Quotes about side
page 25

“During his expedition to Gwalior, Iltutmish (1210-36) massacred 7000 persons besides those killed in the battle on both sides. His attacks on Malwa (Vidisha and Ujjain) were met with stiff resistance and were accompanied by great loss of life. He is also credited with killing 12,000 Khokhars (Ghakkars) during Aibak's reign.”

Iltutmish (1210–1236) Sultan of Mamluk Sultanate

Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Life, Loss, Personality

“The conception of yourselves as altogether virtuous and wronged is, I assure you, not at all the one which onlookers hold of you. No doubt, you have rights on your side. No doubt, some of you suffered without just cause. But nothing which has been done to you cries aloud to Heaven for condemnation as your own actions.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)

Suffering

“So far as the personal side is concerned, the victory was to him who lost and the defeat to him who won. I can say that never in the last fifteen years have I had the peace of mind that I have since the election. I have almost a feeling of elation.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

On losing the presidency to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Hoover Off the Record (1934)

Peace, Feeling, Victory, Personality

“A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (月下獨酌), one of Li Bai's best-known poems, as translated by Arthur Waley in More Translations From the Chinese (1919)
Variant translation:
From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me—
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.
"Drinking Alone with the Moon" (trans. Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu)

Men, Way, Spring, Flowers

“My work may be balanced on the second side [the Romantic tendency]….- but I believe it has some elements of order & unity, some design, even balance & abstract qualities, some tenseness. When its all classical, its too obvious & cold & deadly perfect - when its all romantic, its too loose uncontrolled wildly chaotic & shapeless – But in my opinion – Gothic sculpture – Mexican, all primitive sculpture, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens, Michelangelo, Masaccio, are all more romantic than classic [Moore is reacting here on Stanley Casson's critic in 'The Listener' 25 Aug. 1937”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, Unpublished notes' for 'The Sculptor Speaks' (1937), p. 116

Perfection

“This past summer I realized that I am not the sort of woman to stand alone in life. Apart from the eternal worries about money, it is precisely the freedom I have had which was able to lure me away from myself. I would so much like to get to the point where I can create something that is me. It is up to the future to determine for us whether I'm acting bravely or not. The main thing now is peace and quiet for my work, and I have that most of all when I am at Otto Modersohn's side.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her friend Clara Rilke-Westhoff, 17 November 1906; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 206
1906 + 1907

Life, Money, Peace, Freedom

“Nothing shocks me more than ferocity against the vanquished, especially when victors take poses. Between the dogs and the wolf, I shall always side with the wolf, especially when he is wounded.”

Jacques Verges (1925–2013) French lawyer

Rien ne me choque autant que l'acharnement sur un vaincu, surtout quand les lyncheurs prennent la pose. Entre les chiens et le loup, je serai toujours du côté du loup, surtout quand il est blessé. Beauté du crime (Plon, 1988, ISBN 2-259-01897-1), p. 13 http://www.denistouret.net/textes/Verges.html

Dogs, Wolf

“The structure of cities, the architecture of houses, squares, gardens, public walks, gateways, railway stations, etc – all these provide us with the basic principles of a great Metaphysical aesthetic... We, who live under the sign of the Metaphysical alphabet, we know the joy and sorrows to be found in a gateway, a street corner, a room, on the surface of a table, between the sides of a box…”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 233
De Chirico's statement on Metaphysical aesthetic in painting motifs like houses, architecture, railway stations
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Joy, Housing, Box

“I care deeply about those who struggle to get by — but I believe the best thing to do is help them stand on their own two feet. And no, that’s not saying, "You're on your own," but, "We are on your side, helping you be all you can." And I believe in something for something; not something for nothing.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"The Scarlet Z, for Zombie (Reaganite)" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-scarlet-z-etc/ (15 August 2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National Review Online 2010s, 2014

Help

“The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [is retaliation]. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has not value. But if we harass the nearby village... then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators]... and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is [assailed], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war... the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.”

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician

Righteous Victims (1999)
Source: Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jGtVsBne7PgC&pg=PA275&lpg=PA275#v=onepage&q&f=false>p. 275-276</a>

War, Search

“At Bishop they learn'd that Dixon had been buried in back of the Quaker Meeting-House in Staindrop. Doctor Isaac stay'd with his Father, step for step. At the grave, which by Quaker custom was unmark'd, Mason beseech'd what dismally little he knew of God, to help Dixon through. The grass was long and beaded with earlier rain. A Cat emerg'd from it and star'd for a long time, appearing to know them.
"Dad?" Doc had taken his arm. For an instant, unexpectedly, Mason saw the little Boy who, having worried about Storms at Sea, as Beasts in the Forest, came running each time to make sure his father had return'd safely, — whose gift of ministering to others Mason was never able to see, let alone accept, in his blind grieving, his queasiness of Soul before a life and a death, his refusal to touch the Baby, tho' 'twas not possible to blame him…. The Boy he had gone to the other side of the Globe to avoid was looking at him now with nothing in his face but concern for his Father.
"Oh, Son."”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

He shook his Head. He didn't continue.
"It's your Mate," Doctor Isaac assur'd him, "It's what happens when your Mate dies."
Mason & Dixon (1997)

Life, Death, God, Soul

“As [Phoenix] drew near her room, she heard a woman's voice saying, "It will be easier for us when that monster of yours dies."
"There will be another one, and she will be the same," answered Chia Lien's voice.
"You can make Patience your wife," the woman said. "She will be easier to manage."
"She won't even let me touch Patience," Chia Lien said. "And Patience doesn't dare complain, though she doesn't like her vigilance either. I wonder what I have done to deserve such a wife."
Phoenix shook with rage. Thinking that Patience must have complained behind her back, she turned to her and slapped her face. She then burst into the room, seized Pao-er's wife and struck her repeatedly. Fearing that Chia Lien would bolt from the room, she planted herself at the door while she denounced the woman. "Prostitute!" she cried, "you seduce your mistress's husband and then plot to murder her! And you," she turned to Patience, "you prostitutes are all in conspiracy against me, though you pretend to be on my side." She struck Patience again.
Patience was outraged. She cried, "You two—is it not enough for you to do this shameful thing without dragging me in?" She also made for Pao-er's wife.
Chia Lien, who had until now stood helplessly watching Phoenix beat Pao-er's wife, took the opportunity to hide his own embarrassment by beating Patience. "Who are you to raise your hand against her?" he said to the maid.
Patience retreated and said, weeping, "But why did you drag me into it?"
Phoenix's anger mounted when she saw that Patience was afraid of Chia Lien and commanded her to ignore him and beat Pao-er's wife. The maid, outraged and helpless, ran out of the room, crying and threatening to kill herself.
Phoenix now threw herself at Chia Lien, crying that he might as well kill her then and there since he wanted to get rid of her. Chia Lien grew desperate. He seized a sword from the wall and said he would gladly oblige if she insisted.
Yu-shih and others arrived on the scene. "What is the matter now?"”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

