Quotes about sign
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“The history of France begins with the French language. Language is the primary sign of nationality.”

Jules Michelet (1798–1874) French historian

[Histoire de France, Michelet, Jules, Chamerot, 1861, 1, book 3]
History of France, 1833-1867

“Our prestige abroad, what other peoples think of us, is not of importance only to those Americans who work or travel abroad. The sign "Yankee go home" does not apply only to our diplomats, foreign-aid specialists, and military personnel who are stationed overseas.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Speech at East Los Angeles College Stadium, Los Angeles, California

People, Travel, Home, Thinking

“The simple organization of a people into a national body, composite or otherwise, is of itself an impressive fact. As an original proceeding, it marks the point of departure of a people, from the darkness and chaos of unbridled barbarism, to the wholesome restraints of public law and society. It implies a willing surrender and subjection of individual aims and ends, often narrow and selfish, to the broader and better ones that arise out of society as a whole. It is both a sign and a result of civilization. A knowledge of the character, resources and proceedings of other nations, affords us the means of comparison and criticism, without which progress would be feeble, tardy, and perhaps, impossible. It is by comparing one nation with another, and one learning from another, each competing with all, and all competing with each, that hurtful errors are exposed, great social truths discovered, and the wheels of civilization whirled onward.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People, Truth, Law, Error

“I listened to the San Juan games on the radio and my idol was Monte Irvin, because he not only was a good hitter but had a very good arm. Even my friends called me Monte Irvin as a nickname. I never thought I’d be good enough to play pro ball. I always felt you had to be like Superman to play professionally. But in 1952, at age 17, I signed a contract with Santurce. My bonus? It was $500 and one glove. They also paid me $30 a week. Two years later – when I was 19 – there were eight or nine big league teams after me and I signed with the Dodgers for a $10,000 bonus. This was a big day in my life.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Life, Age, Game

“Yes, a man ought to be courageous enough, loyal enough, and rich enough, not to produce but one prodigious work, in order that this work should be a chef-d'oeuvre, and glorify the man in his creation... If I could have my wish, I would be a millionaire for nothing else save to effect the genesis of a single and unique picture, to consecrate myself thereto and to find my pleasure therein, to suffer and joy in it, until, content with my work, after years of trial, I could sign it and say: 'There my powers stop and there my heart ceases to beat.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

as quoted by Charles Sprague Smith, in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye publisher, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 160-61
undated quotes

Pleasure, Courage, Suffering, Heart

“I programmed all the drums and synths, while he played all the guitars. The initial plan was just to demo his songs because he was out of his UA deal, so we pumped it to people like Island and Virgin and they loved it. It was signed to Island, but Simon Draper of Virgin heard it and called me to talk about their band, the Human League. They'd done demos of The Sound of the Crowd and Love Action in a Sheffield studio, but Simon didn't think they were getting the punch they needed. He loved the drums on Homosapien and asked me to do a track. So the band turned up at Genetic with their multi-track for The Sound of the Crowd. Simon had conned them and told them that I'd mix it! I said, 'We're going to start again and do it better'. There were a few grumbles, but by the time we'd finished, they were really pleased.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

Perrone, Pierre, Martin Rushent: Synth-pop pioneer and innovative producer of the Human League, the Stranglers and Buzzcocks, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/martin-rushent-synthpop-pioneer-and-innovative-producer-of-the-human-league-the-stranglers-and-buzzcocks-2294842.html, The Independent, 11 June 2011

Love, People, Thinking, Time

“We have reached the bottom of the 9th inning, and now it is happening, what we normally experience at any ballpark when a visiting pitcher is so close to greatness, even the hometown fans come to root for him. He has come too far, he has journeyed too long to drop it.
(With 2 out) Chris Gwynn standing at the plate, Dennis Martinez delivers…Fastball hit JUST foul along the third base line. Foul by a foot, and now the crowd seems to be inspired. It's as if they take it as a sure sign that Dennis will get what he wants, and what he wants is suddenly what they want. 47,224 on their feet. One pitch away from a pitcher's absolute Nirvana. The pitcher's dream: A perfect game. Dennis Martinez ready, here's the pitch…Popped deep in the air to center field, going deep on it is Marquis Grissom, he's got it on the track!
(Crowd cheers)
Dennis Martinez getting mobbed by his teammates on this 28th of July, 1991, 3:22 pm in the afternoon. Dennis Martinez has reached the ultimate, a perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Nothing scratchy, nothing flukey, it was a masterpiece! And with tears pouring down his cheeks, he goes down the steps and into the Expo dugout. What a game!”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Dennis Martinez's perfect game at Dodger Stadium, July 28, 1991, based off of video on mlb.com

Dreams, Angels, Game, Tear

“I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change wound have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM."”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, God, World, Problem

“[The Constructive idea.. ] has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention by any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Naum Gabo (1937) 'Editorial', p. 7 as cited in: W. Rotzler (1989) Constructive Concepts - A History of Constructive Art from Cubism to the Present, Rizzoli.
1936 - 1977, Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Life, World, Law, Art

