Quotes about set
page 33

“You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and for setting our people free from bondage.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

People

“Apparently, sir you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, ‘’does’’ have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—’’we’’ entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Drink, Sense, Water

“It was said by a very learned Judge, Lord Macclesfield, towards the beginning of this century that the most effectual way of removing land marks would be by innovating on the rules of evidence; and so I say. I have been in this profession more than forty years, and have practised both in Courts of law and equity; and if it had fallen to my lot to form a system of jurisprudence, whether or not I should have thought it advisable to establish two different Courts with different jurisdictions, and governed by different rules, it is not necessary to say. But, influenced as I am by certain prejudices that have become inveterate with those who comply with the systems they found established, I find that in these Courts proceeding by different rules a certain combined system of jurisprudence has been framed most beneficial to the people of this country, and which I hope I may be indulged in supposing has never yet been equalled in any other country on earth. Our Courts of law only consider legal rights: our Courts of equity have other rules, by which they sometimes supersede those legal rules, and in so doing they act most beneficially for the subject. We all know that, if the Courts of law were to take into their consideration all the jurisdiction belonging to Courts of equity, many bad consequences would ensue. To mention only the single instance of legacies being left to women who may have married inadvertently: if a Court of law could entertain an action for a legacy, the husband would recover it, and the wife might be left destitute: but if it be necessary in such a case to go into equity, that Court will not suffer the husband alone to reap the fruits of the legacy given to the wife; for one of its rules is that he who asks equity must do equity, and in such a case they will compel the husband to make a provision for the wife before they will suffer him to get the money. I exemplify the propriety of keeping the jurisdictions and rules of the different Courts distinct by one out of a multitude of cases that might be adduced.... One of the rules of a Court of equity is that they cannot decree against the oath of the party himself on the evidence of one witness alone without other circumstances: but when the point is doubtful, they send it to be tried at law, directing that the answer of the party shall be read on the trial; so they may order that a party shall not set up a legal term on the trial, or that the plaintiff himself shall be examined; and when the issue comes from a Court of equity with any of these directions the Courts of law comply with the terms on which it is so directed to be tried. By these means the ends of justice are attained, without making any of the stubborn rules of law stoop to what is supposed to be the substantial justice of each particular case; and it is wiser so to act than to leave it to the Judges of the law to relax from those certain and established rules by which they are sworn to decide.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Bauerman v. Eadenius (1798), 7 T. R. 667.

Women, Money, People, Justice

“You gentlemen may laugh, but that is true, all right; it sounds ridiculous, I know, but it is fact. Now if the problem were put up to any of you man to develop science of shoveling as it was put up to us, that is, to a group of men who had deliberately set out to develop the science of all kinds of all laboring work, where do you think you would begin? When you started to study the science of shoveling I make the assertion that you would be within two days – just as we were in two days –well on the way toward development of the science of shoveling. At least you would outlined in your minds those elements which required careful, scientific study in order to understand science of shoveling. I do not want to go into all of the details of shoveling, but I will give you some of the elements, one or two of the most important elements of the science of shoveling; that is, the elements that reach further and have more serious consequences than any other. Probably the most important element in the science of shoveling is this: There must be some shovel load at which a first-class shoveler will do his biggest day’s work. What is that load? To illustrate: when we went to the Bethlehem Steel Works and observed the shoveler in the yard of that company, we found that each of the good shovelers in that yard owned his own shovel; they preferred to buy their own shovels rather than to have the company furnish them. There was a larger tonnage of ore shoveled in that woks than of any other material and rice coal came next in tonnage. We would see a first-class shoveler go from shoveling rice coal with a load of 3.5 ponds to the shovel to handling ore from the Massaba Range, with 38 pounds to the shove Now, is 3.5 pounds the proper shovel load or is the 38 pounds the proper load? They cannot both be right. Under scientific management the answer to this question is not a matter of anyone’s opinion; it is a question for accurate, careful, scientific investigation.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 111.

Men, Way, Understanding, Question

“In this essay I want to review some work on stigma, especially some popular work, to see what it can yield for sociology. An exercise will be undertaken in marking off the material on stigma from neighbouring facts, in showing how this material can be economically described within a single conceptual scheme, and in clarifying the relation of stigma to the subject matter of deviance. This task will allow me to formulate and use a special set of concepts, those that bear on 'social information', the information the individual directly conveys about himself.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Preface
1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963

Exercises

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

and may Allah bless you and grant you success in these examinations – but even in the Akhirah we ask Allah to bless you, to open your doors. To prepare for the Akhirah, it's not an easy task, but with the hope in the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala things will be made easy, and at the same time, with the constant preparation, without giving up hope – never ever giving up, never saying no, never just throwing the towel – by the will of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we will achieve, and we will achieve great heights. "Exams in Life - Never Give Up - Mufti Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4w4pak66V0, YouTube (2013) Lectures

Life, Death, Happiness, People

“No one warns young people to follow Adam's example. He waited till God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this 'being asleep' in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all. Instead we are set as bloodhounds after a partner, considering everyone we see until our minds are so concerned with the sex problem that we can talk of nothing else when bull-session time comes around. It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women — but he can think of them as he ought — as sisters, not as sparring partners!”

Jim Elliot (1927–1956) Martyred Christian missionary to Ecuador

Quoted in Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty (1989), Chapter 4

Women, God, People, Sex

“Whatever is common to children of a given age is set up as the fundamental character of that age. The fact that three-year-old children are quite often negative is considered evidence that negativism is inherent in the nature of three-year-olds, and the concept of a negative age or stage is then regarded as an explanation for the appearance of negativism.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in contemporary psychology, 1931, p. 153 as cited in: Eells, T. D. (2007). " Generating and generalizing knowledge about psychotherapy from pragmatic case studies http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/journals/index.php/pcsp/article/viewFile/893/2263". In: Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy, Vol 3, Nr. 1, p. 35-54.

