Quotes about situation (2091 quotes, page 17)

“We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 137.

Understanding , Nature , Knowledge , Problem

“The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has, in all the varieties of her offspring, a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousand-fold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being prematurely destroyed.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life , Nature , Parting

“Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 39, Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction

Love , Life

“When a child… discovers his own imagination, he suddenly walks into a new life. …seeing situations that do not exist. …in part as fantasy, and in part as a quite rational exploration of future experiences. …play …frolics in the fantasy world, and it experiments in the rational world… They project themselves into all worlds, possible and impossible, and discover for themselves the knife-edge boundary between them.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

Life , World , Imagination , Future

“Ghosts, unshriven souls, psychological hang-ups — they all exist in the mind to put people through hell — they're just different ways […] of looking at a given situation.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal

People , Way , Soul , Hell

“We now have a situation where a type of reverse racism is applied to mainstream Australians by those who promote political correctness and those who control the various taxpayer funded "industries" that flourish in our society servicing Aboriginals, multiculturalists and a host of other minority groups.”

Pauline Hanson (1954) Australian politician

Maiden Speech (1996)

“.. As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new kingdom (of Armenia) - from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia - the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods and chattels in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new grant Sultan. the new 'city of Tigranes", Tigranocerta, situated in in the most southern province of Armenia, not far from the Mesopotamian frontier, was a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of palace, garden and park that were appropriate to sultanism In other respects, too, the new great king proved faithful to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood of the East the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed himself in public, appeared in the state and costume of a successor of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple fagtan, the half white half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban, and the royal diadem - attended moreover and served in slavish fashion, wherever he went or stoood, by four "kings."”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Chapter 2 Pg. 47 - "Rule of the Sullan Restoration" Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

People , Faith , Fashion , Appearance

“Art' is a Renaissance invention which has been carried to a state of extreme refinement in the present day. This is the so-called 'abstract art'. The production of good works of art was achieved only at the cost of an enormous concentration upon certain matters. This concentration could be achieved only through neglecting 'life', through the very loss of life- just as religion had experienced before. 'Today this situation is no longer tolerable'. Today life is paramount. Modern life in general rejects all tendencies towards isolation and ivory tower-like exclusiveness. It is absolute un-modern to concentrate upon just one thing (as did the middle Ages!) Modern life is based upon the construction, which is to say, upon a system of tensions or the neutralization of the system of carry and support. In agreement with this concept we too must distribute our vitality over the whole range of life taken in the broadest possible sense. All other attitudes towards life produce tragedy.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in 'The end of Art', in De Stijl; Theo van Doesburg – series XII, 1924-5, pp. 135–136
1920 – 1926

Life , Age , Religion , Art

“Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 14 (30 November 1787) Full text at Wikisource http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers/No._14. This quotation was used on the official invitations to the 1985 presidential inaugural of President Ronald Reagan.
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

People , World , Knowledge , Sense

“Everyone who knows something about the dangers of reflection and the dangerous walk along the road of reflection also knows that it is dubious when a person, instead of getting out of the tension through resolution and action, becomes productive about his state in tension. Then there is no effort to get out of the state, but reflection fixes the situation for reflection and thereby fixes the man. The more richly thoughts and expressions offer themselves, the more briskly the productivity advances-in the wrong direction-the more dangerous it becomes and the more it hides from the person, concerned that his work, his extremely strenuous work, his very interesting (perhaps also for a third party who has a total view) work, is a work of bogging himself down deeper and deeper. That is, he does not work himself loose but works himself fast and becomes interesting to himself by reflecting on the tension and diverts himself with an utterly piecemeal productivity about detached details, with isolated short articles.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Book of Adler, by Søren Kierkegaard, Hong 1998 p. 127
1840s, The Book on Adler (1846-1847)

Effort , Personality

“Truscott: How dare you involve me in a situation for which no memo has been issued.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act II

“To distinguish the meaningful graphs that represent real or possible situations in the external world, certain graphs are declared to be canonical.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

Source: Conceptual Structures, 1984, p. 91. cited in: C.J. van Rijsbergen, F. Crestani, M. Lalmas (1998) Information Retrieval: Uncertainty and Logics. p. 59

World

“The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation—to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.”

Theodore Dreiser book The Financier

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXVI

Evil

“So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven." Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament. "Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you." A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason's mind, his body, his spirit- he wasn't sure which or where but he was suddenly jolted thoroughly. Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch. "You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Horror, disbelief in his voice.
Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 137-138

“Inextricably intertwined in the question was slavery, and it only became the more so in the years that followed. Socially and culturally the North and South were not much different. They prayed to the same deity, spoke the same language, shared the same ancestry, sang the same songs. National triumphs and catastrophes were shared by both. For all the myths they would create to the contrary, the only significant and defining difference between them was slavery, where it existed and where it did not, for by 1804 it had virtually ceased to exist north of Maryland. Slavery demarked not just their labor and economic situations, but power itself in the new republic.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 9

Question

“Confidence is a feeling you get when you don't REALLY understand the situation.”

James P. Hogan book Code of the Lifemaker

Code of the Lifemaker (1983)

Feeling , Confidence , Understanding

“I shall always regard this aspect of my dispute with Keynes as the greatest mistake of my professional career, and the book, The Great Depression, which I subsequently wrote, partly in justification of this attitude, as something which I would willingly see be forgotten. […] Now I still think that there is much in this theory as an explanation of a possible generation of boom and crisis. But, as an explanation of what was going on in the early ’30s, I now think it was misleading. Whatever the genetic factors of the pre-1929 boom, their sequelae, in the sense of inappropriate investments fostered by wrong expectations, were completely swamped by vast deflationary forces sweeping away all those elements of constancy in the situation which otherwise might have provided a framework for an explanation in my terms. The theory was inadequate to the facts. Nor was this approach any more adequate as a guide to policy. Confronted with the freezing deflation of those days, the idea that the prime essential was the writing down of mistaken investments and the easing of capital markets by fostering the disposition to save and reducing the pressure on consumption was completely inappropriate. To treat what developed subsequently in the way which I then thought valid was as unsuitable as denying blankets and stimulants to a drunk who has fallen into an icy pond, on the ground that his original trouble was overheating.”