“Who is Guru? The highest manifestation of God is Guru. So when Guru is here, God is here, to whom will you give your devotion? I want that the general should sign some papers. I need not go to his office when he is sitting in my home. Is it necessary to go in his office when his is sitting in my home? When God has come here, then what is the need to give devotion to God there?”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

(responding to a question about the word guru), Alta Loma Terrace Satsang, 1971 - reproduced from Elan Vital magazine, vol. II, issue 1
1970s

God, Home

“It wasn’t really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I’ll be happy. It wasn’t what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I’m pretty bored of them, though. I wasn’t interested and couldn’t be bothered to pretend I was.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

60 Seconds: Nigella Lawson (2006)

Summer, Happiness

“An artist using statistics as a brush could paint two very different pictures of our country. One would have warning signs: increasing layoffs, rising energy prices, too many failing schools, persistent poverty, the stubborn vestiges of racism. Another picture would be full of blessings: a balanced budget, big surpluses, a military that is second to none, a country at peace with its neighbors, technology that is revolutionizing the world, and our greatest strength, concerned citizens who care for our country and care for each other.”

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

2000s, 2001, Address to Joint Session of Congress on Administration Goals (February 2001)

World, School, Peace, Painting

“We sign a contract for a North Rail that cost $17 million per kilometer while the equivalent cost in Shanghai is $7M.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“Maps, due to their melding of scientific and artistic approaches, always involve complex interaction between the denotative and the connotative meanings of signs they contain.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 337

“But then the question came up of just who would define what Defined Military Sites were. I received a letter – to my and to Arafat, at the same time – which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: “I’m not signing.” Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to my and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Or rather, ratify it, it had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Benjamin Natenyahu, Israeli settlement of Ofra, 2001, speaking to a family of West Bank settlers whose 10 year old son had just returned from the hospital after being injured in a Palestinian attack. http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/07/14/bibi-the-bamboozler-to-settlers-america-wont-get-in-our-way-its-easily-moved/,(Hebrew video source) http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=731034 2000s, 2001

Question, Time

“I have no idea what forms this Paganism will have in another 30 years, I think we will be surprised. The Gods will manifest more and more--it's a matter of survival for the Earth, our Mother. That we Pagans are ever more numerous to worry over Her future is surely a sign of the Gods who act through us.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

God, Idea, Thinking, Future

“I stopped reading the comics page a long time ago. It seems that whoever is in charge of what to put on that page is given an edict that states: “For God’s sake, try to be as bland as possible and by no means offend any one!” Thus, whenever something like Doonesbury would come along, it would be continually censored and, if lucky, eventually banished to the editorial pages. The message was clear: Keep it simple, keep it cute, and don’t be challenging, outrageous or political.
And keep it white!
It’s odd that considering all the black ink that goes into making the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it’s not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just…well, you know…so much more happy and friendly and funny!
Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That’s where you can see a lot of black faces. The media loves to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.
Oops, there I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, the “whites only” signs are down, but they have just been replaced by invisible ones that, if you are black, you see hanging in front of the home loan department of the local bank, across the entrance of the ritzy suburban or on the doors of the U. S. Senate”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

100 percent Caucasian and going strong!
Foreword to "The Boondocks Treasury: a Right to be Hostile" by Aaron McGruder, (2003).
2003

Love, Men, God, People

“Charisma is a sign of the calling. Saints and pilgrims are defiantly moved by it.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Patterns, Seeds, Cloaking, Soul Circling, p. 86
Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (2007)

“…[Bob Kane] had an idea for a character called "Batman", and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of … reddish tights, I believe, with boots … no gloves, no gauntlets … with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign … BATMAN.”

Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer

[Jim Steranko, The Steranko History of Comics, Supergraphics, Reading, Pa., 1970, ISBN 0-517-50188-0, p.44]

Idea, Drawing

“Android continues to stomp its competition flat. Even the post-Jobs Apple can't stem the tide; it's pretty close to the 10% niche market share I predicted back in 2009 already, with no sign that trend will or can be reversed.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: Nokia gives it up for Microsoft http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5039 in Armed and Dangerous (3 September 2013)

“Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 3

God, Winter, Weather

“If we don't put forward such a proposal (signing a peace pact with Mainland China) and start negotiating with (Mainland) China, how can we know we will not achieve any results?”

Hung Hsiu-chu (1948) Taiwanese politician

Hung Hsiu-chu (2015) cited in " Cross-strait status quo is 'one China, same interpretation': KMT's Hung http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201505060036.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 6 May 2015

Peace

“It’s important to understand how we got where we are today. In 1966, the unthinkable happened: a madman climbed the University of Texas clock tower and opened fire, killing more than a dozen people. It was the first mass shooting in the age of television, and it left a real impression on the country. It was the kind of terror we didn’t expect to ever see again. But around 30 years ago, we started to see an uptick in these types of shootings, and over the last decade they’ve become the new norm.
In July 2012, a gunman walked into a darkened theater in Aurora and shot 12 people to death, injuring 70 more. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. The sudden and utterly random violence was a terrifying sign of what was to come.
In December 2012, a young man entered an elementary school in Newtown and murdered six educators and 20 young children. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. Watching the aftermath of these young babies being gunned down was heartrending.
In June 2016, a gunman entered a nightclub in Orlando and sprayed revelers with gunfire. The shooter fired hundreds of rounds, many in close proximity, and killed 49. Many of the victims were shot in the head at close range. One of his weapons was an assault rifle.
Last month, a gunman opened fire on concertgoers in Las Vegas, turning an evening of music into a killing field. All told, the shooter used multiple assault rifles fitted with bump-fire stocks to kill 58 people. The concert venue looked like a warzone.
Over the weekend in Sutherland Springs, 26 were killed by a gunman with an assault rifle. The dead ranged from 17 months old to 77 years. No one is spared with these weapons of war. When so many rounds are fired so quickly, no one is spared. Another community devastated and dozens of families left to pick up the pieces.
These are just a few of the many communities we talk about in hushed tones—San Bernardino, Littleton, Aurora, towns and cities across the country that have been permanently scarred.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