Children, Age, Nature, Appearance

“I had to tell him quite plainly that the Belgians had lost only 16,000 men in the war, and that, when all was said, Belgium had not made greater sacrifices than Great Britain. The truth is that we are always called upon to foot the bill. When anything has to be done it is "Old England" that has to do it. If the Rumanians have to be supplied with food and credits have to be given, in the final result England has to stand the racket. It is time that we again told the world what we have done. These things tend to be forgotten. Our policy is quite clear but imperfectly understood. We mean that the French shall have coal in the Saar Valley and that the Poles shall have access to the sea through Danzig; but we don't want to create a condition of affairs that will be likely to lead to another war. We don't want to place millions of Germans under the domination of the French and the Poles. That would not be for their benefit, and what is the use of setting up a lot of Alsace-Lorraines?”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (31 March 1919), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), pp. 263-264
Prime Minister

Men, War, Truth, World

“There is no Intrinsick Worth in Money but what is alterable with the Times, and whether a Guinea goes for Twenty Pounds or for a Shilling, it is … the Labour of the Poor, and not the high and low value that is set on Gold or Silver, which all the Comforts of Life must arise from.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

"An Essay on Charity, and Charity-Schools", p. 345
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Life, Money, Time

“[The House of Lords] is the right hon. Gentleman's poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to. And we are told that this is a great revising Chamber, the safeguard of liberty in the country. Talk about mockeries and shams. Was there ever such a sham as that?”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1907/jun/26/house-of-lords in the House of Commons (26 June 1907) President of the Board of Trade

Housing, Country

“Christ's whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness — the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God — one long campaign in which the "temptation" stands out as the first great battle and victory.”

Thomas Hughes (1822–1896) English lawyer, author and cricketer

Part IV
The Manliness of Christ (1879)

Life, God, World, Victory

“Much attention has been given in recent years to what might be called the "higher organization" of the state, both in the practical experimentation of modem nations and in the domain of theoretical analysis. In almost every country in the world there has been experimentation with and discussion of the emerging evolution of political-economic forms and forces, now everywhere challenging the peace and security of mankind technology, cartels, unions, business and agricultural associations, armies, professions, churches, schools. The problem of a socialistic or a mixed economy has led to vigorous debate not only upon economic principles but upon the whole political setting of economics.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

177-8 ; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 220-1
Systematic Politics, 1943

World, School, Peace, Business

“These European White Men, then, with civilization in their blood and in their destiny, crossed the Atlantic and set up a new civilization on a bleak and rock bound coast. It was the White Men who drove north to Alaska and west to California; the men who opened up the tropics and subdued the Arctics; the men who mastered the African Veldts; the men who peopled Australia and seized the gates of the world at Suez, Gibraltar and Panama.”

Ben Klassen (1918–1993) American engineer, author and politician

Nature's Eternal Religion (1973), Ch. 2, Paragraph 3
Nature's Eternal Religion (1973)

Men, People, World

“Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the fluent and still mark that the dying wave etches on the hot sand, it is the darting of the immortal lizard on the rock burnt by the midday heat, it is the rainbow of conciliation, on sad May afternoons, after the storm has passed, down there, making a dark backdrop to the almond trees in flower, to the gardens with their washed colours, to the ploughmen's huts, smiling and tranquil, it is the livid cloud chased by the vehement blowing of Aeolus enraged, it is the nebulous disk of the fleeting moon behind the ripped-open funereal curtain of a disturbed sky in the deep of night, it is the blood of the bull stabbed in the arena, of the warrior fallen in the heat of battle, of Adonis' immaculate thigh wounded by the obstinate boar's curved tusk, it is the sail swollen with the winds of distant seas, it is the centuries-old tree browned in the autumn..”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from the first lines in De Cirico's essay 'Painting', 1938; from http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/211_Painting_1938_Metaphysical_Art.pdf 'Painting', 1938 - G. de Chirico, presentation to the catalogue of his solo exhibition Mostra personale del pittore Giorgio de Chirico, Galleria Rotta, Genoa, May 1938], p. 211
1920s and later

Sadness, Smile, Art, Flowers

“The lake-beings about him drew daggers and moved upon Kull. Then the king laughed and set his back against a column, gripping his sword hilt until the muscles stood out on his right arm in great ridges.
"This is a game I understand, ghosts," he laughed.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Delcardes' Cat" (1967)

Game, Understanding

“I really remember John Lennon's Imagine. I guess I'm twelve; that's one of my first albums. That really set fire to me. It was like he was whispering in your ear — his ideas of what's possible. Different ways of seeing the world.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Rolling Stone interview (2005)

World, Way, Imagination, Idea

“Acid rain is a short-hand term that covers a set of highly complex and controversial environmental problems. It is a subject in which emotive and political judgements tend to obscure the underlying scientific issues which are fairly easily stated but poorly understood.”

Basil John Mason (1923–2015) British meteorologist

in The Causes and Consequences of Acid Rain, [Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, The Institution, 1982, 31]

Problem

“Personally I am a sincere advocate of all means which would lead to the settlement of international disputes by methods such as those which civilization has so successfully set up for the adjustment of differences between individuals.
But I am also bound to say this — that I believe it is essential in the highest interests, not merely of this country, but of the world, that Britain should at all hazards maintain her place and her prestige amongst the Great Powers of the world. Her potent influence has many a time been in the past, and may yet be in the future, invaluable to the cause of human liberty. It has more than once in the past redeemed Continental nations, who are sometimes too apt to forget that service, from overwhelming disaster and even from national extinction. I would make great sacrifices to preserve peace. I conceive that nothing would justify a disturbance of international good will except questions of the gravest national moment. But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Mansion House (21 July 1911) during the Agadir Crisis, quoted in The Times (22 July 1911), p. 7
Chancellor of the Exchequer

World, Peace, Question, Time

“How can America be in a position to assimilate its many races and to select intelligently its future immigrants unless it has a clear understanding of each race, a clear comprehension of its ideals and achievements and of its contributive relation to its own development? We have tried the haphazard method. We concentrated races indiscriminately in cities, and the result was colonies and ghettos. We dumped them into industries, and got immigrant slums and "dagos" and "hunkies" and "kikes". We tried to shut them out, and could think of nothing better to accomplish this than a literacy test. We set the beauty-loving Italian digging ditches and put the Greek in factories, and in our negligence we wasted both.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Love, Beauty, Intelligence, Understanding

