Quotes about sign
page 5

“He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 295

Silence

“If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 81

Art, Color, Mathematics, Study

“Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your eyes were open!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

World

“Christians and Muslims, we have many things in common, as believers and as human beings. We live in the same world, marked by many signs of hope, but also by multiple signs of anguish. For us, Abraham is a very model of faith in God, of submission to his will and of confidence in his goodness. We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Address to young Muslims in Casablanca on 19 August 1985, during the pope's apostolic journey to Morocco Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1985/august/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19850819_giovani-stadio-casablanca_en.html

God, World, Faith, Hope

“Turtle on its back in the desert sea / and you look like a cool drink / just slightly out of reach / Draw myself into the shell / waiting on a sign from God / or a nod from hell”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Sea Anemone"
Orange Rhyming Dictionary (1998)

God, Hell, Drink, Waiting

“The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"William Dean Howells" (1983)
1980s, At Home (1988)

World, Education, Past, Painting

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Life, God, Hate, People

“A passion for the infinite is daily presented as a sign of moral distinction, when in fact it can only occur in disturbed minds which accord the status of a norm to the very disturbance from which they are suffering.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

Suffering, Passion

“Satirists, be careful. In the 1931 film by René Clair Vive la Liberte a song says, "Work is freedom." In 1940 the sign on the gates to Auschwitz said: "Arbeit macht frei."”

Stanisław Jerzy Lec book Unkempt Thoughts

Unkempt Thoughts (1957)

Freedom

“The signs on Bell’s door read “J. Bell” and “M. Bell.” I knocked and was invited in by Bell. He looked about the same as he had the last time I saw him, a couple of years ago. He has long, neatly combed red hair and a pointed beard, which give him a somewhat Shavian figura. On one wall of the office is a photograph of Bell with something that looks like a halo behind his head, and his expression in the photograph is mischievous. Theoretical physicists’ offices run the gamut from chaotic clutter to obsessive neatness; the Bells’ is somewhere in between. Bell invited me to sit down after warning me that the “visitor’s chair” tilted backward at unexpected angles. When I had mastered it, and had a chance to look around, the first thing that struck me was the absence of Mary. “Mary,” said Bell, with a note of some disbelief in his voice, “has retired.” This, it turned out, had occurred not long before my visit. “She will not look at any mathematics now. I hope she comes back,” he went on almost plaintively; “I need her. We are doing several problems together.” In recent years, the Bells have been studying new quantum mechanical effects that will become relevant for the generation of particle accelerators that will perhaps succeed the LEP. Bell began his career as a professional physicist by designing accelerators, and Mary has spent her entire career in accelerator design. A couple of years ago Bell, like the rest of the members of CERN theory division, was asked to list his physics speciality. Among the more “conventional” entries in the division such as “super strings,” “weak interactions,” “cosmology,” and the like, Bell’s read “quantum engineering.””

Jeremy Bernstein (1929) American physicist

Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

Hope, Mathematics, Problem, Study

““It is terrible bad luck. Owls are often augurs of death, Mr. Flattery. There is no surer sign.”
“Not even the cessation of breathing?” the viscount asked, but neither Tristam nor Beacham laughed.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 39 (p. 557)

Death, Bad luck

“I suspect that some of you would say ‘A civilized nation is one that has railways, modern industry, organized army, tank, aircraft, etc., and an uncivilized nation is one that does not possess such things.’ Or you would say that a civilized nation is one whose cities … have wide and paved streets, with multi-storey buildings, and so on.’ Civilized nations, of course, do have such things, but I submit that these are products of civilization, not its essence. The essence of civilization is that people are mature, and the clearest sign of their maturity is that they observe the law.”

Mohammad Ali Foroughi (1877–1942) Iranian politician

Radio broadcast (October 1941)

People, Law

“With any child entering adolescence, one hunts for signs of health, is desperate for the smallest indication that the child's problems will never be important enough for a television movie.”

Delia Ephron (1944) American writer and film producer

Funny Sauce (1986), Delia Ephron

Health, Problem

“Across this dazzling
Mediterranean
August morning
The dolphins write such
Ideograms:
With power to wake
Me prisoned in
My human speech
They sign: 'I AM!”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Dolphins"

“As we did before in 1994, I feel we have a capacity to do so again. We succeeded in resolving our problems by peaceful means when everybody expected war and violence… We have one of the best constitutions in the world. We should be proud of this constitution, which provides the framework for a functioning multiparty democracy, independent courts and other institutions that stand for [the] advancement of human rights… He said the country had already held three elections and that two presidents had relinquished their power through constitutional means. Although former president Thabo Mbeki had left under difficult conditions, even that had been done constitutionally… These are all signs of growing constitutional maturity. Our democracy is growing up and there are open debates which will take us to robust contestations.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Speech in Durban https://web.archive.org/web/20150919172235/http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/de-klerk-sanguine-about-sa-1.427715#.WhPN0EpKvqY (2008) 2000s, 2008