[Senators Introduce Assault Weapons Ban, November 8, 2017, w:Diane Feinstein, Diane, Feinstein, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/11/senators-introduce-assault-weapons-ban]
On the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

Death, War, Children, People

“I am against change. It is overrated. It improves nothing,’ said Hor.
‘Come now, that is an absurd opinion, and goes against all sense. It is merely a sign of age, for as we get older, so we believe the world gets worse, manners decline, standards of ethics and knowledge are eroded—’ said Nakht.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

ibid
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

Age, World, Knowledge, Sense

““Sometimes I see signs on walls saying Kill the Rich,” Clem said. “And sometimes Kill the Rich has been crossed out and Harm the Rich written underneath. A clear gain for civilization I would say. And the one that says Jean-Paul Sartre Is a Fartre. Something going on there, you must admit. Dim ﬂicker of something….””

Donald Barthelme book Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), p. 66.

“The European Union is very popular with politicians, because it's very good to politicians. It was created for their benefit. It's not so good to voters, because it denies them a voice — another reason it's popular with politicians. These days, we in Europe no longer make most of our own laws. We have them handed down to us by people we haven't elected and can't remove. The people we do elect are powerless to change anything, even if they wanted to, and most of them don't want to, because they've got their snouts in the trough of a corrupt organisation whose accounts haven't been signed off for the last sixteen years.”

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

"Come on, Ireland" (20 May 2011) http://youtube.com/watch/?v=R6M8an_XKL8 2011

People, Law, Change

“[to] think, in a certain way, of the power and severity of Romanesque paintings... Go to the beach and make graphic signs in the sand, draw by pissing on the dry ground, design in space by recording the songs of the birds, the sounds of water and wind.... and the chant of insects.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

'Working notes of Miro, 1940 – 1941'; as quoted in: Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 69
1940 - 1960

Way, Bird, Thinking, Water

“We have signed international conventions, such as on women's rights, and we should respect them.”

Talal bin Abdul Aziz (1931–2018) Member of House of Saud

Senior Saudi royal demands reform, BBC News, 5 September 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6980056.stm,

Women

“Engvall: Yesterday, my son was out in the yard playing with his friend, and he hit his friend. I walked up to him, and I said, "Hey…" (pantomimes hitting his son) "We don't hit". He looked at me like, "Here's your sign, Dad".”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography (2002)
Here's Your Sign, "Here's MY Sign..."

“Catholic writers tend to see humanity struggling in a fallen world. They combine a longing for grace and redemption with a deep sense of human imperfection and sin. Evil exists, but the physical world is not evil. Nature is sacramental, shimmering with signs of sacred things…. Catholicism is also intrinsically communal, a notion that goes far beyond sitting at Mass with the local congregation, extending to a mystical sense of continuity between the living and the dead. Finally, there is a habit of spiritual self-scrutiny and moral examination of conscience”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

10
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

World, Communication, Nature, Sense

“Even the wind lay still,
Our essence was fire and cold and movement, movement…
Oh, if they ask you for the sign of the father in you,
Tell them it's movement, movement, movement and… repose.”

Aaron Weiss

Paper-Hanger.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

“Jews like presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders have forgotten that riches are a reward for work well done. In the Jewish faith's infinite wisdom, wealth justly acquired is a sign of God's blessing.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Burn-the-Wealth Bernie & His Partial Enslavement System," http://www.quarterly-review.org/burn-the-wealth-bernie/The Quarterly Review, October 16, 2015 2010s, 2015

Wisdom, God, Faith, Hope

“Maybe I'd better call a halt to the journal for a bit. Until something crops up, that is, which it hopefully won't for a couple of decades. In the meantime: farewell, enjoy your futile lives, etc. This is Bartimaeus, care of The Other Place, signing off.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

Closing entry
The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Bart's Journal

