism is the right of people to keep all the fruits of their labor. No taxes are fair. All taxes are, at their root, immoral because they involve the use of force to take money from people, money that rightfully belongs to them, and give it to others. That is why libertarians would fund most government services with voluntary user fees.”

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

2012, " The Fair Tax Isn't Fair, It's a Farce http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7101"

Money, People

“Yet even here all these peoples have remained rooted in their sacred homelands for centuries. Though oppressed and colonized by outsiders, they have never been expelled en masse, and so the theme of restoration to the homeland has played little part in the conceptions of these peoples. There are, however, two peoples, apart from the Jews, for whom restoration of the homeland and commonwealth have been central: the Greeks and the Armenians, and together with the Jews, they constitute the archetypal Diaspora peoples, or what John Armstrong has called ‘mobilized diasporas° Unlike diasporas composed of recent mi migrant workers—Indians, Chinese and others in Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Caribbean— mobilized diasporas are of considerable antiquity, are generally polyglot and multi-skilled trading communities and have ancient, portable religious traditions. Greeks, Jews, and Armenians claimed an ancient homeland and kingdom, looked back nostalgically to a golden age or ages of great kings, saints, sages and poets, yearned to return to ancient capitals with sacred sites and buildings, took with them wherever they went their ancient scriptures, sacred scripts and separate liturgies, founded in every city congregations with churches, clergy and religious schools, traded across the Middle East and Europe using the networks of enclaves of their co-religionists to compete with other ethnic trading networks, and used their wealth, education and economic skills to offset their political powerlessness)”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999), Chapter: Greeks, Armenians and Jews.

People, Age, Education, School

“Difference is the foundation of those buildings, the pilings beneath the docks, tangled in the roots of the trees. Half the place was built on it. The other half couldn’t live without it. But to talk about it in public reveals you to be ill-mannered and vulgar.”

Samuel R. Delany book The Einstein Intersection

Section 9
The Einstein Intersection (1967)

Tree

“When the priest went in, he stopped short at the sight of this defamation of God's holy place, and dared not serve the requiem on such a spot. And so the church was left forever, with monsters stuck in the doors and windows, was overgrown with forest trees, roots, rough grass and wild thorns, and no one can now find the way to it.”

Nikolai Gogol book Viy

"Viy" (1835)

God, Way, Tree, Grass

“A work of genius is a complex object and there is light to be shed about what went into the making of it. Even in the case of scientific and mathematical achievement we can say a great deal about the existing state of knowledge, the problems it failed to address, why those problems were or had become interesting, the particular capacities which the solver brought to their solution. At the other extreme is a work of art which seems to have much more immediate roots in the personal life of the artist or writer. In between is the area in which Keynes worked, which was partly scientific, partly artistic. This gives a wide justification for a biographical approach. As I put it in the introduction to my first volume: 'If underlying Keynesian theory was Keynes's vision of his age, knowledge of his state of mind and the circumstances which formed it is essential, not only in order to understand how he came to see the world as he did, but also in order to pass judgement on the theory itself.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2003), Introduction

Life, Age, World, Art

“As long as we live in a system of states, and as long as the roots of fascism and imperialist aggression have not finally been extirpated, our vigilance in regard to possible new violators of peace should not slacken, and concern for the strengthening of cooperation between the peace-loving powers will continue to be our most important duty.”

Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) Soviet politician and diplomat

As quoted in Strategy and Tactics of Soviet Foreign Policy (1963) by John Malcolm Mackintosh, p. 4

Love, Peace

“For Kant, the predisposition to good (like Calvin’s ‘seed of goodness’) is in one way more fundamental to us than the overlying propensity to evil, and in one way it is less fundamental. The predisposition to good is more fundamental because it is essential to us; we cannot lose it without ceasing to be human. The propensity to evil is in that way less fundamental, because we can lose it, and indeed we should lose it, without ceasing to be human. On the other hand, the propensity to evil is in a different way more fundamental. It is our root maxim when we are born.”