War, World, Peace, Feeling

“Mnemonists, people with freakish memories and no other virtues, were capable of playing dazzling games, dismaying and confusing the other participants by their rapid muster of countless ideas. In the course of time such displays of virtuosity fell more and more under a strict ban, and contemplation became a highly important component of the Game. Ultimately, for the audiences at each Game it became the main thing. This was the necessary turning toward the religious spirit. What had formerly mattered was following the sequences of ideas and the whole intellectual mosaic of a Game with rapid attentiveness, practiced memory, and full understanding. But there now arose the demand for a deeper and more spiritual approach. After each symbol conjured up by the director of a Game, each player was required to perform silent, formal meditation on the content, origin, and meaning of this symbol, to call to mind intensively and organically its full purport. The members of the Order and of the Game associations brought the technique and practice of contemplation with them from their elite schools, where the art of contemplation and meditation was nurtured with the greatest care. In this way the hieroglyphs of the Game were kept from degenerating into mere empty signs.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

People, School, Art, Way

“That’s the trouble with people like them, I suppose; whenever you think you’re detecting the first signs of them starting to behave responsibly, it’s just them being even more devious and underhand than usual.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 8 “Killing Time” section V (p. 261).

People, Thinking

“We are now in a position to prove the following propositions : —
1. The distance of the sun from the earth is greater than eighteen times, but less than twenty times, the distance of the moon (from the earth); this follows from the hypothesis about the halved moon.
2. The diameter of the sun has the same ratio (as aforesaid) to the diameter of the moon.
3. The diameter of the sun has to the diameter of the earth a ratio greater than that which 19 has to 3, but less than that which 43 has to 6; this follows from the ratio thus discovered between the distances, the hypothesis about the shadow, and the hypothesis that the moon subtends one fifteenth part of a sign of the zodiac.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

Time, Sun, Parting

“(DVD introduction) Well, welcome to your very own DVD of me, DVB, and ‘Mind Control’. If you weren’t expecting me and thought you were buying Reginald Perrin, then press eject now before you begin vomiting. Otherwise, please, please ensure that you are sitting in an extreme level of comfort, preferably in pre-worn slippers and, I trust, with your extended family around you. If you have seen the film ‘Signs’ and would like to wear the pointy tin foil hats now would be a good time to put them on you can’t be too careful. Well, pphhh, goodness me, er, it’s been a meteoric rise over these last years. The money and sex are exhausting and I have you the viewer to thank. Thanks. We’ve put together some of the pieces from the specials and series in glistening digital format, each pixel hand picked and gently polished and brought to you in wide-sound, surround-screen enjoyment. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I’ll enjoy the royalties from this, which is enormously. If you don’t like it and HMV won’t take it back because you’ve got sticky all over it then the disc makes an excellent beer coaster or wheels for a space truck or can be immense fun just putting it on your finger and [waggling it], like that. But I hope you do like it. When I first started developing these techniques I had no idea that they were going to prove at all popular and for all my nancing about and staring I’m actually really excited to have a DVD out and can’t wait to go and find it in Discount Books & Puzzles next to the Dizzie Gillespie CD box sets and disappointing erotica. I hope you like it and if you do, please go and buy another one.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Money, Books, Family, Hope

“By virtue of its innermost intention, and like all questions about language, structuralism escapes the classical history of ideas which already supposes structuralism’s possibility, for the latter naively belongs to the province of language and propounds itself within it. Nevertheless, by virtue of an irreducible region of irreflection and spontaneity within it, by virtue of the essential shadow of the undeclared, the structuralist phenomenon will deserve examination by the historian of ideas. For better or for worse. Everything within this phenomenon that does not in itself transparently belong to the question of the sign will merit this scrutiny; as will everything within it that is methodologically effective, thereby possessing the kind of infallibil-ity now ascribed to sleepwalkers and formerly attributed to instinct, which was said to be as certain as it was blind.”

Jacques Derrida book Writing and Difference

Force and Signification
Writing and Difference (1978)

History, Idea, Question

“Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

2.9
The Moviegoer (1961)

Life, People, World, Dead

“With any child entering adolescence, one hunts for signs of health, is desperate for the smallest indication that the child's problems will never be important enough for a television movie.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Delia Ephron, Funny Sauce (1986)
Misattributed

Health, Problem

“If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination… The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-2009 of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (23 June 2009) Reviews, One-star reviews

Music, Imagination, Hell, Revenge

“NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country. And now you [Hillary Clinton] want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership. You were totally in favor of it. Then you heard what I was saying, how bad it is, and you said, I can't win that debate. But you know that if you did win, you would approve that, and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA. Nothing will ever top NAFTA.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Partnership, Country