she asked. "Everything was going well a moment ago."
Emboldened by the presence of the newcomers, Chia Lien became more menacing. Phoenix, on the other hand, quieted herself and left the scene to seek the protection of the Matriarch. She threw herself sobbing into the Matriarch's arms and said, "Save me, Lao Tai-tai. Lien Er-yeh wants to kill me."
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 198–199

Fear, Thinking, Rage, Cry

“When a cartoonist attempts to be ‘fair and balanced’ and ‘understand all sides,’ they have failed. Too many avoid that altogether and instead become comedians. They take any topic and cast about and ask themselves: “What’s funny in this?” I despise that attitude. Sure, satirical humor is an important element, but not the only element. A good cartoonist need not be funny to be effective. Many of my best cartoons are not funny.”

Ben Garrison American political cartoonist

The “Rogue Cartoonist” Ben Garrison on What it’s Like to be a Political Cartoonist During the Presidential Election http://www.lifeandnews.com/articles/the-rogue-cartoonist-ben-garrison-on-what-its-like-to-be-a-political-cartoonist-during-the-presidential-election/ (September 30, 2016)

Understanding

“Kingsley fell over. And this was no brisk trip or tumble. It was an act of colossal administration. First came a kind of slow-leak effect, giving me the immediate worry that Kingsley, when fully deflated, would spread out into the street on both sides of the island, where there were cars, trucks, sneezing buses. Next, as I grabbed and tugged, he felt like a great ship settling on its side: would it right itself, or go under? Then came an impression of overall dissolution and the loss of basic physical coherence. I groped around him, looking for places to shore him up, but every bit of him was falling, dropping, seeking the lowest level, like a mudslide.”

Martin Amis book Experience

Part II: One Little More Hug
Experience (2000)

Cars, Loss

“Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone, the whole put into perspective so that each side of an object, or of a plane, leads towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, whether a sections of nature, or, if you prefer, of the spectacle which Pater omnipotens aeterne Deus unfolds before your eyes. Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth... Everything I am telling you [ Joachim Gasquet ] about - the sphere, the cone, cylinder, concave shadow – on mornings when I'm tired these notions of mine get me going, they stimulate me, I soon forget them once I start using my eyes.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), pp. 163-164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Nature, Forgetting

“On the bright side, however, it means I get to stay at home and stare at a computer screen all day as opposed to go to work and stare at a computer screen all day.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

On being sick, 15 May 2003
Fully Ramblomatic

Home

“Even a single missed crucial consideration could vitiate our most valiant efforts or render them as actively harmful as those of a soldier who is fighting on the wrong side. The search for crucial considerations (which must explore normative as well as descriptive issues) will often require crisscrossing the boundaries between different academic disciplines and other fields of knowledge. As there is no established methodology for how to go about this kind of research, difficult original thinking is necessary.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Search, Knowledge, Thinking, Effort

“What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil!”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

Love, Life, Nature, Learning

“The newspapers still talk about glory but the average man, thank God, has got rid of that illusion. It is a damned bore, with a stall mate as the most probable outcome, but one has to see it through, and see it through with the knowledge that whichever side wins, civilisation in Europe will be pipped for the next 30 years. Don't indulge in Romance here, Malcolm, or suppose that an era of jolly little nationalities is dawning. We shall be much too much occupied with pestilence and poverty to reconstruct.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 136, to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

God, Knowledge

“Frankly, we doubt the veracity and seriousness of the United States in regard to achieving results that would be acceptable to both sides in Geneva.”

Dmitriy Ustinov (1908–1984) Soviet military commander and politician

Quoted in "Peace is Possible: The Politics of the Sermon on the Mount" - Page 94 - by Franz Alt - Political Science - 1985.

“There is current in our land (and several European countries) at this moment a kind of nit-picking worship of historic im-po-tence. They say, they say, that Bach must not be interpreted and that he must have no emotion, his notes speak for themselves. You want know what that is? Pure unadulterated rot! Bach has the red blood. He has the communion with the people! He has all of this amazing spirit and imagine that you could put all the music on one side of the agenda with his great interpretation and great feeling and put the greatest man of all right up on top of a dusty shelf underneath some glass case in a museum and say that he must not be interpreted! They're full of you know what and they are so untalented that they had to hide behind this thing 'cause they couldn't get in the House of Music any other way!”

Virgil Fox (1912–1980) American musician

Heavy Organ (introduction to the Bach Toccata and Fugue in Dm, BWV 565)

People, Music, Way, Feeling

“We are told that we are a pack of Socialists and faddists, and that common sense is on the side of the Unionist party. Well, for my part, I am for going in for all progressive legislation step by step. I do not believe in the short cuts. If Socialism means the abolition of private property, if it means the assumption of land and capital by the State, if it means an equal distribution of products of labour by the State, then I say that Socialism of that stamp, communism of that stamp, is against human nature, and no sensible man will have anything to say to it. But if it means a wise use of the forces of all for the good of each, if it means a legal protection of the weak against the strong, if it means the performance by public bodies of things which individuals cannot perform so well, or cannot perform at all, then the principles of Socialism have been admitted in almost the whole field of social activity already, and all we have to ask when any proposition is made for the further extension of those principles is whether the proposal is in itself a prudent, just, and proper means to the desired end, and whether it is calculated to do good, and more good than harm.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech to the Home Counties Division of the National Liberal Federation (13 February 1889), quoted in 'Mr. J. Morley At Portsmouth.', The Times (14 February 1889), p. 6.