John E. Hare (1949) British philosopher

Source: “Evolutionary Theory and Theological Ethics” (2012), p. 251

Way, Evil

“Darwinian social theory gives us a glimpse of an underlying symmetry and logic in social relationships which, when more fully comprehended by ourselves, should revitalize our political understanding and provide the intellectual support for a science and medicine of psychology. In the process it should also give us a deeper understanding of the many roots of our suffering.”

Robert Trivers (1943) American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist

Foreword to The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)

Understanding, Support, Suffering, Science

“By this you may see who are the rude and barbarous Indians: For verily there is no savage nation under the cope of Heaven, that is more absurdly barbarous than the Christian World. They that go naked and drink water and live upon roots are like Adam, or Angels in comparison of us.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

Third Century, sect. 12.
Centuries of Meditations

World, Angels, Drink, Water

“…the finances of the country is intimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which English liberty has been gradually acquired. Running back into the depths of antiquities for many centuries, it lies at the root of English liberty, and if the House of Commons can by any possibility lose the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Hastings (17 March 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 343.
1890s

Money, Housing, Dependency, Country

“The sixteenth century transformed Middle English into modern English. Grammar was up for grabs. People made up vocabulary and syntax as they went along. Not until the eighteenth century would rules of English usage appear. Shakespearean language is a bizarre super-tongue, alien and plastic, twisting, turning, and forever escaping. It is untranslatable, since it knocks Anglo-Saxon root words against Norman and Greco-Roman importations sweetly or harshly, kicking us up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. No one in real life ever spoke like Shakespeare’s characters. His language does not “make sense,” especially in the greatest plays. Anywhere from a third to a half of every Shakespearean play, I conservatively estimate, will always remain under an interpretive cloud. Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the encrustations of footnotes in modern texts, which imply to the poor cowed student that if only he knew what the savants do, all would be as clear as day. Every time I open Hamlet, I am stunned by its hostile virtuosity, its elusiveness and impenetrability. Shakespeare uses language to darken. He suspends the traditional compass points of rhetoric, still quite firm in Marlowe, normally regarded as Shakespeare’s main influence. Shakespeare’s words have “aura.””

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

This he got from Spenser, not Marlowe.
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 195

Life, Hostility, People, Sense

“Our new economic approach is rooted in ideas which stress the importance of macro-economics, post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between growth and investment, and people and infrastructure.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Michael White, "The gift of tired tongues", The Guardian, 30 September 1994; Norman Macrae, "You've never had it so incoherent", Sunday Times, 2 October 1994.
Speech at an economic seminar, Tuesday 27 September 1994.
Member of Parliament

People, Idea

“This universal character of referring and expressing, which is proper to our entire created cosmos, stamps created reality as meaning, in accordance with its dependent non-self-sufficient nature. Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood. It has a religious root and a divine origin.”

Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) Dutch philosopher

Source: A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Volume I: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy (trans. William S. Young and David H. Freeman), p. 4 ( full context http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dooy002newc05_01/dooy002newc05_01_0004.php#4)

Nature, Reality, Universe, Dependency

“To this end I suggest we need to look to an idea deeply rooted in Christian life and thought. The idea of the Common Good. The Common Good is concerned with personal and mutual flourishing in terms of our talents and vocations. It is about treating people as they really are: as human beings who belong to families, localities and communities. To shared traditions, interests and faiths. Not as abstracted, rootless, atomised individuals that dominates neo-classical or neoliberal thinking -the thinking that dominates our life.”

Jon Cruddas (1962) British politician

The Common Good in an Age of Austerity Lecture, 9 July 2014 http://joncruddas.org.uk/sites/joncruddas.org.uk/files/ebor%20a.pdf

Life, People, Family, Faith

“The main objection to the theory of pure visualization is our thesis that the non-Euclidean axioms can be visualized just as rigorously if we adjust the concept of congruence. This thesis is based on the discovery that the normative function of visualization is not of visual but of logical origin and that the intuitive acceptance of certain axioms is based on conditions from which they follow logically, and which have previously been smuggled into the images. The axiom that the straight line is the shortest distance is highly intuitive only because we have adapted the concept of straightness to the system of Eucidean concepts. It is therefore necessary merely to change these conditions to gain a correspondingly intuitive and clear insight into different sets of axioms; this recognition strikes at the root of the intuitive priority of Euclidean geometry. Our solution of the problem is a denial of pure visualization, inasmuch as it denies to visualization a special extralogical compulsion and points out the purely logical and nonintuitive origin of the normative function. Since it asserts, however, the possibility of a visual representation of all geometries, it could be understood as an extension of pure visualization to all geometries. In that case the predicate "pure" is but an empty addition, since it denotes only the difference between experienced and imagined pictures, and we shall therefore discard the term "pure visualization."”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

