Quotes about ruin
page 6

“For those whom God to ruin has design'd,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. III, line 2387.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

“Hindu society as a whole has ceased to remember that Afghanistan rose on the ruins of Gandhara and Kamboja, the two ancient Janapadas of Bharatavarsha which had stood guard on our North-Western gateway for ages untold.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Age

“Interviewer: I read a post on the Internet from a young girl who had been victimized by someone and her position was like, "I can talk about this now because Fiona Apple can talk about what happened to her." Do you look at yourself as a role model for women and girls who've had this experience?
Fiona: That's the only reason I ever brought the whole rape thing up. It's a terrible thing, but it happens to so many people. I mean, 80 percent of the people I've told have said right back to me, "That happened to me too." It's so common, and so ridiculous that it's a hard thing to talk about. It angers me so much because something like that happens to you and you carry it around for the rest of your life. No matter how much therapy you go through, no matter how much healing you go through, it's part of you. I just feel that it's such a tragedy that so many people have to bear the extra burden of having to keep it secret from everyone else. As if it's too icky a subject to burden other people with and everyone's going to think you're a victim forever. Then you've labeled yourself a victim, and you've been taken advantage of, and you're ruined, and you're soiled, and you're not pure, you know.If I'm in a position where people are looking up to me in any way, then it's absolutely my responsibility to be open and honest about this, because if I'm not, what does that say to people? It doesn't change a person -- well, it does change a person but it doesn't take anything away from you. It can only strengthen you. It has made me so angry in the past. Like I wanted to say it to somebody. I really wanted somebody to connect with, somebody to understand me, somebody to comfort me. But I felt like I couldn't say anything about because it was taboo to talk about.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Nuvo, "Fiona Apple: The NUVO Interview" April [1997]

Life, Women, People, Secret

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Love, Pain, Hate, People

“The story of Islam is no different. Prophetic Islam is inimical to mystic ideas. In the beginning, some Sufis courted martyrdom, but eventually they bought peace and safety by surrendering to Prophetic Islam. There have been some outstanding Sufis, but by arid large the Sufi movement has been part of a larger aggressive apparatus, just like Christian Missions of Imperialism. Though Islam persecuted "infidels", destroyed their temples, enslaved and looted them, we find no Sufis protesting. In fact. they were often beneficiaries of this vandalism. "In many cases there is no doubt that the shrine of a ·Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practised on the spot long before the introduction of Islam," says Thomas Arnold making it look quite normal and harmless. Mu'in aI-Din Chishtl's dargah at Ajmer is one such shrine built on the ruins of an old Hindu temple. The saint had also got the present of a Hindu princess, part of thebooty captured by a Muslim General, Malik Khitab, when he attacked the neighbouring pagan land. Sufi saints often took full part in Islamic jihad.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Peace, Idea, Parting, Princess

“Thy possessions have made thee a hollow image; they have ruined thee and left thee.”

Ephrem the Syrian (306–373) Syriac deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century

in A Spiritual Psalter (2004), p. 267

“We don't distinguish between the various forms of child abuse. Emotional abuse … is pretty much ignored. When someone spends their life being told, 'You're stupid, you're a disgrace, I should have aborted you, you ruined my life,' it scars them in ways that are almost impossible to describe with words. And yet, such a person describing their life would be told, 'Oh, you weren't an incest victim? Oh, you weren't burned with cigarettes? So, how abused were you really?”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Patty Satalia WPSU on October 24, 2004 [www.wpsu.org/radio/Audio/takenote/TN544.ram

Life, Stupidity, Way, Personality

“When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter,
he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself
in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, “The kingfishers!
who cares
for their feathers
now?” His last words had been, “The pool is slime.””

Charles Olson (1910–1970) American writer

Part I, 2
The Kingfishers (1950)

Night

“Are these not sufficient proofs of your incompetency and inability to resist my forces? I will give you more and stronger ones. But if you still persist in refusing to liften to reason and decline to do my bidding, and if you wish delibrately to rush to your ruin, then I will shortly, in your presence, order your castle [Fort Provintia] to be stormed. If I wish to set my force to work, then I am able to move heaven and Earth. Wherever I go I am destined to win. Therefore take warning, and think the matter over.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan, 2008, Jonathan Manthorpe, illustrated, Macmillan, 0230614248, 71, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=p3D6a7bK_t0C&pg=PA71&dq=koxinga+taiwan+always+chinese&hl=en&ei=NcbiTafrEY3ogQeB7_28Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=koxinga%20taiwan%20always%20chinese&f=false,

Thinking

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech on the Excise Bill, House of Commons (March 1763), quoted in Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who Flourished in the Time of George III (1855), I, p. 42. repeated by Brennan, J., MILLER v. UNITED STATES, 357 U.S. 301 (1958) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=357&invol=301 repeated by Alfred Denning, Baron Denning, Southam v Smout [1964] 1 QB 308 at 320.