Lionel Robbins (1898–1984) British economist

Autobiography of an Economist (1971), p. 154.

Books , Way , Idea , Thinking

“It's just not sexy. It doesn't matter how cute the girl is… When I kiss somebody in life, I decide to kiss somebody in life. But when someone says "Do it, or…" And when you're kissing somebody, the word action for me translates to that statement. So I don't ever feel that, you know, manly about it. Plus whenever you got two people people facing each other it's always hard for the light to get into the eyes. They're always trying to get light into the eyes so you can see what's going on. And the closer the people stand the harder that lighting becomes and the more specific you have to be about where your head is which is particularly hard for me. So when you're kissing somebody it really is surgical. When you go in there and if you go in there like this as opposed to like that [minor head movement] you blow the take! Plus, if you kiss somebody with pleasure, it doesn't look good. If it feels good, it looks terrible. So you've got to kiss for camera which means you're feeling almost nothing anyway. So it is a very strange situation especially for me.”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

Hallowhedon – James Marsters Talks Kissing (Nov 7 '09) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuSk6uWHVyg

Life , People , Pleasure , Feeling

“I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Letter to Edward Blount (27 August 1714); a similar expression in "Thoughts on Various Subjects" in Swift's Miscellanies (1727): Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

Hope , Madness , Country

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with no ordinary feelings, I assure you, that I rise on this occasion to thank you for the very flattering manner in which you have received the last toast, and for the good wishes expressed therein. I cannot look around me, and see this vast assemblage of my friends and workpeople, without being moved. I feel gratified at this day's proceedings; I also feel greatly honoured by the presence of the nobleman at my side. I am more than all delighted at the presence of this vast assemblage of my workpeople. Perhaps it may be permitted me to remark that ten or twelve years ago I was looking forward to this day (on which I complete my his fiftieth year) as the period when I hoped to retire from business and enjoy myself in agricultural pursuits, which would be quite congenial to my mind and inclination. As the time drew near, looking at my large family (five of them being sons) I reversed that decision, and resolved to proceed a little longer and remain at the head of the firm. Having thus determined, I at once made up my mind to leave Bradford. I did not like to be a party to increasing that already overcrowded borough, but I looked around for a site suitable for a large manufacturing establishment, and I fixed upon this, as offering every capability for a first rate manufacturing and commercial establishment. It is also, from the beauty of its situation, and the salubrity of the air, a most desirable place for the erection of dwellings. Far be it from me to do anything to pollute the air or the water of the district. I shall do my utmost to avoid these evils, and I have no doubt of being successful. I hope to draw around me a population that will enjoy the beauties of this neighbourhood—a population of well paid, contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects (who are competent to carry them out) that nothing shall be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see satisfaction, contentment, and happiness around me.”

Titus Salt (1803–1876) English industrialist and philanthropist

The speech he made to the 3,500 guests (including his workers) at the banquet on 1853-09-20, which he held to celebrate both his fiftieth birthday and the opening of his new factory at Saltaire. [Inauguration of the works at Saltaire, The Bradford Observer, 1853-09-22, 8, http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&orientation=&scale=0.33&sort=DateAscend&docLevel=FASCIMILE&prodId=BNCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253ALQE%253D%2528jn%252CNone%252C17%2529Bradford%2BObserver%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%252909%252F22%252F1853%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=11&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C17%29Bradford+Observer%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%2909%2F22%2F1853%24&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&enlarge=&bucketSubId=&inPS=true&userGroupName=brad&hilite=y&docPage=article&nav=prev&sgCurrentPosition=0&docId=R3207957429, 2012-06-07 (subscription site)]
A slightly edited version (in the third person) appears in [Holroyd, Abraham, 1873, 2000, Saltaire and its Founder, Piroisms Press, ISBN 0-9538601-0-8, 14-15]

Life , Family , Beauty , Hope

“My strength to work in such situations comes from my family and people who love to watch me.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Amrita Mulchandani

Love , People , Family

“Recently in our country, there has been a steadily increasing number of people who dislike work and pursue leisure and extravagance. Almost everywhere individuals and organizations are fighting with resultant loss of energy that is needed for positive action. In order to save them from this situation, a principle of judo, based on the maximum efficiency concept should be applied as one aspect of modern society and as a natural result of the application of the principle of maximum efficiency, a mutual welfare and prosperity is believed to be the only effective way to ease and neutralize the forces among these individuals and organizations.”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

Also quoted in "Hints For Judo" by D. Risei Kano, at usadojo.com http://www.usadojo.com/articles/hints-judo.htm
Kodokan Magazine (1974)

People , Way , Nature , Loss

“When we sell a kilo of bean coffee in Uganda, we get one dollar per kilo. The same kilo, when it is processed [and sold in the UK], goes for $10, $11 or even more a kilo. That is the same situation [price disparity] that goes for all raw materials.”

Yoweri Museveni (1944) President of Uganda

As quoted in "President Museveni Highlights Ugandan Achievements for Americans: Ugandan leader proud of political opening, economic growth in his country" https://web.archive.org/web/20050927025054/http://news.findlaw.com/wash/s/20050923/200509231521551.html (23 September 2005), by Jim Fisher-Thompson, Washington File, FindLaw
2000s

Coffee

“I hope that the North Koreans understand that the conclusions that we came to are conclusions that are embedded in America's security situation.”

Ash Carter (1954) United States Secretary of Defense

pbs.org interview http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/interviews/acarter.html