Instead we shall speak of the normative function of the thinking process, which can guide the pictorial elements of thinking into any logically permissible structure.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Imagination, Problem, Thinking, Change

“This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)

Love, Life, War, Justice

“Think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn’t be imagined without it.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 21 : Lord Asriel's Welcome

Imagination, Thinking

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at 4 o'clock in the morning.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995)

Books, World, Feeling, Drink

“As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great president of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.”

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

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

God, Justice, Feeling, Thinking

“In the dark ages before the invention of the electronic vacuum tube there were many legends of living statues and magic pictures. One of the commonest devices of sorcerers and witches was the model of an enemy which somehow embodied his soul, so that injury to the model would be reflected by suffering or death of the original… Idolatry, witchcraft and other superstitions are so deeply rooted and widespread that it is possible that even the most detached scientific activity may be psychologically equivalent to them; such activity may help to satisfy the desire for power, to assuage the fear of the unknown or to compensate for the flatness of everyday existence.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.

Death, Age, Fear, Soul

“In recent weeks, we have taken bold steps to prevent a severe disruption of the American economy, which would have a devastating effect on other economies around the world. We've promoted stability in the markets by preventing the disorderly failure of major companies. The Federal Reserve has injected urgently needed liquidity into the system. And last week, I announced a decisive action by the federal government to address the root cause of much of the instability in our financial markets, by purchasing illiquid assets that are weighing down balance sheets and restricting the flow of credit. I can assure you that my administration and our Congress are working together to quickly pass legislation approving this strategy, and I'm confident we will act in the urgent time frame required.”

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

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

World, Confidence, Failure, Decision

“What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

68-71.
Every Good Man is Free

Wisdom, Happiness, Justice, Soul

“The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.”

Seamus Heaney book Death of a Naturalist

"Digging", line 25, from Death of a Naturalist (1966).
Poetry Quotes, Death of a Naturalist

Men

“The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.”

Ayn Rand book Philosophy: Who Needs It

Source: Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982), p. 84.

Secret, Way, Knowledge

“In our constant struggle to believe we are likely to overlook the simple fact that a bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as needful as faith to the welfare of our souls. I would go further and say that we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything. Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Through unbelief Israel failed to inherit the promises. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “The just shall live by faith.” Such verses as these come trooping to our memories, and we wince just a little at the suggestion that unbelief may also be a good and useful thing. … Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the person and promises of God and rests upon them with perfect assurance. Whatever has behind it the character and word of the living God is accepted by faith as the last and final truth from which there must never be any appeal. Faith never asks questions when it has been established that God has spoken. 'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar' (Rom. 3:4). Thus faith honors God by counting Him righteous and accepts His testimony against the very evidence of its own senses. That is faith, and of such we can never have too much. Credulity, on the other hand, never honors God, for it shows as great a readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself. The credulous person will accept anything as long as it is unusual, and the more unusual it is the more ardently he will believe. Any testimony will be swallowed with a straight face if it only has about it some element of the eerie, the preternatural, the unearthly.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Root of the Righteous (1955), Chapter 34.

