William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist
Source: The Curve of the Snowflake (1956), p. 72.
William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist
Source: The Curve of the Snowflake (1956), p. 72.
Arthur Ransome (1884–1967) English author and journalist
Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/jul/07/future-of-manufacturing-industry in the House of Commons (7 July 1986). <br class="br">1980s
Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter
OK! Magazine http://www.okmagazine.com/news/view/3919 (January 18, 2008)
Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General
Remarks at his installation as Attorney General.
Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Julia Langdon, "The gloves are off in the Speaker's corner", Herald (Glasgow), 9 April 1998, p. 21.
Statement to the press on arriving at Hillsborough Castle for the Northern Ireland talks, 7 April 1998.
1990s
Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh
That Sort of Bear.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)
Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer
self-titled TV comedy special, 1997
said after she suggested a "Buddy System" where pro-lifers are federally assigned orphaned babies
Standup routines
Count Basie (1904–1984) American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer
As quoted in Hear Me Talkin' to Ya : The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men who Made It (1966) by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, p. 301
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 156.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
“If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.”
Hal Abelson (1947) computer scientist
Abelson attributes this thought to his Princeton roommate Jeff Goll <br class="br">Source: Public Knowledge - Hal Abelson http://www.publicknowledge.org/about/who/board/abelson; also quoted in Vortex dynamics in thin films of amorphous Mo77Ge23, 1998, p. 6
“And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.”
James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist
The Creation, st. 7.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
Yanis Varoufakis (1961) Greek-Australian political economist and author, Greek finance minister
Source: Russell Hotten. " Yanis Varoufakis: In his own words http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31111905" at bbc.co.uk, 3 February 2015; On the austerity terms of Greece's €240bn bailout
“Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.”
Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright
Misattributed
Source: Elbert Hubbard, "J.B. Runs Things," Short Stories and Index: Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings, Part 14 (1923) [Kessinger Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0766103978], p. 278.
“America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet
America (1956)
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
Source: https://frederickdouglass.infoset.io/islandora/object/islandora%3A2333 "Negroes and the National War Effort"]
speech in Philadelphia (6 July 1863): Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)
Dashiell Hammett book The Gutting of Couffignal
My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger's in my ears. "Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?"
final lines, The Gutting of Couffignal (published in Black Mask, December 1925)
Short Stories
David Wright (1982) American baseball player
quoted by MLB.com columnist Lindsay Berra on The Official Website of The New York Mets http://m.mets.mlb.com/news/article/259053992/what-is-the-latest-on-david-wrights-recovery/.
Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer
Fluke, Sandra. (April 17, 2012). "Who says women don't care about wages?" http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/opinion/fluke-equal-pay-for-women/, CNN, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. accessed April 17, 2012. <br class="br">Articles
Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
"Casimir Pulaski Day"
Lyrics, Illinois (2005)
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian
Pope John Paul II on Eastern religions and yoga: A Hindu-Buddhist rejoinder.
“I may be small, but I screw up big because I'm standing on the shoulders of GIANTS.”
Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga
This evokes the statement by Newton: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director
"Speech to Danish working-class actors on the art of observation" [Rede an dänische Arbeiterschauspieler über die Kunst der Beobachtung]] (1934), from The Messingkauf Poems, published in Versuche 14 (1955); trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 235
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
Ernie Irvan (1959) American racing driver
As quoted in "Daytona 500's Magical Aura: Dale Earnhardt's 1998 Ride" http://bleacherreport.com/articles/610050-daytonas-magical-aura-dale-earnhardts-1998-daytona-500 by Ashley McCubbin in Bleacher Report (15 February 2011).
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)
1960s, Inaugural address (1965)
Ali book Nahj al-Balagha
Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha
K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India
Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), ch. 2
Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer
Blue and Gansey
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven Boys (2012)
“Like him in Æsop, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel.”
Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy
Section 1, member 2, Lawful Cures, first from God.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II
Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic
"The Paris Taxi-Driver Considered as an Artist," in Enchanted Aisles (1924).
Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player
As quoted in “Clemente Still Loves Pirate Fans” https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kWwqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VlAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3630%2C5689009 by Bill Christine, in The Pittsburgh Press (Monday, April 14, 1969), p. 32 <br class="br">Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1969</big>
Robinson Duckworth (1834–1911) British priest
Of the origin of Alice in Wonderland.
The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899), p. 358
Abdul Halim of Kedah (1927–2017) King of Malaysia
Installation as the 5th Yang di-Pertuan Agong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ggZ1C0VMg, 20/2/1971
A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet
"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …
Time (28 March 1960)
Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer
Pegasus, St. 2, p. 181
The New Book of Days (1961)
Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union
Quoted in "Odd World: A Photo-reporter's Story" - Page 299 - by John Phillips - 1959
Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player
As quoted in ".280 Not Good Enough: Clemente's Bat Answers Boos" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TpcuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kKEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2309%2C1919830 by Ian McDonald, in The Montreal Gazette (Friday, May 21, 1971), p. 17 <br class="br">Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>
David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral
Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 299
Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse
Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 5, "The Cruelty of Charity"
Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress
[Kopan, Tal, Black senators eye future generation, https://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/black-senators-meeting-tim-scott-103928, 21 August 2018, Politico, February 26, 2014]
2014
“An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.”
Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer
Book II, lines 801-802
Compare: "Loose his beard and hoary hair / Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air", Thomas Gray, The Bard, i. 2
Davideis (1656)
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran
Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews
Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist
"The Pale Pink Roast" (1959)
Bill Burr (1968) American actor, comedian and a celebrity podcaster
Premium Blend, episode [2.03], June 20, 1998
Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
"Angel Surrounded by Paysans" (1949)
Context: I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone
Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings,
Like watery words awash; like meanings said
By repetitions of half-meanings. Am I not,
Myself, only half a figure of a sort,
A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man
Of the mind, an apparition appareled in
Apparels of such lightest look that a turn
Of my shoulders and quickly, too quickly, I am gone?
“Euryalus
In death went reeling down,
And blood streamed on his handsome length, his neck
Collapsing let his head fall on his shoulder—
As a bright flower cut by a passing plow
Will droop and wither slowly, or a poppy
Bow its head upon its tired stalk
When overborne by a passing rain.”
Volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artus
It cruor inque umeros cervix conlapsa recumbit:
Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo
Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.
Compare:
Μήκων δ' ὡς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν, ἥ τ' ἐνὶ κήπῳ
καρπῷ βριθομένη νοτίῃσί τε εἰαρινῇσιν,
ὣς ἑτέρωσ' ἤμυσε κάρη πήληκι βαρυνθέν.
He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy
bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime;
so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.
Homer, Iliad, VIII, 306–308 (tr. R. Lattimore)
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IX, Lines 433–437 (tr. Fitzgerald)
Dalton Trumbo book Johnny Got His Gun
Johnny Got His Gun (1938)
Context: There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life, little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don't let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we've got to fight for liberty, or whatever their word is. There's always a word.
“Put your shoulder to the wheel.”
Aesop (-620–-564 BC) ancient Greek storyteller
Hercules and the Wagoner.
Carl Schurz (1829–1906) Union Army general, politician
Speech at the Chamber of Commerce, New York City, New York (2 January 1896)
Context: What is the rule of honor to be observed by a power so strongly and so advantageously situated as this Republic is? Of course I do not expect it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be offered to it. But, surely, it should not, as our boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about among the nations of the world, with a chip on its shoulder, shaking its fist in everybody's face. Of course, it should not tamely submit to real encroachments upon its rights. But, surely, it should not, whenever its own notions of right or interest collide with the notions of others, fall into hysterics and act as if it really feared for its own security and its very independence.