Hope , Understanding

“Those who urge an alliance with Assad cite the example of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet despot who became an ally of Western democracies against Nazi Germany. I never liked historical comparisons and like this one even less. To start with, the Western democracies did not choose Stalin as an ally; he was thrusted upon them by the turn of events. When the Second World War started Stalin was an ally of Hitler thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union actively participated in the opening phase of the war by invading Poland from the east as the Germans came in from the West. Before that, Stalin had rendered Hitler a big service by eliminating thousands of Polish army officers in The Katyn massacre. Between September 1939 and June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was an objective ally of Hitler. Stalin switched sides when he had no choice if he wanted to save his skin. The situation in Syria today is different. There is no alliance of democracies which, thanks to Obama’s enigmatic behavior, lack any strategy in the Middle East. Unlike Stalin, Assad has not switched sides if only because there is no side to switch to. Assad regards ISIS as a tactical ally against other armed opposition groups. This is why Russia is now focusing its air strikes against non-ISIS armed groups opposed to Assad. More importantly, Assad has none of the things that Stalin had to offer the Allies. To start with Stalin could offer the vast expanse of territory controlled by the Soviet Union and capable of swallowing countless German divisions without belching. Field Marshal von Paulus’ one-million man invasion force was but a drop in the ocean of the Soviet landmass. In contrast, Assad has no territorial depth to offer. According to the Iranian General Hossein Hamadani, who was killed in Aleppo, Assad is in nominal control of around 20 percent of the country. Stalin also had an endless supply of cannon fodder, able to ship in millions from the depths of the Urals, Central Asia and Siberia. In contrast, Assad has publicly declared he is running out of soldiers, relying on Hezbollah cannon fodder sent to him by Tehran. If Assad has managed to hang on to part of Syria, it is partly because he has an air force while his opponents do not. But even that advantage has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. Four years of bombing defenseless villages and towns has not changed the balance of power in Assad’s favor. This may be why his Russian backers decided to come and do the bombing themselves. Before, the planes were Russian, the pilots Syrian. Now both planes and pilots are Russian, underlining Assad’s increasing irrelevance. Stalin’s other card, which Assad lacks, consisted of the USSR’s immense natural resources, especially the Azerbaijan oilfields which made sure the Soviet tanks could continue to roll without running out of petrol. Assad in contrast has lost control of Syria’s oilfields and is forced to buy supplies from ISIS or smugglers operating from Turkey. There are other differences between Stalin then and Assad now. Adulated as “the Father of the Nation” Stalin had the last word on all issues. Assad is not in that position. In fact, again according to the late Hamadani in his last interview published by Iranian media, what is left of the Syrian Ba’athist regime is run by a star chamber of shadowy characters who regard Assad as nothing but a figurehead.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: No, Bashar Al-Assad is no Joseph Stalin http://english.aawsat.com/2015/10/article55345413/opinion-no-bashar-al-assad-is-no-joseph-stalin, Ashraq Al-Awsat (16 Oct, 2015).

War , World , Law , Behavior

“First of all, my father inspired me…he is a great social activist and women's rights activist…he spoke out. And he spoke for women's rights…that hard situation, he inspired me, because he spoke. And that's what I learned from him.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Statements in PBS interview with Margaret Warner (October 11, 2013)

Women , Learning

“It was in 1926 that John Maynard Keynes wrote his now famous essay "The End of Laissez-Faire." Since then, history has evolved through the Great Depression, "hot" and cold wars, the establishment of the Bretton woods regime, suspension of convertibility of the US dollar into gold, oil shocks, and the information and telecommunications revolution. The situation at the end of the 20th century seems to be quite similar to that of the late 1920s, having come full circle.”

Eisuke Sakakibara (1941) Japanese economist and critic

The End of Market Fundamentalism (1999)

War , History

“Your friend insults the homeless by giving them no credit for having made the decisions that shaped their lives, and demeans them further by declaring them powerless to alter their situations. There’re many ways, my dear, to victimize people. The most insidious way is to persuade them that they’re victims.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

People , Way , Decision

“For the most part similarities of various degrees will occur in one perceptual situation; and then specific perceptual units will be formed not simply because their members resemble each other, but because their mutual resemblance is greater than is that of such members and any other parts of the situation.”

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist

Source: Dynamics in Psychology, 1940, p. 135

Parting

“It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

The Median Isn't the Message (1985)

Love , Death , Hope , Way

“From now on, I do not permit my sravaka disciples to eat meat. … One who eats meat kills the seed of great compassion. … I, from now on, tell my disciples to refrain from eating any kind of meat. O Kasyapa! When one eats meat, this gives out the smell of meat while one is walking, standing, sitting or reclining. People smell this and become fearful. This is as when one comes near a lion. One sees and smells the lion, and fear arises. O good man! When one eats garlic, the dirty smell is unbearable. … It is the same with one who eats meat. It is a similar situation with all people who, on smelling the meat, become afraid and entertain the thought of death. All living things in the water, on land and in the sky desert such a person and run away. They say that this person is their enemy.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Source: Mahayana, Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (or Nirvana Sutra), Chapter Seven: On the Four Aspects

Death , People , Fear , Water

“Our ethnicity is part of us, however, it should not isolate or distance us from the community in which we live. People of different cultures cannot not live peacefully together unless they have respect for each other. I accept that seeking further integration is a challenge and it cannot be imposed or done under duress; the feeling has to come from within ourselves. To create an environment for that to happen, we have to develop situations and opportunities that place people in a position to make choices and this is one of them. And unless we begin to see our neighbours as people, as human beings rather than by ethnicity, it is difficult to shed our stereotypes of each other.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening address to the Leadership Fiji 2006 program, 9 March 2006.

People , Feeling , Communication , Parting

“I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the middle-classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life—many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of every one but an English money-monger.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845), p. 27

Life , Men , Money , Justice

““You are very honest about the situation of your own country.”
Deirdre said roughly, “Most of us won’t admit it, but I think it best to look truth in the eyes.””

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Delenda Est (pp. 202-203)
Time Patrol

Truth , Thinking , Country

“Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 18, "We Abandon Hope"

Men , Food , Suffering , Water

“I got a lot of benefit from auditing. It was the fastest and deepest way to handle situations that I had yet encountered. I immediately wanted to learn to do it. … With Scientology, I was able to characterize the Mind more accurately, and to cease justifying it. This greatly clarified what I was doing. … After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the Mind as a machine. I can now operate my Mind accordingly, with exactitude. I can do the familiar mind over matter experiments - the control of pain and bleeding, telepathy, those things. Many people can do such things, and they are well known in the yogic tradition.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 146-47, 0-517-53502-5]

Pain , People , Way , Learning

“You plunge into that underworld space, and that's also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that's a horrible place to be. And that's hell. That's why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don't understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it's only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it's only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic. And I've seen that with people many times. And I think that anybody who uses their imagination on themselves can see how that happens, because I can't imagine that there isn't a single person in the room who hasn't nursed fairly intense fantasies of revenge, at least at one point in their life – and usually for what appear to be good reasons. It can shake your faith in being to be betrayed, but if it shakes it so badly that you turn against being itself, that's certainly no solution. All it does is make everything that's bad, even worse.”

