Quotes about running
page 15

Jose Peralta photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Assata Shakur photo

“I can't run naked; I'm always tripping.”

Radio From Hell (August 14, 2007)

Barry Schwartz photo
Thomas Sowell photo
Colin Wilson photo
John D. Rockefeller photo

“The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Attributed in The Fourth — And by Far the Most Recent 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1990) by Robert Byrne; attributed elsewhere to Nathan M. Rothschild

André Maurois photo

“…It's much better to run the risk of a few kisses before marriage, for they at least leave some memories.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

"… or some regrets."
A Time for Silence

Vivek Wadhwa photo
Louis Bromfield photo
Learned Hand photo

“In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

Oliver Wendell Holmes lecture delivered at Harvard (1958); quoted in The Rhetoric of Our Times (1969) by J. Jeffery Auer, p. 124.
Extra-judicial writings

Hillary Clinton photo

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base…. There was no greeting ceremony and we were basically told to run to our cars. That is what happened.”

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

March 17, 2008, allegedly misspeaking about her 1996 trip to Bosnia. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/24/eveningnews/main3964921.shtml
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Manuel Castells photo
Christopher Lloyd photo
Esperanza Aguirre photo

“Socialism fails when it run out of money of others.”

Esperanza Aguirre (1952) Spanish politician

Source: NoticiasEsperanzaAguirre.es http://www.noticiasesperanzaaguirre.es/aguirre-el-socialismo-fracasa-cuando-se-le-acaba-el-dinero-de-diario-siglo-xxi/. April 2011.

Bill Whittle photo

“Joe Biden would probably be running a Denny's if he wasn't Vice President.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

citation needed

Glen Cook photo
Jon Stewart photo

“I've always run by the hierarchy of "If not funny, interesting. If not interesting, hot. If not hot, bizarre. If not bizarre, break something."”

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

Rolling Stone interview http://jon.happyjoyfun.net/tran/1990/95_0126rolling.html, January 26, 1995

Alex Salmond photo

“participation in the Crichton campus. It is now official - miracles happen in an SNP run Scotland!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)

Johnny Mercer photo

“The days of wine and roses laugh and run away like a child at play
Through the meadow land toward a closing door
A door marked "nevermore" that wasn't there before”

Johnny Mercer (1909–1976) American lyricist, songwriter, singer and music professional

Song The Days of Wine and Roses

Brion Gysin photo
J.M. Coetzee photo
Jerry Falwell photo

“I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

America Can Be Saved! (1979) Sword of the Lord Publishers, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, p. 52-53, quoted at "The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party" http://www.theocracywatch.org/schools2.htm

Ann Richards photo

“The regular Democratic Party and its organization was run by men who looked on women as little more than machine parts.”

Ann Richards (1933–2006) American politician

2006
Source: [Rick, Lyman, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14richards.html?hp&ex=1158292800&en=22b04a312a2fd14f&ei=5094&partner=homepage, Ann Richards, Plain-Spoken Texas Governor Who Aided Minorities, Dies at 73, New York Times, September 14, 2006, 2006-09-16]

Robert Southey photo

“It runs through the reeds,
And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,
In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-skurry.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 2.
The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)

Errol Morris photo

“We look about in vain for any semblance of the old authority, the old absolute, for any suitable foothold from which to get a running start.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers (1932)

Johann Georg Hamann photo

“Let us assume that we invited an unknown person to a game of cards. If this person answered us, “I don’t play,” we would either interpret this to mean that he did not understand the game, or that he had an aversion to it which arose from economic, ethical, or other reasons. Let us imagine, however, that an honorable man, who was known to possess every possible skill in the game, and who was well versed in its rules and its forbidden tricks, but who could like a game and participate in it only when it was an innocent pastime, were invited into a company of clever swindlers, who were known as good players and to whom he was equal on both scores, to join them in a game. If he said, “I do not play,” we would have to join him in looking the people with whom he was talking straight in the face, and would be able to supplement his words as follows: “I don’t play, that is, with people such as you, who break the rules of the game, and rob it of its pleasure. If you offer to play a game, our mutual agreement, then, is that we recognize the capriciousness of chance as our master; and you call the science of your nimble fingers chance, and I must accept it as such, it I will, or run the risk of insulting you or choose the shame of imitating you.” … The opinion of Socrates can be summarized in these blunt words, when he said to the Sophists, the leaned men of his time, “I know nothing.””