“Coming back to Iraq, obviously the situation has been getting worse over time, but I think it is still salvageable. We now have a political process going on, and I think if one looks at the place and what's been happening there, one has to marvel at what has been accomplished. There is an old saying, no news is good news, and the media obviously work on the reverse principle: Good news is no news. Most of the good things that have happened have not been reported, but there has been tremendous progress in many respects. Three elections were held three fair elections in which millions of Iraqis stood in line waiting to vote and knowing they were risking their lives every moment that they did so. And all this wrangling that's going on now is part of the democratic process, the fact that they argue, that they negotiate, that they try to find a compromise. This is part of their democratic education.
So I find all this both annoying and encouraging. I see that more and more people are becoming involved in the political process. And there's one thing in Iraq in particular that I think is encouraging, and that is the role of women. Of all the Arab countries, with the possible exception of Tunisia, Iraq is the one where women have made most progress. I'm not talking about rights, a word that has no meaning in that context. I'm talking about opportunity, access. Women in Iraq had access to education, to higher education, and therefore to the professions, and therefore to the political process to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the Arab world, as I said, with the possible exception of Tunisia. And I think that the participation of women the increasing participation of women is a very encouraging sign for the development of democratic institutions.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Women, People, World, Education

“Why should I not expect from the sign of the dream more than I expect from a degree of consciousness which is daily more acute? Can’t the dream also be used in solving the fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist? Is the dream any less restrictive or punitive than the rest? I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Life, Dreams, Question, Reality

“The old man … received the Sabbath with sweet song and chanted the hallowing tunefully over raisin wine; while it was still day he hallowed and the sun came to gaze at his glass. … The table was well spread with all manner of fruit, beans, greenstuffs and good pies, plum water tasting like wine, but of flesh and of fish there was never a sign. … in truth it is in no way obligatory to eat flesh and fish … He and she, meaning the old man and the old woman, had never tasted flesh since growing to maturity.”

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888–1970) Israeli Hebrew writer, Nobel laureate in Literature

The Bridal Canopy https://books.google.it/books?id=wg4WAAAAMAAJ, translated by I. M. Lask, New York: Literary Guild of America, 1937, p. 222.

Truth, Way, Fish, Water

“Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

God

“A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of depression, but a Beethoven symphony reveals what that depression feels like. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of mind, yet they are rarely brought together.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

Feeling, Nature

“The restless dust of Los Angeles fevered him. He was a greater wanderer than myself, and all day long he sought out perverse loves in the parks. But he was so ugly he never found his desire, and the warm nights with low stars and yellow moon tortured him away from his room until the dawn arrived…Some day he would leave this hated city, some day he would go back where friendship meant something, and sure enough, he went away and I got a postcard signed "Memphis Kid" from Fort Worth, Texas.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Angels

“The first duty of a government is to be true to itself. This does not mean perfection, it means a plan to strive for perfection. It means loyalty to ideals. The ideals of America were set out in the Declaration of Independence and adopted in the Constitution. They did not represent perfection at hand, but perfection found. The fundamental principle was freedom. The fathers knew that this was not yet apprehended. They formed a government firm in the faith that it was ever to press toward this high mark. In selfishness, in greed, in lust for gain, it turned aside. Enslaving others, it became itself enslaved. Bondage in one part consumed freedom in all parts. The government of the fathers, ceasing to be true to itself, was perishing. Five score and ten years ago, that divine providence which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle, sent into the world a new life destined to save a nation. No star, no sign foretold his coming. About his cradle all was poor and mean, save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his tender years from her deathbed in humble poverty, she endowed her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin, as into his life, men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the nation. He broke the might of oppression. He restored a race to its birthright.”

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

1920s, Duty of Government (1920)

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“He knew that he had screwed up but he was the kind of guy who, after he shoots his mouth off, cannot back down or admit any failing. The world is full of those people. All of us would be better off if their fathers would strangle them as soon as they showed signs of being that way. This particular fool was willing to sacrifice an army rather than admit his error.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 30 (p. 368)

People, World, Fools, Way

“As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great president of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.”

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

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

God, Justice, Feeling, Thinking

“I was in a cab in New York. The cab had a sign, "Please do not smoke, Christ is our unseen guest." This guy was reaching. I figure, if he could overcome being nailed to a cross, I don't think a Marlboro Light's gonna faze him that much.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Dark Poet (1991)

Guy, Thinking, Light, Christ

“and for the falling stars the broken hearts mansions in your mind
and all the roads that were lost the signs you missed
turns that passed you by maybe it’s not too late to find your way it’s not your place to say
what if you can you can go home again”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Theme from Pasadena (You Can Go Home) http://aliciawittmusic.com/lyrics/theme-from-pasadena-you-can-go-home-again/, (lyrics by Witt, music by Ben Folds) · Video performance with Ben Folds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QAVUzEOX1E Lyrics, Revisionary History (2015)

Way, Home, Star, Heart

“Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

To Charles Sumner, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“I could never have signed this treaty. I hope that that is clear to all who have heard me.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the House of Lords http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108314 rejecting the Maastricht Treaty (7 June 1993) Post-Prime Ministerial

Hope

“In a media-based society (and of course there is no such thing as a non-media-based society consisting of more than one person) it is the signs and significants, the meanings and habits and conventions of speaking and thinking, the images and stereotypes which control everything. It is important to analyze how it is represented and of course what is not represented or how it lacks representation. It's not so much Rupert Murdoch – whose assholeness I will not dispute – that we should attack, but rather something I would call the cultural grammar of the public space. Power is formed within such a grammar. Access and non-access to each and every thing is regulated in its realm. Meanings are negotiated there.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

talking about Guerilla Communication strategies in "Urban Hacking" http://www.transcript-verlag.de/ts1536/ts1536.php, transkript, p. 98