“Never pay any attention to what critics say…Remember, a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Bengt de Törne Sibelius: A Close-Up (London: Faber and Faber25 october

“What is learning but a set of sensory signals from the environment, with different forms of learning resulting from different types or patterns of sensory signals?”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Learning

“… The fame of Gibbon is highest among writers; those especially who have studied for years particular periods included in his theme (and how many those are; for in the East and West he has set his mark on all that is great for ten centuries!) acutely feel and admiringly observe how difficult it would be to say so much, and leave so little untouched; to compress so many telling points; to present in so few words so apt and embracing a narrative of the whole.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[ART. I—Edward Gibbon, National Review, 2, January 1856, 1–42, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081643169;view=1up;seq=43] (quote p. 31)
Edward Gibbon (1856)

Feeling, Study

“The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in school, where students soon discover that (as in the home) in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

School, Home, Thinking

“My kids were in boarding school. I was a bit bored of just jet setting from one country to another. So I came to India to do Aandhiyaan for a lark. I think it was one of David Dhawan's best films, even better than Aankhen. But I was heartbroken when it flopped.”

Mumtaz (actress) (1947) Indian film actress

Mumtaz (Filmfare, 7 December 2011) Quotes from Mumtaz Source: Best of Filmfare http://www.angelfire.com/celeb/mumtaz/spicerack.htm

School, Thinking, Country

“For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing punishments. And indeed the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death; and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the Divine doctrines of the Essens about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life, Death, Men, God

“I phoned Prince out of the blue, hummed a melody, and he listened," … "I hung up, and he came over within the hour. He listened again, and I said, 'Do you hate it?' He said, 'No,' and walked over to the synthesizers that were set up, was absolutely brilliant for about twenty five minutes, and then left. He was so uncanny, so wild, he spoiled me for every band I've ever had because nobody can exactly re-create—not even with two piano players-what Prince did all by his little self.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on "Stand Back") Musician, issue 123-128 http://books.google.com/books?id=h5EJAQAAMAAJ (1989), p. 84.

Hate

“The great national and political revolution of '76 set the seal to the liberties of North America. And but for one evil, and that of immense magnitude, which the constitutional provision we have been considering does not fairly reach — I allude to negro slavery and the degradation of our coloured citizens — we could foresee for the whole of this magnificent country a certain future of uniform and peaceful improvement.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)

Peace, Evil, Future, Country

“Democracy prevents the politician's fulfillment of his obligations to the nation. Even the most well-meaning politician becomes, in a democracy, the slave of his supporters, because either he satisfies their personal interests or they destroy his organization. The politician lives under the tyranny and permanent threat of the electoral bosses. He is placed in a position in which he must choose between the termination of his lifetime work and the satisfaction of the demands of party members. And the politician, given such a choice, opts for the latter. He does so not out of his own pocket, but out of that of the country. He creates jobs, sets up missions, commissions, sinecures--all rostered in the nation's budget--which put increasingly heavy pressures on a tired people.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

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

People, Democracy, Support, Personality

“Leaders must be optimists. Their vision was beyond the present and set on a future of real peace and true freedom.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

Speech before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. August 30, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3613480.stm

Peace, Freedom, Future

“Slowly he turned the pages, scanning the pictures and the text for a repetition of the combination B-O-Y. Presently he found it beneath a picture of another little ape and a strange animal which went upon four legs like the jackal and resembled him not a little. Beneath this picture the bugs appeared as: A BOY AND A DOG There they were, the three little bugs which always accompanied the little ape.
And so he progressed very, very slowly, for it was a hard and laborious task which he had set himself without knowing it — a task which might seem to you or me impossible — learning to read without having the slightest knowledge of letters or written language, or the faintest idea that such things existed.
He did not accomplish it in a day, or in a week, or in a month, or in a year; but slowly, very slowly, he learned after he had grasped the possibilities which lay in those little bugs, so that by the time he was fifteen he knew the various combinations of letters which stood for every pictured figure in the little primer and in one or two of the picture books.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Books, Dogs, Boy, Idea

“I'm very aware that this programme may be regarded as bleak or depressing - an increasing population with an ever decreasing supply of resources – but humans have capabilities that animals don't: to think rationally; to study; to plan ahead. The number of people on the planet depends on the personal decisions we each make regarding the number of children we have even setting aside the moral responsibility we have to protect other species, if we continue to damage our ecosystem, we damage ourselves. Its clear that we'll have to change the way that we live and use our resources. We're at a crossroads where we can chose to cooperate or carry on regardless. Can our intelligence save us? I hope so. m46s24-m47s15”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

Children, People, Hope, Way

“Hayek’s blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Friedrich Hayek I knew, and what he got right - and wrong (2015)

People, Appearance, Time

“But I think all of us would also agree that there's a very central part of your faith in how you approach public life. And I, frankly, would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their judgments, because then I'd wonder, where's your judgment — how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don't pray? Who you pray to, how you pray, how you come close to God is between you and God. But the notion that you're endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary on what we mean by America.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Republican debate http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2011/10/last-nights-gop-debate-transcript.html 2011-10-18 2010s

Life, God, Faith, Thinking

“It seems clear that [set theory] violates against the essence of the continuum, which, by its very nature, cannot at all be battered into a single set of elements. Not the relationship of an element to a set, but of a part to a whole ought to be taken as a basis for the analysis of a continuum.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Riemanns geometrische Ideen, ihre Auswirkungen und ihre Verknüpfung mit der Gruppentheorie (1925), as quoted/translated by Erhard Scholz, "Philosophy as a Cultural Resource and Medium of Reflection for Hermann Weyl" (2004)

Nature, Parting

“It is the spirit of Salem—the corrupting influence of Puritanism which in itself is perversion of the Stoic ideal—infecting what remains of a nation which could have set an example to the world.”