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Therefore these words were a thorn in their eyes and a scourge on their backs.
Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), pp. 165-167.

John McCain photo
Errico Malatesta photo
David Cameron photo
Thomas Piketty photo
Sam Cooke photo
Hilary Duff photo
Ralph Klein photo

“There’s an old saying in politics: anyone dumb enough to run for the job probably is too stupid to have it.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: As quoted in "Ralph Klein’s most memorable quotes" http://globalnews.ca/news/439807/ralph-klein-was-a-sound-bite-gold-mine/, Global News

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5188. To hold with the Hare, and run with the Hounds.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Glen Johnson photo

“Chad Dawson will run like a chicken”

Glen Johnson (1969) jamaican boxer

http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=22789

Tristram Hunt photo
Henry Adams photo
George H. W. Bush photo
Barbara W. Tuchman photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“They always say we need someone to hit home runs. We got some guys who can now. I don’t care for home runs. I showed ’em I could do it when I hit 23 in 1961. Home runs aren’t that important, though. Not to me, anyway.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

On his chances for a third consecutive NL batting title; as quoted and paraphrased in "Clemente Not Thinking of Batting Title" by Milton Richman, in The Cumberland Evening Times (Tuesday, March 15, 1966), p. 12
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>
Context: “I never think about that before the season. Toward the end of the year I start thinking about it. Not before. I did it last year by just meeting the ball,” he said. “I didn’t swing hard at all. I think I’m going to do the same thing this year. We have two good hitters behind me now and I don’t have to swing so hard.” He means Donn Clendenon and Willie Stargell. The two hit a total of 41 homers to Clemente’s 10 last year. “They always say we need someone to hit home runs. We got some guys who can now. I don’t care for home runs. I showed ’em I could do it when I hit 23 in 1961. Home runs aren’t that important, though. Not to me, anyway.”

Roberto Clemente photo

“Last year I lose almost 20 pounds. When I go home end season I weigh only 163. I worry more 'bout bad back than I worry 'bout baseball. Now I feel goot. Ver goot. I sink I play one fitty games and I hit thee hunnert. I feel I hab goot season. Maybe fiteen home runs, nyenee RBIs, steal maybe dirty bases.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Great Outdoors: Drafted for $4,000, Clemente Becomes Bucs' Top Bargain; Now That His Back Ailment Is Cured, Outfielder Hopes He'll Hit .300 Again" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=xUEqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Dk4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7140%2C2566447 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Thursday, April 10, 1958), p. 28
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1958</big>

Jim Morrison photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“In vain do individual great men seek to mint new concepts and to set them in circulation — it is pointless. They are used for only a moment, and not by many, either, and they merely contribute to making the confusion even worse, for one idea seems to have become the fixed idea of the age: to get the better of one's superior. If the past may be charged with a certain indolent self-satisfaction in rejoicing over what it had, it would indeed be a shame to make the same charge against the present age (the minuet of the past and the gallop of the present). Under a curious delusion, the one cries out incessantly that he has surpassed the other, just as the Copenhageners, with philosophic visage, go out to Dyrehausen "in order to see and observe," without remembering that they themselves become objects for the others, who have also gone out simply to see and observe. Thus there is the continuous leap-frogging of one over the other — "on the basis of the immanent negativity of the concept", as I heard a Hegelian say recently, when he pressed my hand and made a run preliminary to jumping. — When I see someone energetically walking along the street, I am certain that his joyous shout, "I am coming over," is to me — but unfortunately I did not hear who was called (this actually happened); I will leave a blank for the name, so everyone can fill in an appropriate name.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals IA 328, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Albert Camus photo