Communication, Nature, Sense, Strong

“For a long time one school of players favored the technique of stating side by side, developing in counterpoint, and finally harmoniously combining two hostile themes or ideas, such as law and freedom, individual and community. In such a Game the goal was to develop both themes or theses with complete equality and impartiality, to evolve out of thesis and antithesis the purest possible synthesis. In general, aside from certain brilliant exceptions, Games with discordant, negative, or skeptical conclusions were unpopular and at times actually forbidden. This followed directly from the meaning the Game had acquired at its height for the players. It represented an elite, symbolic form of seeking for perfection, a sublime alchemy, an approach to that Mind which beyond all images and multiplicities is one within itself — in other words, to God. Pious thinkers of earlier times had represented the life of creatures, say, as a mode of motion toward God, and had considered that the variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Similarly, the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality. ”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Life, God, Hostility, World

“I quit smoking. It's very hard, but I'm glad I did. I'll tell you, this war against drugs in the US is the reason I quit because I got too fuckin' sick of being on the wrong side. The war against drugs, which actually is a war against civil rights, don't ever be fooled again. If they cared about us they'd get rid of the number one drug which is cigarettes; kills more people than crack, coke, and heroin combined, times 100. Legal.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Salvation (2005)

War, People, Fools, Time

“Segregating science and spirituality has been the greatest crime against humanity in the past century. These two main branches of knowledge that should have gone hand in hand were divided and practitioners were either labeled as modern scientists or representatives of religious faiths. “Only scientific discoveries apply to logic and intelligence. They are the only truth. Religious faith is blind and misguided.” This was the ideology that was popularized. All the recent natural disasters and the alarming changes in the global climate are challenging the further survival of this beautiful earth we live in. Now, many people cannot help thinking that all this may be the result of weighing science and spirituality on opposite sides of a scale and deeming that one is much greater than the other.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

From Amritanandamayi's Address at the United Nations Academic Impact Conference on Technology for Sustainable Development (2015)

People, Truth, Faith, Beauty

“Another way of emphasizing this diversity is to argue that if one cannot forecast (predict), one does not have a theory, and that forecasting is the weakest link in the chain of the management sciences at present. Indeed, if one cannot predict one cannot measure, and if one cannot measure, then there is no "theory."
This argument will seem entirely too strong to some. We do "forecast" in terms of probability distributions, and we do make measurements in terms of "costs." Of course, the management scientist has done all sorts of things with the concept of cost which few cost accountants would condone. But in the laboratory and outside it in industrial studies, one sees the emergence of a cost concept which eventually should revolutionize the measurements in managerial policy-making.
Theory and fact are just two sides of the same coin, but the two sides of a coin are different, and this difference will continue to characterize the development of management science.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 8 1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Way, Study, Strong, Science

“Equally important to not appearing "trigger-happy" is not to appear prone to either accidents or miscalculations. Who wants to live in the 1960's and 1970's in the same world with a hostile strategic force that might inadvertently start a war? Most people are not even willing to live with a friendly strategic force that may not be reliably controlled. The worst way for a country to start a war is to do it accidentally, without any preparations. That might initiate an all- out "slugging match" in which only the most alert portion of the forces gets off in the early phase. Both sides are thus likely to be clobbered," both because the initial blow was not large enough to be decisive and because the war plans are likely to be inappropriate. To repeat: On all these questions of accident, miscalculation, unauthorized behavior, trigger-happy postures, and excessive destructiveness, we must satisfy ourselves and our allies, the neutrals, and, strangely important, our potential enemies. Since it is almost inevitable that the future will see more discussion of these questions, i will be important for us not only to have made satisfactory preparations, but also to have prepared a satisfactory story. Unless every-body concerned, both laymen and experts, develops a satisfactory image of strategic forces as contributing more to security than insecurity it is most improbable that the required budgets, alliances, and intellectual efforts will have the necessary support. To the extent that people worry about our strategic forces as themselves exacerbating or creating security problems, or confuse symptoms with the disease, we may anticipate a growing rejection of military preparedness as an essential element in the solution to our security problem and a turning to other approaches not as a complement and supplement but as an alternative. In particular, we are likely to suffer from the same movement toward "responsible" budgets pacifism, and unilateral and universal disarmament that swept through England in the 1920's and 1930's. The effect then was that England prematurely disarmed herself to such an extent that she first almost lost her voice in world affairs, and later her independence in a war that was caused as much by English weakness as by anything else.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Hostility, War, People, World

“No amount of force will break an egg-shell if exerted on one side alone. So capital could not squeeze labor as long as labor was free to natural opportunities, and in a world where these natural materials and opportunities were as free to all as is the air to us, there could be no difficulty in finding employment, no willing hands conjoined with hungry stomachs, no tendency of wages toward the minimum on which the worker could barely live. In such a world we would no more think of thanking anybody for furnishing us employment than we here think of thanking anybody for furnishing us with appetites.
That the Creator might have put us in the kind of world I have sought to imagine, as readily as in this kind of a world, I have no doubt. Why he has not done so may, however, I think, be seen. That kind of a world would be best for fools. This is the best for men who will use the intelligence with which they have been gifted. Of this, however, I shall speak hereafter. What I am now trying to do by asking my readers to endeavor to imagine a world in which natural opportunities were "as free as air," is to show that the barrier which prevents labor from freely using land is the nether millstone against which labor is ground, the true cause of the difficulties which are apparent through the whole industrial organization.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 13 : Unemployed Labor

Men, World, Fools, Imagination

“It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics.
Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 9 (p. 225)

World, Dreams, Sex, Way

“Each of these sides of Emerson—The Plotinus and the Montaigne-Bacon—requires the other side. The highest goals or ambitions are inevitably judged by whether or not one can take concrete, measurable steps to reach them, while the practical, workaday side of things is most interesting to Emerson when it serves or leads to something great.”