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 1, Chapter 8 “A Decision in Cold Blood” (p. 233)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

World

“People may wonder why I am content to prescribe such a general and apparently vague formula as "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" for all and every ailment. The reason is, strange as it may seem, that our subconscious mind does not need the details. The general suggestion that everything "in every way" is going well is quite sufficient to set up the procedure of persuasion which will carry its effects to the different organs and improve every function. I have had remarkable demonstration of this in the course of my long teaching and experiments. Time and again I have seen patients cured, not only of the particular disease for which they sought relief, but also of minor disabilities which they had almost forgotten.”

Emile Coué (1857–1926) French psychologist and pharmacist

Source: Autosuggestion : My method (2014), Chapter III: Auto-suggestion in practice.

People, Disease, Way, Time

“Excessive toil occurred only where the masters or overseers were feeble witted as well as brutal. A persistent rumor among abolitionists was that sugar planters followed a policy of working slaves to death in seven years as a matter of economy. The persons spreading such reports were as ignorant of Negro nature as they were of conditions in the sugar mills. Furthermore, they overrated the ability of the masters to know how to kill a slave in the given time instead of leaving him a broken-down burden to the plantation. When they set out to prove the accusation they returned with no evidence, but convinced that the practice existed in some obscure region which they had not succeeded in ferreting out. Harriet Martineau, after watching slaves go through the motions of work without tiring themselves, considered the planters as models of patience and observed that new slave owners from Europe or the North were prone to be the most severe. Numerous observers, of various shades of opinion on slavery, agreed that brutality was no more common in the black belt than among free labor elsewhere, and that the slave owners were the worst victims of the system.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Death, Nature, Time, Personality

“Political equality is not merely a folly – it is a chimera. It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does. Whatever may be the written text of a Constitution, the multitude always will have leaders among them, and those leaders not selected by themselves. They may set up the pretence of political equality, if they will, and delude themselves with a belief of its existence. But the only consequences will be, that they will have bad leaders instead of good. Every community has natural leaders, to whom, if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer. Always wealth, in some countries by birth, in all intellectual power and culture, mark out the men whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government. They have the leisure for the task, and can give it the close attention and the preparatory study which it needs. Fortune enables them to do it for the most part gratuitously, so that the struggles of ambition are not defiled by the taint of sordid greed. They occupy a position of sufficient prominence among their neighbours to feel that their course is closely watched, and they belong to a class brought up apart from temptations to the meaner kinds of crime, and therefore it is no praise to them if, in such matters, their moral code stands high. But even if they be at bottom no better than others who have passed though greater vicissitudes of fortune, they have at least this inestimable advantage – that, when higher motives fail, their virtue has all the support which human respect can give. They are the aristocracy of a country in the original and best sense of the word. Whether a few of them are decorated by honorary titles or enjoy hereditary privileges, is a matter of secondary moment. The important point is, that the rulers of the country should be taken from among them, and that with them should be the political preponderance to which they have every right that superior fitness can confer. Unlimited power would be as ill-bestowed upon them as upon any other set of men. They must be checked by constitutional forms and watched by an active public opinion, lest their rightful pre-eminence should degenerate into the domination of a class. But woe to the community that deposes them altogether!”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 112, 1862, pp. 547-548
1860s

Men, Feeling, Communication, Motivation

“The moon has set,
And the Pleiades.
Midnight.
The hour has gone by.
I sleep alone.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Frag. 72
Translations, Sappho's Poems and Fragments (2002)

Sleep

“This fighting-shy of every obligation partly explains the phenomenon, half ridiculous, half disgraceful, Of the setting-up in our days of the platform of "youth" as youth. … In comic fashion people call themselves "young," because they have heard that youth has more rights than obligations, since it can put off the fulfilment of these latter to the Greek Kalends of maturity. …[T]he astounding thing at present is that these take it as an effective right precisely in order to claim for themselves all those other rights which only belong to the man who has already done something.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question

People, Youth, Fashion, Fight

“Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Address at University of Exeter (26 October 1978)

Sea

“I strongly feel that, if we are successful, our program will mark the beginning of a renaissance for manned space flight. This might even be similar to that wonderful time period between 1908 and 1912 when the world went from a total of ten airplane pilots to hundreds of airplane types and thousands of pilots in 39 countries. We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X PRIZE [Foundation] for the inspiration.”

Burt Rutan (1943) American aerospace engineer

From website: The Ansari X PRIZE (http://www.xprize.org/teams/mojave_aerospace_ventures.php ). Retrieved Nov. 23, 2004.

Youth, World, Dreams, Travel

“"The Itch" was an accident. I responded to [co-writer] Billy Steinberg's lyric because I thought even though we set it in this particular story of a girl in a relationship who isn't getting what she needs, it's really a metaphor for desire. Everything just coincided without my realizing it. I was playing Lucy in Dracula 2000, and she's a character who is totally open, sexual and curious and definitely has "The Itch" on many different levels. And it was just coincidence that all this stuff kind of like came together for me. Because I get the itch all the time. And to me that really means something.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

Attributed

Girl, Time

“There is no doubt that Sankara before him had set the wheel of inquiry by boldly declaring Advaita as the answers to all the questions posed by different Upanishads. He has tried to synthesize the approach and took up the Brahma sutras of Vyasa as the basic text for study. The Brahma sutras is an extraordinary text. Before Sage Vyasa a very great body of literature has accumulated mainly in the Upanishads, most of the time speaking in one voice about Brahama vidya and at the same time throwing in diverse suggestions It has grown up almost like a banyan tree with overgrown branches. Vyasa by reducing many of these concepts into short and crisp sutras has provided behind each sutra an ocean of knowledge. It is impossible to understand the whole body of knowledge in a unitary way. Sankara brought in a cohesion. He was close to the Vedic ideals in point of time …”

R. Nagaswamy (1930) Indian academic

"Ramanuja Myth & Reality A Critical Study Of Ramanujas Life & Works

Way, Literature, Understanding, Question

“Erdogan may have dreamt of a one-party system with himself at the helm far into the future. That, however, is not on the cards. Going in such a direction could deal the coup de grace to Turkey’s already sick economy by drying up foreign direct investment and fast developing trade links with Europe and North America. What Erdogan can do is to build a “one-and-a-half party” system in which the AKP will set the agenda for the remainder of the decade while opposition parties provide the “half” needed to maintain the appearance of parliamentary democracy. A “one-and-a-half party” system isn’t unprecedented. Mexico tried it for half a century. Japan has lived with it since the end of the Second World War. It is also the model that Vladimir Putin has imposed in Russia. The failed coup has set Turkish democracy back by at least a decade. However, had it succeeded it might have caused an even longer and deeper setback.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Turkey – Towards a “One and a Half Party” System http://english.aawsat.com/2016/08/article55355819/opinion-turkey-towards-one-half-party-system, Ashraq Al-Awsat (5 Aug, 2016).

