Quotes about set
page 16

“I always said I’d never go to New York until someone pays me—because I’ve seen people come back from New York like desiccated, broken… New York is a tough place if you’re coming out of Port Authority or from Oregon, and they were paying me 356 dollars a day to be on the set [of Sid and Nancy] so that was really wonderful. Then I did Straight To Hell which went straight to video (but) then Andy Warhol noticed me from those two films. Then I got to be in Interview magazine and I got this little measure of celebrity, but with no money (laughs) that sucks… (but) it feels great if you’ve been wanting it. A lot of people like to say, ‘oh I didn’t ask for this, it just happened. I’m the luckiest guy in the world…’ I always wanted it.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On her first exposure to fame after appearing in Alex Cox's films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987), Dazed (22 March 2016)
2014–2017

Money, People, World, Guy

“The powers, and faculties, and principles that are necessary fully to comprehend all that we see and all that surrounds us, exist and have been bestowed on man by his beneficent Creator. Still, it is only by slow degrees that he is to become their master, acquiring knowledge, step by step, as he has need of its services, and learns how to use it. Such seems to be the design of Providence, which is gradually opening to our inquiries the arcana of nature, in order that we may convert their possession into such uses as will advance its own wise intentions. Happy are they who feel this truth in their character of individuals! Thrice happy the nations which can be made to understand, that the surest progress is that which is made on the clearest principles, and with the greatest caution! The notion of setting up anything new in morals, is as fallacious in theory as it will be found to be dangerous in practice.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XXI

Happiness, Truth, Feeling, Understanding

“"Make them read that it is no longer the fashion to wear birds upon hats. That will afford relief to your poor milliner and at the same time set free thousands of our darling birds who have been so cruelly used."
Popopo thanked the wise king and followed his advice.
The office of every newspaper and magazine in the city was visited by the knook, and then he went to other cities, until there was not a publication in the land that had not a "new fashion note" in its pages. Sometimes Popopo enchanted the types, so that whoever read the print would see only what the knook wished them to. Sometimes he called upon the busy editors and befuddled their brains until they wrote exactly what he wanted them to. Mortals seldom know how greatly they are influenced by fairies, knooks and ryls, who often put thoughts into their heads that only the wise little immortals could have conceived.
The following morning when the poor milliner looked over her newspaper she was overjoyed to read that "no woman could now wear a bird upon her hat and be in style, for the newest fashion required only ribbons and laces."”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

"The Enchanted Types", in American Fairy Tales (1901)
Short stories

Fashion, Business, Bird, Time

“Gary [Cooper] turned out to be the surprise of my young life. He was so convincing with his stuttering, stammering awkward little boy manners. When the action called for Dr. Wassell to kiss me, I got all set for a bashful boy kiss. Well, it was like holding a hand grenade and not being able to get rid of it! I was left breathless.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

Life, Boy, Kiss

“Feminists often discuss women having two jobs: work and children. True. But no one discusses those divorced and remarried men who have three jobs: work, and two sets of children to nurture and financially support.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 163.

Women, Men, Children, Support

“At fifteen my heart was set on learning; at thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts; at fifty I knew the will of heaven; at sixty my ear was obedient; at seventy I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of what was right.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Retrospection of his own life. From this phrase, alternative names for each decades of human life are derived in Chinese.
Source: The Analects, Chapter II

Learning, Heart

“As with the tender juvenile, who sets light to his frock, so with the sweet senior, who sets his fortunes on fire. Even in his maturer time, in his state of cinderhood, he still craves to be further consumed.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That a Burnt Child often Dreads the Fire".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Light, Time

“The Culture-Philistine … everywhere meets with educated people of his own sort, and since schools, universities and academies are adapted to his requirements and fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation. Since he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect to religion, morality and literature, with respect to marriage, the family, the community and the state, he considers it demonstrated that this imposing homogeneity is culture. It never enters his head that this systematic and well-organised philistinism, which is set up in all high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any means made culture just because its organs are in concert. It is not even bad culture, says Nietzsche; it is barbarism fortified to the best of its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of original barbarism; and he has many graphic expressions to describe Culture-Philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck fast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 8

Marriage, People, Education, School

“Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Pártase de cualquier punto. Todos son iguales. Todos llevan a un punto de partida.
Voces (1943)

Departure

“Your only safety lies in placing yourself in circumstances which will make exertion necessary, and which will secure Divine assistance. Never mind your infirmities. You have nothing to do with them. Your business is to trust, and to go forward. If you wait till the sea becomes land, you will never walk on it. You must leave the ship, and, like Peter, set your feet upon the waves, and you will find them marble.”

Edward Payson (1783–1827) American religious leader

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 125.

Business, Waiting, Sea

“A short poem is often called a lyric, which originally meant a poem short enough to be set to music and sung for a moment's pleasure.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

Pleasure, Music

“It is a mere futile process to exchange one set of commodities for another, if the parties; after this new distribution of goods has taken place, are not better off than they were before.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VIII, p. 384
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“One interesting footnote: although Friedman made great strides in macroeconomics by applying the concept of individual rationality, he also knew where to stop. In the 1970s, some economists pushed Friedman’s analysis of inflation even further, arguing that there is no usable trade-off between inflation and unemployment even in the short run, because people will anticipate government actions and build that anticipation, as well as past experience, into their price-setting and wage-bargaining. This doctrine, known as “rational expectations,” swept through much of academic economics. But Friedman never went there.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Who Was Milton Friedman?", The New York Review of Books (February 15, 2007)
The New York Review of Books articles