“There are few sights sadder than a ruined book. -Lemony Snicket”

Daniel Handler book The Wide Window

The Wide Window (2000)

Books

“Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) American ecologist

Tragedy of the Commons, 1968.
Tragedy of the Commons (1968)

Men, World, Freedom

“There were three known existing sapphires. One was in the Conquest of Space Museum on Terra, one was in the hands of United System President Polonius Delph—he was the richest man in seven worlds, or had been until he’d paid cash for his jewel. The other had been stolen soon after its discovery. Maybe Delph had it…
“From what I understand of your world, Delph isn’t the only one who wants the sapphires. He has rivals in the Plutocracy. Another mysterious collector? Or those rivals are competing for the presidency or they think they can ruin him. As you know, it’s a vicious circle in politics. You can’t get to be president unless you have the wealth and you can’t really make massive sums until you’re president.””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: Short fiction, The Lost Canal (2013), p. 355

World, Understanding, Thinking, Wealth

“Harshness is for the good of a boy, soft-heartedness will ruin him.”

Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) Japanese writer

Book V, ch. 5.
The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

Boy

“We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Statement about the conditions in Czechoslovakia and other previously Soviet Bloc countries. Daily Telegraph London (3 January 1991)

Housing

“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever…. Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

Bird, Tree, Animals

“If I was wealthy I'd never do anything but poke around in ruined cities all over the world - and probably get snake-bit.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (1931)
Letters

World

“I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet…[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face…I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called…Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

It's a busy couch.
Behavioral Problems

Birthday, Drink, Business, Perfection

“And all the world over, each nation's the same;
They've simply no mission of playing the game.
They argue with umpires - they cheer when they've won
And they practice beforehand, which ruins the fun.
The English are moral, the English are good
And clever, and modest, and misunderstood!”

Michael Flanders (1922–1975) English writer and performer

A Song of Patriotic Prejudice

World, Game

“What interests me is the transformation, not the monument. I don't construct ruins, but I feel ruins are moments when things show themselves. A ruin is not a catastrophe. It is the moment when things can start again.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

Quoted in Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-schwartz/in-the-beginning-there-was-not_b_1703387.html

Feeling

“Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Wired Issue 2.09 (September 1994) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/penn.html 1990s

Art, Parting

“There is something that happens to the mind in moments of terror. Perhaps we figure it's the last we'll ever have and we record it for the rest of our long journey. We take perfect snapshots, an album to despair over. We trim the edges and place them in plastic. We tuck the scrapbook away to take out in our ruined times.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

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

Time, Perfection, Despair

“… Her aunt is an agnostic, an ardent advocate of women's rights, an internationalist who rests all her hopes on Esperanto, is devoted to Bernard Shaw, and spends her spare time in campaigns of anti-vivisection. Her elder brother, whom she admires exceedingly, has just spent two years at Oxford. He is an Anglo-Catholic, an enthusiast concerning all things medieval, writes mystical poetry, reads Chesterton, and means to devote his life to seeking for the lost secret of medieval stained glass. Her mother's younger brother is an engineer, a strict materialist, who never recovered from reading Haeckel in his youth; he scorns art, believes that science will save the world, scoffs at everything that was said and thought before the nineteenth century, and ruins his health by experiments in the scientific elimination of sleep. Her mother is of a quietistic frame of mind, very much interested in Indian philosophy, a pacifist, a strict non-participator in life, who in spite of her daughter's devotion to her will not make any move to enlist her enthusiasms. And this may be within the girl's own household. Add to it the groups represented, defended, advocated by her friends, her teachers, and the books which she reads by accident, and the list of possible enthusiasms, of suggested allegiances, incompatible with one another, becomes appalling.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 161

Life, Women, Health, Secret

“There is plenty of primary literature available in Arabic and Persian regarding the rise, development, and doings of numerous sufi silsilas in India. Some of this literature has been translated into Urdu and English as well. A study of this literature leaves little doubt that sufis were the most fanatic and fundamentalist elements in the Islamic establishment in medieval times. Hindus should go to this literature rather than fall for latter-day Islamic propaganda. The ruin of Hindus and Hinduism in Kashmir in particular, can be safely credited to sufis who functioned there from the early thirteenth century onwards.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Literature, Study, Time

“They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. But if yellow is a name Why aint black the same. Well, if I say Hey black girl Lord, she try to ruin my game.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1982)

Girl, Game

“The deva asked,
What causes ruin in the world?
What breaks off friendships?
What is the most violent fever?
Who is the best physician?"

