Quotes about saw
page 24

George S. Patton IV photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo

“We are going so slow," Noah said, craning his neck to observe the inevitable queue behind them. "I think I just saw a tricycle pass us."
"Rude.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

Noah about Blue's driving
pg 175
The Raven Cycle Series, Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014)

Isaac Asimov photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Theo Walcott photo

“I trained with the lad last season at Southampton for two or three weeks. In all the years I played there was never anything I saw on a training pitch that took my breath away, but he was doing things on the pitch that made me stand up and say 'Wow'. He could go on and make a better player than Wayne Rooney.”

Theo Walcott (1989) English association football player

Matt Le Tissier, former England footballer, 2006 ( Source http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/sport/football.html?in_article_id=400107&in_page_id=1779)
About

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Quentin Crisp photo

“I never saw Portsmouth by day.”

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 13

Enoch Powell photo
Rutherford B. Hayes photo
Amir Taheri photo

“Khamenei is not the first ruler of Iran with whom poets have run into trouble. For some 12 centuries poetry has been the Iranian people’s principal medium of expression. Iran may be the only country where not a single home is found without at least one book of poems. Initially, Persian poets had a hard time to define their place in society. The newly converted Islamic rulers suspected the poets of trying to revive the Zoroastrian faith to undermine the new religion. Clerics saw poets as people who wished to keep the Persian language alive and thus sabotage the ascent of Arabic as the new lingua franca. Without the early Persian poets, Iranians might have ended up like so many other nations in the Middle East who lost their native languages and became Arabic speakers. Early on, Persian poets developed a strategy to check the ardor of the rulers and the mullahs. They started every qasida with praise to God and Prophet followed by panegyric for the ruler of the day. Once those “obligations” were out of the way they would move on to the real themes of the poems they wished to compose. Everyone knew that there was some trick involved but everyone accepted the result because it was good. Despite that modus vivendi some poets did end up in prison or in exile while many others spent their lives in hardship if not poverty. However, poets were never put to the sword. The Khomeinist regime is the first in Iran’s history to have executed so many poets. Implicitly or explicitly, some rulers made it clear what the poet couldn’t write. But none ever dreamt of telling the poet what he should write. Khamenei is the first to try to dictate to poets, accusing them of “crime” and” betrayal” if they ignored his injunctions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

Nguyen Khanh photo
Dietrich von Choltitz photo

“I stood in front of him and I saw an old, stooped, bloated man with gray, slick hair, barely standing on his legs.”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

About Adolf Hitler. Quoted in one of the German newspapers from 1994.

Clarence Thomas photo
Väinö Linna photo
Jonathan Pearce photo

“Taylor…. Benjani coming in………. OHHHHH, HOW ABOUT THAT! A bullet of a header; Totally out of the blue - It's Portsmouth 1, Manchester United 1! Utaka did well…forcing it wide, Taylor with an in cross, Benjani coming from a deep position; wasn't picked up….. he launched himself at it….1-1. No one could see that coming…. and no one saw Benjani coming.”

Jonathan Pearce (1959) British football commentator

Jonathan's sheer excitement as Portsmouth equalise against the champions, Manchester United at Fratton Park in August 2007. The match ended in a stalemate draw, both sides having a player sent off in the final third.

H.L. Mencken photo
Max Ernst photo

“I saw a shady forest and therein a crowd of nightingales. The nightingales as to their breast were rough and hairy, and as to their feet some were like calves, some like panthers, and some like wolves, and they had beast's claws instead of toes.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

text of Max Ernst's poem 'First Memorable Conversation with the Chimera', in the journal 'VVV', no. 1. New York, June 1942, p. 17
1936 - 1950

Julian of Norwich photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Amber Benson photo
John Gray photo
Orson Pratt photo
Frank Borman photo

“"God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

Frank Borman (1928) NASA astronaut

Last lines of the Apollo 8 Genesis reading, and adding his own closing to the message from Apollo 8 crew, as they celebrated becoming the first humans to enter lunar orbit, Christmas Eve (24 December 1968) http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo8_xmas.html

William S. Burroughs photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Colin Wilson photo
Robert P. George photo
Tobin Bell photo
José Guilherme Merquior photo

