Quotes about someone
page 24

“I don’t need to praise anything so justly famous as Frost’s observation of and empathy with everything in Nature from a hornet to a hillside; and he has observed his own nature, one person’s random or consequential chains of thoughts and feelings and perceptions, quite as well. (And this person, in the poems, is not the “alienated artist” cut off from everybody who isn’t, yum-yum, another alienated artist; he is someone like normal people only more so — a normal person in the less common and more important sense of normal.)”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Other Frost”, p. 29
Poetry and the Age (1953)

People, Feeling, Nature, Sense

“Gary Ross is just an incredible director, and it was great to have someone like him.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

[Davia L. Mosley, 'The Hunger Games' exclusive Cast members share highlights, behind-the-scenes action, Marietta Daily Journal, Georgia, United States, March 13, 2012]

“I've prayed every night for the past 10 years. There's a lot more to thank God for now. My philosophy is 'live life to the fullest,' [and] I was saved for a reason. Maybe I'm going to help someone else. I don't question it. All I know is, I'm thankful I'm still here.”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

James Montgomery DJ AM Says He Was 'Saved For A Reason' In First Post-Crash Interview http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1597103/20081015/dj_am.jhtml October. 15 2008. Retrieved August 30, 2009. (October 2008).

Life, God, Question, Past

“I sometimes think the Labour Party is like a pub where the mild is running out. If someone doesn't do something soon, all that's left will be bitter. (Laughter). And all that's bitter will be Left.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102777 Leader of the Opposition

Thinking, Laughter

“Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't know, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had a long road back to the campus before me.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 9

Love, Travel

“I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing," and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 183.
Testimony (1979)

Business, Thinking

“The term money has two very different meanings in popular discourse. We often speak of someone "making money," when we really mean that he or she is receiving an income. We do not mean that he or she has a printing press in the basement churning out greenbacked pieces of paper. In this use, money is a synonym for income or receipts; it refers to a flow, to income or receipts per week or per year. We also speak of someone's having money in his or her pocket or in a safe-deposit box or on deposit at a bank. In that use, money refers to an asset, a component of one's total wealth. Put differently, the first use refers to an item on a profit-and-loss statement, the second to an item on a balance sheet”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money

Money, Loss, Wealth, Box

“To me, capital punishment is a form of societal self-defense. It should not be employed indiscriminately, but in cases of the most heinous crimes, the death penalty may be the only appropriate punishment. Some people believe it is right to take a life to save the life of someone else, but they would not vote to take the life of a convicted criminal, no matter how horrible the crime. Others believe that killing another person for any reason is simply wrong. I respect those opinions, but I disagree with them. I'm convinced that government has a duty to promote community defense. The death penalty, when applied in appropriate cases, can be a strong deterrent to crime. It is certainly a deterrent to the convicted criminal sentenced to death, and it is also a deterrent to other potential capital offenders.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 112

Life, Death, People, Penalty

“Is it conceivable to adhere to a religion founded by someone else?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Religion

“Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed, but in every case it is someone else’s blood. That is why some of our thinkers feel free to say just about anything.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Toute idée fausse finit dans le sang, mais il s'agit toujours du sang des autres. C'est ce qui explique que certains de nos philosophes se sentent à l'aise pour dire n'importe quoi.
Actuelles I, 1950

Feeling, Idea

“Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

Diary entry for June 27, 1988, p. 177.
Writing Home (1994)

Life, Housing

“Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Happiness

“If you meet someone who has the same first name as this person, you immediately like them less.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), Recognizing Your Archenemy

Personality

“If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

War, Children, Rage

“I think that happiness resides somewhere between the extremes of personal, religious, and political. I think happiness resides where we understand someone else's point of view and needs. Happiness resides where we are not lost in the solitary dream.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

November 2005[citation needed]
Philosophy

Happiness, Dreams, Understanding, Thinking

“MGR has been a great influence in my life, I don’t deny that. But now I am my own person. I have evolved. Hereafter, I am responsible only for myself. Never again will anybody influence me to such an extent that all my thoughts and actions and statements are influenced and made in a particular way just because someone else wants it that way.”

Jayalalithaa (1948–2016) Indian politician and actress

Source: In an interview to Saavy magazine. The Life And Times Of Jayalalitha Ajith Pillai, A.S. Panneerselvan http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205450, 04 May 1998.