The Blessed One replied,
Ruin in the world is caused by ignorance;
friendships are broken off by envy and selfishness;
the most violent fever is hatred;
the best physician is the Buddha.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

The Gospel of Buddha http://reluctant-messenger.com/gospel_buddha/preface.htm (1894), a compilation of translations from ancient records.

Friendship, World, Envy, Selfishness

“Take me disappearing, through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time…”

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

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

Time

“And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”

Herman Melville book Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)

Home, Solitude

“A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 66

Life, Men, Disease

“Odysseus returned at last, neither dead nor alive, somehow still attached to this ruined corpse—a spirit perhaps unwanted among spirits and forced to remain in the dead house of its body.”

Whitley Strieber book The Hunger

The Hunger (1981)

Housing, Dead

“Because he attempted to tell [in his painting 'The Jewish Cemetery' painted by Ruisdael, ] that which is outside the reach of art…. there are ruins to indicate old age, a stream to signify the course of life, and rocks and precipices to shadow forth its dangers. But how are we to discover all this?”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 304
posthumous, undated

Life, Age, Art, Painting

“Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job. Maybe they’re right, Floyd replied.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 9 (p. 138)

Thinking, World, Fear, People

“God created man for fellowship… The fall of man ruined that and Paradise—that is, the garden of Eden—was lost, but on the new earth paradise will be regained and God will again fellowship with mankind in a unique sense.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 88

God, Sense

“If you see the good in others and cover their defects with your love, they will follow you. If you see only weaknesses in others, your spirituality will be ruined.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

The Way of God's Will Chapter 3-1 The Church and Church Life http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw3-01.htm Translated 1980.

Love

“There are people in every age who come early or late to a sense of the futility of the world. Some people, such as the monks of the desert, flee the entanglements of the world to rush toward eternity. But even for those who remain in the world, the approach of eternity is implacable. “The glacier knocks in the cupboard, / The desert sighs in the bed,” was W. H. Auden’s mock-prophetic forecast. He meant the desert is incipient in the human condition. Time melts away from us. Even in luxuriant weather, even in luxuriant wealth, even in luxuriant youth, we know our bodies will fail; our buildings will fall to ruin.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

People, Youth, Age, World

“And thou, vast ocean! on whose awful face
Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace.”

Robert Montgomery (poet) (1807–1855) English poet

The Omnipresence of the Deity, Part i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Man marks the earth with ruin,—his control / Stops with the shore", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv, stanza 179.

Time

“My publication was for a fine purpose. Certain snobs may now look down on it and call it common or even pornographic, but until the end of the war, I had Hitler's greatest respect, and Der Stürmer had the party's complete support. At our height, we had a circulation of 1.5 million. Everybody read Der Stürmer, and they must have liked it or they wouldn't have bought it. The aim of Der Stürmer was to unite Germans and to awaken them against Jewish influence which might ruin our noble culture.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

War, Support, Reading

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Let America Be America Again (1935)

Death, People, Mountain

“I am running because I love my country and Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are ruining it. It is time to take our country back and I am asking you to join me in this fight.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Smith, John L., Critics play whack-a-mole with Tea Party of Nevada candidate, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 23, 2010]

Love, Time, Fight, Country

“It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin.”

Honoré de Balzac book Pierrette

Les villes se relèvent aussi difficilement que les maisons de commerce de leur ruine.
Source: Pierrette (1840), Ch. III: Pathology of Retired Mercers.

Housing

“Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Fate of Man, ch. 26 (1939)

Disease

“Herr Reich Chancellor, present-day science is following a wrong and dangerous path. First and foremost it concerns the treatment of water - the principal agent of life. The existing methods of water control, power stations and forestry are ruining water - the earth's blood. It becomes diseased, and so affects all its surroundings. Instead of progress, the future promises catastrophe. With your four-year plan, and the technological methods employed, you are demolishing Germany, instead of building her up. In this way, Germany will sink within ten years..”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Living Water

Life, Disease, Way, Water

“After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.”

George V of the United Kingdom (1865–1936) King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India

Statement to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, referring to his son, Edward, Prince of Wales
Quoted in Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin (1969) ch.34

Boy, Dead

“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

December 21, 1762
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“The Revolution of ’82 (1782) was a revolution which enabled Irishmen to sell at a much higher price their honour, their integrity, and the interests of their country; it was a revolution which while at one stroke it doubled the value of every borough monger in the Kingdom, left three-fourths of our countrymen [Catholics] slaves as it found them, and the Government of Ireland in the base, wicked and contemptible hands who had spent their lives plundering and degrading her … Who of the veteran enemies of the country lost his place, or his pension? Not one. The power remained in the hands of our enemies, again to be exerted for our ruin, with this difference, that, formerly, we had our distresses gratis at the hands of England, but now we pay very dearly to receive the same with aggravations at the hands of Irishmen—yet this we boast of and call a Revolution.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Attributed, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland by a Northern Whig. (September, 1791)

Country

“I am the unknown Will,
The Anger that threatens glory and ruin:
Lord of Storms am I,
in heaven high and caverns deep.
I am the Father of the War,
Odin for you, Wotan for him,
Wayfarer, Wanderer, beggar, king,
numen, genius, strength and ring.”