Thinking, Personality

“The more visible signs of protest are gone, but I think there is a realization that the tactics of the late sixties are not sufficient to meet the challenges of the seventies.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As quoted in The Quotable Woman (1978) by Elaine Partnow, p. 390

Thinking

“I was called a fool when I was chair of fashion at Parsons and I invited PETA to speak to students. The industry went crazy. I said: "Wait a minute. The International Fur Trade Commission is coming here. I have a responsibility to bring another point of view, let the students decide." I would say if you're going to use fur, you have a responsibility to know its origins. … There's no reason to kill animals for fur. Wearing fur is like wearing a big sign reading, "I'm in favor of inflicting cruelty and pain on animals as a fashion statement." Unspeakable torture is inflicted on dogs, cats, bunnies, raccoons, foxes, minks and myriad trapped, helpless creatures in the name of fashion — yes, dogs and cats.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

"Tim Gunn and me" http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2009/11/tim-gunn-and-me.html by Patt Morrison, interview with the Los Angeles Times (23 November 2009).

Pain, Dogs, Fools, Cats

“… there are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

Ogilvy on Advertising, p. 170

“Language is a gift that puts lyrics to the music of our lives. Without spoken language we wouldn’t be able to say, ‘I love you’. We’d have to say ‘uuurrrgghh’ or hold up a sign. And whether it’s one person’s gentle English or another’s muddy, arrogant French, it’s our language that makes us unapproachable and difficult to understand.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Love, Music, Understanding, Personality

“The novels and poems which proceed from writers in the grip of this barren pessimism are of the kind which make narrow moralists fume, and use words like "decadence"; the writers rejoice, because making narrow moralists (who are usually frightened people) hop with rage is a sign that they have hit a mark, and they do not understand how poor and easy a mark it is.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

People, Understanding, Rage

“One can imagine having a procedural rule that anything ambiguous should be treated as the Taj Mahal unless we see that it is labelled "fog"…The motorist replies: "What sort of rule is this? Surely the best guarantee I can have that the fog is fog is if I fail to see the sign saying 'fog' because of the fog."”

Michael Frayn (1933) British writer

James Fenton (ed.) The Original Michael Frayn (Edinburgh: Salamander Press, 1983) p. 67.

Imagination

“After long and fruitless endeavors to effect the purposes of their mission and to obtain arrangements within the limits of their instructions, they concluded to sign such as could be obtained and to send them for consideration, candidly declaring to the other negotiators at the same time that they were acting against their instructions, and that their Government, therefore, could not be pledged for ratification….
Whether a regular army is to be raised, and to what extent, must depend on the information so shortly expected. In the mean time I have called on the States for quotas of militia, to be in readiness for present defense, and have, moreover, encouraged the acceptance of volunteers; and I am happy to inform you that these have offered themselves with great alacrity in every part of the Union. They are ordered to be organized and ready at a moment's warning to proceed on any service to which they may be called, and every preparation within the Executive powers has been made to insure us the benefit of early exertions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson's Seventh State of the Union Address (27 October 1807). Description of the negotiations and rejected treaty of James Monroe and William Pinkney with Britain over maritime rights, and subsequent negotiations over the British sinking of the American ship Chesapeake, leading to an American embargo (The Embargo Act).
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Time, Parting, Dependency, Happiness

“There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant [William] Calley, are war criminals.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

Testimony before subcommittees of the U.S. Senate, April, 1971

Men, War, People, Law

“When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which — of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Between Man and Man (1965), p. 15
Between Man and Man (1965)

Life, God, Time, Night

“Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time.”

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Hermann Ebbinghaus, quoted in: Geza Revesz, The Origins and Prehistory of Language, London 1956. footnote p. 126

Time

“I started watching reality shows and being horrified at people signing up to be humiliated in front of the entire country. … I saw one show, The Amazing Race, in which people were eating spicy soup and vomiting and crying. Why would you do that? Also, I was fascinated by these actors and actresses who would sign up to be followed around by cameras in their life. You become a celebrity, not because of your work or what you do, but because you have no privacy. I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. It's worth more than that. I'm worth more than that.”

Lisa Kudrow (1963) American actress

Guardian interview (2006)

Life, People, Reality, Cry

“If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society, if Christians are to occupy the "high ground" which they vacated in the noon time of "modernity," it will not be by forming a Christian political party, or by aggressive propaganda campaigns. Once again it has to be said that there can be no going back to the "Constantinian" era. It will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced, and from which men and women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel. But that will only happen as and when local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life, and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument, and foretaste of God's redeeming grace for the whole life of society.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002), 232-233.

Life, Women, Men, God

“We shall lodge at the sign of the Grave, you say;
Well, the road is a long one we trudge, my friend,
So why should we grieve at the break of the day?
Let us sing, let us drink, let us love, let us play,--
We can keep our sights for the journey's end.”

Percy Addleshaw (1866–1916) English journalist

Travellers (1895).