God, Truth, Faith, Soul

“All totalitarianism of the twentieth century were predicated on a systematic, anti-individualistic collectivism. In the case of Marxist-Leninism, the source was classical Marxism. [Giovanni] Gentile had carefully dissected the neo-Hegelian roots of that collectivism. What he found missing in the collectivism of Marx was ethical concern. He sought to provide that concern to the collectivism of Fascism—a collectivism that shared a common intellectual origin with Marxism and Marxism-Leninism.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 102

“For sure, even with the best will, the modern person seems generally unable to imagine how large a significance those components of our consciousness rooted in religious beliefs have actually had upon culture, national character, and the organization of life. Nevertheless, it can not be, of course, the intention here to set a one-sided spiritualistic analysis of the causes of culture and history in place of an equally one-sided “materialistic” analysis. Both are equally possible. Historical truth, however, is served equally little if either of these analyses claims to be the conclusion of an investigation rather than its preparatory stage.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Life, Truth, Imagination, History

“Today, of course, our current inflation problem is firmly rooted in the irresponsible monetary policies of maestro Greenspan.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

Problem

“Nobody can ask us to abjure our fascist roots.”

Gianfranco Fini (1952) Italian politician

published on il Giornale, 5 January 1990

“The vehicle of actions begin to ripen into fruit when the afflictions exist; not when the afflictions have been rooted out. As the rice in the paddy has the power to grow only so long as the chaff remains attached thereto and their seed power is not burnt up, not when the chaff has been removed, so also does the vehicle of actions grow into ripeness, when the afflictions are attached to it, and when is seed-power not has not been burnt up by intellection; not when the afflictions have been removed.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 110.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Affliction

“Just as economic pressure from the base … is able to modify the production of surplus value, so pressure grounded in spatial practice is alone capable of modifying the apportionment of that surplus value — i. e. the distribution of the portion of social surplus production allotted to society's collective 'interests', to so-called social services. Such grass-roots pressure, if it is to be effective in this regard, cannot be confined to attacking the state qua guardian of the 'general interest'. For this state, born of the hegemony of a class, has as one of its functions — and a more and more significant function — the organization of space, the regularization of its flows, the control of its networks. It devotes to these purposes a considerable part of global surplus value, of the surplus production assigned to the running of society.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

Henri Lefebvre (1974) The Production of Space. Translated to English in 1991 by Donald Nicholson-Smith; As cited in: "Henri Lefebvre on Governance and Space" on thepolisblog.org 2012.10
Other quotes

Grass, Parting

“One of the great things about liberalism is that it allows for more paths for just that pursuit. In tribal society, there was little to no division of labor beyond what was rooted in age and sex. In feudal monarchies and modern totalitarianisms alike, there is division of labor, but it is imposed on people by rulers: “You will be a soldier.” “You will be a fry cook.” “You were born to be a slave or a serf.” In a free society, you have choice. It’s not perfect: You can’t choose to be a Marine if you do not meet the requirements, but you are free to try.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, A Free People Must Be Virtuous (2018)

People, Age, Sex, Perfection

“Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw materials,—O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue!”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

Lie, Soul, Light, Strong

“At the root of our troubles is a cultural complex whose six main elements make up a "Six-Sided Prison" that traps us all. In Part I[, ] I try to name and describe the six sides of the Prison: patriarchal attitudes, egocentricity, scientific single vision, the bureaucratic mentality, nationalism, and the big-city outlook. Capitalism and socialism are, I argue, both rooted in the Prison (which predates capitalism by hundreds of years) – though neither needs to be.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Racism, militarism, exploitation, ecocide, etc., are also rooted in the Prison.
Page 7.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Parting

“Contemplating such questions as the dialectical relations between being and becoming has inspired and strengthened my beliefs. You are not hearing here some random ideas of a passionate student or a distressed prisoner, but reflections rooted in the experience of a woman physicist who happens to have also advocated for equal rights and human rights, and who as a result was subjected to threats, deprivation, arrests, continuous prosecutions, and finally sentenced to a total of 23 years of imprisonment, 16 years of which has to be served based on the ruling laws in Iran. The harsh treatment and excessive sentence to which I have been subjected were not due to any underground violent or terrorist activity on my part, but– as admitted by the judges of this very system–because of my insistence on the rights of civil society and of human rights. My case, then, clearly portrays the unjust, brutal and illegal practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Law, Idea, Question, Passion

“Since (from the same root as umma) to lead us toward that objective].”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Ali Shariati, in: The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 27-29, (1983), p. 215.