Life, Way, Personality

“We have turned our backs on God, and given Him lip-service by maintaining a belief in His existence and at the same time embracing that which is abhorrent to Him; things such as homosexual marriage, abortion, adultery, fornication, pornography, lying, theft and blasphemy. Few have any fear of God, which the Bible says is the ‘beginning’ of wisdom. A wise man once said, ‘Most I fear God. Next I fear him who fears Him not.’ When someone doesn’t fear God, they give themselves to evil.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

As quoted in Mass Murder 'Normal' in World without God' http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/mass-murder-normal-in-world-without-god/, Worldnutdaily (2012-07-23)

Wisdom, God, Marriage, Fear

“Physics is at present a mass of partial theories which no man has yet been able to render truly and clearly consistent. It has been well said that the modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a student of gravitational relativity theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday he is praying... that someone will find the reconciliation between the two views.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

Source: I am a mathematician, the later life of a prodigy (1953), p. 109

“What someone says or writes about me doesn't change the way I am; it only changes my opinion about that person.”

Marcos Pontes (1963) Brazilian astronaut

Webpage Astronauta Marcos Pontes - Entrevistas http://marcospontes.com.br/$SETOR/MCP/OPINIOES/entrevistas.html

Way, Change, Personality

“Books are still being written defaming H. P. B. and Mrs. Besant and one wonders what their writers hope to achieve. As far as I can ascertain the modern generation of investigating students are not the least interested in the pros or cons of their characters… What they are interested in is the teaching and the truth. This is wholesome and right. I wish these modern writers who spend months in raking up dirt and endeavoring to prove someone was vile would realise the stupidity of their activities. They do not touch the truth; they do not change the loyalties of those who know; they do not change the trend towards occult realisation and they hurt nobody but themselves.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter V - Part 1

Truth, Books, Stupidity, Hope

“If this is nothing more than a stipulation about how we ought to use the term ‘ideological’, then perhaps it will do no harm. But if it is a proposal about how historians ought to set about the business of explaining beliefs, then it seems to me fatal for just the reasons I have sought to give. It refuses to recognise that one of the reasons why someone may hold a certain belief is that there is good evidence in favour of it, that it fits well with their other beliefs, and so on – in a word, that it is rational for them to hold it. If we refuse to speak in these terms, we deprive ourselves of an indispensable means of identifying the most appropriate lines of enquiry to follow in any given case.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Visions of Politics (2002), "Interpretation, rationality and truth"

Business

“Most people won’t have opportunity to do full-time service, but those lucky enough to have monetary wealth or some spare time really can make an enormous difference. As someone who’s now in the public sector, and is seeing up-close-and-personal the real impact of what we do and what we give, I can tell you: every dollar and every volunteer help, in more ways than you can count.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/education/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_slate_60_dinner_keynote_address_at_william_j_clinton_presidential_library
Philanthropy

People, Way, Time, Help

“Many people find it hard working with their boss and often leave their jobs because of their boss’ working style, behaviours and attitude. I once heard someone say, “I joined the company, but I left my boss.””

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

page 184 Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?id=p24GkAsgjGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?id=qZjO9_ov74EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id=4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false

People

“Summer. When the day is over
there's a heart a little colder;
someone said goodbye,
but you don't know why.
Somewhere there is someone keeping
all the tears they have been weeping,
someone said goodbye,
but you don't know why.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Tear, Heart, Summer

“I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others, … So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.”

Tim Cook (1960) American business executive

WSJ.com http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/30/apples-tim-cook-im-proud-to-be-gay/?mod=e2fb&mg=blogs-wsj&url=http%253A%252F%252Fblogs.wsj.com%252Fdigits%252F2014%252F10%252F30%252Fapples-tim-cook-im-proud-to-be-gay%253Fmod%253De2fb

People, Feeling, Help

“Think about every example, every time someone comes up with religion as the reason why they want to impose it. It is always stupid. It is always imposing bigotry or limitations against somebody else’s freedom because you want to pretend in your special brand of pixie dust that is different from the gods and monsters other people want to make up. That’s what it is all about. There is simply no true religion because literally none of it is true.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

God, People, Stupidity, Religion

“"That's the way it works in movies," said Suzanne. "Something happens that has an impact on someone's life, and based on that impact, his life shifts course. Well, that's not how it happens in life. Something has an impact on you, and then your life stays the same, and you think, 'Well, what about the impact?'”

