Source: The Brutal Takeover: The Austrian ex-Chancellor’s account of the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler, 1971, p. 53
Heifetz official web site http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/quotes.html
Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), p. 108
I did so and his possessions were now mine.
Diary entry from Sierra Maestra on the execution of Eutimio Guerra as an anti-revolutionary spy (January 1957), quoted in Che Guevara : A Revolutionary Life (1997) by Jon Lee Anderson
1960s, The Drum Major Instinct (1968)
Saying that NATO's interference in Libya caused more casualties {December 2011) http://rt.com/politics/lavrov-nato-libya-victims-201/
As quoted in Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts & Funny Sayings (1993) edited by Bob Phillips, p. 42
Page 123
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)
Daniel Martin (1977)
p 219-220
New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972)
When the Tripods Came
1860s, Toussaint L'Ouverture (1861)
1880s, "The Study of Administration," 1887
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 82.
“Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?”
E 32
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10123375/I-am-not-a-Nazi-says-EDL-leader-Tommy-Robinson.html ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opy5fXrTGEA) On BBC's Sunday Politics (16 June 2013)
2013
On Coalition Government (1945)
Introduction to "One Flesh" exibition, April 4-27, 1997
"Ask Bush Why The Iraqi Military Won't Fight," http://www.unz.com/imercer/ask-bush-why-the-iraqi-military-wont-fight/ The Unz Review, May 29, 2015.
2010s, 2015
Lin Join-sane (2013) cited in " SEF chair wants PRC tourists to transit in Taiwan http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/06/22/2003565391" on Taipei Times, 22 June 2013.
First statement regarding White Nationalist Rally terrorism in Charlottesville, VA. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/charlottesville-protest-trump-condemns-violence-many-sides. The Guardian. (12 August 2017)
2010s, 2017, August
Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=yEA_AQAAMAAJ&q=%22small+debts+are+like+small+shot+they+are+rattling+on+every+side+and+can+scarcely+be+escaped+without+a+wound+great+debts+are+like+cannon+of+loud+noise+but+little+danger%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage to Joseph Simpson, circa 1759
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
As quoted in Zirkle, Conway (1935), The beginnings of plant hybridization p. 105
Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 226
Interview with Ekyse Knox http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/elyseknox_interview.shtml
So I went ahead and wrote it.
Introduction to his reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnfSV27vLY of Lord of the Flies in the unabridged audio version (1980)
The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2
Source: Means and Ends of Education (1895), Chapter 1 "Truth and Love"
On his travels to the United States. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2549442_2,00.html
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 15 (p. 254)
Leaked recording: Arthur Li speaks against Johannes Chan, EJ Insight, http://www.webcitation.org/6cfxbjx4k, 30 October 2015 http://www.ejinsight.com/20151028-leaked-recording-arthur-li-speaks-against-johannes-chan/,
Letter to Josiah Quincy (9 February 1811), Quincy. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/adams-the-works-of-john-adams-vol-9-letters-and-state-papers-1799-1811
1810s
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 377.
Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (1:22 p.m. 2012 December 17)
2012, Twitter Feed
Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.36-39
[Morgan, Forrest, Shakespeare—the Man, The works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 1, 1891, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064786716;view=1up;seq=388, 280 of 255–302]
Shakespeare—the Man (1853)
It won't even be an interesting debate, getting killed by shrapnel, in my opinion is a lot more gruesome and a lot worse.
John Mearsheimer on America Unhinged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqqzh59sVo provided by the Center for the National Interest. The bold text is Mearsheimer speaking about B. H. Liddell Hart's experience with chemical warfare, and the rest is of his opinion of it.
Prelude (1910).
Source: A stakeholder approach to strategic management, 1984, p. 40
68th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, March 25, 1968, less than 2 weeks before his death. Source: Martin Luther King's pro-Israel legacy by Allen B. West on February 15, 2014 at AllenBWest.com. http://allenbwest.com/2014/02/martin-luther-kings-pro-israel-legacy/ 2012-01-15 Youtube video Martin Luther King Jr: "Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world" by Youtube user Israel SDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvr2Cxuh2Wk 2014-06-09 Youtube video Dr. King's pro-Israel Legacy (in 5 minutes) by IBSI - Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dd7pIB0CP0
1960s
What Does 'Death to Israel' Mean to You? (2011)
" Full Remarks: Governor Larry Hogan Announces Cancer Diagnosis http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/06/22/full-remarks-governor-larry-hogan-announces-cancer-diagnosis/"(22 June 2015)
Biocentrism and the Existence of God http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-god-exist-or-not-new_b_802103.html, Huffington Post, January 3, 2011.