War, World, Democracy, Appearance

“Coleridge observes that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists. The latter feel that classes, orders, and genres are realities; the former, that they are generalizations. For the latter, language is nothing but an approximative set of symbols; for the former, it is the map of the universe. The Platonist knows that the universe is somehow a cosmos, an order; that order, for the Aristotelian, can be an error or a fiction of our partial knowledge. Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal antagonists change their name and language: one is Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley; the other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"The Nightingale of Keats"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Men, Error, Feeling, Knowledge

“Intelligence, then, is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions based on rational (truth-obeying) rules. The computer scientists Allen Newell and Herbert Simon fleshed this idea out further by noting that intelligence consists of specifying a goal, assessing the current situation to see how it differs from the goal, and applying a set of operations that reduce the difference. Perhaps reassuringly, by this definition human beings, not just aliens, are intelligent. We have desires, and we pursue them using beliefs, which, when all goes well, are at least approximately or probabilistically true.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works (1997), p. 62

Truth, Intelligence, Idea, Decision

“I know that it can be very easy, under the intensive pressures of a campaign, for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics — to rationalize this on the grounds that what is at stake is of such importance to the Nation that the end justifies the means. And both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics in the past.
In recent years, however, the campaign excesses that have occurred on all sides have provided a sobering demonstration of how far this false doctrine can take us. The lesson is clear: America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means.
I urge the leaders of both political parties, I urge citizens, all of you, everywhere, to join in working toward a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made. This is my goal. I ask you to join in making it America's goal.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, First Watergate Speech (1973)

People, Past, Future, Falseness

“Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there… In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden — Ship of fools" (13 October 2014) https://youtube.com/watch/?v=RZsvdg1dkJ4 2014

Way, Democracy, Star, Business

“Lost — Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Published as "A Beautiful Thought … we clip from an exchange paper" in Universalist Union (16 March 1844) this is often quoted as an advertisement originally written by Mann, attributed to him in Getting on in the World (1874) by William Mathews, p. 268; and most publications since that date, and sometimes titled "Lost, Two Golden Hours".
Variants:
Lost,
Two golden hours:
Each with a set of
Sixty diamond minutes!
No reward
Is offered, for they are .
Lost for ever!
Published as "Loss of Time" in The Church of England Magazine (28 June 1856) without any crediting of authorship.
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset...
The most commonly quoted variant simply begins with a comma rather than a dash.

“Udnie – I see Again in Memory my Dear Udnie' is no more the portrait of a young girl than 'Edtaonisl' (counterpart of his work 'Udnie'] is the image of a prelate, as we ordinarily conceive of them. They are [both] memories of America, evocations of over there which, subtly set down like musical chords, become representative of an idea, a nostalgia, a fleeting impression.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

'Udnie – I see Again in Memory my Dear Udnie' is the title of a painting, he made in 1913; a memory of the dances performed by Stasia Napierkowska on the ship to New York, to visit the w:Armory Show, where Picabia was presented in 1913 as a 'leading Cubist painter'
1910's
Source: 'Ecrits: vol. 1', 1913 - 1920, Picabia, Belfond, Paris, p. 26

Music, Girl, Idea, Nostalgia

“Tragedies are always discussed as if they took place in a void, but actually each tragedy is conditioned by its setting, local and global. The events of 11 September 2001 are not exception.”

Tariq Ali (1943) British Pakistani writer, journalist, and historian

The Clash of Fundamentalism

“Unfortunately, many programs are so big that there is no one individual who really knows all the pieces, and so the amount of code sharing you get isn't as great. Also, the opportunity to go back and really rewrite something isn't quite as great, because there's always a new set of features that you're adding on to the same program.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Source: Interview from Programmers at Work (1986)

“What use are experimental results to someone who is interested in something vastly larger and more complicated, perhaps fundamentally different than anything that can be studied in a laboratory setting?”

Charles Plott (1938) American economist

Charles Plott, cited in: Michel Meyer (2001), Economic Theory and Explanation, p. 338

Study

“The Smithsonian Institute has 33,000 sets of human remains in their basement … Many of them were taken while the people were still alive. They were so desperate to find missing links, so desperate to prove their theory that they murdered people to prove it. It was the philosophy of evolution that drove them.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

People

“To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high, we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 19 ("To an Athlete Dying Young"), st. 2.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Home

“[Anti-monopoly] is a movement inspired by a set of fools and black-mailers. To be sure, there are some men in it whose motives are good, if their sense is not. When I want to buy up any politician, I always find the Anti-Monopolists the most purchasable. They don't come so high.”