“[A] number of points are worth making at once [that challenge Foucault’s Madness and Civilization]: (1) There is ample evidence of medieval cruelty towards the insane; (2) In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the mad were already confined, to cells, jails or even cages; (3) ‘dialogue’ or no ‘dialogue’, even madness during those times was frequently connected with sin -- even in the Ship of Fools mythology; and, to that extent, it was regarded in a far less benevolent light than suggested by Foucault (pre-modern minds accepted the reality of madness -- ‘madness as a part of truth’ -- just as they accepted the reality of sin; but this does not mean they valued madness, any more than sin; (4) as Martin Schrenk (himself a severe critic Foucault) has shown, early modern madhouses developed from medieval hospitals and monasteries rather than as reopened leprosaria; (5) the Great Confinement was primarily aimed not at deviance but at poverty -- criminal poverty, crazy poverty or just plain poverty; the notion that it heralded (in the name of the rising bourgeoise) a moral segregation does not bear close scrutiny; (6) at any rate, as stressed by Klaus Doerner, another of critic of Foucault (Madmen and the Bourgeoisie, 1969), that there was no uniform state-controlled confinement: the English and German patterns, for example, strayed greatly from the Louis Quatorzian Grand Renfermement; (7) Foucault’s periodization seems to me amiss. By the late eighteenths century, confinement of the poor was generally deemed a failure; but it is then that confinement of the mad really went ahead, as so conclusively shown in statistics concerning England, France, and the United States; (8) Tuke and Pinel did not ‘invent’ mental illness. Rather, they owe much to prior therapies and often relied also on their methods; (9) moreover, in nineetenth-century England moral treatment was not that central in the medicalization of madness. Far from it: as shown by Andrew Scull, physicians saw Tukean moral therapy as a lay threat to their art, and strove to avoid it or adapt it to their own practice. Once more, Foucault’s epochal monoliths crumble before the contradictory wealth of the historical evidence.”

Source: Foucault (1985), pp. 28-29

Oliver Sacks photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Muhammad bin Qasim photo

“Muhammad took the fort [of Rawar] and stayed there for two or three days. He put six thousand fighting men, who were in the fort, to the sword, and shot some with arrows. The other dependents and servants were taken prisoners, with their wives and children… When the number of the prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons, amongst whom thirty were the daughters of chiefs, and one of them was Rai Dahir's sister's daughter, whose name was Jaisiya. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of the prisoners were forwarded in charge of Ka'ab, son of Mharak. When the head of Dahir, the women, and the property all reached Hajjaj, he prostrated himself before Allah, offered thanksgivings and praises… Hajjaj then forwarded the head, the umbrellas, and wealth, and the prisoners to Walid the Khalifa. When the Khalifa of the time had read the letter, he praised Almighty Allah. He sold some of those daughters of the chiefs, and some he granted as rewards. When he saw the daughter of Rai Dahir’s sister he was much struck with her beauty and charms, and began to bite his finger with astonishment…. It is said that after the conquest was effected and the affairs of the country were settled and the report of the conquest had reached Hajjaj, he sent a reply to the following effect. 'O my cousin! I received your life-inspiring letter. I was much pleased and overjoyed when it reached me. The events were recounted in an excellent and beautiful style, and I learnt that the ways and rules you follow are conformable to the Law. Except that you give protection to all, great and small alike, and make no difference between enemy and friend. God says, - Give no quarter to Infidels, but cut their throats. Then know that this is the command of the great God [Allah]. You shall not be too ready to grant protection, because it will prolong your work. After this, give no quarter to any enemy except to those who are of rank.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 172-173. Also partially quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Fred Astaire photo

“He's a genius…a classical dancer like I never saw in my life.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Mikhail Baryshnikov in "Interview with Mike Wallace", 60 Minutes, CBS Television. February 18, 1979. (M).

Oscar Levant photo

“I would like to have been present, if I could have my choice of all moments in music history, when Stokowski suddenly became conscious of his beautiful hands. That must have been a moment. Like stout Cortez [sic] on a peak in Darien (I know it was Balboa) he saw before him a limitless expanse, a whole uncharted sea that might be subjected to his influence, free from the encumbrance of a baton.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

In "Music in Aspic," Harper's Magazine (October 1939) and A Smattering of Ignorance (1940); as quoted in "Lightning Wit Plays On American Musical Scene; Oscar Levant Answers Unspoken Request for 'Information, Please' With Uncensored Comments on Exalted Persons" by Ray C. B. Brown, in The Washington Post (January 14, 1940), p. E4

Henry Gee photo
Gary Gygax photo
Ken Wilber photo
J. F. C. Fuller photo

“In 1919 I was the sole person who saw war in the form it would be; yet saw it only as an acorn and not as an oak.”