Ma Ying-jeou (2013) cited in: " Legislators stall cross-strait office draft http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/06/21/2003565291/2" in The Taipei Times, 21 June 2013.
Statement made at KMT Headquarter in commenting the stall negotiation in establishing reciprocal representative office across the Taiwan Strait, 20 June 2013.
Strait issues
Indian Political Thought, p. 191
“On my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain.”
When asked in 1995 how she would like to die. guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1995/jul/22/fiction.maevebinchy?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Anastasia Steele, Chapter 4, p. 74.
Fifty Shades Freed (2011)
September 13, 1936
India's Rebirth
Ordinary Woman: Just a few days left! (Feminist Frequency, 2016)
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence
Source: Covel, Michael W., Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets, FT Press (2007), pages 172-173, ISBN 0-13-613718-0
Press conference in New York, as quoted in CommingSoon (June 2007) http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=21257
2007
Cricket England versus India; Third Test, day one; Over-by-over: afternoon session http://sport.guardian.co.uk/englandindia2007/story/0,,2145331,00.html
Zoological Retrogression (1891)
Source: Mathematics as an Educational Task (1973), p. 363
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.
In fact, it is certain that in proportion as the human mind frees itself from ideas inculcated by minorities of priests, military chiefs and judges, all striving to establish their domination, and of scientists paid to perpetuate it, a conception of society arises, in which conception there is no longer room for those dominating minorities. A society entering into possession of the social capital accumulated by the labor of preceding generations, organizing itself so as to make use of this capital in the interests of all, and constituting itself without reconstituting the power of the ruling minorities. It comprises in its midst an infinite variety of capacities, temperaments and individual energies: it excludes none. It even calls for struggles and contentions; because we know that periods of contests, so long as they were freely fought out, without the weight of constituted authority being thrown on the one side of the balance, were periods when human genius took its mightiest flight and achieved the greatest aims. Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association.
It seeks the most complete development of individuality combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms, which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all.
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: Mind has come up with this brilliant way of looking at the world — science — but it can’t look at itself. Science has no place for the mind. The whole of our science is based upon empirical, repeatable experiments. Whereas thought is not in that category, you can’t take thought into a laboratory. The essential fact of our existence, perhaps the only fact of our existence – our own thought and perception is ruled off-side by the science it has invented. Science looks at the universe, doesn’t see itself there, doesn’t see mind there, so you have a world in which mind has no place. We are still no nearer to coming to terms with the actual dynamics of what consciousness is.
Force of Circumstances Vol. III (1963) as translated by Richard Howard (1968)
General sources
Context: Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it. Psychiatrists have told me that they give The Second Sex to their women patients to read, and not merely to intellectual women but to lower-middle-class women, to office workers and women working in factories. 'Your book was a great help to me. Your book saved me,' are the words I have read in letters from women of all ages and all walks of life.
If my book has helped women, it is because it expressed them, and they in their turn gave it its truth. Thanks to them, it is no longer a matter for scandal and concern. During these last ten years the myths that men created have crumbled, and many women writers have gone beyond me and have been far more daring than I. Too many of them for my taste take sexuality as their only theme; but at least when they write about it they now present themselves as the eye-that-looks, as subject, consciousness, freedom.
“It's so rare to find a movie that doesn't take sides.”
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/house-of-sand-and-fog-2003 of House of Sand and Fog (26 December 2003)
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: It's so rare to find a movie that doesn't take sides. Conflict is said to be the basis of popular fiction, and yet here is a film that seizes us with its first scene and never lets go, and we feel sympathy all the way through for everyone in it. To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie understands them and their flaws. Like great fiction, House of Sand and Fog sees into the hearts of its characters, and loves and pities them. … "House of Sand and Fog" relates not a plot with its contrived ups and downs but a story. A plot is about things that happen. A story is about people who behave.