“The allegories of the "fall of man" and the "deluge," are the two most important features of the Pentateuch. They are, so to say, the Alpha and Omega, the highest and the lowest keys of the scale of harmony on which resounds the majestic hymns of the creation of mankind; for they discover to him who questions the Zura (figurative Gematria), the process of man's evolution from the highest spiritual entity unto the lowest physical — the post-diluvian man, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, every sign of the picture writing which cannot be made to fit within a certain circumscribed geometrical figure may be rejected as only intended by the sacred hierogrammatist for a premeditated blind — so many of the details in the Bible must be treated on the same principle, that portion only being accepted which answers to the numerical methods taught in the Kabala.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter IX

Question

“The idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it's not because white people aren't privileged. We have all sorts of privileges, and most people have privileges of all sorts, and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them. But the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group - there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that. It's absolutely abhorrent. If you really want to know more about that sort of thing, you should read about the Kulaks in the Soviet Union in the 1920's. They were farmers who were very productive. They were the most productive element of the agricultural strata in Russia. And they were virtually all killed, raped, and robbed by the collectivists who insisted that because they showed signs of wealth, they were criminals and robbers. One of the consequences of the prosecution of the Kulaks was the death of six million Ukrainians from a famine in the 1930's. The idea of collectively held guilt at the level of the individual as a legal or philosophical principle is dangerous. It's precisely this sort of danger that people who are really looking for trouble would push. Just a cursory glance at 20th century history should teach anyone who wants to know exactly how unacceptable that is.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Death, People, History, Idea

“God does not need to speak for himself in order for us to discover definitive signs of his will; it is enough to examine the normal course of nature and the consistent tendency of events. I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which his hand has drawn.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Original text: Il n’est pas nécessaire que Dieu parle lui-même pour que nous découvrions des signes certains de sa volonté; il suffit d’examiner quelle est la marche habituelle de la nature et la tendance continue des événements; je sais, sans que le Créateur élève la voix, que les astres suivent dans l’espace les courbes que son doigt a tracées.
Introduction
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)

God, Star, Nature

“And the most depressing sign about [ Josiah Royce's ] thinking is that he seems perfectly aware how this makes no provision either for immortality or for real freedom, and yet he appears to have no uneasiness under it, but to contemplate this ghastly destiny of ours with a complacency even savoring of self-satisfaction.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Letter to W.T. Harris; Quoted in: James McLachlan, "George Holmes Howison: The Conception of God Debate and the Beginnings of Personal Idealism." The Personalist Forum. Vol. 15, Nr. 1 (1995). p. 6; Cited in Dwayne Tunstall, Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight, Fordham Univ Press, 2009. p. 12
Journals

Thinking, Freedom, Appearance

“As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,
And stars shine clear; to whose sweet beams, high prospects, and the brows
Of all steep hills and pinnacles, thrust up themselves for shows;
And even the lowly valleys joy, to glitter in their sight,
When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,
And all the signs in heaven are seen that glad the shepherd's heart.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Book VIII, line 487, p. 115 https://books.google.com/books?id=ashjAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA115&dq=%22As+when+about%22 The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets (1611)

Star, Light, Heart, Joy

“All the formulæ of Conic Sections having long since gone out of my head, I went on my return to London to the Royal Institution to read them up. Professor, now Sir James Dewar, came in and probably noticing signs of despair in my face, asked me what I was about; then said, "Why do you bother over this? My brother in law, J. Hamilton Dickson of Peterhouse, loves problems and wants new ones. Send it to him." I did so… and he most cordially helped me by working it out… on the basis of the… Gaussian Law of Error.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

Love, Law, Error, Problem

“Native Americans would say that [the sight of a fox killed in a trap] was the moment when my fate was sealed. They say that you sign nature's unwritten contract to work with animals at a very young age as a result of some experience, either good or bad, that happens in early childhood. Looking back, there is no doubt that the shock of seeing that magnificent young fox-my friend-hanging from that tree left me with a feeling of revulsion for my own kind and a desire to distance myself from the human race.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

The Man who lives with Wolves (2010)

Fate, Age, Feeling, Nature

“Good-breeding, or true politeness, is the art of showing men by external signs the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by good company. It must be acquired by practice and not by books.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Misattributed, Jackson's personal book of maxims

Men, Books, Art, Sense

“Since the 1970s some seven-hundred-thousand people have signed up for a self-improvement called 'est', or as it's now called 'The Forum.' Est was the brainchild of a former used-car salesman named Jack Rosenberg. Back in the sixties, Rosenberg deserted his wife and four children in Philadelphia, changed his name to Werner Hans Erhard, and moved to California where he started another family, and, came up with the idea for est.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

Children, People, Family, Cars

“In these conditions, our people can make miracles. I have often had the opportunity to realize that the sense of duty of our villagers is authentic. It is a sign of awareness. One call by the National Council is enough for him to leave his home and to rush to arms, when there is nothing that compels him to do so. At the time, the mobilization by the Russian government was always executed on the force of terror.”