“The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Correspondance: 1932-1960, p.220, Gallimard, 1981. Letter to Jean Granier, 1957 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=56VcAAAAMAAJ&q=le+train+du+monde+m%27accable+en+ce+moment.+a+longue+%C3%A9ch%C3%A9ance,+tous+les+continents+(jaune,+noir+et+bistre)&dq=le+train+du+monde+m%27accable+en+ce+moment.+a+longue+%C3%A9ch%C3%A9ance,+tous+les+continents+(jaune,+noir+et+bistre)&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAWoVChMIqfiA3aHcyAIVgw6QCh3IngRL

Johan Norberg photo
Clement Attlee photo
Henri Matisse photo
Eugene Lee-Hamilton photo

“To keep through life the posture of the grave,
While others walk and run and dance and leap.”

Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845–1907) English poet and translator

Sonnets of the Wingless Hours https://archive.org/details/sonnetswingless01leegoog (1894).

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Preta, I’m not going to discuss promiscuity with anyone. I don't run that risk because my children are well educated and they don't live in a promiscuous environment such as is, unfortunately, yours.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Responding to the singer Preta Gil after asked about what he would do if his son fell in love with a black woman on 28 March 2011 https://extra.globo.com/famosos/deputado-jair-bolsonaro-fala-da-promiscuidade-de-preta-gil-declara-que-seria-incapaz-de-amar-um-filho-homossexual-em-entrevista-1980933.html in an interview to the program CQC on Band. Brazil presidential candidate Bolsonaro's most controversial quotes https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaros-most-controversial-quotes-012652084.html. Yahoo!, 29 September 2018.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders photo

“One of the big things my dad was running on was changing Washington, breaking that cycle, I felt like the outsider component was important and I thought he had the ability to actually win and defeat Hillary.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders (1982) American political press secretary

Trump looking to Sarah Huckabee Sanders in tough moments https://apnews.com/29ea3c163ce34b00bd4b2deb4145dfd6/sarah-huckabee-sanders-rising-star-trumps-orbit (March 12, 2017)

Sam Rayburn photo

“Well, Lyndon, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

To Lyndon Johnson, regarding Johnson's attendance at his first Cabinet meeting (under Kennedy); reported in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972), Introduction.

Jennifer Beals photo

“[On running] For me running is about freedom. I find that the freer I feel, the faster I am.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

http://jennifer-beals.com/media/press/runners_world.html Runner’s World magazine (June 2009)].

Glenn Beck photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
John Archibald Wheeler photo
Nicholas Wade photo
Robert W. Service photo

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Shooting of Dan McGrew http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/dan_mcgrew.html (1907), The Cremation of Sam McGee http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/2640/?letter=C&spage=26

Benjamin Graham photo

“Do not let anyone else run your business.”

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 20, "Margin of Safety": The Central Concept, p. 286

Italo Calvino photo
Parker Palmer photo
Jonah Goldberg photo

“One of the things that motivated my old friend Andrew Breitbart was his righteous indignation at being called a racist. That's a running theme in his book, "Righteous Indignation."”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Andrew Breitbart would tell Steve Bannon to stay in Europe (2018)

John Maynard Keynes photo
Kent Hovind photo
John Von Neumann photo
Rob Enderle photo

“[Steve Jobs] is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he's excellent.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

The rock star of Corporate America http://marketwatch.com/story/apples-jobs-rock-star-of-corporate-america-2010-12-08 in MarketWatch (7 December 2010)

Ben Carson photo

“Being nice always comes back to repay us in the long run.”