People, Past

““The practice of employing images as ornaments and memorials to decorate the temple of the Lord is in a most especial manner approved by the Word of God himself. Moses was commanded to place two cherubim upon the ark, and to set up a brazen figure of the fiery serpent, that those of the murmuring Israelites who had been bitten might recover from the poison of their wounds by looking on the image. In the description of Solomon's temple, we read of that prince, not only that he made in the oracle two cherubim of olive tree, of ten 83 Vide supra, p. 17. 101 cubits in height, but that ‘all the walls of the temple round about he carved with divers figures and carvings.’ “In the first book of Paralipomenon (Chronicles) we observe that when David imposed his injunction upon Solomon to realise his intention of building a house to the Lord, he delivered to him a description of the porch and temple, and concluded by thus assuring him: ‘All these things came to me written by the hand of the Lord, that I may understand the works of the pattern.’ “The isolated fact that images were not only directed by the Almighty God to be placed in the Mosaic tabernacle, and in the more sumptuous temple of Jerusalem, but that [132] he himself exhibited the pattern of them, will be alone sufficient to authorise the practice of the Catholic Church in regard to a similar observance.”—(Hierurgia, p. 371.) All this may be briefly answered. There was no representation of the Jewish patriarchs or saints either in the tabernacle or in the temple of Solomon, as is the case with the Christian saints in the Roman Catholic and Græco-Russian Churches; and the brazen serpent, to which the author alludes, was broken into pieces by order of King Hezekiah as soon as the Israelites began to worship it.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), pp. 100-101

God, Books, Understanding, Tree

“The moment the first American soldier sets foot on the Japanese mainland, all prisoners of war will be shot.”

Hideki Tōjō (1884–1948) former Prime Minister of Japan and Minister of War executed in 1948

Note signed by Tojo (June 1945), left at a camp during the Bataan Death March http://home.att.net/~betsynewmark3/DebateonBomb.htm. Possible forgery since Tojo was no longer in power for over a year at the time of the discovery. Also, the Japanese homeland was not threatened with invasion at the time and it was common sense that the Philippines would be attacked before. 1940s

War

“[Camilla Fulci] was about 15 or so at the time. I tried to remind her of her riding along the set [of 1975's Four of the Apocalypse). She looked very strange, when I said that. A stuntman led me away and showed me that the lower half of the poor girl's body was paralyzed because of a riding accident, just like that of Christopher Reeves! She was such a lovely girl. It made me feel very bad that I had said that.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Love, Feeling, Girl, Time

“A manager sets objectives - A manager organizes - A manager motivates and communicates - A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

A manager develops people.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 344

People, Communication, Motivation

“I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"Letter to Gilbert Murray" (April 23, 1900).

Women, God, Peace, Nature

“Goebbels is and always has been surrounded by mistrust and deep dissimulation. It was this mistrust that accounted for his being set down as a Bolshevist in disguise, though he cares no more for Socialism and Communism than for patriotism and nationalism. Germany? The testing ground for revolution. Socialism? Nothing but a means to an end a means to revolution, but never the goal of one.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 47

Communication

“I was given opportunities not extended to my fellow soldiers, I embraced those opportunities to set the record straight.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

“As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists. These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.”

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

during address to the United States Naval Academy, November 30, 2005. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10253079/ 2000s, 2005

Decision

“Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Anxiety and Instinctual Life (Lecture 32) 1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Thinking

“An internal combustion engine is 'clearly' a system; we subscribe to this opinion because we know that the engine was designed precisely to be a system. It is, however, possible to envisage that someone (a Martian perhaps) totally devoid of engineering knowledge might at first regard the engine as a random collection of objects. If this someone is to draw the conclusion that the collection is coherent, forming a system, it will be necessary to begin by inspecting the relationships of the entities comprising the collection to each other. In declaring that a collection ought to be called a system, that is to say, we acknowledge relatedness. But everything is related to everything else. The philosopher Hegel enunciated a proposition called the Axiom of Internal Relations. This states that the relations by which terms are related are an integral part of the terms they relate. So the notion we have of any thing is enriched by the general connotation of the term which names it; and this connotation describes the relationship of the thing to other things… [There are three stages in the recognition of a system]… we acknowledge particular relationships which are obtrusive: this turns a mere collection into something that may be called an assemblage. Secondly, we detect a pattern in the set of relationships concerned: this turns an assemblage into a systematically arranged assemblage. Thirdly, we perceive a purpose served by this arrangement: and there is a system.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Decision and control: the meaning of operational research and management cybernetics, 1966, p. 242.

Knowledge, Parting, Drawing

“From his childhood onward this boy [the future Edward VIII] will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score—[Cries of ‘Oh, oh!’]—and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation. [Cries of ‘Oh, oh!’] A line will be drawn between him and the people whom he is to be called upon some day to reign over. In due course, following the precedent which has already been set, he will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumours of a morganatic alliance will follow—[Loud cries of ‘Oh, oh!’ and ‘Order!’]—and the end of it all will be that the country will be called upon to pay the bill.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Cries of Divide!
House of Commons speech (1894)

People, World, Boy, Future

“.. Africa: it's a magic word that lends itselfs to suppositions and sets amateur explorers to dreaming. I want to try to be 'at home' on this bit of foreign [Arab] soil.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

as quoted by Sarah Anderson, in Between Sea and Sahara: An Orientalist Adventure, Eugène Fromentin, (1859) - in 'Preface'; transl. Blake Robinson; publisher I.B. Tauris 2004, p. 4

Dreams, Home

“If Darwin's discovery had been made in a Taoist or Shinto, Hindu or animist culture it would very likely have become just one more strand in its intertwining mythologies. In these faiths humans and other animals are kin. By contrast, arising among Christians who set humans beyond all other living things, it triggered a bitter controversy that rages on to this day.”

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

The Human: Science versus Humanism (p. 3-4)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Faith, Rage, Animals

“If I ask another professor what he teaches in the introductory programming course, whether he answers proudly "Pascal" or diffidently "FORTRAN," I know that he is teaching a grammar, a set of semantic rules, and some finished algorithms, leaving the students to discover, on their own, some process of design.”

Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist

The Paradigms of Programming (1979)

“Marc Randazza argues that restricting Anglin’s trolling would set a dangerous precedent. Anglin “has every right to ask people to share their views, no matter how abhorrent those views are,” Randazza told. “This is the shitty price we have to pay for freedom.””