Carrie Fisher book Postcards from the Edge

You have epiphanies all the time. They just don't have any effect."
Postcards from the Edge (1987)

Life, Way, Thinking, Time

“What is to be said of someone who flings himself into the Ocean and has no aspiration but to drown himself in it? This is precisely the significance of the so-called "fusion" with a "cosmic consciousness" which is really nothing but the confused and indistinct assemblage of all the psychic influences.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times (1945), p. 289

“The models of management which individuals and organizations use come from a variety of sources. Sometimes the model comes from a theory. The theory may emerge from someone's thoughts about the desired characteristics of a manager, or about the characteristics of competent managers. Sometimes the model comes from a panel. A group of people, possibly in the job or at levels above the job within the organization, generates a model through discussion of what is needed to perform a management job competently.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Source: Competent manager (1982), p. 7.

People

“I simply don't understand why the Nobel academy gave him a peace prize or why Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh gave him a new garden. And I don't see why he should be given a statue in Trafalgar Square, either. If we're after someone who stands up for the oppressed, what about Jesus? I feel fairly sure he never blew up a train.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Mandela Just Doesn't Deserve His Pedestal, p. 239
The World According to Clarkson (2005)

Peace, Feeling, Understanding, Training

“Solitude is certainly a fine thing; but there is pleasure in having someone who can answer, from time to time, that it is a fine thing.”

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654) French author, best known for his epistolary essays

La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il y a plaisir d'avoir quelqu'un qui sache répondre, à qui on puisse dire de temps en temps, que c'est un belle chose.
Dissertations chrétiennes et morales (1665), XVIII: "Les plaisirs de la vie retirée".

Pleasure, Solitude, Time

“RockNet: Were you terribly uncomfortable at the recent Grammy Award Show?
Cornell: I don't know. It's just a strange subject. It's almost as if the music industry is patting itself on the back in a way. This was the seventh Grammy nomination for us and had we won one for our first nomination I would have had a really cool attitude about it because it would have meant that the people who were actually voting were paying attention to music for music's sake as opposed to some other reason.
I was happy that we were nominated because it was an independent record company and it was a low-profile record. We didn't win a Grammy until we'd sold several millions and it seems that what sells a lot is what wins, even though the record may or may not be any good, but that seems to be the requirement.
I'm not critical of the people who work in the music industry, and I appreciate the Grammy. (But) to me it's their party and it's not really mine. It's not for the musicians. It has more to do with the industry. You can tell after a Grammy period all the record labels and artists who won a bunch take out full-page ads in the trades gloating. That's fine. That's what they do, they sell records and they work really hard to develop careers. If they're into it, I'm not going to be disrespectful, but I'd hate for anyone to think that it's something that was a necessity for me or the rest of the band, or that it was a benchmark to us of legitimacy for us because it's not. It doesn't really matter that much to us. It seems like it's for someone else. I'd never get up and say that. If I was totally not into it, the best thing to do is to not show up.
Maybe ten years from now I'll reflect and say "wow, that happened and it was pretty unusual. Not every kid on the block gets to go up and pick up a Grammy Award."”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

It's just one more thing to take the focus away from what we like to do, which is to write music and make records and try not to think about anything whether it's how many records we sell or what people think of us. For us, I think the key to success for being a band and always making good records is always going to be forgetting about everything else outside our own little band. RockNet Interview: Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, May 1, 1996 https://web.archive.org/web/19961114054327/http://www.rocknet.com/may96/soundgar.html, Soundgarden Era

Hate, Happiness, People, Music

“It's one thing to remember history and to put up historical markers that get it right. It's quite another thing to commemorate someone and to name stuff for him. You don't learn anything from driving the Jefferson Davis Highway about Jefferson Davis except that he was a great man and should be honored. And it's precisely that last little bit - should be honored - that we need to take away from him.”

James W. Loewen (1942) American historian

As quoted in "Rejection Of Flag Exposes Larger Truths About The Confederacy" http://www.npr.org/2015/07/02/419554834/rejection-of-flag-exposes-larger-truths-about-the-confederacy (2 July 2015), by Robert Siegel, NPR 2015

History, Learning

“Living with someone always means a denial of self in SOME way and I suppose I have always known it was something I couldn't accomplish. So I've always stayed on the sidelines. Getting the pleasure vicariously. It's not wholly satisfactory, but then of course no lives are, and you know what I think about indiscriminate sex and promiscuous trade. I think it's the beginning of a long, long road to despair.”