Aram Manukian (1879–1919) Armenian revolutionary, politician and general who managed and led the Van Resistance and instrumented the …

On January 5, 1918, on the eve of Armenian Christmas. Attributed without citation in [Death of Aram Manoukian - January 29, 1919, http://thisweekinarmenianhistory.blogspot.com/2013/01/death-of-aram-manoukian-january-29-1919.html, thisweekinarmenianhistory.com, 29 January 2013, 15 March 2014]

People, Home, Sense, Time

“Even as the nation monitors the Muslim world within its borders more closely for signs of Islamism, it must continue, of course, to protect the civil rights of law-abiding American Muslims. Political leaders should regularly and publicly distinguish between Islam, the religion of Muslims, and Islamism, the totalitarian ideology. In addition, they should do everything in their power to make sure that individual Muslims, mosques, and other legal institutions continue to enjoy the full protection of the law. A time of crisis doesn’t change the presumption of innocence at the core of our legal system. Police should provide extra protection for Muslims to prevent acts of vandalism against their property or their persons.”

Daniel Pipes (1949) U.S. neoconservative columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history

Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias, City Journal http://www.danielpipes.org/articles/79, Autumn 2002.

World, Religion, Law, Change

“I must beg leave to recommend to your Excellency's consideration the appointing an officer to write and sign the necessary passes. The person I should wish to be appointed is Lieutenant Bio d get. If it was put in general orders, that passes signed by him should be deemed authentic, as if signed by me, it would leave me at liberty to pursue the more important employments of my station.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1776)

Personality

“Innis comments on how the invention of writing and the advancement of military techniques led to the founding of ancient empires: The sword and the pen worked together. Power was increased by concentration in a few hands, specialization of function was enforced, and scribes with leisure to keep and study records contributed to the advancement of knowledge and thought. The written record signed, sealed, and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the extension of government. Small communities were written into large states and states were consolidated into empire. The monarchies of Egypt and Persia, the Roman empire and the city states were essentially products of writing.”

Harold Innis book Empire and Communications

2007 edition, p. 30.
Empire and Communications (1950)

Communication, Knowledge, Study

“[Hypotheses]
1. That the Moon receives its light from the sun.
2. That the earth is in the relation of a point and centre to the sphere in which the moon moves.
3. That, when the moon appears to us halved, the great circle which divides the dark and the bright portions of the moon is in the direction of our eye.
4. That, when the moon appears to us halved, its distance from the sun is then less than a quadrant by one-thirtieth of a quadrant.
5. That the breadth of the (earth's) shadow is (that) of two moons.
6. That the moon subtends one fifteenth part of a sign of the zodiac.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

Note "is less than a quadrant..." is less than 90° by l/30th of 90° or 3°, and is therefore equal to 87°.
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

Light, Appearance, Sun, Parting

“In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti (1945), as cited in: Joel Shatzky, ‎Michael Taub (1999), Contemporary Jewish-American Dramatists and Poets. p. 302

Art

“I believe public transport has a great future as we see increasing signs of economic recovery and it has a major role to play in helping Europe and the rest of the world meet the challenge of climate change.”

Brian Souter (1954) British businessman

As quoted on the Stagecoach Group Web Site http://www.stagecoachgroup.com/scg/media/press/pr2010/2010-06-14/ (22nd May 2010)

World, Change, Future, Help

“Syria has allowed its soil to be transited by foreign fighters who have come from a variety of source countries in the Gulf area and in the — in North African countries.
There are some signs that that may have been reduced somewhat in the last couple of months. We need to watch that a bit and see if that is the case.”

David Petraeus (1952) retired American military officer and public official

As quoted in "Ranking House Committee Members Grill Crocker and Petraeus on U.S. Progress in Iraq" in The Washington Post (10 September 2007) http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/ranking_committee_members_grill_petraeus_crocker_10.html

Country

“I curse in everyday life, but usually when I stub my toe. The topics I'm discussing, it's not necessary to curse. I found [cursing] is a sign that a joke is not finished or well-written.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Michael McIntyre (February 9, 2007) "He's bringing home the bacon, from clubs to Super Bowl ads", The Plain Dealer, p. 30.