Artur Balder (1974) Spanish film director

Invocation of the Nordic god Odin, from "Invocations and Oracles", Germanic Appendices, Volume V of the Teutoburg Saga, as quoted in advance posting (30 September 2014) https://m.facebook.com/ArturBalderWeb/photos/a.328905527173875.77327.224962374234858/757576457640111/?type=1

War, Anger

“Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. I, ch. XI
Jude the Obscure (1895)

Error, Feeling

“Democracy is incapable of perseverance. Since it is shared by political parties that rule for one, two, or three years, it is unable to conceive and carry out plans of longer duration. One party annuls the plans and efforts of the other. What is conceived and built by one party today is destroyed by another tomorrow. In a country in which much has to be built, in which building is indeed the primary historical requirement, this disadvantage of democracy constitutes a true danger. It is a situation similar to that which prevails in an establishment where masters are changed every year, each new master bringing in his own plans, ruining what was done by some, and starting new things, which will in turn be destroyed by tomorrow's masters.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Democracy, Effort, Change, Perseverance

“Unless you remove the weeds, a good crop will be ruined.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "The Quarterly review" - Page 20 - by William Gifford, John Taylor Coleridge - 1935

“It is a dreadful picture—this picture of Italy under the rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned—the more frequently, amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the germ and core of all nationality—in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a— hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Italy under the Oligarchy
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, God, War, World

“There are so many films from which one leaves as stupid as one entered. I'd rather give you a migraine than nothing at all … I'd rather ruin your eyes than leave you indifferent.”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

Stupidity, Indifference

“…good American poets are surprisingly individual and independent; they have little of the member-of-the-Academy, official man-of-letters feel that English or continental poets often have. When American poets join literary political parties, doctrinaire groups with immutable principles, whose poems themselves are manifestoes, the poets are ruined by it. We see this in the beatniks, with their official theory that you write a poem by putting down anything that happens to come into your head; this iron spontaneity of theirs makes it impossible for even a talented beatnik to write a good poem except by accident, since it eliminates the selection, exclusion, and concentration that are an essential part of writing a poem. Besides, their poems are as direct as true works of art are indirect: ironically, these conscious social manifestoes of theirs, these bohemian public speeches, make it impossible for the artist’s unconscious to operate as it normally does in the process of producing a work of art.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Fifty Years of American Poetry”, pp. 327–328
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Art, Feeling, Parting

“As an industrialist, I am free to apply the technical methods of former centuries; but by doing so, I should invite certain ruin.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 3

“Nothing can save England, if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then, indeed, our story is told. If, while on all sides foreign nations are every day asserting a more aggressive and militant nationalism by arms and trade – if we remain paralysed by our own theoretical doctrines or plunged in the stupor of after-war exhaustion…indeed, all that the croakers predict will come true and our ruin will be certain and final.”

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

Speech to the Royal Society of St George (23 April 1933), Winston Churchill, Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches (A&C Black, 2013), p. 402
The 1930s

War, Faith

“[I]f we lose our chance now…that chance will not return either to us or to our children. The memories of the last War will grow dim. The world will get back into the old rut, familiar professions and piety about peace will again soothe us to sleep, and the various countries will once more base their security upon military preparation. So they will all, in the end, find themselves drifting hopelessly upon those currents that make for war. … And remember what the next war will be like. The old lines which divide combatants from non-combatants, the weak and the diseased from the strong and the robust, men from women and children, will all be obliterated and civilization itself assailed, and from sea and sky will be brought to a heap of ruins.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester (24 May 1929), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 487
1920s

Women, Men, War, Children

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life, Men, Books, Family

“We need a barrier behind which, in the years to come, our people can work in security to rebuild its ruins. That barrier is the Rhine. I must take national feelings into account. That does not mean that I am afraid of losing office. I am quite indifferent on that point. But I will not, by giving up the occupation, do something which will break the willpower of our people.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Speech at the Paris Peace Conference (June 1919), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 352.
Prime Minister

People, Feeling, Indifference

“On a trip to Germany, Lange and his entourage were climbing the tower of an ancient castle when they stopped to catch their breath. "How old is this ruin?" someone asked a guide. "Forty-two years," said Lange.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Anecdotes
Source: A New Zealand Dictionary of Political Quotations, p. 94.