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

Other

Life , People , Faith , Feeling

“After Magna Carta became subject to renewed interest in the 17th century, William Blackstone referred to this provision as protecting the 'absolute rights of every Englishman'. And he formulated those absolute rights as 'the right of personal security', which included the right to life; 'the right of personal liberty'; and 'the right of private property'. He defined 'the right of personal liberty' as 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. The Framers drew heavily upon Blackstone's formulation, adopting provisions in early State Constitutions that replicated Magna Carta's language, but were modified to refer specifically to 'life, liberty, or property'. State decisions interpreting these provisions between the founding and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment almost uniformly construed the word 'liberty' to refer only to freedom from physical restraint. Even one case that has been identified as a possible exception to that view merely used broad language about liberty in the context of a habeas corpus proceeding—a proceeding classically associated with obtaining freedom from physical restraint.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Life , Law , Decision , Freedom

“The whole of this studio is bonded; that is to say, we are not officially in Japan per se, but rather, in what is considered for these purposes an adjunct of the customs shed at Narita airport. Officially, we are not here because we are pornographic. It's a rather curious situation.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

During the filming of Prospero's Books, quoted in an interview in American Film, Nov/Dec 1991
Prospero's Books

“The large establishment of wives and servants rendered the nobles immobile. No Indian scholars, engineers or travellers went abroad to learn the skills the Europeans were developing in their countries. While people from Europe were frequently coming to Hindustan, no Indian nobleman could go to the West because he could not live without his harem and he could not take with him his cumbersome harem to countries situated so far away. Europe at this time was forging ahead in science and technology through its Industrial Revolution, but the Mughal elites kept themselves insulated from this great stride because of inertia. Consequently, the country was pulled back from marching with progress, a deficiency which has not been able to be made up until now.”

K. S. Lal book The Mughal Harem

Source: The Mughal Harem (1988), p.203.

People , Travel , Learning , Science

“Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
JM: Never get into a situation you can’t get out of. I really have stuck to it, because it’s good advice for all walks of live.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from "Famous last words", Q (February 2003).

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.

The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace'. The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.

Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), pp. 487-488.
1970s

War , World , Peace , Law

“I would say, that situation I am describing on Joe Rogan show I was very definitely a predator on both occasions. As offensive as some people would find that I don’t much care. That was certainly my experience. The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

Episode 193 http://drunken-peasants-podcast.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_193 of Drunken Peasants Podcast debuted 4 January 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azC1nm85btY&t=3552s, transcript circulated 20 February 2017 by Heavy http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/milo-yiannopolous-pedophilia-transcript-pederasty-video-full-sex-boys-men-catholic-priest-cpac-quotes/ with supplements from discover-the-truth https://discover-the-truth.com/2017/02/20/full-unedited-video-of-milo-yiannopoulos-defending-pedophilia/
2017

Love , Men , Children , People

“I once spent an hour and a half trying to explain a situation to "Sepp" Dietrich with the aid of a map. It was quite useless. He understood nothing at all.”

Wilhelm Bittrich (1894–1979) German general

Quoted in "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's S.S." - Page 439 - by Heinz Höhne, R. Barry - 1969

“Prentice: This appalling situation is the result of my lax moral code. It's clean living and Teach Yourself Woodwork for me from now on!”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act I

“[True democracy] is not what the Communists practice. It is not even what the African states practice. But that is the pressure being exerted when demands are made upon our country. In other words, the process towards integration [would inexorably] lead to Bantu domination, a situation from which there would be no escape. … [Coloureds and Indians] must not think that the colour of their skins will protect them. The minority groups will all have to contend with an unrestricted domination by the Bantu if a multi-racial state comes into being. … the people of South Africa cannot accept the consequence of a multi-racial state unless the Whites, the Coloureds and the Indians are prepared to commit race suicide.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

As Prime Minister on 23 January 1962, 10 quotes by Hendrik Verwoerd (Politics Web) https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/hendrik-verwoerd-10-quotes-hendrik-verwoerd-politics-web-20-september-2016, sahistory.org.za (20 September 2016)

People , Democracy , Thinking , Suicide

“[How is it consistent with what you advocated this evening in terms of a vision for peace, that you continued to allow the building of settlements in the West Bank, during your primeministership? ] Let me tell you, first of all, during my term as a Prime Minister, we have not built a single new settlement. I ordered the dismantling of many voluntary -- I don't know how to call it -- new settlements that had been set on top of hills in different parts of the West Bank, basically. But, I allowed contracts, contracts that had been signed, legally, in Israel, beforehand. To build new neighborhoods in some big cities in the West Bank, cities with 25,000 or 30,000 people. And very few new homes, in small settlements, where youngsters, who came back from the army service, asked to build their home near the home of their parents. Now, Israel is a law-abiding state, you cannot break contracts, there is Supreme Court. If the government behaves in a way that is not proper, any individual can appeal and change whatever we decide. Realizing that this is a sensitive issue from the Palestinian side, I talked to Arafat, at the beginning of my term as a Prime Minister, and I told him: Mr. Chairman, I know that you are worried about it, it creates some problems, in your own constituency. But let me tell you, we have a great opportunity here to put an end to the whole conflict, in a year and a half. When President Clinton that invested unbelievable amount of energy and political capital in trying to solve it, and he's still in power. Now, I understand your problem with settlement if there is no end, there is no time limit, and you are afraid that maybe the accumulation of new settlements will change the nature of the situation, for the worse, from your position. So I tell you, out of our own considerations, independent of you, we have decided not to set even a single new settlement. We will not allow anyone to establish his own private initiatives on the hills, for our own reasons, not because of you. But at the same time I will respect any contract that has been signed, under law, in Israel. But -- and here is a point -- bearing in mind that we can put an end to the conflict, to reach an agreement within a year and a half, why the hell it will matter? To build a new building in Israel takes more than a year and a half, so you won't see any building that is not already emerging from the ground, having it's roof before we can reach an agreement. Now if such a building happens to be in a settlement that will become, under the agreement, part of the new independent Palestine, why the hell you have to care? Take it, use it, put some refugees in it. And if it will happen to be a part of what will be agreed, as Israel, in a mutual agreement that is signed by you, why the hell do you care, if you agree? I believe that that simple answer would not solve his public -- or internal political -- problems, but it would solve the real issue if the will was there to make peace, and not just to politically maneuver and manipulate.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

People , Peace , Law , Way

“Four basic operations in the effective use of graphic records (documents), to store information and make it available, have been listed by Hyslop: A, recording information in documents; B, storing recorded information—documentary items; C, identifying items containing information relevant to a given problem, situation, or subject; D, providing the identified items from storage. Information storage and retrieval in the wide sense covers all these operations. In the narrow sense used in this paper, information retrieval means only C, identifying documentary items by subject.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: The Structure of Information Retrieval Systems (1959), p. 1275.