J. F. C. Fuller (1878–1966) British Army general

Quoted in Men Against Fire. S.L.A. Marshall (1947), p. 27.

Ross Mintzer photo

“In 7th grade, I saw the Allman Brothers play at the Beacon Theatre. I also saw the Dave Mathews Band perform at Giant’s Stadium. Those concerts changed my life. I was inspired so much. In my heart, I knew that was the only thing I wanted to do with my life.”

Ross Mintzer (1987) American musician and performer

Interview with Arts Brooksfield(16 October 2014) https://www.facebook.com/artsBrookfield/photos/a.100993377692.102500.97825917692/10152291198457693/
2014

Scott McClellan photo
Sacha Baron Cohen photo

“I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America, but I saw some dark parts of America, an ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day. I refer, of course, to the anus and testicles of my co-star, Ken Davitian.”

Sacha Baron Cohen (1971) English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor

On his travels to the United States. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2549442_2,00.html

W. Somerset Maugham photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Donald Rumsfeld photo

“After he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, he (Gaddafi) did not want to be Saddam Hussein. He gave up his nuclear program.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Rumsfeld doesn't support sending U.S. troops into Libya http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/08/rumsfeld.interview/index.html March 9, 2011.
2010s

Warren Farrell photo
Chris Stedman photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 60

John Mearsheimer photo

“I kind of wonder if people who are outraged at the movie saw the originals when they were 13-years-olds and didn’t realize that "cheesy" was registering as "awesome."”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

About http://zompist.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/indiana-jones-and-the-synopsis-of-dread/ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“We have, now, matter of mourning: for our sin is cause of Christ’s pains; and we have, lastingly, matter of joy: for endless love made Him to suffer. And therefore the creature that seeth and feeleth the working of love by grace, hateth nought but sin: for of all things, to my sight, love and hate are hardest and most unmeasureable contraries. And notwithstanding all this, I saw and understood in our Lord’s meaning that we may not in this life keep us from sin as wholly in full cleanness as we shall be in Heaven. But we may well by grace keep us from the sins which would lead us to endless pains, as Holy Church teacheth us; and eschew venial reasonably up to our might. And if we by our blindness and our wretchedness any time fall, we should readily rise, knowing the sweet touching of grace, and with all our will amend us upon the teaching of Holy Church, according as the sin is grievous, and go forthwith to God in love; and neither, on the one side, fall over low, inclining to despair, nor, on the other side, be over-reckless, as if we made no matter of it; but nakedly acknowledge our feebleness, finding that we may not stand a twinkling of an eye but by Keeping of grace, and reverently cleave to God, on Him only trusting.
For after one wise is the Beholding by God, and after another wise is the Beholding by man. For it belongeth to man meekly to accuse himself, and it belongeth to the proper Goodness of our Lord God courteously to excuse man.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 52

Max Barry photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Aisha photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
David Hume photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“I rather disdained than coveted the luxuries I saw : alas! we desire riches more for others than ourselves.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Raymond Chandler photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Barbara Hepworth photo
Roy Sesana photo
Bernard Cornwell photo

“And the good news is that you've got a brain. You do! Honest! I saw it with my own eyes, thus disproving the navy's stubborn contention that soldiers have nothing whatsoever inside their skulls. I shall write a paper for the Review.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

I'll be famous! Brain discovered in a soldier.
Doctor Jethro McCann, to Captain Richard Sharpe, after sewing up a severe head wound, p. 78
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

Ben Kenney photo
Jack White photo
Gabriele Münter photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“I have grown accustomed to the disrespect expressed by some of the participants for their colleagues in the other disciplines. "Why, Dan," ask the people in artificial intelligence, "do you waste your time conferring with those neuroscientists? They wave their hands about 'information processing' and worry about where it happens, and which neurotransmitters are involved, but they haven't a clue about the computational requirements of higher cognitive functions." "Why," ask the neuroscientists, "do you waste your time on the fantasies of artificial intelligence? They just invent whatever machinery they want, and say unpardonably ignorant things about the brain." The cognitive psychologists, meanwhile, are accused of concocting models with neither biological plausibility nor proven computational powers; the anthropologists wouldn't know a model if they saw one, and the philosophers, as we all know, just take in each other's laundry, warning about confusions they themselves have created, in an arena bereft of both data and empirically testable theories. With so many idiots working on the problem, no wonder consciousness is still a mystery. All these charges are true, and more besides, but I have yet to encounter any idiots. Mostly the theorists I have drawn from strike me as very smart people – even brilliant people, with the arrogance and impatience that often comes with brilliance – but with limited perspectives and agendas, trying to make progress on the hard problems by taking whatever shortcuts they can see, while deploring other people's shortcuts. No one can keep all the problems and details clear, including me, and everyone has to mumble, guess and handwave about large parts of the problem.”