William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) American philanthropist

Quoted in Clarence P. Dresser, "Vanderbilt in the West" New York Times (9 October 1882).
Disputed

Men, Fools, Motivation, Sense

“Man set out on a two-thousand-year trial of a particular method of differentiation, adapting the structure of his mental processes, conscious and unconscious, to a certain general form. We need to consider only the most general characteristics of this form, and for the purpose of this analysis, there reduce to two. Thought may be either unitary or dualistic (since other pluralistic forms may be neglected), and it may be either process or static. These two pairs produce four combinations or types of thought: unitary-process, unitary-static, dualistic-process and dualistic-static. The first and the last are the most stable and common types; the unitary-static and dualistic-process forms are less frequent and may be regarded as anomalous forms appearing at times of transition.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 193-194

Appearance, Time

“Some recent scholars have proposed that Jesus … preached a "radically egalitarian society"—that is, that he set about to reform society by inventing a new set of rules to govern social relations … There is little to suggest that Jesus was concerned with pushing social "reform" in any fundamental way in this evil age. In his view, present-day society and all its conventions were soon to come to a screeching halt, when the Son of Man arrived from heaven in judgment on the earth. Far from transforming society from within, Jesus was preparing people for the destruction of society. Only when God's Kingdom arrived would an entirely new order appear, in which peace, equality, and justice would reign supreme.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

Source: Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999), Ch. 11: 'Not in Word Only', p. 190

God, People, Age, Peace

“For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any books however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1, Chapter 6, p. 70
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

God, Books, Age, Reading

“This book [Zen in the Art of Archery], by Herrigel, which I discovered a few years ago, seems to me fundamental to our profession as photographers. Matisse wrote similarly about drawing: set a discipline, make rigor a rule, forget oneself completely. And in photography the attitude must be the same: detach oneself, do not try to prove anything at all. My sense of freedom is the same: a frame that allows any variation. This is the basis of Zen Buddhism, the evidence: that you go in with great force and then you succeed in forgetting yourself.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Only Geometricians May Enter: Interview with Yves Bourde (1974), p. 65

Books, Art, Sense, Freedom

“Sometimes I think that TV evangelism is one of Satan’s greatest weapons. They put these guys on a pedestal and all of a sudden they get caught with a prostitute, and every Christian I know then is under the gun. So you don’t think that’s kind of set up?”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

CNSNews interview (2014)

Guy, Thinking

“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 263

Life, Women, Men, Age

“A book, like a landscape, is a state of consciousness varying with readers. There exists some book, pamphlet, article in an encyclopaedia, or possibly an old clipping from a newspaper that once set you thinking; there may be many; indeed you may be one of those rare beings with whom a few lines of print are food enough or thought because, as Lamartine says, their thoughts think themselves. The sometimes evocative for you may be poetry, history, philosophy, the sciences, or moral sciences, i. e. the progress of mankind. Some people who go to sleep over a volume will be interested by a review which they think more condensed or better within their reach. Read reviews if they help you to think, that is. to say if they leave in your mind images that will go on living when you have forgotten where they came from. Read a Shakespeare calendar at the rate of four lines a day, if Shakespeare quotations have on you the magic influence they have on some people; read algebra, read the lives of great inventors or of great businessmen, read that kind of books which you and nobody else know to be thought-productive for you.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 122

People, Books, Food, History

“A good deal is said these days about being oneself. It is supposed to be healthy to be oneself. While it is a little hard for me to understand how one could be anything else, I suppose what is meant is that one should not strive to become anything other than what he is. This strikes me as a very dull way of living; in fact, I would be inclined to argue that all of us would be better off if we set out to be something other than what we are. Well, I’m not so sure we would all be better off - perhaps it would be more accurate to say life would be a lot more interesting.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 157, as cited in: Trevor Butt. Understanding People, 2003. p. 89; Described as "a critique of Cartesian dualism"

Life, Way, Understanding

“Early in his career Hoskins had realized that no field of science is remote from the affairs of men, that there is a sociological implication inherent even in the simple set of screwing a nut on a bolt.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 29-30.

Men, Science

“I have read your speech and I must frankly say, with much regret as there is little in it that I can agree with, and much from which I differ. You lay down broadly the Doctrine of Universal Suffrage which I can never accept. I intirely deny that every sane and not disqualified man has a moral right to a vote—I use that Expression instead of “the Pale of the Constitution”, because I hold that all who enjoy the Security and civil Rights which the Constitution provides are within its Pale—What every Man and Woman too have a Right to, is to be well governed and under just Laws, and they who propose a change ought to shew that the present organization does not accomplish those objects…[Your speech] was more like the Sort of Speech with which Bright would have introduced the Reform Bill which he would like to propose than the Sort of Speech which might have been expected from the Treasury bench in the present State of Things. Your Speech may win Lancashire for you, though that is doubtful but I fear it will tend to lose England for you. It is to be regretted that you should, as you stated, have taken the opportunity of your receiving a Deputation of working men, to exhort them to set on Foot an Agitation for Parliamentary Reform—The Function of a Government is to calm rather than to excite Agitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (12 May 1864), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 281-282.
1860s

Men, Fear, Law, Universe

“Use both bribery and threats to exterminate every Cossack to a man if they set fire to the oil in Guriev.”

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

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), p. 69.
Attributions

“I stood on the stage and watched Marco in rather indignantly, look at Governor Bush and say, someone told you that because we’re running for the same office, that criticizing me will get you to that office. It appears that the same someone who has been whispering in old Marco’s ear too. So the indignation that you carry on, some of the stuff, you have to also own then. So let’s set the facts straight. First of all, I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor. Secondly, I never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood. Third, if you look at my record as governor of New Jersey, I have vetoed a 50-caliber rifle ban. I have vetoed a reduction this clip size. I vetoed a statewide I. D. system for gun owners and I pardoned, six out-of-state folks who came through our state and were arrested for owning a gun legally in another state so they never have to face charges. And on Common Core, Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey. So listen, this is the difference between being a governor and a senator. See when you’re a senator, what you get to do is just talk and talk and talk. And you talk so much that nobody can ever keep up with what you’re saying is accurate or not. When you’re a governor, you’re held accountable for everything you do. And the people of New Jersey, I’ve seen it. And the last piece is this. I like Marco too, and two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed. That was before he was running against me. Now that he is, he’s changed his tune. I’m never going to change my tune. I like Marco Rubio. He’s a good guy, a smart guy, and he would be a heck of a lot better president than Hillary Rodham Clinton would ever be.”

Chris Christie (1962) 55th Governor of New Jersey, former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey

Full Transcript of the Sixth Republican Debate in Charleston http://time.com/4182096/republican-debate-charleston-transcript-full-text/, Time (14 January 2016).