Kenneth Williams (1926–1988) English actor and comedian

Letter, quoted in The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010. Source: Kenneth Williams: secret loves behind the life of a tormented man, The Observer, 10 October 2010 http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/kenneth-williams-biography-christopher-stevens,

Pleasure, Sex, Way, Thinking

“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke the Evangelist Gospel of Luke

14:8-11 NIV
Gospel of Luke

Wedding, Personality

“One of these days I'll find a way / I'll rise above the throng / They'll be amazed at what they see / One of these days someone will say / I knew it all along / One of these days, that's what will be”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Superbia

Way

“Things which seem in poor taste: too many personal effects cluttering up the place where one is sitting; too many brushes in an ink-box; too many Buddhas in a family temple; too many stones and plants in a garden; too many children in a house; too many words on meeting someone; too many meritorious deeds recorded in a petition. Things which are not offensive, no matter how numerous: books in a book cart, rubbish in a rubbish heap.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

72
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Children, Books, Family, Housing

“I'm not a great believer in writing courses, though it must be said I've never been in one. It probably depends on what kind of writer you are. I'm very un-analytical about what I do. I don't plan much for the first draft. I try to let characters come out by themselves, rather than designing them. But other writers work differently, and for them the teaching process - which at least forces you to consider what you're doing, and why - may be very helpful. At the very least a creative writing course mandates someone to spend a period of their life just writing, which can be hard to do otherwise. But beware of thinking too much about what you do.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Life, Thinking, Help, Dependency

“There's people outside our house; you get followed by photographers; you can't go out and have a cup of coffee with a friend without someone coming up to you”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

MTV.com Jack Talks About His Addiction and Recovery

People, Coffee, Housing

“Don't get me wrong, I like to cuddle. But there is such a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so that they can't get away.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

"Skanks for the Memories"

“Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, "I must have an ombudsman to protect me." You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.”

Robertson Davies book World of Wonders

"World of Wonders".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

People

“Say if I was in charge and someone said that buildin' needs knockin' down, it's dangerous, if we didn't have a calendar we'd go 'erm let's do it now then.' Whereas cos we've got a calendar it's easy to say…'next Wednesday”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Podfather Trilogy , Episode 2 Thanksgiving
On Calendars

“You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 17

“Real life has let you down.
Real life has let you down.
Someone stripped the jewel from your crown.
Everybody owes somebody something.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

Suzie Blue.
Song lyrics, Burn to Shine (1999)

Life

“Perhaps his love for her made him less than impartial, but he also knew how deeply she'd been hurt and chided her for judging herself so much more harshly than she would have judged someone else…”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Flag in Exile (1995)

Love, Hurt

“I was someone more
Because I was no one poor.
To find that I too was down on my knees.
I'm just homeless.”

Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) American singer, songwriter, and record producer

Homeless, from Take It To The Streets (1990).
Song lyrics

“People get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don’t know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don’t know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview at Collider.com (6 February 2011) http://collider.com/jennifer-beals-interview-the-chicago-code/74802/.

People, Behavior, Thinking, Sense

“There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Baccalaureate address as President of Yale (12 June 1966)

“We all did everything we could do to try and talk her out of [quitting]. But you look in someone's eyes and you can tell they're finished. As Taylor Swift would say: 'We are never ever getting back together ever!' That's what Chris was saying… But I'd beg, borrow and scrape together $5 million and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That's how much I miss her.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on asking Christine McVie to return in 2013) Caspar Llewellyn Smith, "Stevie Nicks: the return of Fleetwood Mac", http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jan/12/stevie-nicks-return-of-fleetwood-mac?intcmp=ILCMUSTXT9383 The Guardian, 12 January 2013

“Here's the thing, it's the same person. It's just that some things that are appropriate on stage aren't appropriate at a dinner party, you know with a bunch of judges and lawyers. It's still saying how you feel, it's still being yourself, it's just knowing when and where. It's also knowing when to let someone else take the lead. That's exactly why Erika Jayne is so great, because when she's onstage, that's what she's supposed to do. To be over the top, to be peacocking. But it still resonates from the same place inside”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

me
Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

Feeling, Personality

“Someone tell me why my road
is eternally strewn with ashes.”