Consciousness Explained (1991)

George Santayana photo

“… I once shook hands with Longfellow at a garden party in 1881; and I often saw Dr. Holmes, who was our neighbor in Beacon Street: but Emerson I never saw.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Persons and Places (1944), p. 50

Julian of Norwich photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Michael Faraday photo

“I was at first almost frightened when I saw such mathematical force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered to see that the subject stood it so well.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Letter to James Clerk Maxwell (25 March 1857), commenting on Maxwell's paper titled "On Faraday's Lines of Force"; letter published in The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence (1884), edited by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, p. 200; also in Coming of Age in the Milky Way (2003) by Timothy Ferris, p. 186

Fred Phelps photo
Glenn Beck photo

“This is not comparing these people to the people in Germany, but this is exactly what happened to the lead-up with Hitler. Hitler opened up the door and said, "Hey, companies, I can help you." They all ran through the door. And then in the end, they all saw, "Uh-oh. I'm in bed with the devil." They started to take their foot out, and Hitler said, "Absolutely not. Sorry, gang. This is good for the country. We've gotta do these things."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

And it was too late.
Money for Breakfast
Television
Fox Business Channel
Fox Business Channel
2009-04-21
Beck says he's not "comparing" banks who took bailouts to "people of Germany," while comparing TARP to "exactly what happened to the lead-up with Hitler
Media Matters for America
2009-04-21
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200904210004
about the Troubled Asset Relief Program
2000s, 2009

Marc Connelly photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness; the second was pain following after; the third, hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry; the fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there was no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe and distress. Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.
These were the pains that shewed in the blessed head: the first wrought to the dying, while it had moisture; and that other, slow, with shrinking drying, with blowing of the wind from without, that dried and pained Him with cold more than mine heart can think.
And other pains — for which pains I saw that all is too little that I can say: for it may not be told. The which Shewing of Christ’s pains filled me full of pain. For I wist well He suffered but once, but He would shew it me and fill me with mind as I had afore desired. And in all this time of Christ’s pains I felt no pain but for Christ’s pains. Then thought-me: I knew but little what pain it was that I asked; and, as a wretch, repented me, thinking: If I had wist what it had been, loth me had been to have prayed it. For methought it passed bodily death, my pains.
I thought: Is any pain like this? And I was answered in my reason: Hell is another pain: for there is despair. But of all pains that lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see thy Love suffer. How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer? Here felt I soothfastly that I loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to Him in pain.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 17

Vernon L. Smith photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“Here closed in death th' attentive eyes
That saw the manners in the face.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Epitaph on Hogarth (1786)

Johannes Grenzfurthner photo
Dr. Seuss photo
Dorothea Lange photo

“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet.”

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) American photojournalist

Statement about Lange's most famous photograph titled "Migrant Mother", in Popular Photography (February 1960.
Context: I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

John Crowley photo

“One winter night when he was a boy … he first saw a ring around the moon.”

John Crowley (1942) American writer

Bk. 1, Ch. 1
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
Context: One winter night when he was a boy … he first saw a ring around the moon. He stared up at it, immense, icy, half as wide as the night sky, and grew certain that it could only mean the End of the World. He waited thrilled in that suburban yard for the still night to break apart in apocalypse, all the while knowing in his heart that it would not: that there is nothing in this world not proper to it and that it contains no such surprises.

Benoît Mandelbrot photo

“Here is the curious thing: the first night I saw the set, it was just wild. The second night, I became used to it. After a few nights, I became familiar with it. It was as if somehow I had seen it before. Of course I hadn't. No one had seen it.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

New Scientist interview (2004)
Context: There is nothing more to this than a simple iterative formula. It is so simple that most children can program their home computers to produce the Mandelbrot set. … Its astounding complication was completely out of proportion with what I was expecting. Here is the curious thing: the first night I saw the set, it was just wild. The second night, I became used to it. After a few nights, I became familiar with it. It was as if somehow I had seen it before. Of course I hadn't. No one had seen it. No one had described it. The fact that a certain aspect of its mathematical nature remains mysterious, despite hundreds of brilliant people working on it, is the icing on the cake to me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Jerome photo