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

People, Freedom

“One, two, three like a bird I sing, 'cause you given me the most beautiful set of wings.
I'm so glad you're here today, 'cause tomorrow I might have to go and fly away. Fly away, fly away, fly away, fly away.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Last Dollar (Fly Away)
Song lyrics, Let It Go (2008)

Beauty, Bird, Singing, Flying

“Mediocrity is set as a standard…rubbish becomes acceptable. This has been the state of Tamil politics for nearly half a century”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

On the state of politics in Tamil Nadu.
Political Views

“I relish the fact that we New Yorkers talk funny, and that art deco skyscrapers symbolize our city. […] But we must set boundaries to this love of variety. I accept the need, even the blessings, of standardization in practical matters: we require a worldwide telephone dialing system and a network of national highways […]. We need domains of standardization, and realms of regionalism, each in its appropriate place, and linked in mutual respect and recognition. I accept and even want McDonalds at the highway interchange—but not in my little neighborhood of ethnic restaurants, and not next to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Baseball : Joys and Lamentations", p. 309; originally published in The New York Review of Books (1993-11-04)
Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville (2003)

Love, Art

“England's improvement by sea and land. To outdo the Dutch without fighting. To pay debts without moneys. To set at work all the poor of England with the growth of our own lands. To prevent unnecessary suits of law; with the benefit of a voluntary register. Directions where vast quantities of timber are to be had for the building of ships, with the advantage of making the great rivers of England navigable. Rules to prevent fires in London, and other great cities; with directions how the several companies of handicraftsmen in London may always have cheap bread and drink. By Andrew Yarranton, Gent. London, printed for the author, &c., 1677.”

Andrew Yarranton (1619–1684) English civil engineer

Full title cited in Patrick Edward Dove (1854, p. 403)
Quotes from England's Improvement, (1677)

Money, Law, Drink, Fight

“All of my advice comes from remembering what I did wrong and then telling people not to do it. … Don't wait to read the most recent research papers. … Wonder how you could do better. … Do your own research projects. Take the initiative. … Ask your own questions — try to answer them. … At some point you stop being a student and you start being a scientist. … And it's a completely different skill set …”

Sean Carroll (1966) American theoretical cosmologist

[Episode #124 - In Search of Reality: A Conversation with Sean Carroll, 21 April 2018, Waking Up Podcast with Sam Harris, https://samharris.org/podcasts/124-search-reality/] (1:21:12 of 1:58:24)

People, Question, Waiting, Reading

“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.” She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Life, People, Truth, Way

“"Tell me if you had music lessons at school?"
"Yes, I had."
"Do you remember this school's address? Go there and set fire to it. They taught you nothing."”

Kuba Wojewódzki (1963) Polish journalist

"Powiedz mi, czy ty miałaś wychowanie muzyczne w szkole?"
"Tak."
"Pamiętasz adres szkoły? Pójdź i podłóż ogień, niczego cię nie nauczyli."
To Idol contestants

School, Music

“Humanism does not exist in itself, just as man taken in himself and for himself does not exist. Only concrete man exists, man set in a particular age, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular social class, representing a particular tradition and particular personal ideals.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Adam Schaff (1947), cited in: Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio (2007) "Adam Schaff: from Semantics to Political Semiotics." 9th World Congress of IASS/AIS. 2007.

Age, Personality, Country

“"I'll be going now," she said.
Shinji made no answer and a surprised look came over his face. He had caught sight of a black streak that ran straight across the front of her red sweater.
Hatsue followed his gaze and saw the dirty smudge, just in the spot where she had been leaning her breast against the concrete parapet. Bending her head, she started slapping her breast with her open hands. Beneath her sweater, which all but seemed to be concealing some firm supports, two gently swelling mounds were set to trembling ever so slightly by the brisk brushing of her hands.
Shinji stared in wonder. Struck by her hands, the breasts seemed more like two small, playful animals. The boy was deeply stirred by the resilient softness of their movement.
The streak of dirt was finally brushed out.”

Yukio Mishima book The Sound of Waves

Source: The Sound of Waves (1956), p. 31, ch. 4.

Boy, Support, Animals

“Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it. We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother. For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man's toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 184

Life, Women, Men, Truth

“To attend a place of worship, to abstain from spirits, to read a serious newspaper and put money in the savings bank, was in 1840 as good an ideal as could be set before a man. To pursue it gave him rank as a citizen, the promise of a vote, and a share in a solid civilization.”

G. M. Young (1882–1959) English historian

Portrait of an Age (1936)

Money, Reading

“So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms. A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior. The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing. They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination. A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions. Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything. “Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul. No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter. The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community. How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison? The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction. The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity. Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis. Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts… Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities… Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole. They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them). To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity" http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/beyond-terrorism-isis-and-other-enemies-of-humanity/, New York Post (August 20, 2014). New York Post

Hostility, War, People, Fear

“The Essens also, as we call a sect of ours, were excused from this imposition. These men live the same kind of life as do those whom the Greeks call Pythagoreans, concerning whom I shall discourse more fully elsewhere. However, it is but fit to set down here the reasons wherefore Herod had these Essens in such honor, and thought higher of them than their mortal nature required; nor will this account be unsuitable to the nature of this history, as it will show the opinion men had of these Essens.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Antiquities of the Jews

Life, Men, History, Nature

“The reason why lime makes a solid structure on being combined with water and sand seems to be this: that rocks, like all other bodies, are composed of the four elements. Those which contain a larger proportion of air, are soft; of water, are tough from the moisture; of earth, hard; and of fire, more brittle. Therefore, if limestone, without being burned, is merely pounded up small and then mixed with sand and so put into the work, the mass does not solidify nor can it hold together. But if the stone is first thrown into the kiln, it loses its former property of solidity by exposure to the great heat of the fire, and so with its strength burnt out and exhausted it is left with its pores open and empty. Hence, the moisture and air in the body of the stone being burned out and set free, and only a residuum of heat being left lying in it, if the stone is then immersed in water, the moisture, before the water can feel the influence of the fire, makes its way into the open pores; then the stone begins to get hot, and finally, after it cools off, the heat is rejected from the body of the lime.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter V, Sec. 2

Way, Feeling, Lying, Water

“For the sake of national integration in India, it is imperative to set the record straight, to reverse this process of absolutizing any minor difference in identity into a separatist claim to a nation-state. In the specific case of the Sikhs, the obvious fact should be made clear, that Sikh identity is integrated in a hierarchy of differentiation within Hinduism : it is a Bhakti sect within the broad Vaishnava tradition within Sanatana Dharma.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“When you're eight or nine years old and you look at the TV set men are landing on the moon — anything is possible. And that is something we need to not lose sight of, is that the inspiration and permission to dream is immense.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

… It's important to have specific dreams.
The Last Lecture (2007)

Men, Dreams

“America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I’d rather be America’s enemy.”