“The root of the problem is that domesticated animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical, emotional and social needs that are redundant in human farms. Farmers routinely ignore these needs without paying any economic price. They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring, and selectively breed monstrosities.”

Yuval Noah Harari (1976) Israeli historian

Introduction to Animal Liberation

Problem, Animals

“Because of the lack of productive capacities of its own, the Jewish Folk cannot carry out the construction of a State, viewed in a territorial sense, but as a support of its own existence it needs the work and creative activities of other nations. Thus the existence of the Jew himself becomes a parasitical one within the lives of other Folks. Hence the ultimate goal of the Jewish struggle for existence is the enslavement of productively active Folks. In order to achieve this goal, which in reality has represented Jewry's struggle for existence at all times, the Jew makes use of all weapons that are in keeping with the whole complex of his character. Therefore in domestic politics within the individual nations he fights first for equal rights and later for superior rights. The characteristics of cunning, intelligence, astuteness, knavery, dissimulation, and so on, rooted in the character of his Folkdom, serve him as weapons thereto. They are as much stratagems in his war of survival as those of other Folks in combat. In foreign policy, he tries to bring nations into a state of unrest, to divert them from their true interests, and to plunge them into reciprocal wars, and in this way gradually rise to mastery over them with the help of the power of money and propaganda. His ultimate goal is the denationalisation, the promiscuous bastardisation of other Folks, the lowering of the racial levy of the highest Folks, as well as the domination of this racial mishmash through the extirpation of the Folkish intelligentsia and its replacement by the members of his own Folk.”

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

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)

Money, War, Way, Intelligence

“Hell no, it isn't a fact. Only a damned fool would do a thing like that. You know there was a lot of pretty rough ribbing going on on both benches during that Series. When I swung and missed that first one, those Cubs really gave me a blast. So I grinned at 'em and held out one finger and told 'em it'd only take one to hit it. Then there was that second strike and they let me have it again. So I held up that finger again and I said I still had that one left. Naw, keed, you know damned well I wasn't pointin' anywhere. If I'd have done that, Root would have stuck the ball right in my ear. And besides that, I never knew anybody who could tell you ahead of time where he was going to hit a baseball. When I get to be that kind of fool, they`ll put me in the booby hatch.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Responding to Chicago sportscaster Hal Totten in the spring of 1933, as to whether Ruth had actually 'called' his 5th-inning home run in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, as quoted in "Oct. 1, 1932 The Yankees' Babe Ruth Gestures Toward Wrigley Field's Bleachers Then Homers Off The Cubs' Charlie Root, Apparently Calling His Shot In Game 3 Of The World Series" http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-11-01/sports/8703230677_1_babe-ruth-cub-bench-world-series-history/3 by Jerome Holtzman, in The Chicago Tribune (1987)

Fools, Hell, Time

“True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.”
Vera gloria radices agit atque etiam propagatur, ficta omnia celeriter tamquam flosculi decidunt nec simulatum potest quicquam esse diuturnum.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 43
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

Flowers, Falseness

“As we see, this is an illegal state; it is a cancerous entity and the root of all the crises and wars and cannot be a factor in bringing about a true and just peace in this region. Therefore, we cannot acknowledge the existence of a state called Israel, not even far in the future, as some people have tried to suggest. Time does not cancel the legitimacy of the Palestinian claim.”

Hassan Nasrallah (1960) Secretary General of Hezbollah

On Egyptian television, February 6, 2000 <br class="br">Quote, 2000 <br class="br">Source: Britain Israel Communication & Research Centre http://www.bicom.org.uk/publications/terrorism/s/1870/sheikh-hassan-nasrallah-quotes-from-the-leader-of-hezbollah/

War, People, Peace, Time

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=266" (1934), st. 1

Youth, Age, Flowers, Tree

“I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Journal entry (14 October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)

Life, Books, Music, Feeling

“I am reasonably certain of one thing. The unquestioning acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation has served to hold back progress on the development of alternative approaches. Blind acceptance of the orthodox position cannot produce the challenges needed to push the theory eventually to its breaking point. And break it will, probably in a way nobody can predict, to produce a theory nobody can imagine. The arguments about reality will undoubtedly persist, but at least we will have a better theory.
I have tried to argue that quantum theory is a difficult subject for modern students of physical science because its interpretation is so firmly rooted in philosophy. If, in arguing the case, I have only made the subject seem even more confusing, then I apologize. However, my most important message is a relatively simple one: quantum theory is rife with conceptual problems and contradictions, and its most common interpretation is anti-realist in nature. If you fine the theory difficult to understand, this is the theory's fault—not yours.”