Love, Drink, Singing

“I have been consistent and committed to comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. I think our best chance was in 2007, when Ted Kennedy led the charge on comprehensive immigration reform. We have Republican support. We had a president willing to sign it. I voted for that bill. Senator Sanders voted against it. Just think, imagine where we would be today is we had achieved comprehensive immigration reform nine years ago. Imagine how much more secure families would be in our country, no longer fearing the deportation of a loved one; no longer fearing that they would be found out. … In 2006, when Senator Sanders was running for the Senate from Vermont, he voted in the House with hard-line Republicans for indefinite detention for undocumented immigrants, and then he sided with those Republicans to stand with vigilantes known as Minute Men who were taking up outposts along the border to hunt down immigrants. So I think when you were running for the Senate, you made it clear by your vote, Senator, that you were going to stand with the Republicans. When you got to the Senate in 2007, one of the first things you did was vote against Ted Kennedy’s immigration reform which he’d been working on for years before you ever arrived.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Love, Men, Fear, Family

“We are also convinced that we can already proclaim the first signs of the time. The first works of a new era are tremendously difficult to define. Who can see clearly what their aim is and what is to come; But just the fact that they do exist and appear in many places today, sometimes independently of each other, and that they possess inner truth, makes us certain that they are the first signs of the coming new epoch... The hour is unique. Is it too daring to call attention to the small, unique signs of the time?”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

1911 - 1914, The 'Savages' of Germany' (1912)

Truth, Appearance, Time

“Scripture says:—If a man should rise, pretend to be a prophet, and show you his signs by which he desired to convince you that his words are true, know that God intends thereby to prove to the nations how firmly you believe in the truth of God's Word, and how well you have comprehended the true Essence of God; that you cannot be misled by any tempter to corrupt your faith in God. Your religion will then afford a guidance to all who seek the truth, and of all religions man will choose that which is so firmly established that it is not shaken by the performance of a miracle. For a miracle cannot prove that which is impossible; it is useful only as a confirmation of that which is possible, as we have explained in our Mishneh-torah.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.24

God, Truth, Faith, Religion

“Weep for life, with its toil and care,
Its crime to shun, and its sorrow to bear;
Let tears and the sign of tears be shed
Over the living, not over the dead!”

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

(21st August 1830) The Legacy of the Roses
The London Literary Gazette, 1830

Life, Tear, Dead

“If you've been cryocrastinating, putting off signing up for cryonics "until later", don't think that you've "gotten away with it so far". Many worlds, remember? There are branched versions of you that are dying of cancer, and not signed up for cryonics, and it's too late for them to get life insurance.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

" Timeless Identity http://lesswrong.com/lw/qx/timeless_identity/" (June 2008)

Life, World, Thinking

“Ron White's son is going on a direct flight from Austin, Texas to Houston, Texas and is talking to the flight attendant.
Flight attendant: Is there going to be someone to pick him up when he gets off the plane?
Ron: No, I'm going to pin a $20 bill to his collar and wish him the best of luck. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie (2003)
Here's Your Sign

“One of the first major steps in the direction of modern skepticism came through the victory of Occam over Aquinas in a controversy about language. The statement that modi essendi were replaced by modi significandi et intelligendi, or that ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations, describes broadly the change in philosophy which continues to our time. From Occam to Bacon, from Bacon to Hobbes, and from Hobbes to contemporary semanticists, the progression is clear: ideas become psychological figments, words become useful signs.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” p. 36.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

Idea, Change, Time, Victory

“The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Dr. Heidenhoff's Process http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7052/7052-h/7052-h.htm (1880), Ch. 4.

Women, Men, Lovers, Mood

“I have received a question I have expected, 'Don't you deal with accidents?' Yes, I deal with accidents, just as Arp admits it all the time. And I admit it, too. But I like to have them under my command and not sign them because they are accidents. If it remains only accident then sign it 'accident' or 'fate' or 'the Lord', whatever you prefer. It's not you because you have not visioned it. You see visual formulation deals with vision, visual information and visual reaction. So I speak differently from all those who deliver themselves to uncontrolled accidents.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Fate, Question, Time

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

418
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men

“The Myth is the Myth of the Blood, which, under the sign of the Swastika, released the World Revolution. It is the Awakening of the Soul of the Race, which, after a period of long slumber, victoriously put an End to Racial Chaos.”

Alfred Rosenberg book The Myth of the Twentieth Century

Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - 1930 (in front of the actual text, not by Rosenberg himself)
Misattributed

World, Soul, Victory

“On an ordinary day the corridor would have been filled with the early lunch crowd, but now the emptiness gave the place an eerie feeling, as though I were a trespasser and hidden eyes were watching me. Except that I was the only one there and the single sign of life was the light behind my office door.
I turned the knob, pushed it open and just stood there a second because something was wrong, sure as hell wrong, and the total silence was as loud as a wild scream. I had the.45 in my hand, crouched and edged to one side, listening, waiting, watching.”

Mickey Spillane book The Killing Man

The Killing Man (1989)

Life, Feeling, Hell, Light

“Incredibly, Apple has persuaded Disney, which owns ABC, to make available all episodes of five TV series, including "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and "That's So Raven." Each show costs $1.99 — an easy impulse buy if you missed an episode. They play back beautifully, with no network logo in the corner, no yearlong wait for the DVD, and no commercials. (One 43-minute "hour" of TV takes 12 minutes to download with my cable modem, and about two minutes to transfer to the iPod over its U. S. B. 2.0 cable.)… That Mr. Jobs persuaded Disney to dip its pinky toe into these waters is an impressive development — and a very promising sign.”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" An iPod Worth Keeping an Eye On http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/technology/circuits/19web-pogue.html," The New York Times, October 18, 2005.