Robert D. Richardson (1934) American historian

Source: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process (2009), p. 34

“It was not till Jesus had cried, "It is finished," and from His riven side the soldier's spear had fetched the blood and water; it was not till then, that the fountain sealed of Incarnate Love became the fountain opened of Redeeming merit, and that the Siloah began to flow, which ever since has flowed adown the oracles of God.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 74.

Love, God, Water

“You may say that I am too optimistic… You might be right. I have said that the peaceful activities are indeed a minority, but what should I tell you? The negative side you know already.”

Jonathan Kis-Lev (1985) painter

An optimist seeks peace (Ein Optimist sucht den Frieden) http://www.schwaebische.de/home_artikel,-Ein-Optimist-sucht-den-Frieden-_arid,2456681.html, Schwäbische Zeitung, 2008-07-10

Peace

“The service trade agreement is a pact that benefits related sectors across the Taiwan Strait and promotes the interests of the public on both sides. It will result in a win-win situation for both sides.”

Lin Join-sane (1944) Taiwanese politician

Lin Join-sane (2013) cited in " Cross-strait service trade pact signed http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/06/22/2003565371" on Taipei Times, 22 June 2013.

“I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Panel discussion "Religion, Sex and Politics" http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2514401.htm on abc.com.au, March 19, 2009. 2009

Sex, Idea, Thinking

“And one laughs out with an exultant joy.
An athlete he - Maybe his young limbs strain
In some remembered game, and not in vain
To win his side the goal - Poor crippled boy,
Who in the waking world will never run again.”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, Night Duty

World, Game, Boy, Joy

“I had an apartment and I had a neighbor, and whenever he would knock on my wall, I knew he wanted me to turn my music down, and that made me angry 'cause I like loud music… So when he knocked on the wall, I'd mess with his head. I'd say "Go around! I cannot open the wall! I don't know if you have a door on your side, but over here there's nothin.'”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

It's just flat." Comedy Central Presents, S01E06: Mitch Hedberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAHiHJ2AhYE&feature=youtu.be (5 January 1999)

Music

“Nazism (national Socialism) and communism (international socialism) were but two sides of the same coin.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Path To Power (1995)

Communication

“Consider John Kenneth Galbraith or Lester Thurow, both leading economists in the view of the general public, both with all the formal qualifications, both totally ignored by the academic mainstream. Or consider Robert Mundell, who is still revered for his contributions to international monetary theory, yet whose later incarnation as the father of supply-side economics has similarly been ignored.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (1995), Ch. 1. The Fall and Rise of Development Economics

“The essence and significance of our devotions here today are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.”

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

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

Men, Courage, Sense, Rage

“The one thing I never counted on was having luck on my side.
It was generally simpler that way.”

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 13 (p. 209).

Way

“History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars, World War I is an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore, the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war. The way to oppose a war of this kind is to do everything possible to prevent it before it breaks out and, once it breaks out, to oppose war with war, to oppose unjust war with just war, whenever possible.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Protracted Warfare (1938)

War, World, Way, History

“…the grass isn't always greener on the other side. What the younger generation didn't understand was that the grass was greener where it's watered, which meant that both Frank and Amanda had to get out their hoses if they wanted to make things better.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Evelyn Collier, Chapter 6, p. 103
2009, The Best of Me (2011)

Understanding, Grass, Water

“Often it has been that reporter who has most skillfully played the access game — the one who has curried just enough favor with the powerful newsmaker to be smiled upon, without giving up basic credibility and integrity. That’s access journalism. Accountability journalism, by contrast, is often performed off to the side, by those who don’t have to deal with the news provider on a regular basis.”

Margaret Sullivan (journalist) American journalist

Journalists in the age of Trump: Lose the smugness, keep the mission. (November 29, 2016)

Smile, Game

“The Seal, she lounges like a bride,
Much too docile, there's no doubt;
Madame Récamier, on side,
(if such she has), and bottom out.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

Creatures in an Alphabet (1982)

“it is a cheering thought to think
that god is on the side of the best digestion”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

the big bad wolf
archy does his part (1935)

God, Thinking

“In our opinion, certain changes must be made in the conduct of international affairs, systematically subordinating all concrete aims and local tasks to the basic task of actively preventing an aggravation of the international situation, of actively pursuing and expanding peaceful coexistence to the level of cooperation, of making policy in such a way that its immediate and long-range effects will in no way sharpen international tensions and will not create difficulties for either side that would strengthen the forces of reaction, militarism, nationalism, fascism, and revanchlsm.
International affairs must be completely permeated with scientific methodology and a democratic spirit, with a fearless weighing of all facts, views, and theories, with maximum publicity of ultimate and intermediate goals, and with a consistency of principles.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Vietnam and the Middle East

Peace, Way, Change

“There's what we did wrong and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people — by us and also by the enemy — but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Nate Thayer interview (1997)

People

“Yeah I'm in love with the girl in the four-wheel drive
Chrome steel bumpers and red step side
She has a large time in her large machine
Man I wonder how she gets up in that thing
It casts a big shadow sittin' in the sun
She's got it revved up rockin' ready to run
And someday soon I'm gonna climb right up
And take a little ride in her big ol' truck.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Big Ol' Truck.
Song lyrics, Boomtown (1994)

Love, Girl, Time, Sun

“We are satisfied that it is right because it gives the freest play to individual energy and initiative and character and the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. …trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. …We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Bolton (15 October 1903), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 413
Leader of the Opposition

World, Nature, Envy

“To investigate the essence of a natural phenomenon, three conditions are necessary: We must first study and know the phenomenon itself, from all sides; we must then determine in what relation it stands to other natural phenomena; and lastly, when we have ascertained all these relations, we have to solve the problem of measuring these relations and the laws of mutual dependence—that is, of expressing them in numbers. In the first period of chemistry, all the powers of men's minds were devoted to acquiring a knowledge of the properties of bodies; it was necessary to discover, observe, and ascertain their peculiarities. This is the alchemistical period. The second period embraces the determination of the mutual relations or connections of these properties; this is the period of phlogistic chemistry. In the third period, in which we now are, we ascertain by weight and measure and express in numbers the degree in which the properties of bodies are mutually dependent. The inductive sciences begin with the substance itself, then come just ideas, and lastly, mathematics are called in, and with the aid of numbers, complete the work.”

Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) German chemist

Familiar Letters on Chemistry, Tr. Blythe, 4th ed., London, 1859, p. 60 as quoted by John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=xqwQAAAAYAAJ (1903).

Men, Law, Mathematics, Idea

“The fifth and most important principle of our foreign policy is support of national independence—the right of each people to govern themselves—and to shape their own institutions. For a peaceful world order will be possible only when each country walks the way that it has chosen to walk for itself. We follow this principle by encouraging the end of colonial rule. We follow this principle, abroad as well as at home, by continued hostility to the rule of the many by the few—or the oppression of one race by another. We follow this principle by building bridges to Eastern Europe. And I will ask the Congress for authority to remove the special tariff restrictions which are a barrier to increasing trade between the East and the West. The insistent urge toward national independence is the strongest force of today's world in which we live. In Africa and Asia and Latin America it is shattering the designs of those who would subdue others to their ideas or their will. It is eroding the unity of what was once a Stalinist empire. In recent months a number of nations have east out those who would subject them to the ambitions of mainland China. History is on the side of freedom and is on the side of societies shaped from the genius of each people. History does not favor a single system or belief—unless force is used to make it so. That is why it has been necessary for us to defend this basic principle of our policy, to defend it in Berlin, in Korea, in Cuba—and tonight in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Hostility, People, World, Peace

“In the depths of China there lives a mandarin who is richer than any king spoken of in fable or in history. You know nothing about him, not his name, his face or the silks that he wears. In order for you to inherit his limitless wealth, all you have to do is to ring the bell placed on a book by your side. In that remote corner of Mongolia, he will utter a single sigh. He will then be a corpse, and at your feet you will see gold beyond the dreams of avarice. Mortal reader, will you ring the bell?”

José Maria Eça de Queiroz book The Mandarin

No fundo da China existe um mandarim mais rico que todos os reis de que a fábula ou a história contam. Dele nada conheces, nem o nome, nem o semblante, nem a seda de que se veste. Para que tu herdes os seus cabedais infindáveis, basta que toques essa campainha, posta a teu lado, sobre um livro. Ele soltará apenas um suspiro, nesses confins da Mongólia. Será então um cadáver: e tu verás a teus pés mais ouro do que pode sonhar a ambição de um avaro. Tu, que me lês e és um homem mortal, tocarás tu a campainha?
O Mandarim ("The Mandarin", 1880), trans. Margaret Jull Costa, Ch. 1.

Books, Dreams, History, Wealth

“But your Squabbles about a Bishop I wish to see speedily ended. … Each Party abuses the other, the Profane and the Infidel believe both sides, and enjoy the Fray; the Reputation of Religion in general suffers, and its enemies are ready to say, not what was said in the primitive Times, Behold how these Christians love one another, but, Mark how these Christians [hate] one another! Indeed when religious People quarrel about Religion, or hungry People about their Victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Jane Mecom, 23 February 1769 http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=16&page=050a Epistles

Love, People, Religion, Suffering

“I think working on the floor [Helen started 1951-52] came from Pollock. In other words, the whole idea of all sides of pictures being possible, bottom, top, sides of the picture came from him. And the whole idea of the painting being in a sense choreographed came from him, and that once one made a move toward the canvas surface that there was a dialectic and the surface gave you an answer back, and you gave it an answer back. But that was a Pollock notion of --.... That your plans made accidents, demanded something else and then something else hinged on something else..”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about influence of Pollock
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Idea, Thinking, Sense, Painting

“This I (still) believe:
Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball. If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not cease to exist. Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. If you don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from, don't get up right away. Gym teachers think it's funny to commit assault with a baseball so don't day-dream during PE even if they have you so far in the outfield there are DEW line posts on either side of you. All guns are loaded. So are many bows. Trebuchets are for outside use only…”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Facebook post (2014) https://www.facebook.com/james.nicoll.927/posts/10152710405547985 2010s

Dogs, Dreams, Thinking, Teachers

“A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious; such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first significance or its first relevance. A cross could equally stand for crossing something out. It could also be a sign of obstruction. An overturned cross, an X so to speak, could be the symbol of mystery, something for the other side. Then I could paint a cross in such a way that a connection is made between two bars, and in doing so convert it into a symbol of the unlimited. So, many different crosses and X symbols occur in my works.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

quote from 1988
1981 - 1990
Source: Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003, Achim Sommer, Kunsthalle Emden, Altana 2004, p. 27

Way, Quotes, Painting

“Global poverty is an "input" on the supply side; the global economic system feeds on cheap labor.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 5, The Global Cheap-Labor Economy, p. 69 (See also: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx)

“I've found when you get old you must return to certain things in the beginning, or things you have a sentiment for or something. Because your life closes up in so many ways or doesn't become as flexible or exciting or whatever you want to call it. You tend to be nostalgic. And I think about my boats. It's more complicated than that, but also it's going out and also there's a lot of references to crossing over. But the thing of the Nile boat in Winter's Passage: Luxor was about the wonderful thing, the lazy thing, of being two or three months in Luxor by the river. It was just that, it explains a winter passage. From a certain point to the other side: it's like the Greek boat that ferries you over to the other world. That sculpture didn't have it. But sometimes the large painting in Houston does have it. It's a passage through everything.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 174

Life, World, Way, Thinking

“Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there
In small bright specks upon the visible side
Of our strange being’s party-coloured web.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

The Thread of Truth http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/misc/threadtruth.html (1839).