Problem , Sense

“Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for him — a generally painful situation of which he is more or less aware…”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 20

Pain , Suffering , Personality

“With the situation fully and correctly understood, it becomes entirely reasonable that the very small fraction of a second preceding a violent death could be a trigger to speculative thought.”

Gordon R. Dickson book Necromancer

Source: Necromancer (1962), Chapter 10 (p. 67)

Death

“Beforehand I don't make any drawing of the object or objects which I want to paint on the canvas or panel.... but I start directly to situate the designed plan on the canvas - After having thoroughly sketched and thought over my composition, especially the arrangement of light and dark, I start to paint it broadly with oil-paint and try as much as possible to achieve the hue or the colouring, in which I want to see my landscape.... when it is definitely completed.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Ik maak vooraf geene tekeningen van het voorwerp of de voorwerpen, die ik op het doek of paneel wil schilderen.. ..maar begin dadelijk het ontworpen plan op het doek te plaatsen – Na mijne compositie eerst behoorlijk geschetst en beredeneerd te hebben, voornamelijk de schikking van licht en donker, begin ik dezelve met olieverw breed te schilderen, zoveel trachtende de tint of het coloriet er in te brengen, in welke ik mijn landschap.. ..wil gezien hebben.. ..als het geheel afgeschilderd is.
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 98-99

Light , Drawing , Painting

“It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy increasingly adopts — necessarily, it seems — the character of the alien, of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolerable and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily world of work take over the world of man.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 65–66

World

“Some countries just entrust civil servants with monitoring the situation in Morocco. But, some of them are either ill-disposed towards our country, or are influenced by the thesis of our adversaries. And it is them who sometime oversee, sadly, the preparation of the files and the erroneous reports, on the basis of which, officials fix some of their positions.”

Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) King of Morocco

Original French: Certains Etats se contentent de confier aux fonctionnaires le soin de suivre la situation au Maroc. Or, certains parmi eux sont soit mal disposés à l'égard de notre pays, soit influencés par les thèses de nos adversaires. Et ce sont eux qui veillent parfois, malheureusement, à la préparation des dossiers et des rapports erronés, sur la base desquels les responsables arrêtent certaines de leurs positions.
Televised speech–6 November 2013 http://www.maroc.ma/fr/discours-royaux/discours-de-sm-le-roi-loccasion-du-38eme-anniversaire-de-la-marche-verte

Country

“Despite my dad's assurances I was strangely nervous my stomach tight ever since we'd hung up. Maybe Deb had picked up on this and it was why she'd pretty much talked nonstop since I'd approached her and asked for a ride. I'd barely had time to explain the situation before she had launched into a dozen stories to illustrate the point that Things Happened But People Were Okay in the End.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)

People , Time

“The partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western Democracies to the Nazi threat of force. Such a collapse will bring peace or security neither to England nor to France. On the contrary, it will place these two nations in an ever weaker and more dangerous situation. … It is not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced, but also the freedom and the democracy of all nations. The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion. The war potential of Germany will increase in a short time more rapidly than it will be possible for France and Great Britain to complete the measure necessary for their defence.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Statement to the Press (21 September 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), pp. 978-979
The 1930s

War , Peace , Democracy , Freedom

“We've shipped millions of jobs overseas and we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington where after you've served for a while you cash in and become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month; then take a leave, work on Presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out. Now if you just want to get down to brass tacks, the first thing you ought to do is get all these folks who've got these one-way trade agreements that we've negotiated over the years and say, "Fellows, we'll take the same deal we gave you." And they'll gridlock right at that point because, for example, we've got international competitors who simply could not unload their cars off the ships if they had to comply -- you see, if it was a two-way street -- just couldn't do it. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas.”

Ross Perot (1930–2019) American businessman

Cars , Way

“There is no question that Whoopi Goldberg's foolish comments at a John Kerry fundraiser hurt Kerry — who had no idea how to handle the situation. Chevy Chase should have learned from that. Even he has to know that calling the president of the United States an "F" is not going to be accepted by most Americans. Now you don't see this kind of thing on the right. You don't see prominent conservatives cursing out Democratic members of Congress, for example. Now I know talk radio can get rough but nothing like what these Hollywood nitwits are throwing out there.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2004-12-17
Disrespecting the Office of the Presidency
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141845,00.html
2007-09-20

Idea , Question , Learning , Hurt

“There is an oval sculpture of 1943. I was in despair because my youngest daughter, one of the triplets, had osteomyelitis. In those days the war was on and you couldn't get anything. She was ill for four years. I thought the only thing I can do to help this awful situation, because we never knew if it would worsen, is to make some beautiful object. Something as clean as I can make it as a kind of present for her. It's happened again and again. When my son died, he was killed [in the war], it's the only way I can go on.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), p. 19

War , Beauty , Way , Help

“First, there is really no sign at all of any significant reduction in unemployment without a major change in policy…Unemployment has probably levelled out but at a totally unacceptable figure. Secondly, contrary to what the Secretary of State said, the post-oil surplus prospect—not merely the post-oil prospect, because the oil will take a long time to go, but the surplus, the big balance of payments surplus, which is beginning to decline quite quickly—still looks devastating…our balance of payments is now overwhelmingly dependent on this highly temporary and massive oil surplus. Our manufacturing industry is shrunken and what remains is uncompetitive…We have a manufacturing trade deficit of approximately £11 billion, all of which has built up in the past three to four years. This is containable by oil and by nothing else. Invisibles can take care of about £4 billion or £5 billion but they cannot do the whole job. As soon as oil goes into a neutral position we are in deep trouble. Should it go into a negative position, the situation would be catastrophic…To sell off a chunk of capital assets and to use the proceeds for capital investment in the rest of the public sector might just be acceptable. However, that is not what is proposed, and what is proposed cannot be justified on any reputable theory of public finance; and when it is accompanied by a Minister using the oil—which might itself be regarded as a capital asset; certainly it is not renewable—almost entirely for current purposes, it amounts to improvident finance on a scale that makes the Prime Minister's old friend General Galtieri almost Gladstonian.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/nov/12/industry-and-employment in the House of Commons (12 November 1985).
1980s