“I am told that your mother is a religious woman, a widow of many years' standing; and that when you were a child she reared and taught you herself. Afterwards when you had spent some time in the flourishing schools of Gaul she sent you to Rome, sparing no expense and consoling herself for your absence by the thought of the future that lay before you. She hoped to see the exuberance and glitter of your Gallic eloquence toned down by Roman sobriety, for she saw that you required the rein more than the spur. So we are told of the greatest orators of Greece that they seasoned the bombast of Asia with the salt of Athens and pruned their vines when they grew too fast. For they wished to fill the wine-press of eloquence not with the tendrils of mere words but with the rich grape-juice of good sense.”
Audio religiosam habere te matrem, multorum annorum viduam, quae aluit, quae erudivit infantem et post studia Galliarum, quae vel florentissima sunt, misit Romam non parcens sumptibus et absentiam filii spe sustinens futurorum, ut ubertatem Gallici nitoremque sermonis gravitas Romana condiret nec calcaribus in te sed frenis uteretur, quod et in disertissimis viris Graeciae legimus, qui Asianum tumorem Attico siccabat sale et luxuriantes flagellis vineas falcibus reprimebant, ut eloquentiae toreularia non verborum pampinis, sed sensuum quasi uvarum expressionibus redundarent.

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Letter 125 (Ad Rusticum Monachum)
Letters

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“If a Southerner came across from Virginia to Pennsylvania and saw a black man that he thought he would like to have as a slave, he had to say, 'Well, that’s my runaway slave', and this runaway slave would then be arrested and confined, and then there would be a hearing before a federal commissioner. And the would-be slave owner could summon witnesses—as many as he wanted. The man accused of being a slave could summon no witnesses, had no counsel. And if the federal commissioner decided he was a slave, he was paid $10, and if he decided he was a free man, he was paid $5. It’s hard to imagine any law passed in either Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia that was more inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty than the Fugitive Slave Act.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The South was a Closed Society
Context: There were eight of them that had laws trying to protect black people who were free from being kidnapped as slaves, because under the law of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act. If a Southerner came across from Virginia to Pennsylvania and saw a black man that he thought he would like to have as a slave, he had to say, 'Well, that’s my runaway slave', and this runaway slave would then be arrested and confined, and then there would be a hearing before a federal commissioner. And the would-be slave owner could summon witnesses—as many as he wanted. The man accused of being a slave could summon no witnesses, had no counsel. And if the federal commissioner decided he was a slave, he was paid $10, and if he decided he was a free man, he was paid $5. It’s hard to imagine any law passed in either Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia that was more inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty than the Fugitive Slave Act.

Booker T. Washington photo

“Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: 1910s, My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911), Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob
Context: I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
My experience is that people who call themselves "The Intellectuals" understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up and become interested in some practical work which would have brought them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation.

“He saw much good in inherited institutions, and yet, at the same time, he also saw the desirability and necessity of change.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)
Context: Hayek’s approach was largely Burkean. He saw much good in inherited institutions, and yet, at the same time, he also saw the desirability and necessity of change.

Peter Cook photo

“I saw an advertisement the other day for the secret of life.”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

"Are You Spotty?" (1964)
E. L. Wisty
Context: I saw an advertisement the other day for the secret of life. It said "The secret of life can be yours for twenty-five shillings. Sent to Secret of Life Institute, Willesden." So I wrote away, seemed a good bargain, secret of life, twenty-five shillings. And I got a letter back saying, "If you think you can get the secret of life for twenty-five shillings, you don't deserve to have it. Send fifty shillings for the secret of life."

Richard Wright photo
George Eliot photo

“Each day saw the birth
Of various forms, which, flung upon the earth,
Seemed harmless toys to cheat the exacting hour,
But were as seeds instinct with hidden power.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

On the work of the metal-smith Tubal-Cain
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: Each day he wrought and better than he planned,
Shape breeding shape beneath his restless hand.
(The soul without still helps the soul within,
And its deft magic ends what we begin.)
Nay, in his dreams his hammer he would wield
And seem to see a myriad types revealed,
Then spring with wondering triumphant cry,
And, lest the inspiring vision should go by,
Would rush to labor with that plastic zeal
Which all the passion of our life can steal
For force to work with. Each day saw the birth
Of various forms, which, flung upon the earth,
Seemed harmless toys to cheat the exacting hour,
But were as seeds instinct with hidden power.