Truth

“A cemetery is an affront to the rational mind. One reason is its eerily wasted space, this tribute to the dead that inevitably degenerates into ancestor worship as, on birthdays and anniversaries, humans of every faith and no faith at all brave whatever weather may that day threaten, in order to stand before these rows of silent stone markers, praying, yes, and remembering, of course, but very often actually speaking to the deceased, an oddly pagan ritual in which we engage, this shared pretense that the rotted corpses in warped wooden boxes are able to hear and understand us if we stand before their graves.The other reason a cemetery appeals to the irrational side is its obtrusive, irresistible habit of sneaking past the civilized veneer with which we cover the primitive planks of our childhood fears. When we are children, we know that what our parents insist is merely a tree branch blowing in the wind is really the gnarled fingertip of some horrific creature of the night, waiting outside the window, tapping, tapping, tapping, to let us know that, as soon as our parents close the door and sentence us to the gloom which they insist builds character, he will lift the sash and dart inside and…And there childhood imagination usually runs out, unable to give shape to the precise fears that have kept us awake and that will, in a few months, be forgotten entirely. Until we next visit a cemetery, that is, when, suddenly, the possibility of some terrifying creature of the night seems remarkably real.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 50, Again Old Town, I

Children, Fear, Faith, Imagination

“"You can never be too safe." Yes, you can. How many of us bother to inspect the hydraulic brake lines in our cars before we start the engine and head off to work? Doing so would be safer than simply assuming that the lines were intact and driving off. After all, prior to launching a space vehicle, the people at NASA make no similar assumptions. They go through a countdown of all systems, taking nothing for granted. Erring on the side of over-caution is costly, and so is erring on the side of under-caution, though for a given choice, one might be costlier than the other.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

People, Cars

“There are only two sides to this question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots and traitors.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

Last public speech before his death, Chicago, Illinois (1 May 1861)
1860s

War, Question

“Sangakkara: Being a good captain is about pulling your own weight in the side and making sure you perform. The better you perform, the easier captaincy becomes. It's a nice interesting balance about your own performance and also surrounding yourself with players of quality which makes captaincy the easiest job because you know you have match-winners in your side. You know people can execute whatever's asked of them. So decision-making becomes very easy. Take Ricky Ponting and the Aussie side that he had under him for a few years. Hard decisions were very rare because you just had to look at your team and knew exactly what they were capable of.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

People, Decision

“Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared.”

George Mallory (1886–1924) British mountaineer

Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance (1921), Chapter XII: The Northern Approach, "The Reconnaissance of the Mountain", p. 186

Imagination, Mountain, Appearance

“In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue — it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

“The Cheyennes do not fight at all this side of the Arkansas, but north some young warriors were fired upon and then the fight began.”

Black Kettle (1803–1868) Leader of the Southern Cheyenne

Source: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), p. 94

Fight

“The poverty-stricken rural population rose up against their despoilers; they burnt down the castles of the nobles, and swore that they would leave nothing to be seen upon the land but the cabins of the poor. The rich middle-class seemed at first to side with them, and at Strasburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm the peasants were encouraged, aided, and provided for. However, the bourgeoisie soon grew alarmed at the spreading of the insurrection, and made common cause with the nobles in smothering the revolt in the rural districts. Luther, who was then at the apex of his power, condemned the rising in the name of religion, and proclaimed the servitude of the people as holy and legitimate. "You seek," wrote he, "to free your persons and your goods. You desire the power and the goods of this earth. You will suffer no wrong. The Gospel, on the contrary, has no care for such things, and makes exterior life consist in suffering, supporting injustice, the cross, patience, and contempt of life, as of all the things of this world. To suffer! To suffer! The cross! The cross! Behold what Christ teaches!" Were not these teachings, given in the name of the faith to a famishing people in revolt against the tyranny and avidity of the ruling aristocracy, fatal to the future of the peasant masses, whose very sufferings were thus legitimised in the name of the religion that should have come to their aid?”

Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868–1953) Italian economist and political figure

Source: Catholic Socialism (1895), p. 75

Life, People, World, Faith

“A vast change had taken place in English social life within two generations… View the navigation, the roads, the harbours and all other public works. Take notice of the spirit with which manufactures are carried on. Move your eye which side you will, you behold nothing but great riches and yet greater resources.”

Arthur Young (1741–1820) English writer

Arthur Young, quoted in: Bruce Lancaster (2001) The American Revolution, p. 16

Life, Change

“(The lockout) makes no sense unless you put it in the context of a wider strategy, which is to somehow weaken Canadians' commitment to Canada Post so that ultimately, when the government gets out there to privatize it, they think they can get the public on their side”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Feds using lockout as wedge to privatize Canada Post: Layton http://www.canada.com/news/Feds+using+lockout+wedge+privatize+Canada+Post+Layton/4965556/story.html June 17, 2011

Thinking, Sense

“(17.2. 1914) Beyond some bars, out of arm's reach, lies an objective [a banana]; on this side, in the background of the experiment room, is placed a sawn-off castor-oil bush, whose branches can be easily broken off. It is impossible to squeeze the tree through the railings, on account of its awkward shape; besides, only one of the bigger apes could drag it as far as the bars. Sultan is let in, does not immediately see the objective, and, looking about him indifferently, sucks one of the branches of the tree. But, his attention having been drawn to the objective, he approaches the bars, glances outside, the next moment turns round, goes straight to the tree, seizes a thin slender branch, breaks it off with a sharp jerk, runs back to the bars, and attains the objective. From the turning round upon the tree up to the grasping of the fruit with the broken-off branch, is one single quick chain of action, without the least 'hiatus', and without the slightest movement that does not, objectively considered, fit into the solution described.”