To admire a story you must be willing to listen to the people and observe them, and at the end of House of Sand and Fog, we have seen good people with good intentions who have their lives destroyed because they had the bad luck to come across a weak person with shabby desires.
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.
Quotes from interviews, Sydney Morning Herald interview (2003)
Context: Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good.
I have become, you might call it mature — I would call it senile — and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided.
Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XIII : Character — The True Gentleman
Context: Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side. Dr. Johnson has said that the habit of looking at the best side of a thing is worth more to a man than a thousand pounds a year. And we possess the power, to a great extent, of so exercising the will as to direct the thoughts upon objects calculated to yield happiness and improvement rather than their opposites.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric. The enemy is invariably a threat to "our way of life," an infidel, a desecrator, a polluter, a defiler of higher or better values. The current war against the very real threat posed by militant Islamic fundamentalism is a particularly clear example.
Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: It was brought home to me that two men may be as sincere, as earnest, as faithful, as uncompromising, and yet hold opinions far asunder as the poles. I have before said that I think the moment of this conviction is the most perilous crisis of our lives; for myself, it threw me at once on my own responsibility, and obliged me to look for myself at what men said, instead of simply accepting all because they said it. I begin to look about me to listen to what had to be said on many sides of the question, and try, as far as I could, to give it all fair hearing.
"The Nobel Evening Address" p. 115.
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)
Context: Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind. Religion has much involvement with faith. Sometimes it seems that there is quite a distance between a way of thinking based on faith and one entirely based on experiment, remaining skeptical. Unless you find something through investigation, you do not want to accept it as fact. From one viewpoint, Buddhism is a religion, from another viewpoint Buddhism is a science of mind and not a religion. Buddhism can be a bridge between these two sides. Therefore, with this conviction I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics. In these fields there are insights to share, and to a certain extent we can work together.
The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)
Context: If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships.
Speech to the St. David's Day Banquet in Cardiff (1 March 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 46-47.
1927
Context: ... that chauvinistic spirit which so often has been the curse of modern Europe. The best way in which you can develop a true national feeling and put your own country in the pride of place which belongs to her is to do it in communion with other nations and with the sole object of improving the world at large. It is not from disillusionment we have suffered since the War; we are taking a more sober view both of ourselves and of the world... Nationalism can take on some very ugly shapes. It looks as if as many crimes will be committed in its name as in the name of Religion or of Liberty. Indeed the source of the trouble is that Nationalists are apt to assume the garments of Religion... Love of one's country has been perverted into hatred of our neighbour's country by the preaching of lop-sided intellectuals, who themselves generally manage to escape the martyrdom they provide for others.
Source: Law and Authority (1886), II
Context: The hospitality of primitive peoples, respect for human life, the sense of reciprocal obligation, compassion for the weak, courage, extending even to the sacrifice of self for others which is first learnt for the sake of children and friends, and later for that of members of the same community — all these qualities are developed in man anterior to all law, independently of all religion, as in the case of the social animals. Such feelings and practices are the inevitable results of social life. Without being, as say priests and metaphysicans, inherent in man, such qualities are the consequence of life in common.
But side by side with these customs, necessary to the life of societies and the preservation of the race, other desires, other passions, and therefore other habits and customs, are evolved in human association. The desire to dominate others and impose one's own will upon them; the desire to seize upon the products of the labor of a neighboring tribe; the desire to surround oneself with comforts without producing anything, while slaves provide their master with the means of procuring every sort of pleasure and luxury — these selfish, personal desires give rise to another current of habits and customs.
Context: A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent.
For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country and in fact it already has been so. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.
Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence (2 September 1945), Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (1960-1962), Vol. 3, pp. 17-21
"How a ragtag band created Wikipedia" http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/37 - TED Talk (July 2005); this has sometimes appeared paraphrased as "The real struggle is not between the right and the left but between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks."
Context: Most people understand the need for neutrality. The real struggle is not between the right and the left — that's where most people assume — but it's between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks. And no side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on either of those qualities.