“Our nation stood guard on tense borders; we spoke for the rights of dissidents and the hopes of exile; we aided the rise of new democracies on the ruins of tyranny. And all the cost and sacrifice of that struggle has been worth it, because, from Latin America to Europe to Asia, we've gained the peace that freedom brings.”

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

2000s, 2005, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (October 2005)

Peace, Hope, Democracy, Freedom

“Lor bless ye, yes! These critters ain't like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right. Now, they say," said Haley, assuming a candid and confidential air, "that this kind o' trade is hardening to the feelings; but I never found it so. Fact is, I never could do things up the way some fellers manage the business. I've seen 'em as would pull a woman's child out of her arms, and set him up to sell, and she screechin' like mad all the time; — very bad policy — damages the article — makes 'em quite unfit for service sometimes. I knew a real handsome gal once, in Orleans, as was entirely ruined by this sort o' handling. The fellow that was trading for her didn't want her baby; and she was one of your real high sort, when her blood was up. I tell you, she squeezed up her child in her arms, and talked, and went on real awful. It kinder makes my blood run cold to think of 't; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up, she jest went ravin' mad, and died in a week. Clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, just for want of management, — there's where 't is. It's always best to do the humane thing, sir; that's been my experience.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his arm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a second Wilberforce.
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1 In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

Way, Feeling, Business, Thinking

“Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous,
Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus,
See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), Winged Man

“Whenever I had an opportunity to address the people in different parts of our province, I told them clearly that indeed, I was of the opinion that India should not be divided because today in India we have witnessed the result. Thousands and thousands of young and old, children, men, and women were massacred and ruined. But now that the division is an accomplished fact, the dispute is over. " I delivered many speeches against the division of India, but the question is: has anybody listened to me? You may hold any opinion about me, but I am not a man of destruction but of construction. If you study my life, you will find that I devoted it to the welfare of our country. We have proclaimed that if the Government of Pakistan would work for our people and our country the Khudai Khidmatgars would be with them. I repeat that I am not for the destruction of Pakistan. In destruction lies no good. "Neither Hindus nor Muslims, nor the Frontier, not Punjab, Bengal or Sindh stands to gain from it. There is advantage only in construction. I want to tell you categorically I will not support anybody in destruction. If any constructive programme is before you, if you want to do something constructive for our people, not in theory, but in practice, I declare before this House that I and my people are at your service…”

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) Indian independence activist

February 1948
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: A True Servant of Humanity by Girdhari Lal Puri pp -188 ? 190

Life, Women, Men, Children

“I'm very glad that there was, in fact, a consequence. I think that this kind of coarse language doesn't belong anywhere in reasonable dialogue between reasonable people. … It gets ruined by this disgusting -- and I'll use the word 'disgusting' -- comment which doesn't belong in any polite company and certainly doesn't belong on any radio station that I would listen to.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Interview http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2007-04-13T215538Z_01_N13229123_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-RACE-IMUS-RICE.xml&src=rss&rpc=22 by Michael Medved, April 13, 2007.

People, Thinking

“In our time the Biblical prophecies are being realized. As the prophet Amos said, they shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine. They shall till gardens and eat their fruit. And I will plant them upon their soil never to be uprooted again. Ladies and gentlemen, the people of Israel have come home never to be uprooted again.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Netanyahu speech at the UN General Assembly 1 October 2013 http://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-netanyahus-2013-speech-to-the-un-general-assembly/. 2010s, 2013

People, Home, Drink, Wine

“If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. But they won't make soldiers. As a class they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier. Better by far to yield to the demands of England and France and abolish slavery and thereby purchase their aid, than resort to this policy, which leads as certainly to ruin and subjugation as it is adopted; you want more soldiers, and hence the proposition to take negroes into the Army. Before resorting to it, at least try every reasonable mode of getting white soldiers. I do not entertain a doubt that you can, by the volunteering policy, get more men into the service than you can arm. I have more fears about arms than about men, For Heaven’s sake, try it before you fill with gloom and despondency the hearts of many of our truest and most devoted men, by resort to the suicidal policy of arming our slaves.”

Howell Cobb (1815–1868) American politician

Howell Cobb. "Letter to James A. Seddon", in: Encyclopædia Britannica] (1911), Hugh Chisholm, editor, 11th ed., Cambridge University Press.
Quote regarding suggestions that the Confederates turn their slaves into soldiers. Also quoted as 'You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong'.