Wolfgang Köhler book The Mentality of Apes

Source: The Mentality of Apes, 1925, p. 94; As cited in: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964, p. 103

Jerk, Tree, Indifference

“The Prophet is thus a primal force. His action affects the character of the general harmony, while he him self does not become a part of that harmony, but remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life "a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad" [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Priest and Prophet" (1893), pp. 130-131

Life, Fools, Parting, Cry

“It's a big mistake to think that your own cause, or your own country, or your own side has God in its corner. For one thing, it commits the sin of pride.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=14m12s 2010s, 2010

God, Thinking, Country

“[…] The image superimposed on Ricci's field of view by his visor display showed a pair of guards in hooded parkas, goggles, and wool scarves taking relaxed strides along their patrol of the building's north side. Their shoulder-slung FN P90 assault weapons fired the same ammunition as his FN Five-seveN pistol: small rounds, big punch. […]”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

With Jerome Preisler and Martin H. Greenberg; Bio-Strike (2000), p. 405
2000s

“To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

People, Feeling, Parting

“I remember a picture I saw in a paper not long before the wall came down. There was a man standing holding a very young daughter, my guess was that she was only about one or two years old. She had on a rather plain dress, he had on a coat and a tie and he was carrying probably a cardboard suitcase. And my guess is that everything he owned in the world was in that suitcase. And he was weeping. He wasn't weeping because he left his car and the rest of his family back on the other side of that Iron Curtain; he was weeping because he was free. He was weeping because now he had opportunity, he had the chance to choose for the first time in his life, and his daughter whom he was holding in his hands had a future, whereas before she would not have had one. That struck me as a very, very vivid picture of what this all meant.”

Leighton W. Smith, Jr. (1939) United States Navy admiral

On the end of the Cold War, in part 7: The End of the Cold War http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/LWSmith/lwsmith-con02.html Interview at USC Berkeley (1997)

Life, World, Family, Cars

“How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 3, § 39
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Life

“If I traveled all my life
And I never get to stop and settle down
Long as I have you by my side
There's a roof above and good walls all around
You're my castle, you're my cabin and my instant pleasure dome
I need you in my house 'cause you're my home.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

You're My Home.
Song lyrics, Piano Man (1973)

Life, Pleasure, Travel, Home

“If we were choosing sides and every player was in the pool, my first pick would be Whitey Ford and my second would be Ted Williams. Beyond that there would be just too many and I'd be afraid of leaving somebody out. Besides, with Whitey on the mound and Williams in the lineup, we'd still beat just about anybody.”

Mickey Mantle (1931–1995) Professional baseball player

When asked "to choose the ideal team he would field if he had to win game," with "the stipulation that he confine his choices to one-time teammates and rivals"; as quoted in The Greatest Team of All Time: As Selected by Baseball's Immortals, From Ty Cobb to Willie Mays (1994), compiled by Nicholas Acocella and Donald Dewey, p. 121.

“To wonder what was so radical about a movement which seemed to demand "only" the cessation of fraudulent work, is to fail to perceive the inner truth of the valid assumption, made on every side, of the connection between frame-breaking and sedition. As if the fight by the producer for the integrity of his work-life can be made without calling the whole of capitalism into question. The demand for the cessation of fraudulent work necessarily becomes a cataclysm, an all-or-nothing battle insofar as it is pursued; it leads directly to the heart of the capitalist relationship and its dynamic.”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Source: Elements of Refusal (1988), pp. 108-109

Life, Truth, Question, Heart

“Our Italian ally has been a source of embarrassment to us everywhere. It was this alliance, for instance, which prevented us from pursuing a revolutionary policy in North Africa. In the nature of things, this territory was becoming an Italian preserve and it was as such that the Duce laid claim to it. Had we been on our own, we could have emancipated the Moslem countries dominated by France; and that would have had enormous repercussions in the Near East, dominated by Britain, and in Egypt. But with our fortunes linked to those of the Italians, the pursuit of such a policy was not possible. All Islam vibrated at the news of our victories. The Egyptians, the Irakis and the whole of the Near East were all ready to rise in revolt. Just think what we could have done to help them, even to incite them, as would have been both our duty and in our own interest! But the presence of the Italians at our side paralysed us; it created a feeling of malaise among our Islamic friends, who inevitably saw in us accomplices, willing or unwilling, of their oppressors. For the Italians in these parts of the world are more bitterly hated, of course, than either the British or the French. The memories of the barbarous, reprisals taken against the Senussi are still vivid. Then again the ridiculous pretensions of the Duce to be regarded as The Sword of Islam evokes the same sneering chuckle now as it did before the war. This title, which is fitting for Mahomed and a great conqueror like Omar, Mussolini caused to be conferred on himself by a few wretched brutes whom he had either bribed or terrorized into doing so. We had a great chance of pursuing a splendid policy with regard to Islam. But we missed the bus, as we missed it on several other occasions, thanks to our loyalty to the Italian alliance! In this theatre of operations, then, the Italians prevented us from playing our best card, the emancipation of the French subjects and the raising of the standard of revolt in the countries oppressed by the British. Such a policy would have aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of Islam. It is a characteristic of the Moslem world, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, that what affects one, for good or for evil, affects all.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

17 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Hate, War, World, Feeling

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.”

Robert Evans

[Robert Evans, 2002, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303353, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Documentary, Highway Films]
The unreliable narrator

Truth, Lying, Memory

“Quite frankly, I think Hitler will win. I do not say that Hitler will be able to invade this country. It is a very difficult channel to cross. Lots of people have tried it, including Napoleon…I would not have gone to war without having Russia on our side. It was an idiotic thing to do.”

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

Quoted in A. J. Sylvester's diary entry (26 November 1941), Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 296-298
Later life

War, People, Thinking, Country

“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

“We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Source: As quoted in "Dalai Lama honours Tintin and Tutu" at BBC News (2 June 2006)

People

“Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Look to Windward
Culture series, Look to Windward (2000)

God, Sense, Memory, Animals

“For ourselves, we firmly believe that the finger of Providence is pointing the way to all races, and colors, and nations, along the path that is to lead the east and the west alike to the great goal of human wants. Demons infest that path, and numerous and unhappy are the wanderings of millions who stray from its course; sometimes in reluctance to proceed; sometimes in an indiscreet haste to move faster than their fellows, and always in a forgetfulness of the great rules of conduct that have been handed down from above. Nevertheless, the main course is onward; and the day, in the sense of time, is not distant, when the whole earth is to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, "as the waters cover the sea.
One of the great stumbling-blocks with a large class of well-meaning, but narrow-judging moralists, are the seeming wrongs that are permitted by Providence, in its control of human events. Such persons take a one-sided view of things, and reduce all principles to the level of their own understandings. If we could comprehend the relations which the Deity bears to us, as well as we can comprehend the relations we bear to him, there might be a little seeming reason in these doubts; but when one of the parties in this mighty scheme of action is a profound mystery to the other, it is worse than idle, it is profane, to attempt to explain those things which our minds are not yet sufficiently cleared from the dross of earth to understand.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Preface
Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848)

Color, Way, Understanding, Knowledge

“There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradiscial future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The world, the flesh & the devil (1929) (1969), p. 3. Intro of part I. The Future ( online http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1920s/soul/ch01.htm)

Life, Death, Men, Fate

“She was a student of history, valued the lessons of it. The worst atrocities began with half-measures, with apologies, compromising with the wrong side, shrinking from what had to be done.”

