Quotes about skin
page 5

Dylan Moran photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“Our senses are not receptors so much as reactors and makers of different modalities of space. Perhaps touch is not just skin contact with things, but the very life of things in the mind.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 256

Helen Suzman photo

“I do not know why we equate—and with such examples before us—a white skin with civilisation.”

Helen Suzman (1917–2009) South African politician

As quoted in "The Hon. Member For Houghton" https://web.archive.org/web/19960913173321/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/04/20/the-hon-member-for-houghton (20 April 1987), by E. J. Kahn, The New Yorker

Rudyard Kipling photo

“For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady,
Are sisters under their skins.”

The Ladies, Stanza VIII.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Melania Trump photo
Rand Paul photo

“A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin. It is unenlightened and ill-informed to promote discrimination against individuals based on the color of their skin. It is likewise unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Letter to the editor, Bowling Green Daily News, 2002-05-30
Rand Paul in '02: I may not like it, but 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin'
Right Now
Washington Post
2010-05-20
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/rand_paul_in_2002_i_may_not_li.html

Frederik Pohl photo
Meagan Duhamel photo
Andrew S. Grove photo

“A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Andrew Grove, in: " What I've Learned: Andy Grove http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a1449/learned-andy-grove-0500/", Esquire magazine, May 1, 2000
New millennium

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Hector Berlioz photo

“Poor devils! Where do these unfortunate creatures come from? On what butcher's block will they meet their end? What reward does municipal munificence allot them for thus cleaning (or dirtying) the pavements of Paris? At what age are they sent to the glue factory? What becomes of their bones (their skin is good for nothing)?”

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) French Romantic composer

Pauvres diables!... D'où sortent ces malheureux êtres ?... À quel Montfaucon vont-ils mourir ?... Que leur octroie la munificence municipale pour nettoyer (ou salir) ainsi le pavé de Paris ?... À quel âge les envoie-t-on à l'équarrissage ?... Que fait-on de leurs os ? (leur peau n'est bonne à rien.)
Les Grotesques de la Musique (Paris: A. Bourdilliat, 1859) p. 89; Alastair Bruce (trans.) The Musical Madhouse (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003) pp. 54-56.
Of critics

Betty Friedan photo
Sienna Guillory photo
Ray Comfort photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo

“He resembled a minor prophet who had been hit behind the ear with a stuffed eel-skin.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Ukridge (1924)

John A. McDougall photo
John Byrne photo

“This guy should have been taken out of the croc pen, had his kids taken from him, and been thrown in the deepest, darkest, dankest pit the Australian judicial system has to offer. Preferably after being skinned alive. Asshole is too good a word.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2006
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=14104&PN=1&TPN=3
On the death of Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter"

Adlai Stevenson photo

“The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Comment on the 1960 Richard Nixon presidential campaign and the Republican symbol, in news summaries (30 August 1960), as quoted in The New Language of Politics: An Anecdotal Dictionary of Catchwords, Slogans and Political Usage (1968) by William Safire

Vyasa photo
Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Bruno Schulz photo
Howard Carter photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them.”

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

Comments on members of the Republican party, in Remarks at the Cow Palace, San Francisco, California (2 November 1960) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 914, Senate Speech Files, John F. Kennedy Papers, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
1960

Eddie Izzard photo
Joseph Merrick photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo
Scooter Libby photo
Elinor Glyn photo

“Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err
With her
On some other fur?”

Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) British novelist and scriptwriter

Anonymous rhyme satirising Three Weeks, quoted in J. Lee Thompson Forgotten Patriot (Madison, N.J.:Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 2007) p. 259
Criticism

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Joshua Jackson photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Samuel Butler photo
Richard Henry Dana Jr. photo
Joseph Heller photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)

Pauline Kael photo
Rumi photo
Shaun Ellis photo

“It fetches crops from the rich earth,
It's a good beast biting the ground.
It must have its knife and its board
And its food right under its thigh.
It goes unwillingly through stones,
It skins the field with leg outstretched.”

Iolo Goch (1320–1398) Welsh bard

Cnwd a gyrch mewn cnodig âr,
Cnyw diwael yn cnoi daear.
E fynn ei gyllell a'i fwyd
A'i fwrdd dan fôn ei forddwd.
Gŵr a'i anfodd ar grynfaen,
Gwas a fling a'i goes o’i flaen.
Source: Y Llafurwr (The Labourer), Line 49.

Jeff Sessions photo
Glenn Beck photo
Robert Olmstead photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“He treated me as a man… He did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins.”

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

About Abraham Lincoln (1864), as quoted in Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 https://books.google.com/books?id=cwVkgrvctCcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Eric+Foner%22+%22Republicans%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOwdup3aLLAhVK7SYKHZufDmUQ6AEIRjAH#v=onepage&q&f=false, by Eric Foner, p. 6
1860s

Robert T. Bakker photo
Richard Ashcroft photo
Djuna Barnes photo

“The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.”

Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?

Richard Pryor photo

“Rosa Parks showed us all that one little person can make a whole bunch of noise without so much as a whisper. She showed the world that the color of your skin shouldn't determine what part of the bus you sit in… as you ride through life.”

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC

Post http://www.richardpryor.com/forums/msgs.cfm?msg=38560&forum=6 on US civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
Web-posts

John Crowley photo
Elisabetta Canalis photo
Anne Sexton photo
Frederick Douglass photo
John Green photo

“The skin is impossibly wet, a cloud condensed into animate matter.”

David G. Haskell (1950) writer, Biologist

"February 28th — Salamander," page 41
The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature http://theforestunseen.com/ (2012)

Ilana Mercer photo
Elisabetta Canalis photo

“Each fur jacket and piece of fur trim is taken from a terrified living being who was trapped in the wild … or who had a miserable life locked inside a barren wire cage before being drowned, electrocuted, poisoned, or skinned alive. … I, along with many … would love to see … take a step into the compassionate future of fashion by pledging not to feature fur.”

Elisabetta Canalis (1978) Italian model and actress

Letter to Vogue Italia; quoted in "Lose the Fur: Elisabetta Canalis’ Message to New Editor of ‘Vogue Italia’" https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/lose-the-fur-elisabetta-canalis-vogue-italia/, PETA UK (22 February 2017).

Samuel Beckett photo
Pete Doherty photo
Michelle Pfeiffer photo
H. G. Wells photo
Fali Sam Nariman photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Britney Spears photo

“About shocking. You know I feel comfortable in my skin. I think it's an okay thing to express yourself.”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

Diane Sawyer interview http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2003_11_23/story_1024.asp, 60 Minutes (23 November 2003)

Bell Hooks photo
Nick Cave photo

“The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), The Carny

Owen Lovejoy photo
Ron Paul photo

“As whites are dying off, they are not replacing themselves. The black population, now about 32 million, will double in the next 60 years. And the Hispanic population will triple.I know it is considered impolite to worry about this trend. We are all the same under the skin, the argument goes. Whatever the truth of that assertion, it is an emprical fact that, in a mixed-economy democracy, nearly every racial and ethnic group votes its group interest except the white population. Whites don't vote for candidates that promise to promote white interests, whereas blacks and Hispanics do.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1993
January
The Disappearing White Majority
Ron Paul Survival Report
7
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/January1993.pdf, quoted in * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Survival Report

Thomas More photo

“Plato by a goodly similitude declareth, why wise men refrain to meddle in the commonwealth. For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.”
Quam ob rem pulcherrima similitudine declarat Plato, cur merito sapientes abstineant a capessenda quippe republica. Cum populum videant in plateas effusum assiduis imbribus perfundi, nec persuadere queant illis, ut se subducant pluviae, tectaque subeant. Gnari nihil profuturos sese si exeant, quam ut una compluantur, semet intra tecta continent habentes satis, quando alienae stultitiae non possunt mederi, si ipsi saltem sint in tuto.

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth

Margaret Atwood photo
Jonas Salk photo
Noel Gallagher photo
John Donne photo
Robert Jordan photo
Ray Kurzweil photo
Thomas Müntzer photo

“The stinking puddle from which usury, thievery and robbery arises is our lords and princes. They make all creatures their property— the fish in the water, the bird in the air, the plant in the earth must all be theirs. Then they proclaim God's commandments among the poor and say, "You shall not steal." They oppress everyone, the poor peasant, the craftsman are skinned and scraped.”

Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525) early Reformation-era German pastor who was a rebel leader during the German Peasants' War

Letter to the Princes, as cited in Transforming Faith Communities: A Comparative Study of Radical Christianity, p. 173 http://books.google.com/books?id=6FRJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA173


(de) Sieh zu, die Grundsuppe des Wuchers, der Dieberei und Räuberei sein unser Herrn und Fürsten, nehmen alle Kreaturen zum Eigentum: die Fisch im Wasser, die Vögel in der Luft, das Gewächs auf Erden muß alles ihr sein (Jes. 5). Darüber lassen sie dann Gottes Gebot ausgehen unter die Armen und sprechen: »Gott hat geboten: Du sollst nicht stehlen.

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Maneka Gandhi photo

“If there are 500 tigers left in India, I'd be surprised. They are even skinning the tigers in Indian zoos.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On poaching of tigers in India, as quoted in "Hunting down the hunter: A dying breed" http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/hunting-down-the-hunter-a-dying-breed-473821.html, The Independent (12 April 2006)
2001-2010

Richard Rodríguez photo
Quentin Crisp photo
Cormac McCarthy photo

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Harry Chapin photo
Ryū Murakami photo
Michael Foot photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“What a charming girl! And what a skin! She positively radiated light around her.”

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

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 150 : Recalling the model Jeanne Samary.

Heidi Klum photo
Timothy Leary photo
Matthijs Maris photo
Garth Brooks photo