Sofia Samatar book A Stranger in Olondria

Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 20, “The Sound of the World” (p. 282)

“It is a great joy to admire someone without reserve; love which is founded upon admiration of the mind as well as the body of the chosen person undoubtedly affords the keenest delight.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Love, Joy, Personality

“Someone told me that creativity is just learning to do something with a different perspective.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 84

Learning

“Our whole life we’ve lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary—not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I’m asking you to do it again. See what’s really going on here. See what’s real.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 24 (p. 265).

Life, World, Decision, Time

“It's hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you.”

Daniel Handler book The Carnivorous Carnival

Lemony Snicket
The Carnivorous Carnival (2002)

People, Idea, Tear, Personality

“It's really fun and just to be with a friend while you're working really hard. It can sometimes be really stressful. Also it's just fun to have someone to laugh with and have a good time with.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Rachel on having friends with her while she tours.
Off & On Broadway documentary (2006)

Time

“If someone claims to have free will, ask them, "free from precisely what?"”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: The Apophenion (2008), p. 24

“That worries me. One death is attrition; two would look like incompetence—on someone’s part.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 3 (p. 37)

Death, Parting

“About three decades ago, when I needed to purchase some office equipment, chiefly steel filing cabinets, I was amused by a firm whose computer, having been informed that R. P. Oliver was the purchasing agent for R. P. Oliver, offered the former a secret "kick back" of 20% if he would buy their products at the expense of the latter. Another firm offered the purchasing agent a "complimentary" woman's mink jacket, which would be sent with his compliments to "any address," thus tactfully permitting him to choose between his wife and his doxy. That would have been good business, had the computers been operated by someone with intelligence enough to notice the odd coincidence between the name of the purchasing agent and the name of the owner to be exploited.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Spiced Crambe", Liberty Bell magazine (March 1993)
1990s

Secret, Intelligence, Business

“Cease to know or to tell
Or to see or to be your own
Have someone else's will as your own
Have someone else's will as your own.”

Nico (1938–1988) German musician, model and actress, one of Warhol's superstars

Afraid

“I don’t think we should get to the state in this or any other country that if someone has a faith they are regarded as curious. Given that [Blair] had that framework – and it’s not for me to question his personal beliefs – then why on earth was he employing folk who so clearly didn’t?”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Faith, Question, Thinking, Personality

“Don't you retards think before you click "Send" that maybe someone on the other end is actually going to read your stupid, malformed emails some day? It's almost like there's a record full of incomprehensible bullshit playing in your mind 24/7, and you put the needle down randomly and whatever it picks up, you just type it up in an email and shoot it off to me, usually mid-sentence.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

I am a genius, you are not. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=your_stupid_ideas The Best Page in the Universe

Stupidity, Thinking, Reading

“Life gets boring, someone invents another necessity, and once again we turn the crank on the screwjack of progress hoping that nobody gets screwed.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Life, Hope

“As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan's eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

pg 158
The Raven Cycle Series, Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014)

Parting

“The Mockery Bird regarded him with a roguish eye, head on one side, and took a few slow steps into the clearing. With its head on one side and its foot tentatively raised, it seemed like some sort of lanky, avian dancing master. It stepped forward among the guava stems with a mincing delicacy and then shuffled its wings like someone shuffling a pack of cards. He noticed that it had very long eyelashes which it raised and lowered over its large gaily-sparkling eyes. … There was another complicated rustle and flurry in the undergrowth and then, projected into the clearing by its own nervous eagerness, came a female Mockery Bird making strange, peeting noises, which became a soothing babble when she caught sight of the male. She went up to her mate and briefly preened his throat feathers as an over-zealous wife will straighten the tie of her consort. … Here in front of him, cossetting each other, were two birds which were thought to be extinct.”

Gerald Durrell book The Mockery Bird

The Mockery Bird (1981)

Bird, Dance

“Solomon: Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
Hofstadter: I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me.
Solomon: So fix it.
Hofstadter: The next day someone will fix it back.”