Life

“There is no god but God and Muhammad (aws) is God’s prophet and messenger;
the purpose of life is to establish a loving relationship with The One through a hermeneutic engagement with God’s signs (ayat) in revelation, creation, and in the human mind and heart;
such a purpose requires a wholehearted commitment to learning in all its forms…”

Yakoub Islam

The Muslim Anarchist Charter (20 June 2005) http://archives-lepost.huffingtonpost.fr/article/2009/12/20/1849641_the-muslim-anarchist-charter-la-charte-anarchiste-musulmane.html

Love, Life, God, Learning

“There are signs that the system of collective security established in San Francisco nearly 50 years ago [at the founding of the UN] is finally beginning to work as conceived. . . We are on the way to achieving a workable international system.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Cited in the Awake! magazine 1996, 4/22; article: Is a World Without War Possible?
1990s

Way

“Below the highest sphere four Regents sit
Who rule our world, and under them are zones
Nearer, but high, where saintliest spirits dead
Wait thrice ten thousand years, then live again;
And on Lord Buddha, waiting in that sky,
Came for our sakes the five sure signs of birth
So that the Devas knew the signs, and said
"Buddha will go again to help the World."
"Yea!" spake He, "now I go to help the World.
This last of many times; for birth and death
End hence for me and those who learn my Law.
I will go down among the Sakyas,
Under the southward snows of Himalay,
Where pious people live and a just King."”

Edwin Arnold book The Light of Asia

Book The First.
The Light of Asia (1879)

Death, People, World, Law

“Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory (sic) sign ups for 'train rides' for Jews in the 40s.”

Stacey Campfield (1968) US politician

2014-05-05
Campfield regrets comparing Obamacare to Nazi train ride
Chas
Sisk
Tennessean
http://www.tennessean.com/story/insession/2014/05/05/campfield-says-obamacare-signups-like-nazi-train-rides/8720257/
Regarding the Affordable Care Act

Training

“I joined the Corps not because I couldn't make it elsewhere or because I needed money to go to school. No signing bonus was going to turn me into a soldier. I became a Marine because I wanted to be among the best, just as I applied to Columbia because I wanted to be among the brightest. I knew both required a high price.”

Matt Sanchez (1970) writer, journalist

[Patterson, Robert, War Crimes, Three Rivers Press, February 26, 2008, 39, 0307338274]

Money, School

“Yes, let the Angel blow!
A peal from the parted heaven,
The first of seven!—
The warning, not yet the sign, of woe!
That men arise
And look about them with wakened eyes,
Behold on their garments the dust and slime,
Refrain, forbear,
Accept the weight of a nobler care
And take reproach from the fallen time!”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"Gabriel" in The Century : A Popular Quarterly, Volume 18 (1874), p. 617.

Men, Angels, Time, Parting

“Anyone who can understand that the Buddhist idea of Nirvana is not merely negative, and that the Buddha himself who (like the Superman) 'looks down on suffering humanity like a hillsman on the planes' is not an atheistic monster, will instantly see how this misses the point. Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was. Anyone who reads the Night Song and the Dance Song in Zarathustra will recognize that they spring out of the same emotion as the Vedic or Gathic hymns or the Psalms of David. The idea of the Superman is a response to the need for salvation in precisely the same way that Buddhism was a response to the 'three signs.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 135

Way, Spring, Idea, Understanding

“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris (15-21 January 1998). (Brzezinski has repeatedly http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04252012-175722/unrestricted/WHITE_THESIS.pdf denied https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGjAsQJh7OM having said this, and no such memo exists. https://books.google.com/books?id=ToYxFL5wmBIC&q=deep+skepticism#v=snippet&q=deep%20skepticism&f=false) Disputed

Secret, History, Reality

“Identity is no longer limited to the outer ego alone. The outer ego is now familiar with the whole self, or the entire identity, and has available to it strength of which it was not previously aware. In periods of exuberance, when you are working well, and your health is extraordinarily good, when you are able to remember and manipulate your dreams, then such periods are signs of the emergence of this new consciousness.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 283, Page 18
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 7

Health, Dreams

“In response to Adarsh Housing Society incident - "There were flats reserved for the scheduled [lower] castes which we applied for and were allotted one of them. We paid the cost of the flat in full. But now it seems we have been cheated. They are neither giving [us] the flat nor any sign of returning our money."”

Uttam Khobragade (1951) bureaucrat

India’s Devyani Khobragade advocated for women’s rights, accused in nanny scandal http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-devyani-khobragade-advocated-for-womens-rights-but-underpaid-her-nanny/2013/12/20/13e23688-69a2-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html, The Washington Post, 20 December 2013

Money, Housing, Cheating

“The biggest issue in this election is something called flip-flopping, and all candidates are accused of doing it. A strong leader is expected to maintain steadfast resolve in his opinion even if the environment changes or he gets new information. In any other context, that would be considered the first sign of a brain tumor. When presidents do it, it's called leadership, and frankly, we can't get enough of it.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

DNRC Newsletter #57, 2004-10-28 http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/newsletter57.html,

Strong, Change

“Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts.”