"Bryan" in Baltimore Evening Sun http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/menck05.htm#SCOPESC (27 July 1925)
1920s
Context: It is the national custom to sentimentalize the dead, as it is to sentimentalize men about to be hanged. Perhaps I fall into that weakness here. The Bryan I shall remember is the Bryan of his last weeks on earth -- broken, furious, and infinitely pathetic. It was impossible to meet his hatred with hatred to match it. He was winning a battle that would make him forever infamous wherever enlightened men remembered it and him. Even his old enemy, Darrow, was gentle with him at the end. That cross-examination might have been ten times as devastating. It was plain to everyone that the old Berseker Bryan was gone -- that all that remained of him was a pair of glaring and horrible eyes.
But what of his life? Did he accomplish any useful thing? Was he, in his day, of any dignity as a man, and of any value to his fellow-men? I doubt it. Bryan, at his best, was simply a magnificent job-seeker. The issues that he bawled about usually meant nothing to him. He was ready to abandon them whenever he could make votes by doing so, and to take up new ones at a moment's notice. For years he evaded Prohibition as dangerous; then he embraced it as profitable. At the Democratic National Convention last year he was on both sides, and distrusted by both. In his last great battle there was only a baleful and ridiculous malignancy. If he was pathetic, he was also disgusting.
Bryan was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses. It was hard to believe, watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.
Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. XXIX, ¶ 16-17
Context: I saw an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form. This I am not accustomed to see, unless very rarely. Though I have visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intellectual vision, such as I have spoken of before. It was our Lord's will that in this vision I should see the angel in this wise. He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful — his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call cherubim. Their names they never tell me; but I see very well that there is in heaven so great a difference between one angel and another, and between these and the others, that I cannot explain it.I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it, even a large one. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.</p
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 11. Concerning our Priests
Context: p>With us, our Priests are Administrators of all Business, Art, and Science; Directors of Trade, Commerce, Generalship, Architecture, Engineering, Education, Statesmanship, Legislature, Morality, Theology; doing nothing themselves, they are the Causes of everything worth doing, that is done by others.Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemed a Circle, yet among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really a Circle, but only a Polygon with a very large number of very small sides. As the number of the sides increases, a Polygon approximates to a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example three or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather, it WOULD be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference.</p
Sangakkara on how Pakistan is a better team than India, quoted on Sports.ndtv.com, "Why Pakistan Can Never Beat India in World Cups - Kumar Sangakkara, Sunil Gavaskar Explain" http://sports.ndtv.com/icc-world-twenty20-2016/news/256674-why-pakistan-can-never-beat-india-in-world-cups-kumar-sangakkara-sunil-gavaskar-explain, March 21, 2016.
Context: India always plays a big tournament in a very settled manner. They trust their players and are always consistent in their selection. They always approach a game with a sense of confidence in their abilities and the selection they have made. When it comes to Pakistan, they come to tournaments unsettled, with a lot of controversy and lots of doubts over selection. There seems to be lot of talk even within the team and around the team, even by the management. When it comes to crucial rivalry and the stakes are high, India seems to control their emotion and execute their game-plan. Whenever Pakistan play India, the former seems to be rattled. India always seem to be the more mature side in World Cups than Pakistan, no matter how many senior players are there in their squad.
Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 15 : Interesting Times
Context: Of the old, violent anarchist groups it was said that they always contained one pathological killer, one selfless idealist and one police spy. It was difficult, at first glance, to tell which was which, but the idealist was always the most dangerous. A "war against terrorism" is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism. The feelings on both sides are not that they are taking part in some evil and criminal act but risking their lives heroically for what they consider to be a just cause. You could understandably reduce terrorism by improving security and increasing the number of police spies, but it can only finally be reduced by removing the number of just causes. ANC terrorism was pointless after the end of apartheid. Terrorism in Israel will stop only when a just solution has been agreed to and the occupied territories handed back. Terrorism has existed in Ireland since Elizabeth I sent the Earl of Essex out in an unsatisfactory attempt to quell the rebels. However, since former terrorists have become government ministers in Northern Ireland, some progress has been made and sometimes the signs are hopeful.