As a true gentleman, conscious of his strength and his dignity, it should be slow to take offense. In its dealings with other nations it should have scrupulous regard, not only for their rights, but also for their self-respect. With all its latent resources for war, it should be the great peace power of the world. It should never forget what a proud privilege and what an inestimable blessing it is not to need and not to have big armies or navies to support. It should seek to influence mankind, not by heavy artillery, but by good example and wise counsel. It should see its highest glory, not in battles won, but in wars prevented. It should be so invariably just and fair, so trustworthy, so good tempered, so conciliatory, that other nations would instinctively turn to it as their mutual friend and the natural adjuster of their differences, thus making it the greatest preserver of the world's peace.
This is not a mere idealistic fancy. It is the natural position of this great republic among the nations of the earth. It is its noblest vocation, and it will be a glorious day for the United States when the good sense and the self-respect of the American people see in this their "manifest destiny." It all rests upon peace. Is not this peace with honor? There has, of late, been much loose speech about "Americanism." Is not this good Americanism? It is surely today the Americanism of those who love their country most. And I fervently hope that it will be and ever remain the Americanism of our children and our children's children.
“It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.”
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer
Atlas, on bearing the burden of maintaining the worlds, in Ch. 4
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.
Jon Krakauer book Into Thin Air
Source: Into Thin Air (1997), Ch. 1.
Context: Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet. I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I'd been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.
“Bernard of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne by their gigantic bigness.”
Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea
John of Salisbury book Metalogicon
Metalogicon (1159) bk. 3, ch. 4. Translation from Henry Osborn Taylor The Mediaeval Mind ([1911] 1919) vol. 2, p. 159; such similes were available to Isaac Newton, when he humbly made use of them in comparing his progress in scientific ideas to those whose ideas he drew upon, in his famous statement to Robert Hooke in a letter of 15 February 1676: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party
Speech made at the Reichstag (21 May 1935) Found in Translation of Herr Hitler's Speech to the German Reichstag on May 21, 1935 https://books.google.com/books?id=r_-htwAACAAJ&dq=hitler+may+21+1935+speech&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir0MTAmInWAhXPaCYKHaFIB2UQ6AEIJjAA Foreign Office Press. German version https://archive.org/stream/RedeDesFhrersUndReichskanzlersAdolfHitlerVorDemReichstagAm21.Mai/MicrosoftWord-Ah19350521#page/n11/mode/2up <br class="br">1930s <br class="br">Context: The Germany of today is a National Socialist State. The ideology that dominates us is in diametrical contradiction to that of Soviet Russia. National Socialism is a doctrine that has reference exclusively to the German people. Bolshevism lays stress on international mission. We National Socialists believe a man can, in the long run, be happy only among his own people. We are convinced the happiness and achievements of Europe are indissolubly tied up with the continuation of the system of independent and free national States. Bolshevism preaches the establishment of a world empire and recognizes only section of a central international. We National Socialists grant each people the right to its own inner life according to its needs and its own nature. Bolshevism, on the other hand, establishes doctrinal theories that are to be accepted by all peoples, regardless of their particular essence, their special nature, traditions, etc. National Socialism speaks up for the solution of social problems, issues and tensions in their own nation, with methods that are consistent with our common human, spiritual, cultural and economic beliefs, traditions and conditions. Bolshevism preaches the international class struggle, the international world revolution with the weapons of the terror and the violence. National Socialism fights for the reconciliation and consequent adjustment of the differences in life and the union of all for common benefits. Bolshevism teaches the overcoming of an alleged class rule by the dictatorship of the power of a different class. National Socialism does not attach importance to a only theoretical rule of the working class, but especially on the practical improvement of their living conditions and standard of living. Bolshevism fights for a theory and, for it, sacrifices millions of people, immense values of traditional culture and traditions, and achieves, compared with us, only a very low standard of living for all. As National Socialists, our hearts are full with admiration and respect for the great achievements of the past, not only in our own people but also far beyond. We are happy to belong to an European cultural community that has so tremendously embossed today's world with a stamp of