Jerome Frank (1889–1957) American jurist

Page 159.
Law and the Modern Mind (1930)

Question

“When a man feels that he cannot leave his work, it is a sure sign of an impending collapse.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Letter to Alfred Brandeis (March 8, 1897), reprinted in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis Volume I 127 (Melvin I. Urovsky & David W. Levy, eds., State University of New York Press 1971).
Extra-judicial writings

Feeling

“Caesar exclaimed: "Let us accept this as a sign from the Gods, and follow where they beckon, in vengeance on our double-dealing enemies. The die is cast."”
Tunc Caesar: "Eatur," inquit, "quo deorum ostenta et inimicorum iniquitas vocat. Iacta alea est," inquit.

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, Ch. 32

God

“You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?) (Hays translation)”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII, 53

People

“We're adding a triple sign-off for all work done on the launch pad, on flight components, and flight critical GSE. You have a technician, a responsible engineer, and then quality assurance will sign the final, record all information, and take photographs of all the work that was done, and then make sure that all information is put into our quality assurance database, which is reviewed prior to launch.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

“The CELAC Declaration is a positive sign towards the advancement of an international order which can and should be more democratic and equitable, based on the principles of the sovereignty of States and peoples and on international solidarity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

CELAC / Zone of Peace: “A key step to countering the globalization of militarism” – UN Expert http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14215&LangID=E. 2014

People

“When the ceremony was over, I found The Bear and handed him my diploma along with a ballpoint pen. "What's this for, lamb?" "I want you to sign it, Colonel. I want you to make it official," I answered. "I wan the name of a man I can respect on my diploma, Colonel." He handed me back the diploma without signing it. "There already is, Bubba," he answered. "There already is."”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

And he pointed to my name.
Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 498

“JR: Cause Aaron Barrett* signed off on the publishing. He sued us because he said that we ripped off “Sell Out””

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“Saw pardelas and a green rush near the vessel. The crew of the Pinta saw a cane and a log; they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool, a piece of cane, a plant which grows on land, and a board. The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries. These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

11 October 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Appearance

“Remember that sign they hung up in an EPA office during the Reagan administration, "No good deed goes unpunished"? Under George Bush, no good science goes unpunished.”

David Helvarg (1951) American journalist

Source: Grist magazine, January 3, 2005.

Science

“I'll run just once — and just for the hell of it. I'll select the most qualified vice-presidential candidate possible just in case something strange happens and I win. After I'm sworn in I hang around long enough to sign an Executive Order requiring all airport screeners to have graduated in the top one-half of their high school class. Then I'll free all non-violent drug offenders, take a few spins on Air Force One and get to know the interns. Then I'll resign and let the vice president take the controls.”

Neal Boortz (1945) American author, journalist, and radio host

School, Hell

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

Art, Understanding, Thinking, Sense

“The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Reading", p. 6
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 74) - Speech given before the destruction of the nuclear-armed satellite Circum-Terra.

Men, People, Stupidity, Light

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Life, Children, Books, Youth

“De Saussur… develops the concept of semiology as the science which studies the functioning of signs in society, and treats linguistics as a branch of such a general science of signs.”

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

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 4

Study, Science

“A few years ago, I had the good fortune of running across a first edition of Paul's textbook (not the recent reprint of the original text, but an actual 1948 edition). It was a real find. I bought the volume in an online auction for, if my recollection is correct, $35. Talk about consumer surplus! I would have gladly paid many times that.
At the next Boston Fed meeting, I took the book along to get Paul to sign it. Below is the book's title page, along with Paul's gracious inscription.”

N. Gregory Mankiw (1958) American economist

Greg Mankiw, "Memories of Paul" http://gregmankiw.blogspot.kr/2009/12/memories-of-paul.html (December 15, 2009) 2000s -

Books, Time

“The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 75

Truth, History, Lying

“Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished.

Men, Nature, Memory, Time

“I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform other people who try to reform me. and I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill em. My motto is, Rob em all, Rape em all and Kill em all. I am very truly yours signed Cooper John II Carl Panzram”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
From a letter to the "Society for the Abolishment of Capital Punishment", Leavenworth, Kansas, May 23, 1930, Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, pgs. 210, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

People, Way

“Art is not merely a decorative enhancement of our lives but a sign of our desire to live in the world fully and honestly.”

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

Governor Generals Award for Poetry, Nov. 1999.
Other

World, Art

“Now, six years ago, al-Qaeda was planning to attack the Twin Towers. It wasn't a very nice world. And I think that if you think about six years ago, al-Qaida was preparing to attack the Twin Towers, Pakistan was allied with the Taliban, Afghanistan was the base from which al-Qaida was going to operate; the Israelis and the Palestinians had given up on a chance for -- or let me put it, the Palestinians had walked away from a chance for a Palestinian state, launched the second intifada, elected Ariel Sharon who basically said there would never be a Palestinian state and there will be a greater Israel; the North Korean were cheating on a deal that they had just signed; China and others were indifferent to that because it was a U. S.-North Korea bilateral deal; Iran was cheating on the IAEA out of sight. I could go on and on and on. That was the world in 2000 and 2001. And there is no doubt that by confronting -- oh, by the way, and Saddam Hussein was shooting at our pilots regularly in the no-fly zone and making a mockery of the Oil-for-Peace -- Oil-for-Food program and corruption was running rampant in that program. So, a worse world? I think so.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Interview With the Associated Press Editorial Board http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/06/86248.htm, June 8, 2007.