Douglas Hofstadter (1945) American professor of cognitive science

Quoted in Deborah Solomon, "The Mind Reader," http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/magazine/01wwlnQ4.t.html New York Times (2007-04-01)

Intelligence

“Another definition of a hero is someone who is concerned about other people's well-being, and will go out of his or her way to help them -- even if there is no chance of a reward. That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero.”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

cyberspacers.com http://www.cyberspacers.com/exclusive/08020302.html

People, Way, Chance, Help

“When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

Ogilvy on Advertising, p. 47

People

“When one speaks of America, millions of Germans think of their relatives who either recently or long ago left their German homeland to seek their fortune in the “New World.” When someone succeeded in quickly making a lot of money in America, people said he had made his fortune. The result was that the “rich uncle” in America was envied and his nephews and nieces were encouraged to join the fortune-seeker. Seeking fortunes in America led to Germany losing people, and the American continent received many people whose contributions are particularly clear in the agricultural and technical fields. That these people and their descendants now give great help to the enemies of Germany in this Second World War is a tragic fact.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der Stürmer, 1944

Money, War, People, World

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she's just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet -- we didn't need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

in "GOP floor revolt over inaction continues," by Jim Brown, One News Now, August 12, 2008
2010s

“…A column is not merely a round stick of stone: it is part of an entire symbolic system, which one cannot intuit simply by looking at it in isolation. The basic reason for studying such things is not merely technical or archivally historical but humanistic; it is to seek out the answer to what someone like Vitruvius meant by his (to us) mysterious comment that "a building should have the proportions of a man,"”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Study, Parting

“All the time I felt I was being watched, that I was not alone, that I was putting on an act for the benefit of someone, that this action could be done only if it was spontaneous, pure – and moral. Because more and more it crept through my mind with the chill spring night that I was trying to commit not a moral action, but a fundamentally aesthetic one; to do something that would end my life sensationally, significantly, consistently. It was a Mercutio death I was looking for, not a real one. A death to be remembered, not the true death of a true suicide, the death obliterate.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Life, Death, Spring, Suicide

“It is not a matter of how many kilograms of meat one has to eat, or of how many times a year someone can go to the beach, or how many pretty things from abroad you might be able to buy with present-day wages. It is a matter of making the individual feel more complete, with much more inner wealth and much more responsibility.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Feeling, Time, Wealth

“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong. It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too, and I just don’t think that it is the right thing to say, “We’re going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.” What we will do is we’ll say, “Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.””

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed. In an interview with Kara Swisher as quoted in Zuckerberg: The Recode interview https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher (July 18, 2018), Recode.

People, Understanding, Thinking, Reality

“The religion of hinduism says that if you’ve been bad, you may come back as a rat or some other animal. If you’ve been good, you might come back as a prince. But that’s like someone saying, “when you jump out of the plane, you’ll get sucked back in as another passenger. If you’ve been bad, you go down to the Economy Class; if you’ve been good, you go up to First Class.” It’s an interesting concept, but it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

God, Religion, Hell, Problem

“I didn't care. It was better to be a live coward than a dead madman. These people walking in and out of huge concrete buildings--someone should warn them. It would come again…Los Angeles was doomed. It was a city with a curse upon it.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

People, Angels, Dead

“Minor surgery is surgery that someone else is having”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

Teaching the Pig to Dance

“Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on Letters on the Nature and Development of Man (1851), by Harriet Martineau. Letter to James Taylor (11 February 1851) The life of Charlotte Brontë

Life, God, Truth, Books

“I'm not 25, and I'm not 5'8". But I know when someone is pulling my leg.”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8B09JYv4Hs&feature=channel_video_title
Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Being cocky

“If someone is frequently under attack by negative entities, it is because of a polluted consciousness that needs to be upgraded. A negative entity dislikes visiting a clean mind as much as a rat dislikes going to a clean place. […] Putting up spiritual paraphernalia around the home and not allowing any negative activity to go on in the environment can help you greatly. This may mean asking friends and loved ones to refrain from drinking, smoking, taking drugs, gossiping, or doing any activity that does not encourage spiritual thought and action.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 22

Love, Home, Drink, Help

“If someone charges that my endeavor here is wholly speculative, I congratulate him on his grasp of the obvious.”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

[Price, Robert M., w:Robert M. Price, The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul, 2012, Signature Books, 1-56085-216-X, 249]

“On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "…Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should…I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information…" Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic."”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close.
[CNN, Jack Cafferty on Sarah Palin, 26 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc]
2008

Hell, Light, Wolf, Time

“I think the most successful way to overthrow any government is through infiltration. It's been proven for years. The dream, of course, is that there is going to be a fantastic cataclysm, and that tomorrow we have Adlai Stevenson in the White House. That's not going to happen, and not because Adlai Stevenson is dead. The reason it's not going to happen is that kind of overthrow is not possible. So I will work in the only way I know how, and that is within the establishment — because that is the only existing program. Let someone come up with another one and if it's good I'd do it in a second.”