its mind. Bolshevism rejects this cultural achievement of mankind, claiming that has found the beginning of the real cultural and human history in the year of birth of Marxism. We, National Socialists, do not want to be of the same opinion as our church organizations in this or that organizational question. But we never want a lack of belief in religion or any faith, and do not wish that our churches become club-houses or cinemas. Bolshevism teaches the godlessness and acts accordingly. We National Socialists see in private property a higher level of human economic development that according to the differences in performance controls the management of what has been accomplished enabling and guaranteeing the advantage of a higher standard of living for everyone. Bolshevism destroys not only private property but also private initiative and the readiness to shoulder responsibility. It has not been able to save millions of human beings from starvation in Russia, the greatest Agrarian State in the world. It would be unthinkable to transfer such a catastrophe into Germany, because, at the of the day, in Russia there are 10 city dwellers for every 90 country dwellers, but in Germany for only 25 farmers there are 75 city dwellers. National Socialists and Bolshevists both are convinced they are a world apart from each other and their differences can never be bridged. Apart from that, there were thousands of our people slain and maimed in the fight against Bolshevism. If Russia likes Bolshevism it is not our affair, but if Bolshevism casts its nets over to Germany, then we will fight it tooth and nail.
“My end draws nigh; 't is time that I were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
Source: Morte D'Arthur (1842), Lines 163-164
Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general
Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 110-111
Context: My days in Europe with the 101st were nearly at an end. I suddenly received orders relieving me from the Division and assigning me as Superintendent of West Point. On August 22 I took an emotion-laden leave of my troops in a division review at Auxerre. For all their hard-boiled reputation, generals can be terribly sentimental about their units and their men. Standing bareheaded at the foot of the reviewing stand, I received the last salute of these gallant soldiers, their ribbons and streamers recalling our battles together. They had put stars on my shoulders and medals on my chest. I owed my future to them, and I was grateful.
Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model
On her near-death experience and final days in New York
Edie : American Girl (1982)
Context: "The Siege of the Warwick Hotel." I was left alone with a substantial supply of speed. I started having strange, convulsive behavior. I was shooting up every half-hour... thinking that with each fresh shot I'd knock this nonsense out of my system. I'd entertain myself hanging on to the bathroom sink with my hind feet stopped up against the door, trying to hold myself steady enough so I wouldn't crack my stupid skull open. I entertained myself by making a tape... a really fabulous tape in which I made up five different personalities. I realized that I had to get barbiturates in order to stop the convulsions, which lasted either hours. Something was spinning in my head.... I just kept thinking that if I could pop enough speed I'd knock the daylights out of my system and none of this nonsense would go on. None of this flailing around and moaning, sweating like a pig, and whew! It was a heavy scene. When I finally cooled down to what I thought was pretty good shape, I slipped on a little muumuu, ran down the stairs of the Warwick, barefoot to the lobby. My eye caught a mailman's jacket and a sack of mail hanging across the back of a chair in the hall way entrance, and before I knew what I was doing, I whipped on the jacket, flipped the bag over my shoulder, and flew out the door, whistling a happy tune. Suddenly I thought: "My God! This is a federal offense. Fooling around with the mail." So I turned around and rushed back and BAM! the manager was waiting for me. He ordered me into the back office. They telephoned an ambulance from Bellevue and packed me into it. Five policemen. I was back into convulsions again, which was really a drag, and I tried to tell the doctors and the nurses and the student interns that I'd run out of barbiturates and overshot speed.... I could speak sanely, but all my motor nerves were going crazy wild. It looked like I was out of my mind. If you had seen me, you wouldn't have bothered to listen, and none of them did. Oh, God, it was a nightmare. Finally six big spade attendants came and held me down on a stretcher. They terrified me... their force against mine. I got twice as bad. I just flipped. I told them if they'd just let go of me, I would calm down and stop kicking and fighting. But they wouldn't listen and they started to tell each other what stages of hallucinations I was in... how I imagined myself an animal. All these things totally unreal to my mind and just guessed on their part. Oh, it was insane. Then they plunged a great needle into my butt and BAM! out I went for two whole days. When I woke up, wow! Rats all over the floor, wailing and screaming. We ate potatoes with spoons. The doctors at Bellevue finally