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

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 199

Robert Sheckley photo

“Your predator is close behind you and will infallibly be your death.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Carmody said, in a moment of strange calm.” But in terms of long-range planning, I never did expect to get out of this Universe alive.”
“That is meaningless,” the Prize said. “The fact is, you have lost everything.”
“I don’t agree,” Carmody said. “Permit me to point out that I am presently still alive.”
“Agreed. But only for the moment.”
“I have always been alive only for the moment,” Carmody said. “I could never count on more. It was my error to expect more. That holds true, I believe, for all of my possible and potential circumstances.”
“Then what do you hope to achieve with your moment?”
“Nothing,” Carmody said. “Everything.”
“I don’t understand you any longer,” the Prize said. “Something about you has changed, Carmody. What is it?”
“A minor thing,” Carmody told him. “I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the Gods run in their heavenly sideshow. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don’t need it. I have my moment, which is quite enough.”
“Saint Carmody,” the Prize said, in tones of deepest sarcasm. “No more than a shadow’s breadth separates you and death! What will you do now with your pitiable moment?”

“I shall continue to live it,” Carmody said. “That is what moments are for.”
Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (pp. 189-190; closing words)

Ben Harper photo

“Sometimes I think it sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.”

Gene Fowler (1890–1960) American journalist

Attributed without citation in Military Chaplains' Review, Chaplains, U.S. Army. (1981), p. 144

Aneurin Bevan photo

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

In the Observer, 6 December 1953.
1950s

Gordon Brown photo

“What has become clear is that Britain cannot trust the Conservatives to run the economy. Everyone knows that I'm all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Speech at the Labour Party conference http://www.labour.org.uk/gordon_brown_conference, 23 September 2008.
Prime Minister

Aldo Capitini photo

“I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different,
I had been there, in the house of torture,
I have seen people being kicked, men’s bodies scorched,
nails pulled out with pliers.
Armed with flame and cudgels, grinning men in shirt sleeves.
Where I could hear my friends being thrown headlong
down the stairs.
Night was as day, and long shrieks wounded me.
In vain I tried to think of wooded lanes and flowers,
a serene life and human words.
The thought seized up, it was as if a wound were opened up
again and again and endlessly searched.
From the mouth struck, teeth and blood came out,
and lamenting moans from the deep throat.
Away, away from that house, from that street and town,
from anything similar to it.
I must save myself, keep up my mind,
that I should not be led to madness by these memories.
Oh, if we could go back to a void, from which a new order,
a maternal opening could come forth,
if I hear a certain tone of voice even in jest, I shudder.
My unhappiness is that I avoid the sight of suffering,
hospitals and prisons.
I have yearned for high solitudes, lands of still sunshine
and sweet shadows,
but I would always be pursued by the ghosts of human beings.
All of a sudden I feel the need of distraction and play,
to lose myself in the noise of the fairground.
I remain with you, but forgive me
if you see me sometimes act like a madman.
I try to heal myself by myself, as an animal,
trusting that the wounds will close.
I stop to listen to the simple conversations of the women
in the marketplace, with their dialectical lilt.
I rejoice at the footsteps of running children,
their overpowering calls.
Because you do not know the absurdity of my dreams,
the fixed expressions, the incomprehensible gestures.
There is turmoil inside me, which seems to ridicule me.
And I cannot cry out, not to be like them.
Tomorrow I will go towards some music, now I am getting ready.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist
Sukarno photo
Audrey Niffenegger photo
Max Scheler photo

“These two characteristics make revenge the most suitable source for the formation of ressentiment. The nuances of language are precise. There is a progression of feeling which starts with revenge and runs via rancor, envy, and impulse to detract all the way to spite, coming close to ressentiment. Usually, revenge and envy still have specific objects. They do not arise without special reasons and are directed against definite objects, so that they do not outlast their motives. The desire for revenge disappears when vengeance has been taken, when the person against whom it was directed has been punished or has punished himself, or when one truly forgives him. In the same way, envy vanishes when the envied possession becomes ours. The impulse to detract, however, is not in the same sense tied to definite objects—it does not arise through specific causes with which it disappears. On the contrary, this affect seeks those objects, those aspects of men and things, from which it can draw gratification. It likes to disparage and to smash pedestals, to dwell on the negative aspects of excellent men and things, exulting in the fact that such faults are more perceptible through their contrast with the strongly positive qualities. Thus there is set a fixed pattern of experience which can accommodate the most diverse contents. This form or structure fashions each concrete experience of life and selects it from possible experiences. The impulse to detract, therefore, is no mere result of such an experience, and the experience will arise regardless of considerations whether its object could in any way, directly or indirectly, further or hamper the individual concerned. In “spite,” this impulse has become even more profound and deep-seated—it is, as it were, always ready to burst forth and to betray itself in an unbridled gesture, a way of smiling, etc. An analogous road leads from simple *Schadenfreude* to “malice.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