Change , Time , Past , Dependency

“If this is indeed the alternative, we are in a tragic situation, compelled to choose between social righteousness and communion with God.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103

God

“The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy—but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

“The situation has multifarious ramifications not immediately apparent to the unassisted optic.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 13, “Caveat Vendor” (pp. 177-178)

“Chamberlain's sins were not his intentions, but rather his ignorance and arrogance in failing to appraise the situation properly. And in that failure he was not alone.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 4, The Failure of Collective Security and World War II, p. 111.

Failure

“People as adaptive organisms adjust their behavior and beliefs to the social context and to the reality of their own past and present behavior and situation.”

Gerald R. Salancik (1943–1996) American organizational theorist

Source: A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. 1978, p. 226

People , Behavior , Reality , Past

“Playboy: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
Jobs: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that first the public telegraph was inaugurated, in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it. So, fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
Playboy: Meaning what?
Jobs: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are "slash q-zs" and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel—one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy, Feb 1985, as quoted in “Steve Jobs Imagines 'Nationwide' Internet in 1985 Interview” https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-imagines-nationwide-internet-in-1985-intervi-1671246589, Matt Novak, 12/15/14 2:20pm Paleofuture, Gizmodo.
1980s

People , World , Faith , Way

“Like Rimbaud before them, the surrealists abandoned the aesthetic altogether; it takes a certain courage to leave poetry for Africa [as Rimbaud himself did]. They revealed their insight as essentially moral in never forgetting for a moment that most living is a process of conforming to an established order which is inhuman in its drives and consequences. Their hatred sustained them through all the humiliating situations in which the modern artist find himself, and led them to conceptions beyond the reach of more passive souls. For them true 'poetry' was freedom from mechanical social responses. No wonder they loved the work of children and the insane – if not the creatures themselves.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), pp. 39-40

Love , Children , Soul , Courage

“It should be no news to anyone that the perceptual judgements of individuals can be unreliable for a range of reasons. The challenge, in science, is to arrange the observable situation in such a way that the reliance on such judgements is minimised if not eliminated.”

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 2, Observation as practical intervention, p. 21.

Way , Science

“Donkey Punch is a very extreme, real-world thriller – it’s about characters and events that are based in reality and it pushes them into very dark and extreme situations where they have to do things that they would never have imagined. The film shows all this quite realistically and doesn’t pull its punches.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[Bloody Disgusting, Interview Donkey Punch: Writer/Directory Olly Blackburn, Mr. Disgusting, http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/interview/441, 23 February 2012, 2011, Bloody-Disgusting LLC]

World , Imagination , Reality

“We had a very respectable force, as to numbers; between eight and nine thousand, rank and file, upon the ground; but of these we attempted to select a particular corps to possess ourselves of the enemy's lines, partly by force, and partly by stratagem; but w r e could not make up the necessary number that was thought sufficient to warrant the attempt, which was five thousand, including the Continental and State troops. This body was to consist of men, who had been in actual service before, not less than nine months. However, the men were not to be had, and, if they could have been found, there was more against it than for it. Colonel Laurens was to have opened the passage by landing within the enemy's lines, and getting possession of a redoubt at the head of Easton's beach. If we had failed in the attempt, the whole party must have fallen a sacrifice, for their situation would have been such that there was no possibility of getting off.”

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

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“Under David Cameron, we have this situation where you now need more qualifications to work as a shift manager at McDonald's than to become a teacher.”

Tristram Hunt (1974) British historian and ex-politician

Speech to the House of Commons, Wed 30 Oct 2013; reported in Evening Standard, Wed 30 Oct 2013, p. 4.

Teachers

“Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model… He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. xxix; As cited in: Jesper Simonsen (1994) Administrative Behavior: How Organizations can be Understood in Terms of Decision Processes http://jespersimonsen.dk/Downloads/Simon-introduction.pdf. Roskilde Universitet.

World

“Stephen Sommers certainly knew what he was doing. Indiana Jones is a hardened cynical guy with a heart of mush and Stephen created an Indiana Jones-lite, one who was a jocular guy willing to take a pie to the face, handle a gun, work in a fist fight, and handle all the requirements of an action hero. Brendan has the unique ability to take a pie to the face, let himself be in a situation where he feels overwhelmed, and then survive. This was definitely in the wheel house of Indiana Jones and always has been. It was quite conscious on Stephen’s part and now I’ve dome something different with it.”

Rob Cohen (1949) American film director, producer and writer

Director Rob Cohen Resurrects 'The Mummy' http://www.newsarama.com/254-director-rob-cohen-resurrects-the-mummy.html (June 25, 2008)

Guy , Feeling , Heart , Fight

“God cannot avoid working to separate good from evil and thus reverse this situation. God is public-minded and continues on the path of living for the whole and going toward the goal of love and peace. On the other hand, Satan is selfish and individualistic. Satan is always trying to destroy the good side through hate, evil and war. His intent is to prevent earth from returning eternally to God's side.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

"The True Family and I" Address given in 16 countries (June and July 1995) http://www.unification.net/1995/950625.html

Love , God , Hate , War

“I was horrified by the attacks against her, [but] Madonna knew the situation in Malawi, where he was born. In that country, there isn't really a legal framework for adopting. Personally, I prefer to stay on the side of the law.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

"Jolie shocked by Madonna attacks" Reuters report, via CNN.com (8 January 2007) http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01/08/jolie.madonna.reut/index.html