contacted my private physician, and after five days he came and got me out. They sent me back to Gracie Square, a private mental hospital that cost a thousand dollars a week. I was there for five months. Then I ran away with a patient and we went to an apartment in the Seventies somewhere which belonged to another patient in the hospital, who gave us the keys. The guy I ran away with was twenty, but he'd been a junkie since the age of nine, so he was pretty emotionally retarded and something of a drag. I didn't have any pills, so, kind of ravaging around, I went to see a gynecologist and a pretty well-off one. He asked me if I would like to shoot up some acid with him. I hadn't much experience with acid, but I wasn't afraid. He closed his office at five, and we took off in his Aston Martin and drove up the coast... no, what's the name of that river? The Hudson. We stopped at a motel and he gave me three ampules of liquid Sandoz acid, intravenously, mainlining, and he gave himself the same amount and he completely flipped, I was hallucinating and trying to tell him what I was seeing. I'd say, "I see rich, embroidered curtains, and I see people moving in the background. It's the Middle Ages and I am a princess, " and I told him he was some sort of royalty. We made love from eight in the evening until seven in the morning with ecstatic climax after climax, just going insane with it, until he realized it was seven and he had to get back to his office to open it at eight-thirty. He gave me a shot to calm me down, and because I couldn't come down, I took about fourteen Placidyls. On the way back something very strange happened. I didn't realize I was going to say it, but I said out loud, "I wish I was dead"... the love and the beauty and the ecstasy of the whole experience I'd just gone through were really so alien. I didn't even know the man... it had been a one-night jag... he was married and had children... and I just felt lost. It hardly seemed worth living any more because once again I was alone. He dropped me off at the apartment where I was staying with the runaway patient. I had a little Bloody Mary when I got there, and dropped a few more Placidyls. With my tolerance, nothing should have happened, but I suddenly went into a coma. My eyes rolled back in my head. It was lucky... I had called an aide, Jimmy, at the hospital - he had been a good friend - I had called him anonymously and asked him to come and visit us. He happened to turn up just as I went into the coma. He and the heroin addict tried to wake me up. They slapped me and pumped my chest and they put me in a bathtub full of really cold water. Jimmy began to call hospitals - not psychiatric but medical - and one of them actually told them to let me sleep it off. But Jimmy just flipped. He knew I was dying, and he was right. He called Lenox Hill Hospital, and the police finally came. Jimmy and the heroin addict were taken into custody, and I was rushed to the hospital. I was actually declared dead. My mother was called... and then BAM! I started breathing again. I was pretty shaken up by what happened because I didn't understand how I could have almost gone out on just fifteen Placidyls when I used to live on thirty-five three-grain Tunials a day, plus alcohol. They released Jimmy and the junkie, but of course I was still in the trap. I thought I was fine and that I could leave. But a psychiatrist came to interview me and I was put in the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital - committed on the grounds of unintentional, unconscious suicide. It was a pretty devastating experience. They put me on eight hundred milligrams of Thorazine four times a day plus six hundred milligrams at bedtime - an ugly-tasting liquid, but it took quick effect and you couldn't hide the pills or spit them out later. I had all kinds of bad reactions from it - I'd get bad tremors and all itchy and wormy. I said I wasn't going to take the stuff any more, no matter what, so they finally took me off it one day. I had a seizure, vomited all over the floor, and I couldn't get tremendous dosages of Thorazine, but they accused me of importing drugs and taking them there in the hospital. My doctor was young... a resident... and I just told him, "You think I've taken drugs. There's no point in even reasoning with you. I'll just go to some other hospital." I expected to go to some plush, tolerable hospital, but I was not accepted in any private hospital with the record they gave me. They committed me to Manhattan State on Ward's Island, in the middle of the East River, next to the prison. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever been through. Really terrifying. I lived in a big dormitory on a ward with about sixty to eighty women. We did all the mopping, cleaning, making beds, scrubbing toilets. And the people there were just so awful. Really pathetic. Some of them were mean. The staff completely ignored you except to administer medication. I thought it was never going to end. In Manhattan State, even in there, there were pushers. One girl who lived in a smaller dormitory - there were two with about ten beds in them - was pushing speed and heroin. And because I'd been warned that if ever you were caught using drugs in a state hospital you'd be criminally punished, I didn't touch any drugs during the three months I was there.