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 13. How I had a Vision of Lineland
Context: Describing myself as a stranger I besought the King to give me some account of his dominions. But I had the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information on points that really interested me; for the Monarch could not refrain from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar to him must also be known to me and that I was simulating ignorance in jest. However, by persevering questions I elicited the following facts:It seemed that this poor ignorant Monarch — as he called himself — was persuaded that the Straight Line which he called his Kingdom, and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of the world, and indeed the whole of Space. Not being able either to move or to see, save in his Straight Line, he had no conception of anything out of it. Though he had heard my voice when I first addressed him, the sounds had come to him in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had made no answer, "seeing no man", as he expressed it, "and hearing a voice as it were from my own intestines." Until the moment when I placed my mouth in his World, he had neither seen me, nor heard anything except confused sounds beating against — what I called his side, but what he called his INSIDE or STOMACH; nor had he even now the least conception of the region from which I had come. Outside his World, or Line, all was a blank to him; nay, not even a blank, for a blank implies Space; say, rather, all was non-existent.His subjects — of whom the small Lines were men and the Points Women — were all alike confined in motion and eye-sight to that single Straight Line, which was their World. It need scarcely be added that the whole of their horizon was limited to a Point; nor could any one ever see anything but a Point. Man, woman, child, thing — each was a Point to the eye of a Linelander. Only by the sound of the voice could sex or age be distinguished. Moreover, as each individual occupied the whole of the narrow path, so to speak, which constituted his Universe, and no one could move to the right or left to make way for passers by, it followed that no Linelander could ever pass another. Once neighbours, always neighbours. Neighbourhood with them was like marriage with us. Neighbours remained neighbours till death did them part.Such a life, with all vision limited to a Point, and all motion to a Straight Line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary; and I was surprised to note the vivacity and cheerfulness of the King.
Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 9 : The Global Politics of Civilizations, § 2 : Islam And The West, p. 217
Context: Muslim governments, even the bunker governments friendly to and dependent on the West, have been strikingly reticent when it comes to condemning terrorist acts against the West. On the other side, European governments and publics have largely supported and rarely criticized actions the United States has taken against its Muslim opponents, in striking contrast to the strenuous opposition they often expressed to American actions against the Soviet Union and communism during the Cold War. In civilizational conflicts, unlike ideological ones, kin stand by their kin.
The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the US department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.
Interview (18 December 1997) http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/turner1.html for CNN : Cold War. Episode 21 : Spies (14 March 1999)
1990s
Context: America and Russia have excessive numbers of nuclear weapons today because we treated nuclear weapons, at the end of World War II, like they were just bigger conventional weapons. If you have tanks, and the other side has more than you, you may be in trouble — or airplanes or ships or whatever. With nuclear weapons, it's not the same: they're too powerful, and at some point you just can't use any more, it's just not meaningful. But what happened was, we had the lead of course, because we invented them. The Russians tried to catch up with us; we tried to stay ahead of the Russians; they tried to catch up with us, and we just had a never-ending race upward. By the mid-Sixties, we realized this, but because of the Cold War mentality, politicians couldn't stand up and say, "I'm willing to have less than the Soviet Union," and so the race continued, but we tried to mitigate it by instituting an arms control process, which at first tried to cap and then later to reduce these numbers. … there's just no way you can actually use them; they become so destructive. I estimate that a couple of hundred nuclear weapons, not just on the center of cities, but on economic positions in the country, will drive a country to the point it will never recover, it will never be the same again. It will survive, but it'll be a totally different country. You don't need thousands to do that. There are only a few hundred cities of any size in even Russia or the United States, like 200, and you just don't need thousands of weapons to demobilize a country.
Foreword
My Turn (1989)
Context: Although there is a certain dignity in silence, which I find appealing, I have decided that for me, for our children, and for the historical record, I want to tell my side of the story. So much was said about me — about astrology, and my relationship with Raisa Gorbachev, and whether I got Donald Regan fired, and what went on between me and my children, especially Patti. Ironically, I felt I could start rebuilding our private life only by going public on these and other topics — to have my say and then to move on.
I often cried during those eight years. There were times when I just didn’t know what to do, or how I would survive. But even so, I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. I did things I never dreamed I could do, went places I never imagined I’d go, grew in ways I never thought possible. <!-- In 1988, during the space of a single week, I stood in the Kremlin with the Gorbachevs, had tea in Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth, visited with Mrs. Thatcher at 10 Downing Street, and stopped off at Disney World in Florida with some of my favorite people on earth, the Foster Grandparents. And always, there was the love and support of my husband.