Law , Personality , Country

“[Fox] exhibited two pictures of this country; the one representing her at the end of the last glorious war, the other at the present moment. At the end of the last war this country was raised to a most dazzling height of splendour and respect. The French marine was in a manner annihilated, the Spanish rendered contemptible; the French were driven from America; new sources of commerce were opened, the old enlarged; our influence extended to a predominance in Europe, our empire of the ocean established and acknowledged, and our trade filling the ports and harbours of the wondering and admiring world. Now mark the degradation and the change, We have lost thirteen provinces of America; we have lost several of our Islands, and the rest are in danger; we have lost the empire of the sea; we have lost our respect abroad and our unanimity at home; the nations have forsaken us, they see us distracted and obstinate, and they leave us to our fate. Country! …This was your situation, when you were governed by Whig ministers and by Whig measures, when you were warmed and instigated by a just and a laudable cause, when you were united and impelled by the confidence which you had in your ministers, and when they were again strengthened and emboldened by your ardour and enthusiasm. This is your situation, when you are under the conduct of Tory ministers and a Tory system, when you are disunited, disheartened, and have neither confidence in your ministers nor union among yourselves; when your cause is unjust and your conductors are either impotent or treacherous.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1781), reprinted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I (1815), p. 429.
1780s

Fate , War , World , Home

“I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. My heart is broken. I will continue my work on behalf of victims everywhere.
None of us know the truth of the situation and I’m sure more will be revealed. Be gentle.”

Rose McGowan (1973) American actress

5:46am https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/1031477689947967489 and 9:35am https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/1031535197433602048 20 August 2018 reaction to accusations against Asia Argento according to Deadline https://deadline.com/2018/08/rose-mcgowan-asia-argento-jimmy-bennett-heart-broken-sexual-assault-payoff-report-reaction-1202448340/, E! https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/961510/rose-mcgowan-reacts-to-asia-argento-reportedly-paying-off-sexual-assault-accuser, Entertainment Weekly https://ew.com/movies/2018/08/20/rose-mcgowan-asia-argento/, Variety https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/rose-mcgowan-asia-argento-sexual-assault-accusation-1202909955/ and Vulture http://www.vulture.com/2018/08/rose-mcgowan-responds-to-asia-argento-assault-allegations.html.

Pain , Truth , Heart

“The Internet will not become a money machine until the banking industry figures out how to transfer money for free so you can charge USD 0.005 (half a cent) for some simple service like, say, reading a newspaper article you have searched for. With today's payment system, the cost of the transfer of the funds completely dwarf the cost of the service paid for. … This situation, however, is what acutely prevents the Internet from taking off as a network for paid services.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: is it ok if I quote? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/2e6eea14913a5c55
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Money , Search , Reading

“They know it's a forty-minute showdown, you versus them. … They have you by the balls and you created the situation, man. You didn't have to talk to them like that. They don’t care about your mood, your headache, your troubles. They have their own problems, and you are one of them.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

Mood , Problem

“I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and change conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book – the unconscious worked on it instead…”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 1, ch. 2
The End of the Affair (1951)

Hate , Books , Problem , Passion

“The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his situation.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“There's no question that at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God's forgiveness. Not God's understanding, but God's forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there's a forgiving God. Somebody once said that when we're young, we seek justice, but as we get older, we seek mercy.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

2011-03-09 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, quoted in * 2011-03-09
Gingrich: Past Adultery 'Partially Driven By How Passionately I Felt About This Country' (Video)
Eric
Kleefeld
Talking Points Memo
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/gingrich-past-adultery-partially-driven-by-how-passionately-i-felt-about-this-country-video.php
2011-03-31
2010s

Life , God , People , Justice

“I’ve always been an animal-lover and when I was about twelve I became a vegetarian. My mom subscribed to PETA’s magazine and I just started looking at the level of what it was. And I just thought it was unkind, so I made my personal choice — which at that point had nothing to do with the global scale of the situation. And so I know it was really early, but I made up my mind then to become an entertainer primarily because I thought I could help. I noticed that all my friends respected entertainers and knew more entertainers names than politicians names, so that was my turning point from possibly doing politics to entertainment … So that was one of the reasons I went into this field. And then the more I kept going career-wise, the more I’ve been able to use that vehicle — that megaphone. And that was exciting — the only exciting part, personally, about being a celebrity. I don’t think there’s anything good about it, except the ability to make positive change.”

Persia White (1972) American actress and singer

"Ecorazzi Celebrates Vegetarian Awareness Month With Actress/Musician Persia White", interview with Ecorazzi (20 October 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/10/20/ecorazzi-celebrates-vegetarian-awareness-month-with-actressmusician-persia-white/.

Moms , Lovers , Thinking , Change

“Decision theory, similarly analyzing rational choices, within human organizations, based upon examination of a given situation and its possible outcomes.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

General System Theory (1968), 4. Advances in General Systems Theory

“The behaviourist motto is "cure the symptoms and you have eliminated the neurosis." Consequently, the behaviour therapist's approach is straightforward. He deals with definite complaints of patients such as fears of certain situations, tics, or obsessional thoughts, which are considered by him to be bad habits. His remedy for them is to use definite and explicit retraining procedures.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Models of Mental Illness (1984), p. 138, partly cited in: Erica Cockrell (2013) " Psychodynamic Therapy http://specialstudentpopulations.weebly.com/theoretical-perspectives.html" at specialstudentpopulations.weebly.com

Fear

“Preemptive boringness. Being one-dimensional is the most satisfying method of coping with out-of-control people - with any situation that's out of control … Don't let people know the ideas you love, the games you've played, the places you've visited in your mind. Keep your treasure to yourself.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

Shampoo Planet (1992)

Love , People , Game , Idea

“A discipline, a region of the world of thought, should seek to know itself. Like an individual human being, it has received from its origins a stamp of character, a native mode of response to the situations confronting it. Right responses, 'responsibility', will require of the profession as of the individual an insight into the powers and defects of the tool which history has bequeathed to it.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 24

World , History

“If we are going to have greater unemployment, if we are going to have more unrest, the chances of a negotiated settlement will be less and in a revolutionary situation the chances of a truly free democratic society emerging are reduced.”

Harry Schwarz (1924–2010) South African activist

The Herald Times (1988) http://www.samedia.uovs.ac.za/cgi-bin/getpdf?id=1030957.
Sanctions and disinvestment from South Africa

Chance

“We have been discussing here that Turkey would take responsibility and the other European countries would make our own contributions to the cause. This way we can extend help near to the crisis, which would make it easier for the migrants to return to their homes once the situation has calmed down.”