C. J. Cherryh book Downbelow Station

Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 192)
Downbelow Station (1981)

History

“From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
We’ll be lovers once again on the
Bright side of the road”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Bright Side of the Road
Song lyrics, Into the Music (1979)

Lovers

“On one side, lemons are selling for a shilling a dozen; on the other, oranges for sixpence. One man blows a horn in your ear, and offers you the Standard; another exerts his lungs, and shews you the Courier. Pencils are to be had for a penny; and penknives, with from three to six blades each, for eighteen pence a-dozen. A fellow with a trunk turns its corner on your temples; another deposits a box, with the grocery of a family —sugar, soap, candles, and all—on your toes. A gigantic gentleman nearly knocks you down in his hurry; and an elderly Jew slips past you so neatly, that you tumble over him before you are aware. Every body is always too late, and therefore every body is in a bustle. Two policemen keep the peace; and half-a-dozen individuals, whose notions on the law of property are at variance with established principles or prejudices, attend for the purpose of breaking it. Add to these some females with shawls and sharp elbows; and pattens, whose iron rings are for the benefit of foot-passengers. Such is the White Horse Cellar, and the pavement from Dover Street to Albemarle Street.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Family, Peace, Law, Past

“The German Reunification and unification of Europe are two sides of the same coin.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

Die deutsche Einheit und die europäische Einigung sind zwei Seiten ein und derselben Medaille.
In a speech on the 15th party congress of the CDU, in Frankfurt an Main (June 17, 2002)

“Most of my news, I get from the radio news stations. One of the stations' advertising lines is "Give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world." In 22 minutes, they just have time for the headlines, so they can only really tell you what happened — which, by the way, is the news. They tell you how many people were killed in Iraq today, but they don’t then bring on some Republican senator to explain to you how that’s good. Or, on the contrary, they don’t bring in a bunch of Democrats to tell you why it’s bad. They just tell you what happened. That’s the news. I am capable of analyzing my own news. What makes these people qualified to analyze my news for me? No matter what side they’re on, I never agree with them.”

Fran Lebowitz (1950) author and public speaker from the United States

Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005).

People, World, Way, Time

“He walked down the side street to a wide thoroughfare of shop-windows and offices. This, he assumed, was one of the main arteries of London, a city he did not know very well. There were sodium street-lights, lights in windows. Occasional cars sped by. There was even an airline bus crammed with yawning passengers. Edwin saw himself reflected in a window full of tape-recorders.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

Cars, Light

“The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

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

Life, Death, Men, People

“Well, if you compare my album even as late as two years ago, I think as a writer I am much more at the forefront. I wrote all the lyrics and lots of the music on that album. It shows humor of the writer side of me. But I have evolved since then.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

answer to question "How different is your music now from what it was 20 years ago?"
2006

Music, Thinking

“First, the eight rules of tolerance: 1. Stay out of the way. 2. Don't pick a fight. 3. If challenged, walk away. 4. Avoid eye contact. 5. If your enemy is diurnal, learn to be nocturnal. 6. Vice versa. 7. Possess nothing the other wants. 8. Draw the line at hurting kids: I will fight to the death.
After tolerance is achieved comes play. Here are the nine rules of play: 1. Know when to quit. 2. Learn how to handicap. 3. Learn what frightens the other (cat claws). 4. Don't let it get to you. It's just a game; you mustn't take it seriously (cats have trouble with this one—escalation is always a risk in cat games). 5. Don't eat your playmate. 6. Pay attention to the signals on the other side—for instance, “enough” and “quit.” 7. Don't suddenly change the rules. 8. Don't be a sore loser. 9. Remember: It's only a game.
And if play succeeds, we can move on to the eight rules of friendship: 1. Learn the rules of your opposite number. 2. Recognize that danger is no longer relevant. 3. Take your time. 4. One step at a time. 5. Apologize often by learning the other's words, gestures, sounds, or postures for “I'm sorry.””

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

6. Acknowledge mistakes. 7. Make the offer of friendship more than once. 8. Express curiosity about what the other is like.
Source: Raising the Peaceable Kingdom (2005), Ch. 5

Death, Friendship, Way, Game

“Even if we come from different sides of the world, speak different languages. Even if we eat too many chips, or rice balls. Even if we have different tastes in games. Every one of us, here today, is identical, in the most important way. Each one of us has the heart of a gamer.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

2005 GDC Keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrEosZKzp4&t=8m6s

World, Way, Game, Heart

“It [his participating in the 7th exhibition of the Impressionists, combined with showing his work on the official Salon] isn't exactly a joy, but as I have said, it lets me out of the revolutionary side of the business, which I'm nervous of... It's a little weakness which I hope will be forgiven me [by the other impressionists]... Delacroix used to say, quite rightly, that a painter should win as many honours as possible.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Quote of Renoir's letter to Durand-Ruel, end of Feb. 1882; as cited in Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 172
1880's

Hope, Business, Joy

“I have my disagreements with the alt-right, but let’s get a win for the right in America before hashing it all out. The current attitude on the right is to fight with your own side rather than to give leftists hell. Under that model of politics, men are losing due process rights, the suicide of whites is at a record high, and there are several Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil. Until the right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the alt-right or disavowing anyone. Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war. Until then, nah.”

Mike Cernovich (1977) American writer

Is Mike Cernovich Part of the Alt-Right? http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/08/31/is-mike-cernovich-part-of-the-alt-right/ (August 31, 2016)

Men, War, Hell, Suicide

“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

Quotes about side page 25

Quotes about side
page 25