Cass Elliot (1941–1974) American singer

Rolling Stone interview (1968)

Dreams, Way, Thinking, Success

“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.”

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

(1847)

“The dog had no name. For a dog to have a name someone must have him and someone must love him, and a dog must have someone. The dog had no one, and no one had the dog. The dog had only the silent empty countryside of the few houses. The dog had only the crumbs and cleaned bones he could pick up at the few houses. The dog had only himself, so the dog had nothing, and he was afraid.”

Meindert DeJong book Hurry Home

Hurry Home, Candy (1953)

Love, Dogs, Housing

“Of what benefit is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but he does not have works? That faith cannot save him, can it? If a brother or a sister is lacking clothing and enough food for the day, yet one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but you do not give them what they need for their body, of what benefit is it? So, too, faith by itself, without works, is dead.”

James, son of Zebedee major religious figure in Christian tradition and one of the Twelve Apostles

James 2:14-17 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/james/2/, NWT

Peace, Faith, Food, Sister

“One should think that you're someone living in the future and that you have to judge—approve or disapprove—the I that acts today, the I that keeps up or fails.”

Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976) Swedish writer

"Om mod" in: Tor Andræ and Anders Österling, I angeläget ärende, Stockholm: A. Bonnier, 1941.

Thinking, Future

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Life, World, Feeling, Question

“Every piece of information about these statues is totally useless... What. import is it to us if their author was a bureaucrat or a cowherd, an old man or a young person? It is very unfounded to pay attention to these meager ircumstances. There is no difference between an old and young man. Not the least in any domain. Or if he was from Burgundy or Auvergne it's the same. And if he is alive or dead for who knows how long it is the same to us. Between a contemporary and someone from the last century, or a companion of Clovis or the big prehistoric reptiles? No difference whatsoever. We are completely wrong to take interest in these details.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote in Dubuffet's 1947 Entry on an anonymous sculptor, associated with the Swiss collector O.J. Müller; from: Jean Dubuffet, Les Barbus Müller et Autres Pièces de la Statuaire Provinciale(1947), in Prospectus I, pp. 498-49 (transl. Kent Minturn)
remark about the publication of biographically based texts on individual art brut artists; according to Dubuffet: veritable history of art without 'names,' 'dates,' or 'histories'.
1940's

Personality, Dead

“I am at the work at which I am interested in Indians and not the Chiefs. I need people to do the job. I may accept someone if he/she is the right wing o left wing, a monarchist or republican because in this phase the grounds are being set, rather than painting the front. This is not about aesthetics. It is irrelevant whether someone is inclined a little on this side or on that side; if one is professional, honest, hard-working, and if one is capable of accomplishing certain job – that person is valuable to me.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Ekonomist, 12.01.2003.

People, Painting, Personality

“The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way. The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for someone to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been a crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites. The New Left, which will eventually succeed it, could easily turn out to be equally crude.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Men, Way, Feeling

“Sharron Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical…
Bill Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.
Sharron Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

interview with talk radio host Bill Manders early in senatorial campaign
Sharron Angle Floated '2nd Amendment Remedies' As 'Cure' For 'The Harry Reid Problems'
2010-06-06
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/sharron-angle-floated-2nd_n_614003.html

Law, Hope, Feeling, History

“About five years ago, somebody showed me some web sites that had my material all over them, and I thought that was fascinating. One reason was, I'd never seen my jokes written one right after another like that. I write on drawing paper—I don't even like lines on the paper—so I have notebooks all over the place with handwritten pieces of my act in them. So to see it go by, all typed out neatly, was like, "Wow." And then two or three years ago, someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Interviews

People, Thinking, Drawing

“How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

¿De qué otra forma se puede amenazar que no sea de muerte? Lo interesante, lo original, sería que alguien lo amenace a uno con la inmortalidad.
Borges, Biografía Verbal (1988) by Roberto Alifano, p. 23

Death