Ahmed Chalabi (1944–2015) Iraqi politician

Dexter Filkins, " Where Plan A Left Ahmad Chalabi http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/11/05/magazine/1154652190060.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q268tpwQ3DQ26emcQ3DtpwQ26pagewantedQ3Dprint&OP=7b29a451Q2Fvqfdv_gQ20KK_vmQ20fuQ5EfqvVQ2FQ2FJvQ7DQ7DvQ2FevTQ7CpQ7CQ5CQ5EQ7BfvQ7DQ7DeGJeVQ7DyQ2FQ2FJQ2F!i_TQ3C", New York Times Magazine, November 5, 2006.

“On entering life, then, young people meet with various collective opinions, more or less narrow-minded. The more the individual has it in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following a herd. But even if an inner voice says to him; “Become thyself! Be thyself!” he hears its appeal with despondency. Has he a self? He does not know; he is not yet aware of it. He therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach him, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self.
We had in Denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become individuals. But Søren Kierkegaard’s appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. For the goal was fixed. They were to become individuals, not in order to develop into free personalities, but in order by this means to become true Christians. Their freedom was only apparent; above them was suspended a “Thou shalt believe!” and a “Thou shalt obey!” Even as individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the herd awaited them again one flock, one shepherd.
It is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an educator. He will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is expected to arrive.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 9-10

Life, People, Education, Idea

“I will set a policy goal next year to make Taiwan a bilingual country, with English and Chinese being its official languages.”

William Lai (1959) Taiwanese politician

William Lai (2018) cited in " Taiwan to Make English an Official Language https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/08/31/taiwan-english-official-language/" on Breitbart, 31 August 2018.

Country

“Set the cart before the horse.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Horse

“Things we never said come together,
The hidden truth no longer haunting me.
Tonight we touched on the things that were never spoken,
That kind of understanding sets me free.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

The Last Song
Song lyrics, The One (1992)

Truth, Understanding

“After the end of the year election and the set up of the second National Economic Development Advisory Conference, I shall start to improve the economy.”

Chen Shui-bian (1950) Taiwanese politician

November 1, 2005
Pet Phrases, 2005

“The crucial and monumental development in the art music of our century has been the qualitative change in the foundational premises of our musical language--the change from a highly chromaticized tonality whose principle functions and operations are still based on a limited selection, the seven notes of the diatonic scale, from the universal set of twelve pitch classes to a scale that comprehends the total pitch-class content of that universal set. We can point to the moment of that change with some precision. It occurs most obviously in the music of Scriabin and the Vienna circle, Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, in 1909-1910, and very soon afterwards, though less obviously, in the music of Bartok and Stravinsky. I think it is safe to say that nothing of comparable significance for music has ever occurred, because the closing of the circle of fifths gives us a symmetrical collection of all twelve pitch classes that eliminates the special structural function of the perfect fifth itself, which has been the basis of every real musical system that we have hitherto known.”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Pages 42-43
The Listening Composer

Art, Music, Thinking, Universe

“People who talk incessantly about "change" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

People, Way, Change

“As I wanted to suggest a luxuriant and untamed type of nature, a tropical sun that sets aglow everything around it, I was obliged to give my figures a suitable setting.It is indeed the outdoor life — yet intimate at the same time, in the thickets and the shady streams, these women whispering in an immense palace decorated by nature itself, with all the riches that Tahiti has to offer. This is the reason behind all these fabulous colors, this subdued and silent glow."But none of this exists!""Oh yes it does, as an equivalent of the grandeur, the depth, the mystery of Tahiti, when you have to express it on a canvas measuring only one square meter."Very subtle, very knowing in her naïveté is the Tahitian Eve. The riddle hiding in the depth of her childlike eyes is still incommunicable to me.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 137: Diverse Choses, his notebook (1896 - 1898)

Life, Women, Color, Nature

“Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

World, Hope, Way, Patience

“Cato said, "I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

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

Men

“[As graduates with] all the status and connections that degree confers, you don’t get to have no hands. No, you don’t get to be precious or cautious or cynical. No, not when the earth is warming and the oceans are rising. You don’t get to be cynical. Not when too many young people still languish in communities ripped apart by violence and despair. Not when women still make less than men for the same work. Not when millions of girls across the globe never set foot inside a school. (Applause.) No, not when many young people just like you — the men and women we honor this Memorial Day—have sacrificed their lives for your freedom to make your voice heard. You don’t get to have no hands.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Oberlin College Prep graduates (2015)

Women, Men, People, School

“It is time we spoke frankly about a w:taboo subject: historical developments since 1915 have rendered more distant than ever the reunification of the whole Armenian homeland. The sooner we face this fact, the sooner we can set out with full force to realize the goal of Armenian national self-determination.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 61.