People, Guy, Support, Appearance

“To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 68

Thinking, Time

“I want to assure the people that Gujarat shall not tolerate any such accident. The culprits will get full punishment for their sins. Not only this, we will set an example, that nobody not even in his dream, thinks of committing a heinous crime like this.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Cited in: Caroline Sweetman (2005) Gender, Peacebuilding, and Reconstruction. p. 94
2002, "When select phrases are lifted and distorted out of context", 2002

People, Dreams, Thinking

“The income tax completely destroys the immunity of property. It flatly declares a prior right of the State to all things produced. What it permits the individual to retain is a concession to expediency, not by any means a right; for the State retains the liberty to set rates and to fix exemptions from year to year, as its convenience dictates. Thus, the sacred right of private property is violated, and the fact that it is done pro forma makes the violation no less real than when it is done arbitrarily by an autocrat.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 47

“Cary [Grant] would arrive on the set and everybody's morale immediately lifted. The crew were crazy about him and so was I. But, curiously, I never felt the male-female chemistry that you sometimes experience on a set. I could have been talking to my best girl-friend.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

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

Girl

“It is impossible for any man, of late, to have set foot beyond the shores of these islands, without observing with deep mortification a great and sudden change in the manner in which England is spoken of abroad; without finding, that instead of being looked up to as the patron, no less than the model, of constitutional freedom, as the refuge from persecution, and the shield against oppression, her name is coupled by every tongue on the continent with everything that is hostile to improvement, and friendly to despotism, from the banks of the Tagus to the shores of the Bosphorus…time was, and that but lately, when England was regarded by Europe as the friend of liberty and civilization, and therefore of happiness and prosperity, in every land; because it was thought that her rulers had the wisdom to discover, that the selfish interests and political influence of England were best promoted by the extension of liberty and civilization. Now, on the contrary, the prevailing opinion is, that England thinks her advantage to le in withholding from other countries that constitutional liberty which she herself enjoys.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (18 June 1829) against the Duke of Wellington's foreign policy, quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 128-129.
1820s

Wisdom, Hostility, Happiness, Thinking

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

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

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Children, Lie, Age, World

“But now, severed from the companion of my infancy, the partaker of all my thoughts, my cares, and my wishes, I was like one set afloat upon a stormy sea, hanging his safety upon a plank; night was closing upon him, and an unexpected surge had torn him from his hold and overwhelmed him forever.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Sea, Night

“As far as country houses were concerned, the functions of the lower ranks within the hierarchy were now only those of respectful service to their superiors. They lived in the basement, or in subordinate wings to either side of the house. The main rooms were designed as the orderly setting for meetings between gentlemen, lords, and princes, who seldom forgot their rank. But behind the rigid etiquette which regulated their intercourse, continual jockeying for power, position and favours went on. The central government was a rich source of jobs and perquisites, which were distributed either by the king himself, or by his ministers and favourites. The main power of the court aristocracy now lay in its power of patronage; it was constantly being solicited for favours.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

Housing, Country

“I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam — a flat foreground of waste land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts of a camp of some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the Handelskade; cold, stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled ground and the hard, frozen water of the canal, in which were set ships one behind another with their frosty mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and deserted, because… their cargoes were frozen-in up-country on barges and schuyts. In the distance, beyond the waste ground, and running parallel with the line of ships, a line of brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs. From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

On Amsterdam, Ch. 14
The Mirror of the Sea (1906)

Children, People, Water, Appearance

“Sociology is the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By "action" in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful […] the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the "meaning" to be thought of as somehow objectively "correct" or "true" by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history and any kind of a priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter "correct" or "valid" meaning.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action, 1922

Way, History, Science

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Women, Men, Money, Children

“The professional man lives off ideas, not for them. … He has acquired a stock of mental skills that are for sale. The skills are highly developed, but we do not think of him as being an intellectual if certain qualities are missing from his work—disinterested intelligence, generalizing power, free speculation, fresh observation, creative novelty, radical criticism. At home he may happen to be an intellectual, but at his job he is a hired mental technician who uses his mind for the pursuit of externally determined ends. It is this element—the fact that ends are set from some interest or vantage point outside the intellectual process itself—which characterizes both the zealot, who lives obsessively for a single idea, and the mental technician, whose mind is used not for free speculation but for a salable end. The goal here is external and not self-determined, whereas the intellectual life has a certain spontaneous character and inner determination. It has also a peculiar poise of its own, which I believe is established by a balance between two basic qualities in the intellectual’s attitude toward ideas—qualities that may be designated as playfulness and piety.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 27

Life, Home, Intelligence, Idea

“A human society comes together by a general agreement in order to obey its kings. So in a truly well-ordered regime there ought to be an election of the ruler himself, by which the ruler is set up as the judge of those who choose him. Well-ordered and correct lordships and honors, then, are established by election, and so also are general judges established over those who elect them.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De concordantia catholica

De concordantia catholica (The Catholic Concordance) (1434)

“For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Life, Men, People, Justice

“There was such a wonderful setting of the moon this morning, the yellow moon against little pink clouds, and the mountains a pure deep blue [viewed from his Swiss farmhouse], quite glorious, I would so have liked to paint. But it was cold, even my window was frozen, although I had kept the fire in all night.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

In a letter from Frauenkirch, Jan. 1919; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 48 Some time later Kirchner would made a colored wood-cut: 'Moonlit Winter Night' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Kirchner_-_Wintermondnacht.jpg 1916 - 1919

Mountain, Painting, Night

“A Moment's Halt — a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste —
And Lo! — the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste!”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing. All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength -- and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure -- and that would be irresponsible.”

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

President Bush Rejects Artificial Deadline, Vetoes Iraq War Supplemental http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070501-6.html (May 1, 2007) 2000s, 2007

People, Failure, Sense, Country

“I use the term "liberal" not in the political sense, as if it meant half measures, but in its original sense meaning by a liberal education the kind of education which sets the mind free from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Preface p. viii
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)

Education, Sense

“It often happens that reforms merely have the effect of transferring the undesirable tendencies of individuals from one channel to another channel. An old outlet for some particular wickedness is closed; but a new outlet is opened. The wickedness is not abolished; it is merely provided with a different set of opportunities for self-expression.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

“Although the great revolution of 1793 changed the whole face of France both politically and socially, it failed to emancipate the twin arts of painting and literature. In each case one tradition was succeeded by another, and nearly forty years elapsed before the new spirit completely broke through the barriers set up by a past generation.”