World, Peace, Food, Way

“When my son is taping for his permanent collection, he sits there and pauses his machine and when he is finished with it, he has a marvelous Clint Eastwood movie and there is no sign of a commercial. It is a brand new movie and he can put three of those on one 6-hour tape.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)

“Doing nothing is not the absence of a policy; it is, in fact, the adoption of one. "Neutrality" favors the side with the biggest arsenal. "Nonintervention" is a form of interference. If you will the end—and President Barack Obama has finally said that Qaddafi should indeed go—then to that extent you will the means…The immediate task is therefore to limit the amount of damage Qaddafi can do and sharply minimize the number of people he can murder. Whatever the character of the successor system turns out to be, it can hardly be worsened if we show it positive signs of friendship and solidarity…I am sure I am not alone in feeling rather queasy about being forced to watch the fires in Tripoli and Benghazi as if I were an impotent spectator. Indifference of this kind to the lives of others can have a coarsening effect. It can lower one's threshold of sympathy. If protracted unduly, it might even become brutalizing.”

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

2011-03-07
American Inaction Favors Qaddafi
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/03/american_inaction_favors_qaddafi.html: On the 2011 Libyan civil war
2010s, 2011

Friendship, People, Feeling, Indifference

“Greeks, God has signed our Liberty and will not go back on his promise.”

Theodoros Kolokotronis (1770–1843) Greek general

Theodoros Kolokotronis, quoted in: Stathis Paraskevopoulos (2008) " History of Kolokotronis: Theodoros Kolokotronis (1770-1843) http://www.kolokotronis.org.gr/default.aspx?catid=151" at kolokotronis.org, Accessed May 23, 2014.

God

“To such a one, already filled with intellectual substance, and possessing what we may call the practical gold-bullion of human culture, it was an obvious improvement that he should be taught to speak it out of him on occasion; that he should carry a spiritual banknote producible on demand for what of "gold-bullion" he had, not so negotiable otherwise, stored in the cellars of his mind. A man, with wisdom, insight and heroic worth already acquired for him, naturally demanded of the schoolmaster this one new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. A valuable superaddition of faculty:—and yet we are to remember it was scarcely a new faculty; it was but the tangible sign of what other faculties the man had in the silent state.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Wisdom, Nature

“Efficiency advantages and disadvantages are more finely balanced than with health care - one person's 'sign of a civilized society' is another's 'society is going to the dogs.”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 13, School Education, p. 309

Health, Dogs, Personality

“The words in a poem, (or more exactly, syllables) are vocal signs that convey an intangible essence (the pattern of feeling) that vanishes the moment we approach it with an analytical intelligence.”

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

What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

Feeling, Intelligence

“Outwardly Eisenhower impressed me favourably. On June 5 Eisenhower, Montgomery and de Lattre de Tassigny arrived in Berlin to sign the declaration on the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme authority in Germany by Governments of the USSR, the US, Britain and France. Before the formal meeting, Eisenhower came to my headquarters to confer upon me a high American military award: I was made Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit. On receiving the award, I immediately called Stalin and told him about it. Stalin said: "We should decorate Eisenhower and Montgomery with Orders of Victory and de Lattre de Tassigny with the Order of Suvorov, First Class." "May I tell them about it?"”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

I asked. Stalin said I could.
p. 660

Victory

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.”

Winnie Byanyima (1959) Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician and diplomat

Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year - poorest half of humanity got nothing https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest-1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year, Oxfam International (22 January 2018)

People, Food, Clothes

“A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Acontece tener un padre un hijo feo y sin gracia alguna, y el amor que le tiene le pone una venda en los ojos para que no vea sus faltas, antes las juzga por discreciones y lindezas y las cuenta a sus amigos por agudezas y donaires.
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Prologue

Love, Feeling, Intelligence

“The term "meaning" is not here included among the basic terms of semiotic. This term, useful enough at the level of everyday analysis, does not have the precision necessary for scientific analysis. Accounts of meaning usually throw a handful of putty at the target of sign phenomena, while a technical semiotic must provide us with words which are sharpened arrows. "Meaning" signifies any and all phases of sign-processes (the status of being a sign, the interpretant, the fact of denoting, the significatum), and frequently suggests mental and valuational processes as well; hence it is desirable for semiotic to dispense with the term and to introduce special terms for the various factors which meaning fails to discriminate.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: Signs, Language and Behavior, 1946, p. 19

“I think that there is this idea that what you should go after is fame. That is a hugely mistaken idea because fame means absolutely nothing. This whole culture of wanting to become famous is on a hiding to nothing, a sign of a society that’s lost its way and will only judge people as being valid if they’re famous, which of course is all bullshit. As Tom Stoppard said, the only thing that fame means is that more people know you than you know.”