Distant, Time

“In psychotherapy, the impact of love feelings, technically called the transference, is held under some degree of control by the artificial device of interpreting the patient's feelings while establishing barriers to the psychological exposure of the therapist. The therapist is supposed to come to the relationship fully endowed with a stable set of established insights which will be adequate in a practical sense to any application which the patient's needs will require. The patient, on the other hand, is supposed to limit his interaction with the therapist to the areas where he is aware of psychic pain or where the therapist accepts communication in the name of therapeutic technique. If everything else is carefully excluded, neither participant will be called on to deal with areas of the unknown in themselves which would require creative personal investment.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

8. Psychotherapy and Social Welfare
Love and Power: The Psychology of Interpersonal Creativity (1966)

Love, Pain, Feeling, Communication

“I think it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony. It is particularly incumbent upon those charged with the instruction of the young to set them an example.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter to trustees, as quoted in "Honoring Lee Anew" http://wluspectator.com/2014/07/15/cox-honoring-lee-anew/ (15 July 2014), by David Cox, A Magazine of Student Thought and Opinion

Peace, Thinking, Country

“When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Introductory Epistle
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)

Death, Suffering, Universe, Change

“It is the things which Ausonius reveals unconsciously that win him liking, not those which he sets out to celebrate with a kind of innocent pomp: not the chair of rhetoric at twenty-five, nor the imperial tutorship in his fifties, nor the consulship at sixty-nine, but that he loved and taught rhetoric all his life, and kept his simplicity.”

Ausonius (310–395) poet

Helen Waddell, Mediaeval Latin Lyrics ([1929] 1943), p. 291.
Criticism

Love, Life

“Reporter: President Jiang, do you think it’ll be good for Mr. Tung to serve another consecutive term?
Jiang: That’ll be good!
Reporter: Does Central Government support him too?
Jiang: Of course yes!
Reporter: Recently European Union has published a report saying that Beijing will affect and influence the nomocracy of Hong Kong in some ways. What's your response to that?
Jiang: Never heard before.
Reporter: It’s Chris Patten who said that.
Jiang: You the media should always remember that Seeing is believing. You should judge by yourself after you have received the news, got it? In case you say these things out of thin air for him, you may share the responsibility in some way.
Reporter: Now in such an early time, you said that you supported Mr. Tung, will that give people the impression that there is already an internal decision or imperial appointment on Mr. Tung?
Jiang: There's no such implication whatsoever. Everything should be done in accordance with Hong Kong Basic Law and the election laws.
Reporter: But…
Jiang: Replying what you've just asked me, I could have said "No comment." But you guys wouldn't be happy. So what should I do?
Reporter: Then Mr. Tung…
Jiang: I did not say that imperially appointing him to serve the next term. You asked me whether I support him or not, I support him. I can tell you explicitly.
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: You all… My feeling is that you the media need to learn more. You are very familiar with the Western set of value, but after all you are too young. Do you understand what I mean? Let me tell you, I've been through hundreds of battles. I've seen a lot. Which country in the West have I not been to? Every time… You should know Mike Wallace in the US. He's way above you all. He and I talked cheerfully and humorously, which is why the media need to raise your intellectual level. Got it or not?
Reporter: President Jiang…
Jiang: I'm anxious for you all truly. You really… I… You guys are good at one thing. Wherever you go to all over the world, you always run faster than Western journalists. But the questions you keep asking - are too simple, sometimes naive. Understand or not? Got it or not?
Reporter: But could you say why you support Tung Chee-hwa?
Jiang: I'm very sorry. Today I am speaking to you as an elder, not as a journalist. I am not a journalist. But I've seen too much. I have this necessity to tell you a bit of my life experience.
Jiang: I just wanted to… Every time… In Chinese we have saying, "Make a fortune quietly." If I had said nothing, that would have been the best. But I thought I've seen all of you so enthusiastic. If I said nothing, that wouldn't be good. So, a moment ago you just insisted… In spreading the news, if your reports are inaccurate, you must be responsible. I did not say giving an imperial appointment. No such meaning. But you insisted on asking me whether I supported Mr. Tung or not. He is still the current Chief Executive. How could we not support the Chief Executive?
Reporter: But if we talk about his serving another term…
Jiang: To serve another term, you must follow the law of Hong Kong. Of course, our right to make the decision is also very important, since the Hong Kong SAR belongs to the Central Government of the People's Republic of China. When it gets to the right time, we'll let you know our decision. Understand what I say? You all. Don't provoke an uproar. Don't make it a flash-news saying that "It has already been imperially appointed" and criticize me. You all! Naive! I'm angry! I just offend you today! Your behavior like this is annoying!”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

As quoted in "Former president Jiang Zemin unleashes a long tirade after a Hong Kong reporter asks him if Beijing had issued an "imperial order" to support Tung Chee-hwa in his bid to seek a second term as Chief Executive" https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/videos/10152728897091030 (October 2014), Facebook. 2000s, Hong Kong reporters make Jiang see red

Life, Happiness, People, World

“If I go before I’m old,
Oh brother of mine please don’t forget me if I go.
Bartender please, fill my glass for me?
With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free,
after three days in the ground.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Bartender
Busted Stuff (2002)

Wine, Forgetting

“The economic doctrine of Adam Smith is the doctrine of Mandeville set out in a form which is no longer paradoxical and literary, but rational and scientific.”

Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) Anglo-Dutch writer and physician

La doctrine économique d'Adam Smith, c'est la doctrine de Mandeville, exposée sous une forme non plus paradoxale et littéraire, mais rationnelle et scientifique.
Élie Halévy La formation du radicalisme philosophique (Paris: F. Alcan, 1901-4) vol. 1, p. 162; Mary Morris (trans.) The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (Clifton, N.J.: A. M. Kelley, 1972) p. 90.
Criticism

“There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky is sensed, is seen, although in such settings the sky is invariably immense. There is a place between the cerebrum and the stars where sky stops and space commenses, and should we find ourselves on a particular prairie or mountaintop at a particular hour […] our relationship with sky thins and loosens while our connection with space becomes as solid as bone.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

Feeling, Star, Sense

“In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

An Essay on Christian Philosophy (1955), p. 51.

“I think that puts a spotlight on the need to have policy proposals to address concerns that people have, including and especially the voters who have been supporting Donald Trump. I think the solution to that to those who share that concern is to have more conservative proposals, more proposals for reform that involve constitutionally limited government, that involve economic and social conservatism. If we can offer up proposals that address the concerns that are driving people in that direction I think we'd be better off for it. A lot of people feel left out by a government that taxes too much and regulates them too heavily and seems to result in a set of circumstances where economic and political incumbents benefit at everybody else's expense. You have six of the ten wealthiest counties in America surround Washington, D. C., and the poor and middle class are getting squeezed while people at the top and people with influence in government seem always to be doing better.”