Water, Waiting

“A world of such individual minds is by the final implications of this proof the world of primary causes, and every member of it, secure above the vicissitudes of Time and Space and Force, is possessed of a supertemporal or eternal reality, and is therefore not liable to any lethal influence from any other source. Itself a primary cause, it can neither destroy another primary cause nor be destroyed by any. The objector who would open the eternal permanence of the soul to doubt, then, must assail the proofs of a priori knowledge; for so long as these remain free from suspicion, there can be no real question as to what they finally imply. The concomitance of our two streams of experience, the timed stream and the spaced stream, raised from a merely historical into a necessary concomitance by the argument that refers it to the active unity of each soul as its ground, becomes the steadfast sign and visible pledge of the imperishable self-resource of the individual spirit.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.307-8

World, Soul, Question, Knowledge

“They drew near, and observing that they were very comfortable standing before the warm fire, they put on logs and, while thus keeping it alive, brought up other people to it, showing them by signs how much comfort they got from it. In that gathering of men, at a time when utterance of sound was purely individual, from daily habits they fixed upon articulate words just as these had happened to come; then, from indicating by name things in common use, the result was that in this chance way they began to talk, and thus originated conversation with one another.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I "The Origin of the Dwelling House" Sec. 1

Men, People, Way, Chance

“We have observed for thirty centuries that a large nose is a sign on the door of our face that says 'Herein dwells a man who is intelligent, prudent, courteous, affable, noble-minded and generous'. A small nose is a cork on the bottle of the opposite vices.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Intelligence

“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Pleasure, Education, Fools, Art

“Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised wares—toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters—were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first sight the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 7

Life, Wisdom, Thinking, Water

“It is always a sign that a doctrine or history possesses no depth of authenticity when one is obliged to resort to miracles in order to prove its truth. Miracles do not possess in or by themselves any principle containing a single article of faith or conclusive fact. It follows not because a prophet has performed miracles that therefore he has spoken the truth, because false prophets and magicians also performed signs and wonders, and false Christs performed miracles by which even the elect might be deceived. It follows not because Jesus restored sight to a blind man and healed a lame one, ergo God is threefold in person, ergo Jesus is a real God and man. It follows not because Jesus awakened Lazarus from death that therefore he also must have arisen from death.”

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

Death, God, Truth, Faith

“Bennett seems to be showing alarming signs of irony. I have always found that irony among the lower orders is the first sign of an awakening social consciousness. It remains to be seen whether it will grow into an armed seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or spend itself in liberal journalism.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

“Not long after I first came to the anchor chair, I briefly signed off using the word, Courage. I want to return to it now, in a different way: to a nation still nursing a broken heart for what happened here in 2001, and especially to those who found themselves closest to the events of September 11; to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, in dangerous places; to those who have endured the tsunami, and to all who have suffered natural disasters, and must now find the will to rebuild; to the oppressed and to those whose lot it is to struggle in financial hardship or in failing health; to my fellow journalists in places where reporting the truth means risking all; and to each of you, Courage.
For The CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting. Good night.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

CBS Evening News Farewell (2005)

Health, Truth, Way, Courage

“.. in spite of the fact that it often feels as though the meaning of words and sentences were conveyed to us by the sounds of speech or the signs on a printed page, It is easy to show that meanings do not travel through space and must under all circumstances be constructed in the head of the language users.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Von Glasersfeld (1989, p. 444) cited in: Wolff-Michael Roth (2011) Passibility: At the Limits of the Constructivist Metaphor. p. 110

Travel, Feeling

“Having written all that, I must admit that there is some soul searching going on in the economics profession. As obvious as the financial crisis seems after the fact, few economists saw it coming (with some notable exceptions). Virtually none anticipated how severe it might be. In the fall of 2005, several prominent economists wrote in a prestigious journal, “As of the end of 2004, our analysis reveals little evidence of a housing bubble.”
Wrong. Actually the article was worse than wrong, because it was written explicitly to refute the signs of a bubble that had become obvious to many laypeople—which is kind of like the fire department showing up at a house with smoke wafting from the roof and declaring, “No, that’s not a fire,” only to have flames start leaping from the attic twenty minutes later. There was a bubble. And it can be explained best by incorporating psychology into economics, namely the tendency of individuals to believe that whatever is happening now is what’s most likely to happen in the future.”

Charles Wheelan (1966) American politician

Introduction
Naked Economics (rev. and updated ed., 2010)

Soul, Search, Future, Housing

“There's colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin' their feet
People sleepin' in their shoes
But there's a warnin' sign
On the road ahead
There's a lot of people sayin'
We'd be better off dead.
Don't feel like Satan,
But I am to them.
So I try to forget it,
Any way I can.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Rockin' in the Free World
Song lyrics, Freedom (1989)

People, Color, Shoe, Way

“What sign is there more plain
Than self-destruction, of a mind insane?”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Quale è di pazzia segno più espresso
Che, per altri voler, perder se stesso?
Canto XXIV, stanza 1 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“I can confirm that Poland will join the euro zone, and not just because all the treaties are signed, but because I consider it of strategic interest both for Poland and the European Union. But only a fool would believe that the euro could provide a guarantee that a financial crisis would never happen again.”