Jim Baggott (1957) British writer

Closing remarks
Beyond Measure (2004)

Way, Imagination, Understanding, Nature

“This rooting out of the Irish people; this transplanting of them from their native home into a foreign land, may be all very well, so far as the young people are concerned; but for the fathers and mothers who have reared families in Ireland, it is immediate decay and death.”

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (1831–1915) Irish Republican Brotherhood member

"Rossa's Recollections 1838 to 1898: Memoirs of an Irish Revolutionary", p. 143

Death, People, Family, Home

“It is a bourgeois feeling to overvalue the possession of representatives. In representation as in money there is power – power over others. Whoever places the purity and the greatness of our party above all else, for him representatives have value only in so far as they serve to give expression to the power and extent of Social Democracy. What do ten, what do a hundred representatives signify, when our escutcheon has lost its gloss through their acquisition? The value of a representative is small. But the value of the integrity of our party is immeasurable. In it rests our strength. As with the shorn hair, that signified his manhood’s honor, the strength of s to flatter away our most precious jewel and the roots of our triumphal strength – the party purity, the party honor.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Money, Feeling, Democracy

“No root, no fruit.”

Utah Phillips (1935–2008) American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet

Of Mentors and Intellectuals http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/05/29/weir, by Rob Weir (May 29, 2008)

“Cardan's originality in the matter seems to have been shown chiefly in four respects. First, he reduced the general equation to the type x^3 + bx = c; second, in a letter written August 4, 1539, he discussed the question of the irreducible case; third, he had the idea of the number of roots to be expected in the cubic; and, fourth, he made a beginning in the theory of symmetric functions. …With respect to the irreducible case… we have the cube root of a complex number, thus reaching an expression that is irreducible even though all three values of x turn out to be real. With respect to the number of roots to be expected in the cubic… before this time only two roots were ever found, negative roots being rejected. As to the question of symmetric functions, he stated that the sum of the roots is minus the coefficient of x2</sup”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, pp.461-464

Idea, Question, Time

“The root of all evil, if you want to point at it, is politicians that are going to save you and I from terrorists, from illegal immigrants, from drugs. "Elect me, and I'll save you."”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement to an Occupy Wall Street protester
YouTube
2011-10-20
http://youtu.be/CmW4uBYyFns
2012-02-24
2011

Evil

“He… gave thirteen forms of the cubic which have positive roots, these having already been given by Omar Kayyam.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, p.464

“Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves.”

Li Minqi (1969) Chinese economist

Source: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy (2008), Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"

People, Grass, Parting

“The new radical Islam is not simply inspired by the hatred of the West, however. Nor is it in any sense a homogeneous movement. Radical Muslims are primarily concerned to put their own house in order and to address the cultural dislocation that many have experienced in the modern period. It is really impossible to generalize about the rise of this more extreme form of the religion. It not only differs from country to country, but from town to town and from village to village. People feel cut off from their roots: Western culture has invaded the interstices of their lives.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Source: Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet (2001), Chapter 1: "Muhammad The Enemy"

People, Religion, Feeling, Sense

“We probed into the nature of space and time, and of the universal, both with regard to external nature and with regard to mind. But then, we went on to consider the general disorder and confusion that pervades the consciousness of mankind. It is here that I encountered what I feel to be Krishnamurti's major discovery. What he was seriously proposing is that all this disorder, which is the root cause of such widespread sorrow and misery, and which prevents human beings from properly working together, has its root in the fact that we are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. Or to put it differently it may be said that we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

"A Brief Introduction to the Work of Krishnamurti" http://www.krishnamurtiaustralia.org/articles/bohm_introduction.htm

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Universe

“It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out.”