Mike Lee (U.S. politician) (1971) American politician

Exclusive interview with Mike Lee: Why I want to join Senate leadership http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/exclusive-interview-with-mike-lee-why-i-want-to-join-senate-leadership/article/2588278 (April 12, 2016)

People, Feeling, Support, Thinking

“(The Queen of Housewife Rock) means I’ve reached a lot of people in a simplistic manner who would never go to a lecture or read an article on Women’s Lib. My basic audience is women who have had their heads turned around by the knowledge that something’s going on out there—that they can stay married and have their own identities. I’m not for the swinging singles. I have a career and marriage happening all at the same time, and that’s the example I set.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On the title Alice Cooper gave to her, as quoted in "Helen Reddy Sings Out for Women's Lib—but Jeffrey Calls the Tune" by Robert Windeler, People Magazines, 3 February 1975 http://people.com/archive/helen-reddy-sings-out-for-womens-lib-but-jeffrey-calls-the-tune-vol-3-no-4/

Women, Marriage, People, Knowledge

“Let's consider first Hayek's claim that prices in free market capitalism do not give people what they morally deserve. Hayek's deepest economic insight was that the basic function of free market prices is informational. Free market prices send signals to producers as to where their products are most in demand (and to consumers as to the opportunity costs of their options). They reflect the sum total of the inherently dispersed information about the supply and demand of millions of distinct individuals for each product. Free market prices give us our only access to this information, and then only in aggregate form. This is why centralized economic planning is doomed to failure: there is no way to collect individualized supply and demand information in a single mind or planning agency, to use as a basis for setting prices. Free markets alone can effectively respond to this information.
It's a short step from this core insight about prices to their failure to track any coherent notion of moral desert. Claims of desert are essentially backward-looking. They aim to reward people for virtuous conduct that they undertook in the past. Free market prices are essentially forward-looking. Current prices send signals to producers as to where the demand is now, not where the demand was when individual producers decided on their production plans. Capitalism is an inherently dynamic economic system. It responds rapidly to changes in tastes, to new sources of supply, to new substitutes for old products. This is one of capitalism's great virtues. But this responsiveness leads to volatile prices. Consequently, capitalism is constantly pulling the rug out from underneath even the most thoughtful, foresightful, and prudent production plans of individual agents. However virtuous they were, by whatever standard of virtue one can name, individuals cannot count on their virtue being rewarded in the free market. For the function of the market isn't to reward people for past good behavior. It's to direct them toward producing for current demand, regardless of what they did in the past.
This isn't to say that virtue makes no difference to what returns one may expect for one's productive contributions. The exercise of prudence and foresight in laying out one's production and investment plans, and diligence in carrying them out, generally improves one's odds. But sheer dumb luck is also, ineradicably, a prominent factor determining free market returns. And nobody deserves what comes to them by sheer luck.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People, Way, Behavior, Exercises

“Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth.
But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise.”

René Descartes book La Géométrie

First Book
La Géométrie (1637)

Pleasure, Problem, Science, Training

“Mujahid Shah, on this occasion, repaired mosques which had been built by the officers of Alla-ood-Deen Khiljy. He broke down many temples of the idolaters, and laid waste the country; after which he hastened to Beejanuggur… The King drove them before him, and gained the bank of a piece of water, which alone divided him from the citadel, where in the Ray resided. Near this spot was an eminence, on which stood a temple, covered with plates of gold and silver, set with jewels: it was much venerated by the Hindoos, and called, in the language of the country, Puttuk. The King, considering its destruction a religious obligation ascended the hill, and having razed the edifice, became possessed of the precious metals and jewels therein.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Alãu’d-Dîn Mujãhid Shãh Bahmanî (AD 1375-1378) Vijayanagar (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Water, Country

“Set up shelter and cleaned up… to let them know I’m still alive. Got text saying I’m a suspect. Saw patrol. Not spotted. They stuck to the trails. Listened to radio. News media calling me a ‘survivalist.’ Ha! Catchy phrase I guess. Shelter-in-place (ordered) by spooked cops.”

Eric Frein (1983) American fugitive

Diary entry (17 September 2014), as quoted in "‘Literally hunting humans’: Eric Frein, sniper who killed Pa. trooper, sentenced to death" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/27/murder-in-his-heart-eric-frein-sniper-killer-of-pa-trooper-sentenced-to-death/?utm_term=.1fa45b04fbf7 (27 April 2017), by Fred Barbash, The Washington Post Diary (September 2014)

“The beauty of physics lies in the extent to which seemingly complex and unrelated phenomena can be explained and correlated through a high level of abstraction by a set of laws which are amazing in their simplicity.”

Melvin Schwartz (1932–2006) American experimental physicist

in Electromagnetism and Its Relation to Relativity, chapter 3 of his book [Principles of electrodynamics, Courier Dover Publications, 1987, 0486654931, 105]

Law, Beauty

“The life we have at this present is the gift of God, "in whom we live, move, and are:" and therefore is he called Jehovah. For the which life as we should be thankful, so we may not in any wise use it after our own fantasy, but to the end for the which it is given and lent us; that is, to the setting forth of God's praise and glory, by repentance, conversion, and obedience to his good will and holy laws: whereunto his long-suffering doth, as it were, even draw us, if our hearts by impenitency were not hardened. And there fore our life in the scripture is called a "walking:" for that as the body daily draweth more and more near his end, that is the earth, even so our soul draweth daily more and more near the death, that is salvation or damnation, heaven or hell.”