Men, Fear, Suicide, Heart

“To the mind of superficial men the future of different races has already brought disaster and ruin upon the country. The poor negro has been charged with all our woes. In the haste of these men they forget that our trouble was not ethnological, but moral, that it was not difference of complexion, but difference of conviction. It was not the Ethiopian as a man, but the Ethiopian as a slave and a coveted article of merchandise, that gave us trouble. I close these remarks as I began. If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the future of the republic. We shall spread the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans. Indian and Celt, Negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew and gentile, all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, Justice, Law, Support

“We joined long wagon trains moving south; we met hundreds of wagons going north; the roads east and west were crawling lines of families traveling under canvas, looking for work, for another foothold somewhere on the land…. The country was ruined, the whole world was ruined; nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Written in 1935, recalling her family’s migration from drought-stricken South Dakota to the Missouri Ozarks in 1894; the 650-mile trip had taken them six weeks.
As quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 1, by William V. Holtz (1993).

World, Family, Hope, Travel

“Because I worked at the White House on 9/11, I carry the memories and the pain of that day in a wound that is particularly deep — one that is very personal. Some of you were not in government on 9/11, and some are from parts of the country where people do not think much today about terrorism. I appreciate that some may not share the same sense of sadness and anger. But I must ask you to take on the perspective that President Bush and I had on September 11th and the days following — the brutal unprovoked murders of mothers and fathers — sons and daughters…the phone calls of desperate good byes…symbols of American wealth and power in flames and ruins. Five years have passed. I concede it may be difficult for some to stay committed to this mission — maintaining the necessary intensity and commitment — without that perspective.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech to U.S. Attorneys’ National Security Conference (January 11, 2007)

Pain, People, Sadness, Thinking

“He strode over to the ruined church. This, Blue had discovered, was how Gansey got places - striding. Walking was for ordinary people.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

Blue, about Gansey
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven Boys (2012)

People

“Let not what thou canst not prevent, though it be the ruin of thy home or country, draw thee from thy proper work.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 98

Home, Drawing, Country

“Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do; that is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much. I cannot tell what part I may be allowed to play myself; I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/sep/03/prime-ministers-announcement in the House of Commons (3 September 1939) announcing war with Germany Prime Minister

Life, Hope, Victory, Parting

“I sat on my bed and I said to God: You've taken her, but you haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair (1951)

Love, God, Hate, Peace

“When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. […] The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. […] The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

You and Your Research (1986)

Way, Error, Problem, Tree

“Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“I honestly believe that drink is the greatest curse of the day, except, of course, civil service, and that it has driven more young men to ruin than anything except civil service examinations. p. 78”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 19, The Successful Politician Does Not Drink

Men, Drink

“The original 1954 Japanese film, Gojira was iconic, and only made a couple mistakes of any significance. (1)They killed him in the end, and we saw his body turned to skeleton. Not the best way to begin 60 years worth of sequels. (2) Godzilla was depicted as a dinosaur, and was associated with living trilobites. Even if there was some sort of ‘realm that time forgot’ out in the Pacific somewhere, Trilobites were already extinct before the first dinosaurs, and Godzilla was clearly no dinosaur. The conceptual artists reportedly referenced illustrations of dinosaurs, but that’s not what they rendered. All bi-pedal dinosaurs [Therapods] were digigrade, walking on their toes, like birds, and usually only three or four digits. Godzilla was plantigrade and pentadactyle, (having five digits and walking on the whole foot) just like lizards. It even looks like a lizard, apart from the fact that no reptile has an actual nose or external ears. In a sense, what Toho pictures created was actually an oriental dragon. These tend to mix reptilian and mammalian traits. Amusingly in 1954, Toho made a giant lizard and called it a dinosaur. In 1998, Tristar re-designed Godzilla as a dinosaur, but called it a lizard. Of course that wasn’t the only thing Tristar did wrong. They tried to ruin the monster completely. They took away the only thing that worked in decades of sequels, the look of the monster itself. Then they took away everything that made Godzilla appealing to Kaiju fans, then they tied it down and shot it. Such disrespect. If you’re going to make a movie that already has a fan-base, and they are the ones who will decide whether your film will pay off, respect those fans and the story they’re paying to see.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

Way, Bird, Sense, Time

“During… ten years the C. R. G. has met nearly every month, and although it has never had more than about a dozen active members, its influence has grown to the point at which is causes Mortimer Taube in America to rage over its medieval scholasticism, John Metcalfe in Australia to denounce it as a plot by Ranganathan to ruin librarianship, and a British University librarian to describe it as one of the two most significant developments in British librarianship since the end of the war.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: The Classification Research Group 1952—1962 (1962), p. 127

War, Universe, Rage

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

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

Bizarre Festival (21 August 1999)