Timo Soini (1962) Finnish politician

Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä says one way to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis would be through the use of EU quotas. Foreign Minister Timo Soini rejects the idea, saying Turkey should take the main responsibility for stopping the migrants with the EU countries' financial help, quoted on Yle.Fi, "PM willing to raise refugee quota, FM says Turkey should take the lead" http://yle.fi/uutiset/pm_willing_to_raise_refugee_quota_fm_says_turkey_should_take_the_lead/8655373, January 7, 2016.

Way , Home , Help , Country

“Although quantum theory involves the use of nonlocal states, such as wave packets and entangled states, there is nothing in the theory, or in the real world so far as it is accurately described by quantum theory, that corresponds to the sorts of instantaneous nonlocal influences which have often been thought to arise in the situation envisaged in the EPR paradox, or implied by the fact that quantum theory violates Bell inequalities.”

Robert Griffiths (physicist)

"Quantum Locality", Found Phys (2011) 41: 705–733

World

“Violence shouldn't be presented as drama. I think people looking for an easy way out often write scenes where characters come into violent conflict as opposed to looking for the true drama in the situation. That's a shortcoming of a lot of films and television shows. I think certain presentations of violence are not immoral, but amoral.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

Fightin Words (1999)

People , Way , Thinking

“Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think.... of art as a situation of comfort.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

Original: Original in Dutch: Kunst lijkt me nooit volledig of zuiver te maken. Het is of ik altijd verwikkeld ben in het melodrama van de alledaagsheid. [...]
Source: Quote of De Kooning from Beyond the Aesthetic, Robert Motherwell, Design 47, April 1946, as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 101.

Peace , Art , Thinking

“The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” p.
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

Men , Past , Parting

“Techniques are performed upon raw materials. The state of art of analyzing the characteristics of the raw materials is likely to determine what kind of technology will be used. (Tools are also necessary, of course, but by and large, the construction of tools is a simpler problem than the analysis of the nature of the material and generally follows the analysis.) To understand the nature of the material means to be able to control it better and achieve predictability and efficiency in transformation. We are not referring here to the 'essence of the material, only the way the organization perceives it to be … The other relevant characteristic of the raw material, besides the understandability of Its nature, is Its stability and variability; that is, whether the material can be treated in a standardized fashion or whether continual adjustment to it is necessary. Organizations uniformly seek to standardize their raw material In order to minimize exceptional situations. This is the point of de-individualizing processes found in military academies, monasteries and prisons, and the superiority of the synthetic shoe material Corfam over leather.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1960s, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations", 1967, p. 195

Art , Shoe , Way , Fashion

“Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - the opiate which lulled the Hindus into a deep slumber such as they had never known vis-à-vis Muslim aggression…. Anyone who questioned the pious proposition that the Quran was as good as the Vedas and the Puranas, ran the risk of being nailed down as an “enemy of communal harmony”….. That part of the “Muslim minority” which had voted for Pakistan but had chosen to stay in India, restarted the old game when India was proclaimed a secular state pledged to freedom of propagation for all religions. It revived its tried and tested trick of masquerading as a “poor and persecuted minority”. It cooked up any number of Pirpur Reports. The wail went up that the “lives, liberties and honour of the Muslims were not safe” in India, in spite of India’s “secular pretensions”. At the same time, street riots were staged on every possible pretext. The “communal situation” started becoming critical once again. …. And once again, the political leadership came out with a make-belief. The big-wigs from all political parties were collected in a “National Integration Council”. It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People , Religion , History , Game

“Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed — but never the husband).”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

The New Yorker (2 August 1930), discussing cartooning
From other writings

“… The answer to this problem is: as implied by Hume, we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative result a second result, equally negative, may be added: we are justified in reasoning from a counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law (that is, of any law of which it is a counterinstance). Or in other words, from a purely logical point of view, the acceptance of one counterinstance to 'All swans are white' implies the falsity of the law 'All swans are white' - that law, that is, whose counterinstance we accepted. Induction is logically invalid; but refutation or falsification is a logically valid way of arguing from a single counterinstance to - or, rather, against - the corresponding law. This shows that I continue to agree with Hume's negative logical result; but I extend it. This logical situation is completely independent of any question of whether we would, in practice, accept a single counterinstance - for example, a solitary black swan - in refutation of a so far highly successful law. I do not suggest that we would necessarily be so easily satisfied; we might well suspect that the black specimen before us was not a swan.”

Karl Popper book The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction http://dieoff.org/page126.htm p. 27

Truth , Law , Way , Question

“Most of the writers I know come from a variety of backgrounds: history, journalism, engineering, physics. The common element here is not what you study, but the fact that you learn how to study, to do research, and to synthesize new ideas out of old. The soul of science fiction, and perhaps even all fiction, is to look at a situation and ask, “what would happen if….” Change some variables and see how that makes people react to the situation. So, getting yourself a good grounding in any field of study will supply you with a great background wealth of material to use to build your stories. Then you really just need to start writing and keep writing. Writing is a skills-based endeavor and there is no easy way to become successful at it. Writers write.”

Michael A. Stackpole (1957) science fiction author

"Interview" at his official website http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?page_id=8

People , Way , Soul , History

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love , Life , War , Lie

“As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified.”

Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011) American pathologist, euthanasia activist

Quoted in "Years of Minutes"‎ - by Andy Rooney - 2004
2000s, 2004

“.. Recently I was at the home of Thomas Hess and he had a painting hanging there and I said to my wife: 'Is that one of my paintings?'. And she said: 'Well, it looks like one of yours from around 1942'. But then we realized that it wasn't one of my but one of Baziote's paintings…. at that time, 1942, the differences in our paintings may have seemed very great, but now [1960] the difference is not so great apparently…. For example; in the early forties Rothko and I decided to paint a certain subject matter. Perhaps if we saw some of those paintings now…. they might not seem so different as they did at the time. However, at no point was there ever any sort of a doctrine or a programma or anything that would make a school. I think it was simply a situation in which all of the painters were at that time; they were trying to break away from certain things.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', June 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, pp. 27-28
1960s

School , Home , Thinking , Time

Quotes about situation page 17

Quotes about situation
page 17