Donald Tusk (1957) Polish politician, current President of the European Council

Interview with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-polish-prime-minister-donald-tusk-i-m-incapable-of-getting-angry-with-angela-merkel-a-755965.html spiegel.de (28th April 2011)

Fools

“The cross of Christ is the pledge to us that the deepest suffering may be the condition of the highest blessing; the sign, not of God's displeasure, but of His widest and most compassionate face.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 568.

God, Suffering, Christ

“It is true that the masses have always been led in one manner or another, and it could be said that their part in history consists primarily in allowing themselves to be led, since they represent a merely passive element, a “matter” in the Aristotelian sense of the word. But, to lead them today, it is sufficient to dispose of purely material means, … and this shows clearly to what depths our age has sunk. At the same time the masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing themselves, and the fact that they believe this is a sign from which the extent of their stupidity may be inferred.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 109

Age, Stupidity, History, Sense

“You have a valuable house or farm. It is suggested that the title is not good. You employ counsel. You have the deeds examined. You search the records for mortgages, judgments and liens. You are not satisfied until you have a certificate, signed by the great seal of the State, assuring you that the title is good. Yet how many leave their title to heaven an undecided matter! Why do you not go to the records and find it? Give yourself no rest day or night until you can read your title clear to mansions in the skies.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 16.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Search, Reading, Housing, Night

“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile, Tear, Light, Silence

“Roger: New bands.. old bands - whatever. It's kind of weird. I guess I stay out of the loop on new bands, younger bands an who's getting signed or how many records this band is making. Persoanlly I don't care about things like that. I like melodies and lyrics and songs and energy. Isn't that what's it all about?”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore
Its weight within the heart, but wore
Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright;
The gall and vinegar they drank alone,
But to the world at large would only own
The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

World, Faith, Light, Wine

“To make something beautiful is revolutionary (not low class, not easy, not a sign of low intelligence).”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

Opening-sentence
Beauty is Revolution (1980)

Beauty, Intelligence

“A very large percentage of the founding Fathers, men who signed the Declaration of Independence and others after them, lost everything. They paid a price. But nobody wants to pay a price now; they want it handed to them. That has to change.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

Men, Change

“A ‘good’ style is one which can communicate through signs a certain inner state symptomatic of a certain taste (such a communication presupposing a listener or reader with the same taste).”

Sarah Kofman (1934–1994) philosopher from France

Source: Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972), p. 2

Communication

“Starting from 1993 in Otaru, Hokkaidō, and now running unchecked throughout Japan, signs saying 'Japanese Only' have gone up, making an unspoken undercurrent of fear of the outsider into clear, present, and brazen exclusionism — following the best traditions of segregation and apartheid.”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

"The Rogues' Gallery: Photos of Places in Japan which Exclude or Restrict non-Japanese Customers," http://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html Debito.Org (last revised November 2007)

Fear

“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ambassador Goldberg, distinguished Members of the leadership of the Congress, distinguished Governors and mayors, my fellow countrymen. We have called the Congress here this afternoon not only to mark a very historic occasion, but to settle a very old issue that is in dispute. That issue is, to what congressional district does Liberty Island really belong; Congressman Farbstein or Congressman Gallagher? It will be settled by whoever of the two can walk first to the top of the Statue of Liberty. This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power. Yet it is still one of the most important acts of this Congress and of this administration. For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation. Speaker McCormack and Congressman Celler almost 40 years ago first pointed that out in their maiden speeches in the Congress. And this measure that we will sign today will really make us truer to ourselves both as a country and as a people. It will strengthen us in a hundred unseen ways.”

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

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Pain, People, Justice, Way

“Herman Cain: My reaction is, that is very insensitive. There are some words that do not basically inspire the kind of negativity like that particular word. And I know that you've refrained from saying that word, so I'm going to say what the word was on the rock. The name of the place was called "Niggerhead". That is very insensitive. And since Governor Perry has been going there for years to hunt, I think that shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking that word off of that rock and renaming the place. It's just a basic case of insensitivity.
Christiane Amanpour: It was painted over.
Herman Cain: Yes, it was painted over. But how long ago was it painted over? So I'm still saying that it is a sign of insensitivity.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Thinking, Time, Painting

“I considered that the painter's personality should be kept out of things, and therefore pictures should be anonymous. It was I who decided that pictures should not be signed, and for a time Picasso did the same. I thought that from the moment someone else could do the same as myself, there was no difference between the pictures and they should not be signed. Afterwards I realized it was not so and began to sign my pictures again. Picasso had begun again anyhow. I realized that one cannot reveal oneself without mannerism, without some evident trace of one's personality. But all the same one should not go too far in that direction..”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, In conversation with Dora Vallier' (1954), p. 265

Time, Personality

“Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

The Art of Loving (1956)
Context: The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one’s own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard — every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.

World

Quotes about sign page 7

Quotes about sign
page 7