People, Music, Way, Thinking

“Even a very general knowledge of Indian history already shows that any instances of Hindu persecution of Buddhism could never have been more than marginal. After fully seventeen centuries of Buddhism's existence, from the 6 th century BC to the late 12 th century AD, most of it under the rule of Hindu kings, we find Buddhist establishments flourishing all over India. Under king Pushyamitra Shunga, often falsely labelled as a persecutor of Buddhism, important Buddhist centres such as the Sanchi stupa were built. As late as the early 12 th century, the Buddhist monastery Dharmachakrajina Vihara at Sarnath was built under the patronage of queen Kumaradevi, wife of Govindachandra, the Hindu king of Kanauj in whose reign the contentious Rama temple in Ayodhya was built. This may be contrasted with the ruined state of Buddhism in countries like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan after one thousand or even one hundred years of Muslim rule. Indeed, the Muslim chroniclers themselves have described in gleeful detail how they destroyed Buddhism root and branch in the entire Gangetic plain in just a few years after Mohammed Ghori's victory in the second battle of Tarain in 1192. The famous university of Nalanda with its fabulous library burned for weeks. Its inmates were put to the sword except for those who managed to flee. The latter spread the word to other Indian regions where Buddhist monks packed up and left in anticipation of further Muslim conquests. It is apparent that this way, some abandoned Buddhist establishments were taken over by Hindus; but that is an entirely different matter from the forcible occupation or destruction of Buddhist institutions by the foreign invaders.”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

Koenraad Elst: Religious Cleansing of Hindus, 2004, Agni conference in The Hague, and in: K. Elst The Problem with Secularism, 2007

Way, History, Knowledge, Universe

“England can never be ruined except by a parliament.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Famous sayings and their authors: a collection of historical sayings in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin, by Edward Latham, Sonnenschein, 1906.

“In Rajab AH 836 (AD February-March, 1433) Sultãn Ahmad mounted an expedition for the conquest of MewãR and Nãgaur. When he reached the town of Nãgaur, he sent out armies for the destruction of towns and villages and levelled with the ground whatever temple was found at whichever place… Having laid waste the land of Kîlwãrã, the Sultãn entered the land of Dîlwãrã, and he ruined the lofty palaces of RãNã Mokal and destroyed the temples and idols…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Ahmad Shãh I of Gujarat (AD 1411-1443) Mewar (Rajasthan)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

“If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman, because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

Si je savais une chose utile à ma nation qui fût ruineuse à une autre, je ne la proposerais pas à mon prince, parce que je suis homme avant d’être Français, parce que je suis nécessairement homme, et que je ne suis Français que par hasard
I.
Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899)

“And so among the ruins of our pride, we grow to be loving children of the Most High.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 331.

Love, Children

“We must also sympathize with the Whites in Kenya Colony in their opposition to a filling of their country with cheap Hindu labor. As Americans we can understand the Negro and recognize his cheerful qualities, but we can have little sympathy with the Hindu whom we have expressly barred from our Pacific Coast. These Hindus, with the Chinese, have ruined the native races of many of the Polynesian Islands. They have been for ages in contact with the highest civilizations, but have failed to benefit by such contact, either physically, intellectually, or morally.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

Age, Understanding, Country

“War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Why Are We in Kosovo?", The New York Times (2 May 1999)

War, Imagination, History, Communication

“When entering a studio the most pleasant thing to see is a blank canvas. It looks so inviting to make a start, you are fresh and hoping for the best. Then a terrible time follows when everything seems lost and ruined, you fear you will never get it done, than suddenly a ray of light! And it seems you get what you wanted to tell. My best works usually are going trough such a struggle.”

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

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018 (version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Het meest aangename te zien wanneer men een atelier betreedt is een leeg doek. Het oogt zo uitnodigend om een begin te maken, je bent fris en hoopt op het beste. Dan volgt een vreselijke tijd waarin alles verloren en verprutst lijkt, je vreest dat je het nooit zal maken, en plotseling een lichtstraal! En het lijkt alsof je krijgt dat wat je wilde vertellen. Mijn beste werken gaan doorgaans door zulk een strijd. Mauve's remark, later quoted by Mauve's student nl:Arina Hugenholtz, in her In memoriam mr. Anton Mauve, RKD Den Haag; as cited in The land of Mauve: utopia or a reality? / Het land van Mauve: utopie of werkelijkheid? https://www.rug.nl/research/kenniscentrumlandschap/mscripties/christina_vlasma-het_land_van_mauve-masterscriptie.pdf; master-scriptie by Christina van Staats-Vlasma; Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, La Broquerie, Manitoba Canada, Nov. 2010, p. 93 undated quotes

Fear, Hope, Light, Time

“Growing old is natural,” growls the old woman. “When you’ve lived long enough for all your ambitions to be in ruins, friendships broken, lovers forgotten or divorced acrimoniously, what’s left to go on for? If you feel tired and old in spirit, you might as well be tired and old in body. Anyway, wanting to live forever is immoral. Think of all the resources you’re taking up that younger people need! Even uploads face a finite data storage limit after a time. It’s a monstrously egotistical statement, to say you intend to live forever.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 7 (“Curator”), p. 279