C. J. Cherryh book The Dreamstone
The Dreamstone, Book One : The Gruagach, Ch. 1 : Of Fish and Fire
Arafel's Saga (1983)
Context: Things there are in the world which have never loved Men, which have been in the world far longer than humankind, so that once when Men were newer on the earth and the woods were greater, there had been places a Man might walk where he might feel the age of the world on his shoulders. Forests grew in which the stillness was so great he could hear stirrings of a life no part of his own. There were brooks from which the magic had not gone, mountains which sang with voices, and sometimes a wind touched the back of his neck and lifted the hairs with the shiver of a presence at which a Man must never turn and stare.
But the noise of Men grew more and more insistent. Their trespasses became more bold. Death had come with them, and the knowledge of good and evil, and this was a power they had, both to be virtuous and to be blind.
Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France
Letter to the Very Reverend A. Martin, Vincennes, 1844-10-03.
Context: I must close now, for I am obliged to go to Terre Haute, where I am called to court to explain my conduct and defend myself against accusations relative to counterfeit money that was said to have been received from me. One has to come to America to be treated thus! Sometimes I am so disheartened with this country that I feel as if I were carrying on my shoulders the weight of its highest mountains, and in my heart all the thorns of its wilderness. Pray for me occasionally that I may not lose courage; nay, more, that I may be brave enough to hold up others who falter sometimes.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) Indian saint
Jayananda: Chaitanya-mañgala, (a biography of the great Vaishnava saint), about the Navadvipa region on the eve of the saint’s birth in 1484 AD. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.
Han Kuo-yu (1957) Taiwanese political figure
Han Kuo-yu (2019) cited in " Han agrees to respect KMT mechanism http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2019/05/01/2003714338" on Taipei Times, 1 May 2019. <br class="br">2019
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/11/maynooth-college in the House of Commons (11 April 1845).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician
Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-congress-interview-797214/ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants the Country to Think Big, Rolling Stone
Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech in Glasgow (10 April 1949), quoted in The Times (11 April 1949), p. 4
Prime Minister
Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator
The Beast of Property (1884)
Steve Perry (1947) American writer
Source: The Tejano Conflict (2014), Chapter 4
Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India
Wijemuni Vijitha Rohana, the person who attacked Rajiv Gandhi Colombo, in Rohana: Courage of his convictions (29 July 2007) http://www.nation.lk/2007/07/29/special5.htmVijitha <br class="br">In Rohana: Courage of his convictions http://www.nation.lk/2007/07/29/special5.htmVijitha
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore
Sir Evan Machonochie in his book “Life in the Indian Civil Service. Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 198 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt, <br class="br">From Modern Mysore
Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor
K. Balachander, in p. 12
Rajinikanth: A Birthday Special (12 December 2012)
Sebastian Vettel (1987) German racing driver in Formula 1
Adrian Newey http://www.espn.co.uk/formula1/sport/story/17810.html
About Sebastian
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)