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) American novelist, short story writer and poet

As quoted in Reader's Digest Vol. 130 (1987)

Past, Future, Personality

“To be international, you have to first be local. … When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.”

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer

http://nofilmschool.com/2016/07/abbas-kiarostami-death-cinema-lessons

Nature, Thinking, Tree, Country

“Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help, and thus we are able to recapitulate in the one word motherliness that which we have developed as the characteristic value of woman. Only, the motherliness must be that which does not remain within the narrow circle of blood relations or of personal friends; but in accordance with the model of the Mother of Mercy, it must have its root in universal divine love for all who are there, belabored and burdened.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

Love, Universe, Help, Maternity

“…nor have I found occasion to depart from the plan… the rejection of the whole doctrine of series in the establishment of the fundamental parts both of the Differential and Integral Calculus. The method of Lagrange… had taken deep root in elementary works; it was the sacrifice of the clear and indubitable principle of limits to a phantom, the idea that an algebra without limits was purer than one in which that notion was introduced. But, independently of the idea of limits being absolutely necessary even to the proper conception of a convergent series, it must have been obvious enough to Lagrange himself, that all application of the science to concrete magnitude, even in his own system, required the theory of limits.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Idea, Science, Parting

“Sociobiology is not just any statement that biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory have something to do with human behavior. Sociobiology is a specific theory about the nature of genetic and evolutionary input into human behavior. It rests upon the view that natural selection is a virtually omnipotent architect, constructing organisms part by part as best solutions to problems of life in local environments. It fragments organisms into “traits,” explains their existence as a set of best solutions, and argues that each trait is a product of natural selection operating “for” the form or behavior in question. Applied to humans, it must view specific behaviors (not just general potentials) as adaptations built by natural selection and rooted in genetic determinants, for natural selection is a theory of genetic change. Thus, we are presented with unproved and unprovable speculations about the adaptive and genetic basis of specific human behaviors: why some (or all) people are aggressive, xenophobic, religious, acquisitive, or homosexual.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Our Natural Place", p. 243
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

Life, People, Behavior, Question

“What we have now come to regard as typical of Middle Eastern regimes is not typical of the past. The regime of Saddam Hussein, the regime of Hafiz al Assad, this kind of government, this kind of society, has no roots either in the Arab or in the Islamic past. It is due and let me be quite specific and explicit it is due to an importation from Europe, which comes in two phases.
Phase one, the 19th century, when they are becoming aware of their falling behind the modern world and need desperately to catch up, so they adopt all kinds of European devices with the best of intentions, which nevertheless have two harmful effects. One, they enormously strengthen the power of the state by placing in the hands of the ruler, weaponry and communication undreamt of in earlier times, so that even the smallest petty tyrant has greater powers over his people than Harun al-Rashid or Suleyman the Magnificent, or any of the legendary rulers of the past.
Second, even more deadly, in the traditional society there were many, many limits on the autocracy, the ruler. The whole Islamic political tradition is strongly against despotism. Traditional Islamic government is authoritarian, yes, but it is not despotic. On the contrary, there is a quite explicit rejection of despotism. And this wasn't just in theory; it was in practice too because in Islamic society, there were all sorts of established orders in society that acted as a restraining factor. The bazaar merchants, the craft guilds, the country gentry and the scribes, all of these were well organized groups who produced their own leaders from within the group. They were not appointed or dismissed by the governments. And they did operate effectively as a constraint.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

People, World, Communication, Time

“Injustice happens at many levels, from the grass roots to the top. And one of the keys of SEWA’s vision and action is linking them.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

Grass

“All meaning is necessarily teleological in character and historically rooted in the concrete operations of human subjects.”

Silvia Federici (1942) Italian American scholar, teacher, and feminist activist

"Viet Cong Philosophy: Tran Duc Thao" (1970)

“Inside ourselves there lies the root of good:
the heart outweighs all talents on this earth.”