The latter, more detached than the former from definite objects, tries to bring about ever new opportunities for *Schadenfreude*.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Charles Stross photo
Joe Biden photo
George W. Bush photo

“It was amazing I won. I was running against peace and prosperity and incumbency.”

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

June 14, 2001, to Göran Persson, unaware he was still on live TV, as quoted in "The President in Europe: The President; Plain-Talking Bush Is Using His Charm On European Stage" by Frank Bruni in The New York Times (16 June 2001) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00EEDE1531F935A25755C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.
2000s, 2001

Charlie Sheen photo

“It was epic. The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them just look like droopy-eyed armless children.”

Charlie Sheen (1965) American film and television actor

On Good Morning America February 28, 2011

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“283. A Man in Passion rides a Horse that runs away with him.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1749) : A Man in a Passion rides a mad Horse.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

George William Curtis photo

“The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J. Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

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

Mo Brooks photo

“They must not know much about Alabama. But Alabama does not like Washington swamp critters telling us who can or cannot run for public office and who we can and cannot vote for.”

Mo Brooks (1954) American politician

Washington 'swamp critters' backing Luther Strange, Mo Brooks says http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2017/05/washington_swamp_critters_back.html (May 12, 2017)

Gregory Benford photo
Rex Stout photo
Lu Xun photo
Kage Baker photo
René Girard photo

“An examination of our terms, such as competition, rivalry, emulation, etc., reveals that the traditional perspective remains inscribed in the language. Competitors are fundamentally those who run or walk together, rivals who dwell on opposite banks of the same river, etc…The modern view of competition and conflict is the unusual and exceptional view, and our incomprehension is perhaps more problematic than the phenomenon of primitive prohibition. Primitive societies have never shared our conception of violence. For us, violence has a conceptual autonomy, a specificity that is utterly unknown to primitive societies. We tend to focus on the individual act, whereas primitive societies attach only limited importance to it and have essentially pragmatic reasons for refusing to isolate such an act from its context. This context is one of violence. What permits us to conceive abstractly of an act of violence and view it as an isolated crime is the power of a judicial institution that transcends all antagonists. If the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there, if the institution loses its efficacy or becomes incapable of commanding respect, the imitative and repetitious character of violence becomes manifest once more; the imitative character of violence is in fact most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal perfection it had not previously possessed. At the level of the blood feud, in fact, there is always only one act, murder, which is performed in the same way for the same reasons in vengeful imitation of the preceding murder. And this imitation propagates itself by degrees. It becomes a duty for distant relatives who had nothing to do with the original act, if in fact an original act can be identified; it surpasses limits in space and time and leaves destruction everywhere in its wake; it moves from generation to generation. In such cases, in its perfection and paroxysm mimesis becomes a chain reaction of vengeance, in which human beings are constrained to the monotonous repetition of homicide. Vengeance turns them into doubles.”

Source: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), p. 11-12.

Michael Bloomberg photo
John Milton photo
Helmut Schmidt photo

“Helmut Schmidt continues to speak of a sense of duty, predictability, feasibility, firmness […] These are secondary virtues. Simply put precise:.. So you can also run a concentration camp with them.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

Oskar Lafontaine on 15. July 1982 in STERN to the discussion about the NATO Double-Track Decision (here: shortend citation of BILD)