John Bradford (1510–1555) English Protestant Reformer and martyr

To the Christian Reader, John Bradford Wisheth the True Knowledge and Peace of Jesus Christ, Our Alone and Omnisufficient Saviour. http://www.godrules.net/library/bradford/07bradford5.htm Sermon on Repentence

Life, Death, God, Law

“The truth is that the mathematical sciences are growing in complete security and harmony. The ideas of Dedekind, Poincare, and Hilbert have been systematically developed with great success, without any conflict in the results. It is only from the philosophical point of view that objections have been raised. They bear on certain ways of reasoning peculiar to analysis and set theory. These modes of reasoning were first systematically applied in giving a rigorous form to the methods of the calculus. [According to them, ] the objects of a theory are viewed as elements of a totality such that one can reason as follows: For each property expressible using the notions of the theory, it is [an] objectively determinate [fact] whether there is or there is not an element of the totality which possesses this property. Similarly, it follows from this point of view that either all the elements of a set possess a given property, or there is at least one element which does not possess it”

Paul Bernays (1888–1977) Swiss mathematician

Paul Bernays, Platonism in mathematics http://sites.google.com/site/ancientaroma2/book_platonism.pdf (1935)

Truth, Way, Mathematics, Idea

“Every attempt to develop systematic democratic theory has to confront the elementary fact that democracy can be, and in practice has been, interpreted as an ideal political system, perhaps (or probably, or certainly) unattainable in full, and also as an actual, historically existing system, a set of political institutions or processes that are attainable at least under some limiting conditions.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

Foreword : Reflections on A Preface to Democratic Theory
A Preface to Democratic Theory (Expanded ed., 2006)

Democracy

“However, in all honesty, I must say that one must essentially forget that all proofs are transcribed in this formal language. In order to think productively, one must use all the intuitive and informal methods of reasoning at one's disposal. At the very end one must check that no errors have been committed; but in practice set theory is treated as any other branch of mathematics. The reason that we can do this is that we will never speak about proofs but only about models.”

Paul Cohen (1934–2007) American mathematician

p. 1078 of "The discovery of forcing." http://www.logic.univie.ac.at/~ykhomski/ST2013/The%20Discovery%20of%20Forcing.pdf Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics 32, no. 4 (2002): 1071–1100.

Error, Mathematics, Thinking, Forgetting

“We've watched the Homo Sapiens interest group since the first appearance of the Blight. Where is this "Earth" the humans claim to be from? "Half way around the galaxy," they say, and deep in the Slow Zone. Even their proximate origin, Nyjora, is conveniently in the Slowness. We see an alternative theory: Sometime, maybe further back than the last consistent archives, there was a battle between Powers. The blueprint for this "human race" was written, complete with communication interfaces. Long after the original contestants and their stories had vanished, this race happened to get in position where it could Transcend. And that Transcending was tailor-made, too, re-establishing the Power that had set the trap to begin with.We're not sure of the details, but a scenario such as this is inevitable. What we must do is also clear. Straumli Realm is at the heart of the Blight, obviously beyond all attack. But there are other human colonies. We ask the Net to help in identifying all of them. We ourselves are not a large civilization, but we would be happy to coordinate the information gathering, and the military action that is required to prevent the Blight's spread in the Middle Beyond. For nearly seventeen weeks, we've been calling for action. Had you listened in the beginning, a concerted strike might have been sufficient to destroy the Straumli Realm. Isn't the Fall of Relay enough to wake you up? Friends, if we act together we still have a chance.Death to vermin.”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), p. 245.

Happiness, Way, Communication, Appearance

“At one time, tips were given only for things you logically would want to have done efficiently and promptly, and they served to supplement a lower payscale for certain classes of employment. This was understood, accepted. It was tourism, back in the century of my birth, cluing in the underdeveloped countries to the fact that all tourists are marks, that set the precedent, which then spread to all countries, even back to the tourists’ own, of the benefits which might be gained by those who wear uniforms and render the undesired and the unrequested with a smile. This is the army that conquered the world. After their quiet revolution in the twentieth century, we all became tourists the minute we set foot outside our front doors, second-class citizens, to be ruthlessly exploited by the smiling legions who had taken over, slyly, completely.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 2 (p. 45)

World, Smile, Birth, Time

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

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

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

Imagination, Problem, Thinking, Change

“Every man knows there are evils in this world which need setting right. Every man has pretty definite ideas as what these evils are. But to most men one in particular stands out vividly. To some, in fact, this stands out with such startling vividness that they lose sight of other evils, or look upon them as the natural consequence of their own particular evil-in-chief.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Henry Hazlitt, Thinking As A Science (1916).

Men, World, Idea, Nature

“I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident […] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border—and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?" pp. 389–390
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Lie, Confidence

“Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

I and Thou (1923)

Appearance

“In all well-conducted concerns the law of "selection of the fittest" sooner or later comes into happy action, when a loyal and attached set of men work together harmoniously for their own advantage as well as for that of their employers.”

James Nasmyth (1808–1890) Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor

Source: James Nasmyth engineer, 1883, p. 218 (p. 181 in 2010 edition)

Men, Happiness, Law

“Things would have worked out a lot better if we had bought our first television set a year earlier, in 1950, so that I could have watched DiMaggio while he was still great. Then I could have shared with my father and other people the vision of the eternal baseball star. It might even have helped me to have more appreciation for some of my elders in the economics profession. But maybe I should be worrying instead about what the young hot shots in economics are thinking of me.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 65

People, Star, Thinking, Help

“The first duty of a government is to be true to itself. This does not mean perfection, it means a plan to strive for perfection. It means loyalty to ideals. The ideals of America were set out in the Declaration of Independence and adopted in the Constitution. They did not represent perfection at hand, but perfection found. The fundamental principle was freedom. The fathers knew that this was not yet apprehended. They formed a government firm in the faith that it was ever to press toward this high mark. In selfishness, in greed, in lust for gain, it turned aside. Enslaving others, it became itself enslaved. Bondage in one part consumed freedom in all parts. The government of the fathers, ceasing to be true to itself, was perishing. Five score and ten years ago, that divine providence which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle, sent into the world a new life destined to save a nation. No star, no sign foretold his coming. About his cradle all was poor and mean, save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his tender years from her deathbed in humble poverty, she endowed her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin, as into his life, men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the nation. He broke the might of oppression. He restored a race to its birthright.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Duty of Government (1920)

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“Primary work systems. These are the systems which carry out the set of' activities involved in an identifiable and bounded subsystem of a whole organization - such as a line department or a service unit…”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"The Sound of the Trees" (1920)
1920s

“Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy. They do their duty, these shopkeeping souls, but they clip the coin a trifle, like the Jews; they think that even if the Lord keeps ever so careful a set of books, they may still cheat Him a little. Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.”