Yes, almost from the day I met him, Ronald Reagan has been the center of my life. I have been criticized for saying that, but it’s true.
Source: On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960), Ch. 2 : The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism<!-- , p. 35 -->
Context: Here I need not go into the paradoxes and mysteries of Kabbalistic theology concerned with the seflroth and their nature. But one important point must be made. The process which the Kabbalists described as the emanation of divine energy and divine light was also characterized as the unfolding of the divine language. This gives rise to a deep-seated parallelism between the two most important kinds of symbolism used by the Kabbalists to communicate their ideas. They speak of attributes and of spheres of light; but in the same context they speak also of divine names and the letters of which they are composed. From the very beginnings of Kabbalistic doctrine these two manners of speaking appear side by side. The secret world of the godhead is a world of language, a world of divine names that unfold in accordance with a law of their own. The elements of the divine language appear as the letters of the Holy Scriptures. Letters and names are not only conventional means of communication. They are far more. Each one of them represents a concentration of energy and expresses a wealth of meaning which cannot be translated, or not fully at least, into human language. There is, of course, an obvious discrepancy between the two symbolisms. When the Kabbalists speak of divine attributes and sefiroth, they are describing the hidden world under ten aspects; when, on the other hand, they speak of divine names and letters, they necessarily operate' with the twenty-two consonants of the Hebrew alphabet, in which the Torah is written, or as they would have said, in which its secret essence was made communicable.
The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)
Context: By what toil and fatigue and patience and strife and the beautiful law of growth has all this been wrought? These things have not come of themselves. They could not have occurred except as the great movement for women has brought them out and about. They are part of the eternal order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things.
UTI interview (2004)
Context: I think that most people, when faced with overwhelming facts, will come around. (I know I certainly have.) But it is definitely difficult to overcome people’s entrenched beliefs, so I feel that if I only convince people that the other side is a reasonable position to take, even if they themselves don’t take it, then I’ve been a success.
It is sort of a quixotic task in that sense, but it’s also useful to me by helping clarify my ideas.
When you say something particularly controversial on the Web, you’ll get all sorts of people coming at you with arguments. Considering those arguments and seeing if they’re right or, if they’re wrong, why they’re wrong, has been very valuable in clarifying my beliefs (and similarly, I hope my challenges have helped other people clarify their beliefs).
Address to the World Evangelical Congress in Berlin (28 October 1966).
Context: This age above all ages is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women. The love shown in Christ by our God to mankind should constrain all of us who are followers and disciples of Christ to do all in our power to see to it that the Message of Salvation is carried to those of our fellows for whom Christ Our Saviour was sacrificed but who have not had the benefit of hearing the good news. Since nobody can interfere in the realm of God we should tolerate and live side by side with those of other faiths.
The summary of the Joy In The Merely Real sequence (October 2009) http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Joy_in_the_Merely_Real
Context: If dragons were common, and you could look at one in the zoo — but zebras were a rare legendary creature that had finally been decided to be mythical — then there's a certain sort of person who would ignore dragons, who would never bother to look at dragons, and chase after rumors of zebras. The grass is always greener on the other side of reality. Which is rather setting ourselves up for eternal disappointment, eh? If we cannot take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed.
1920s, The Genius of America (1924)
Context: It was the fate of Europe to be always a battleground. Differences in race, in religion, in political genius and social ideals, seemed always, in the atmosphere of our mother continent, to be invitations to contest by battle. From the dawn of history, and we can only conjecture how much longer, the conflicts of races and civilizations, of traditions and usages, have gone on. It is one of the anomalies of the human story that these peoples, who could not be assimilated and unified under the skies of Europe, should on coming to America discover an amazing genius for cooperation, for fusion, and for harmonious effort. Yet they were the same people when they came here that they had been on the other side of the Atlantic. Quite apparently, they found something in our institutions, something in the American system of Government and society which they themselves helped to construct, that furnished to all of them a political and cultural common denominator.
Part III: Nice Meeting You, and Goodbye
The Courage to Stand Alone (2001)
Context: You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage. If you are freed from the entire burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage.