Nguyễn Du The Tale of Kieu

Source: The Tale of Kiều (1813), Lines 3251–3252

Heart

“It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 20

Love, Money, Evil

“At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

A la base de notre civilisation, il y a la liberté de chacun dans sa pensée, ses croyances, ses opinions, son travail, ses loisirs.
Speech, November 25 1941.
World War II

Freedom, Personality

“He states that the root of x^3 + 6x = 20 isx = \sqrt[3]{\sqrt{108} + 10} - \sqrt[3]{\sqrt{108} - 10}.</center”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, p.464

“Wars and other kinds of murder have their beginning in the hatred of the enemy and in the unwillingness to be patient with evil. Their root is in intemperate self-love and in immoderate affection for temporal possessions. These conflicts are brought into this world because men do not trust the Son of God enough to abide by his commandments.”

Petr Chelčický book The Net of Faith

The Net of Faith (c. 1443)

Love, Men, God, War

“The aptitudes needed to conduct a real research project are fundamentally different from the ones needed for purposes of scientific vulgarisation (like education). This is because above and beyond a capacity for understanding problems and thinking and expressing oneself clearly – something that every good teacher has –an enormous amount of perseverance and stamina is necessary, and above all a scientific approach rooted in real inventiveness.”

Éric Pichet (1960) economist

Source: The Epistemology of Social Science (2011), p. 87.

Education, Understanding, Problem, Thinking

“Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. Keep your thoughts free from hate, and you need have no fear from those who hate you.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

Quoted in Linda O. McMurray, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 107

Hate, Fear

“I love Gloria Estefan, though -- she is cool. It's always just been about the music with her and they've been really good fun pop songs and really great ballads. And she's still going strong. She's quite classy and true to her Latin roots.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comments by Welsh singer Charlotte Church, BBC online news (September 26, 2005)
2007, 2008

Love, Music, Strong

“That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.”

Roy Blount Jr. (1941) American writer

Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 359.

“Invention is the root of innovation. Innovation is the major force for change in the future.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

Comments made in the Q and A part of a speech at the Silicon Valley computer museum in 2005 regarding the energy spent in Silicon Valley at managing perception as opposed to creating new technology. In response to a question about the power of venture capital and consumer marketing and how it is determining the future of technology.

Change, Future

“German’ socialism came to be wholly associated with the extreme anti-liberal politics of the antisemitic and völkisch movement. The appeal here was mainly to the lower-middle classes—traders, craftsmen, small farmers, lower civil servants—and rooted in a combination of antisemitism, extreme nationalism, and vehement anti-capitalism”

Ian Kershaw (1943) British historian

usually interpreted as ‘Jewish’ capitalism
Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 135

“It is mutual fear and distrust that mostly generate world tensions and these can be traced in no small measure, like other root causes of worsening world conditions, to different people's conflicting and often intolerant, value-belief differences … Whereas in the past science did little, if anything, to remedy this situation and in some ways made things worse, our reformed "macro-determinist" science that includes consciousness and subjective values … provides common universal ethical foundations on which all nations could work to build a World Government or at least a World Security System to help control nuclear developments and other global threats that require international collaboration.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

The Human Predicament: A Way Out? (1985), p. 3

People, World, Fear, Way

“We speak about cooperation but seem hesitant to commit ourselves to a global offensive to root out terrorism, with the pooling of resources, exchange of information, sharing of intelligence, and the unambiguous unity of purpose required. This must change. We do have a global coalition against terrorism. We must give it substance and credibility, avoiding selective approaches and political expediency.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On terrorism, as quoted in We will carry forward composite dialogue, says Manmohan http://www.thehindu.com/2004/09/24/stories/2004092405350100.htm, The Hindu (24 September 2004) <br class="br">2001-2005

Intelligence, Change

“That the nation has found a consensus for its highest office in some one who has sprung from the grass-roots of our society and grown up in the dust and heat of this sacred land is symbolic of the fact that the concerns of the common man have now moved to the centre stage of our social and political life. It is this larger significance of my election rather than any personal sense of honour that makes me rejoice on this occasion.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Source: Speech By Shri Kocheril Raman Narayanan On His Assumption Of Office As President Of India https://web.archive.org/web/19970804210818/alfa.nic.in/rb/krn_asum.htm, National Informatics Center, 25 July, 1997

Life, Sense, Grass, Personality