Friendship, People, Feeling, Lovers

“The war hung over us like a storm cloud. […] They told us how the animals escaped from the zoo after the bombing raid and rushed about the streets. They fled not from people, but to people, and, let's say, the bear roared and shook its paw, the ostrich waved a burnt wing, and the elephant knelt, lifted its trunk and trumpeted plaintively. But what could people do when the earth was burning beneath them? A coral aspid, a very venomous and beautiful snake, slithered up to the sixth floor and meekly curled up under someone's bed. And in these stories about the ruins of great cities, about streets where African reptiles creep and dying elephants trumpet, there was something from Wells and from the Apocalypse — more generally from legends about the end of the world and the total destruction of humanity.”

Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978) Soviet writer

Russian text
The Monkey Comes for His Skull (1943)

War, People, World, Beauty

““In spite of the ruins and death, where every illusion has ended, the strength of my dreams is so strong, that exaltation is reborn from everything, and my hands are never empty." by Smita Nair Jain at The first Global Alumni Leadership Summit organized by the Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore Alumni Association 2015””

Smita Nair Jain (1969) Indian Author, screenwriter and playback singer

Death, Dreams, Strong

“If we are minded to affirm Christ's Kingdom as we ought, we must wage irreconcilable war with him who is plotting its ruin.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill p. 174
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

War, Christ

“The American insanity for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

On Growing Up Tough, "Dolts and Love Cultists" (1971)
1970s-

Love

“The modern academics find it politically incorrect to criticize the devastation under Islamic rule, even though post-colonial scholars have amply exposed the ruin created by the British.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Indra's Net

Indra's Net (2014)

“The East knows a true lucidity, but to be an inheritor of the West is to hack through jungles of indiscipline, devoured by vile ants and words unstrung from sense, until the dripping foliage of delirium opens out onto a space of comprehensive ruin. This has never been understood, nor can it be. The foulness of our fate only deepens with the centuries, as the tracts of insanity sprawl. From bodies gnawed by tropical fevers we swim out through collapse to inexistence in forever, destined for Undo.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Shamanic Nietzsche" (1995), in Fanged Noumena, p. 223

Fate, Sense

“Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings (1998).

Age

“Putin's Russia is our adversary and moral opposite. It is committed to the destruction of the post-war, rule-based, world order built on American leadership and the primacy of our political and economic values…There is no placating Putin. There is no transforming him from a gangster to a responsible statesman. Previous administrations have tried and failed not because they didn’t try hard enough, but because Putin wants no part of it… Oppose Russian aggression against the world we have built from the ruined cities and destroyed empires of World War II. Don’t surrender the gains for our security and the progress for humanity that our Cold War victory achieved. Support the Russian people and their rights to liberty and justice, not the corrupt leaders who betray them… [A]ll who risk their lives to free Russia from tyranny and corruption are our allies. They are our moral equals. And the president of the United States, the nation that has been the greatest force for good in human history, should be the first among us to recognize that.”

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

"Russia dissidents are our moral equals" http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/02/13/trump-gets-it-wrong-on-putin-russia-moral-equals-john-mccain-column/97822770/ (13 February 2017), USA Today 2010s, 2017

War, People, World, Justice

“Surely these fine athletes, those boys of summer, have found their measure of ruin.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Lines On The Transpontine Madness, p. xxi

Boy, Summer

“Fame is but a fruit tree:
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stalk is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.
Forgotten while you're here,
Remembered for a while.
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Fruit Tree
Song lyrics, Five Leaves Left (1969)

Men, Way, Tree, Time

“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter III, p. 381.

People, Law

“You were asking my opinion on your work of art, my dear Jean [= Duchamp's brother-in-law Jean Crotti, who asked Duchamp his comment on an art-work he made]... Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruin others... I do not believe in painting per se – A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it and grant it their favors. In other words, no painters knows himself or what he is doing – There is no outward sign explaining why a Fra Angelico and a Leonardo [da Vinci] are equally 'recognized.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck.
Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Crotti (Duchamp's brother-in-law) and his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York 17 Augustus 1952; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 167
1951 - 1968

Happiness, Age, Law, Art

“I compare that old relic with myself… ruins and dilapidation. What a difference between then and now. Then, youth, strength and riches; now age, weakness and poverty.”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

as quoted by Dayton Duncan, Geoffrey C. Ward "Lachryma Montis," The West, Episode Eight (1996) referring to his old ranch house near Petaluma, California

Youth, Age

Quotes about ruin page 6

Quotes about ruin
page 6