Jeremy Irons (1948) English actor

Jeremy Irons: Why our TV isn't what it used to be
The Telegraph
2008-12-20
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3870293/Jeremy-Irons-Why-our-TV-isnt-what-it-used-to-be.html
2011-08-11

People, Way, Idea, Thinking

“Jeff Foxworthy is having his house repainted and he has a piano in the corner
Painter: Is that y'all's piano?
Jeff: No, that's our coffee table. It just has buck teeth. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's Your Sign

Coffee, Housing

“I don't think young people are as demoralized as the media and government would like us to think. The obvious sign of that is how strong and how close personal connections are and how much people are able to build a life for themselves, despite all this stuff that's been thrown at them.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Life, People, Thinking, Strong

“He (Tony Stark) is flawed, but he’s a great man. He goes through this whole incredible resurrection. He really takes adversity and uses it as an opportunity and that’s a sign of greatness.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

“I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan.
Welcome to the land of fame excess - am I going to fit in?
I jump into the cab, here I am for the first time,
I look to the right and I see the Hollywood sign.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Party in the USA, her second hit song
Song lyrics

Dreams, Time

“We didn't have a feasible business model, let's put it this way, because when we started, the business model is to provide the backend search technology to the portal companies in China. We did that, we came up with very good Chinese search engine technology and we signed up a lot of the Chinese portals in a very short period of time that includes SINA, Sohu, Netease, Yahoo! China and any partol company you can think of in China.”

Robin Li (1968) billionaire businessman and entrepreneur

Source: Opportunities in China at the Age of Innovation https://ecorner.stanford.edu/in-brief/opportunities-in-china-at-the-age-of-innovation/,Stanford eCorner(2009-09-23).

Way, Search, Business, Thinking

“(When asked about pop music) Pop music has become the largest farce in music history. It is soul-less, mechanical, and only made for the sole purpose of making the fastest dollar possible, with more emphasis on imagery than the music. I would much rather remain an independent recording artist who can dictate his own creativity and make it available to a smaller community of fans then sign with a major label under conditions of compromising my work just to sell lunch boxes and sound like every other thing out there. The only artists that have any longevity are the ones that pioneer a movement not follow a movement. The hundreds of following wannabes always get left in the dust or remain one-hit-wonders.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Music, Soul, History, Communication

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men, God, Children, World

“Look on me! if canst read the signs of love,
Thou’lt see that death is written in my face.”

Guido Guinizzelli (1230–1276) Italian poet

Sonetto. (Poeti del Primo Secolo, Firenze, 1816, Vol. I, p. 105).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 407.

Love, Death, Reading

“Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend — who will stand firm when others fail — the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous; in such an one there is a fragment of the Rock of Ages — a sign that there has been a prophet amongst us.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 352.

Age, Faith, Dependency

“A man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal has put together this travel journal. But at the moment of signing he is suddenly afraid. So he casts the first stone. Here.”

Henri Michaux (1899–1984) painter, poet, writer

Preface to Ecuador (1929)

Travel

“What's going on outside? It was really nice - all the fans out there with big signs.”

Pamela Anderson (1967) Canadian-American model, producer, author, former showgirl

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, January 8, 2008, referring to the writers strike picket line outside the studio.

“Shake (shift) parts of some of the letters in Voice (2). A-not-complete-unit, or a new unit. The elements in the 3 parts should neither fit nor not fit together. One would like not to be led. Avoid the idea of a puzzle which could be solved. Remove the signs of "thought". It is not the "thought" which needs showing... It is not interesting and should not be shown (to be) as interesting that the parts can be shifted. It was always true that they can be shifted. 'Duchamp's ironing board.'”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Does Teeny Duchamp have an ironing board?
Book B (sketchbook), c 1967: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 64
1960s

Idea, Parting

“But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Three

Life, Pain, Hope, Learning

“In the depths of our crater lake, everything is silent. The volcano's been extinct for ages. Layer upon layer of solitude, like folds of soft mud. The little bit of light that manages to penetrate to the depths lights up the surroundings like the remains of some faint, distant memory. At these depths there's no sign of life. I don't know how long she looks at me -not at me, maybe, but at the spot where I am. Time's rules don't apply here. Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 23, Kafka Temura

Life, Age, Solitude, Light

Quotes about sign page 5

Quotes about sign
page 5