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

Swenson, 1959, p. 27
1840s, Either/Or (1843)

Love, Men, God, Hate

“The great importance of Wilbury House lies less in its appearance now than in its appearance as it was first built and illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus. It was designed by and built for William Benson in 1710. He is notorious for having been made Wren’s successor in 1718, when George I dismissed Wren as a Tory and an old man, and for having failed so completely that he himself was replaced only one year later. But he is memorable as the designer of the first, not Neo-Palladian, but neo-Inigo-Jones house in England. For this is what Wilbury was, as Sir John Summerson was the first to point out. The house then had a four-column Corinthian portico of tall columns set well away from the wall.”

Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) German-born British scholar

The Buildings of England

Appearance, Housing

“We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i. e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed.
In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Ch. 4 : Supplementary Explanations by Engels http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/socialism/writings/lenin/staterev/ch04.htm The State and Revolution (1917)

Life, People, Communication

“Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life and society and prohibits individual, political and religious rights and freedoms. Islam is not compatible with our Western civilization or democracy, nor will it ever be, because Islam doesn't want to coexist, it wants to submit and set the entire agenda. Islam means submission from muslims over non-muslims – kafirs – like you and me, so there cannot be any mistake about its goal. Islam's end goal, for all time, is to dominate, to dominate and once again dominate and establish a world ruled by Islam.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Speech held by Geert Wilders in Los Angeles (April 2009)
2000s

Life, World, Democracy, Freedom

“Over the last 50,000 years, modern humans have been subjected to enormous evolutionary pressures, in part from the consequences of their own social culture. They explored new ranges and climates and developed new social structures. Fast adaption, particularly to new social structures, was required as each population strove to exploit its own ecological niche and to avoid conquest by its neighbors. The genetic mechanism that made possible this rapid evolutionary change was the soft sweep, the reshaping of existing traits by quick minor adjustments in the sets of alleles that controlled them. But what began as a single experiment with the ancestral human population became a set of parallel experiments once the ancestral population had spread throughout the world. These independent evolutionary paths led inevitably to the different human populations or races that inhabit each continent.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

World, Change, Parting

“Nothing is more characteristic of the Hegelian system of knowledge than the fact that upon its highest pinnacle, where it becomes knowledge of knowledge, i. e. knowledge knowing of itself, it is impossible for it to have any other content but simply the history of philosophy, the account of its continuing self-exposition, in which all individual developments, coming full circle, can only be stages along the road to the absolute philosophy reached in Hegel himself. But that which knowledge is explicitly upon this topmost pinnacle as the history of philosophy, the philosophy completed in Hegel, it is implicitly all along the line: the knowledge of history and the history of knowledge, the history of truth, the history of God, as Hegel was able to say: the philosophy of History. History here has entered so thoroughly into reason, philosophy has so basically become the philosophy of history, that reason, the object of philosophy itself, has become history utterly and completely, that reason cannot understand itself other than a sits own history, and that, from the opposite point of view, it is in a position to recognize itself at once in all history in some stage of its life-process, and also in its entirety, so far as the study permits us to divine the whole. It is a matter of the production of self-movement of the thought-content in the consciousness of the thinking subject. It is not a matter of reproduction! The Hegelian way of looking is the looking of a spectator only in so far as it is in fact in principle and exclusively theory, thinking consciousness. Granting this premise, and setting aside Kierkegaard’s objection that with it the spectator might by chance have forgotten himself, that is the practical reality of his existence, then for Hegel it is also in order (only too much in order!) that the human subject, whilst looking in this manner, stands by no means apart as if it were not concerned. It is in this looking that the something seen is produced. And the thing seen actually has its reality in the fact that it is produced as the thing seen in the looking of the human subject. Man cannot participate more energetically (within the frame-work of theoretical possibility), he cannot be more forcefully transferred from the floor of the theatre on to the stage than in his theory.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Karl Barth Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl, 1952, 1959 p. 284-285
Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl 1952, 1956

Life, God, Truth, Way

“The constitution sets all three branches out as co-equal. The obligation of the judicial branch — as far back as the decision in Marbury v. Madison — is to review the constitutionality and legality of actions by the other branches. And that is its only job, to decide cases and controversies in front of it under article three.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

; quote excerpted in:

Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Decision

“Health and well being are a way of life. Not a certain diet or set of exercises or any other single area, but a combination of all the aspects of your life. Accept full responsibility for yourself, your health and your choices. The western civilization culture is anti health in that it is designed to produce profit not health. Read up on epigenetics. You control more of the genes which differentiate you from other humans than you realize. You are your own creator and creation.”

Jim Morris (bodybuilder) (1935–2016) American bodybuilder

"Jim Morris, vegan bodybuilder" https://web.archive.org/web/20140616020714/http://www.greatveganathletes.com/jim-morris-vegan-bodybuilder, interview with Great Vegan Athletes (2014).

Life, Health, Way, Exercises

“Either you have a rival or you don't. If you have one, you must set out to please, so as to be preferred to him. If you don't have one, you must still please so as to obviate the possibility of having one.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

Ou vous avez un rival ou vous n'en n'avez pas. Si vous en avez un, il faut plaire pour lui être préféré; si vous n'en n'avez pas, il faut encore plaire pour éviter d'en avoir. Letter 152: La Marquise de Merteuil to le Vicomte de Valmont. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_152 Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

“... while we must not thrust beliefs on people, belaboring their minds to try to make them accept orthodoxy, we may set these same beliefs before people, showing them the rich truth which we have found and which they may come to receive as their questing mind develops and grows.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.61, [ellipsis added]

People, Truth