Wynford Dewhurst (1864–1941) British artist

Source: Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. (1904), p. 1: Ch. 1. The evolution of the impressionistic idea.

Art, Literature, Change, Past

“Well, I have been a strong supporter of ending discrimination, and particularly focusing on hate crimes and workplace bias and the like. And in our country, the issue of same-sex marriage, which is a -- is a matter left to each state, each state sets the rules -- is proceeding on a state-by-state basis. I think that is the best way for it to proceed. I have not supported same-sex marriage. I have supported civil partnerships and contractual relationships”

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

Speech and Townterview with Australian Broadcasting Company http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2010/11/150516.htm (7 November 2010) Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Hate, Marriage, Sex, Way

“Since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, mass media has ushered in a new era of collective consciousness – a set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes that operate as a unifying force within society. Notwithstanding the danger of assimilation akin to the Borg in Star Trek, the Internet is accelerating collective consciousness and revolutionizing economy, politics, and education, among others.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Education, Star, Idea

“We must begin by distinguishing between visual mental imagery and visual perception: Visual perception occurs while a stimulus is being viewed, and includes functions such as visual recognition (i. e., registering that a stimulus is familiar) and identification (i. e., recalling the name, context, or other information associated with the object). Two types of mechanisms are used in visual perception: “bottom-up” mechanisms are driven by the input from the eyes; in contrast, “top-down” mechanisms make use of stored information (such as knowledge, belief, expectations, and goals). Visual mental imagery is a set of representations that gives rise to the experience of viewing a stimulus in the absence of appropriate sensory input. In this case, information in memory underlies the internal events that produce the experience. Unlike afterimages, mental images are relatively prolonged.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Stephen M. Kosslyn, "Mental images and the brain." Cognitive Neuropsychology 22.3-4 (2005): p. 334

Knowledge, Memory

“I'm not trying to win a popularity contest. If you're in a public media setting and you're not expressing something of yourself, turn it over to someone who will. Just get out. Just go away and put somebody on who has a point of view, because the most dangerous thing about TV is its equalizing factor, its lowest common denominator factor. And that's what I fight against all the time.”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" Inside Story: Knowing It All http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/64665598.html?did=64665598&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT" by David Davis, L.A. Times (2000-11-26)

Time, Fight

“Once my lover, now my friend;
What a cruel thing to pretend.
What a cunning way to condescend;
Once my lover, and now my friend.Oh, you creep up like the clouds
And you set my soul at ease.
Then you let your love abound,
And you bring me to my knees.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Shadowboxer
Song lyrics, Tidal (1996)

Love, Way, Soul, Lovers

“If these principles are sound, two conclusions follow. The individual and the local, state, and national political units ought to be permitted to assume their own responsibilities. Any other course in the end will be subversive both of character and liberty. But it is equally clear that they in their turn must meet their obligations. If there is to be a continuation of individual and local self-government and of State sovereignty, the individual and locality must govern themselves and the State must assert its sovereignty. Otherwise these rights and privileges will be confiscated under the all-compelling pressure of public necessity for a better maintenance of order and morality. The whole world has reached a stage in which, if we do not set ourselves right, we may be perfectly sure that an authority will be asserted by others for the purpose of setting us right.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

World

“There is no question that the adult caregivers play an important role in the baby's life. It is from these older people that babies learn their first language, have their first experiences in forming and maintaining relationships, and get their first lessons in following rules. But the socialization researchers go on to draw other conclusions: that what children learn in the early years about relationships and rules sets the pattern for later relationships and later rule-following, and hence determines the entire course of their lives. I used to think so too. I still believe that children need to learn about relationships and rules in their early years; it is also important that they acquire a language. But I no longer believe that this early learning, which in our society generally takes place within the home, sets the pattern for what is to follow. Although the learning itself serves a purpose, the content of what children learn may be irrelevant to the world outside their home. They may cast it off when they step outside as easily as the dorky sweater their mother made them wear.”

Judith Rich Harris book The Nurture Assumption

The Nurture Assumption, chapter 1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/harris-nurture.html

Life, Children, People, World

“I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero.”

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) Poet and journalist

The South Country (London: Dent, 1909) pp. 98-99.

Flowers, Nature, Thinking, Grass

“I love coming in with a battle plan, but I also love the freedom to make things up with my actors, and my DP, too. Sometimes we’ll be in a scene and I see new things we can do, so I will throw whatever stuff that has been cooking away in my brain for a long time because I think what I'm coming up with on the set might serve the film better. You know, your instinct will tell you, “This is a better way, try this other way instead,” and that's very important for me, and that is my style of filmmaking, for better or for worse. That's how I like to approach it. And a lot of it comes to me when I'm designing the script, the screenplay. I'm generally very involved in the screenplay, even the ones I'm not on officially as a writer, I'm still extremely involved in how I craft the screen with the writers. I like to get in there and I really craft the world so I can have an idea of how all that will play out before I go on set. Then when I go on set, I like to keep it free, so that I can improvise with my actors.”

James Wan (1977) Malaysian-born Australian film director, screenwriter and producer

Interview: James Wan on His Creative Process, Returning to Horror with The Conjuring 2 and His Approach to Aquaman https://dailydead.com/interview-james-wan-creative-process-returning-horror-conjuring-2-approach-aquaman/ (June 9, 2016)

Love, World, Way, Idea

“Cybernetics is likely to reveal a great number of interesting and suggestive parallelisms between machine and brain and society. And it can provide the common language by which discoveries in one branch can readily be made use of in the others… [There are] two peculiar scientific virtues of cybernetics that are worth explicit mention. One is that it offers a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts suitable for representing the most diverse types of system… The second peculiar virtue of cybernetics is that it offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored. Such systems are, as we well know, only too common in the biological world!”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 4-5

World

Quotes about set page 33

Quotes about set
page 33